In Sumer she was known
as "the Mother of the Gods", and she was credited with the power
of transferring the kingdom and royal insignia from one king to his
successor.

(1) See especially, Poebel, op. cit., pp. 24 ff.

Her supreme position as a goddess is attested by the relative
insignificance of her husband Dunpae, whom she completely overshadows,
in which respect she presents a contrast to the goddess Ninlil, Enlil's
female counterpart. The early clay figurines found at Nippur and on
other sites, representing a goddess suckling a child and clasping one of
her breasts, may well be regarded as representing Ninkharsagga and not
Ninlil. Her sanctuaries were at Kesh and Adab, both in the south, and
this fact sufficiently explains her comparative want of influence in
Akkad, where the Semitic Ishtar took her place. She does indeed appear
in the north during the Sargonic period under her own name, though later
she survives in her synonyms of Ninmakh, "the Sublime Lady", and Nintu,
"the Lady of Child-bearing". It is under the latter title that Hammurabi
refers to her in his Code of Laws, where she is tenth in a series
of eleven deities. But as Goddess of Birth she retained only a pale
reflection of her original cosmic character, and her functions were
gradually specialized.(1)

(1) Cf. Poebel, op. cit., p. 33. It is possible that, under
one of her later synonyms, we should identify her, as Dr.
Poebel suggests, with the Mylitta of Herodotus.

From a consideration of their characters, as revealed by independent
sources of evidence, we thus obtain the reason for the co-operation of
four deities in the Sumerian Creation. In fact the new text illustrates
a well-known principle in the development of myth, the reconciliation
of the rival claims of deities, whose cults, once isolated, had been
brought from political causes into contact with each other. In this
aspect myth is the medium through which a working pantheon is evolved.
Naturally all the deities concerned cannot continue to play their
original parts in detail. In the Babylonian Epic of Creation, where
a single deity, and not a very prominent one, was to be raised to
pre-eminent rank, the problem was simple enough. He could retain his own
qualities and achievements while borrowing those of any former rival. In
the Sumerian text we have the result of a far more delicate process of
adjustment, and it is possible that the brevity of the text is here not