Lugala'abba or Lugalabba was a

Mesopotamian god Deities in ancient Mesopotamia were almost exclusively Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic. They were thought to possess extraordinary powers and were often envisioned as being of tremendous physical size. The deities typically wore ''melam'', a ...

associated with the sea, as well as with the

underworld The underworld, also known as the netherworld or hell, is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions and myths, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld. ...

. It has been proposed that he was worshiped in

Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, N. G. L. Hammond, ''The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory'': Vol. 1, Part 1, Ca ...

. He is also attested in various god lists, in a seal inscription, and in the incantation series '' Šurpu''.

Name and character

Lugala'abba's name was written in

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

as ''^d

lugal ( Sumerian: ) is the Sumerian term for "king, ruler". Literally, the term means "big man." In Sumerian, ''lú'' " 𒇽" is "man" and ''gal'' " 𒃲" is "great", or "big." It was one of several Sumerian titles that a ruler of a city-state could ...

-a-ab-ba''. It means "king of the sea" in Sumerian.

Stephanie Dalley Stephanie Mary Dalley FSA (''née'' Page; March 1943) is a British Assyriologist and scholar of the Ancient Near East. Prior to her retirement, she was a teaching Fellow at the Oriental Institute, Oxford. She is known for her publications of ...

tentatively proposes the alternate translation, "king of the Sealand." In addition to being a deity of the sea, Lugala'abba was associated with the

. Wilfred G. Lambert pointed out making a connection between sea and death is not uncommon in Mesopotamian literature, for example the ''

Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian language, Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (formerly read as Sumerian "Bilgames"), king of Uruk, some of ...

'' uses the phrases "waters of death" and "ocean," ''a-ab-ba'', interchangeably, and noted a similar association is also present in the

Ugaritic texts The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered in 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic language, Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic langua ...

, in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible, or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Isr ...

, and in

Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...

's ''

Theogony The ''Theogony'' () is a poem by Hesiod (8th–7th century BC) describing the origins and genealogy, genealogies of the Greek gods, composed . It is written in the Homeric Greek, epic dialect of Ancient Greek and contains 1,022 lines. It is one ...

'', where the personified

Styx In Greek mythology, Styx (; ; lit. "Shuddering"), also called the River Styx, is a goddess and one of the rivers of the Greek Underworld. Her parents were the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, and she was the wife of the Titan Pallas and the moth ...

is a daughter of

Oceanus In Greek mythology, Oceanus ( ; , also , , or ) was a Titans, Titan son of Uranus (mythology), Uranus and Gaia, the husband of his sister the Titan Tethys (mythology), Tethys, and the father of the River gods (Greek mythology), river gods ...

. However, he also notes the most detailed known description of Lugala'abba occurs in an Akkadian incantation which instead calls him "the exorcist of the gods, the pure god" and implores him to "cast a spell of life."

Associations with other deities

The goddess NIN-ĝa'uga was regarded as Lugala'abba's spouse. Her name can be translated as "queen of the dead" or, based on variant orthographies, "mistress of the house of the dead." Glosses in various explanatory texts indicate that the NIN sign in her name was read as ''ereš'' or ''égi'', rather than ''nin''. Wilfred G. Lambert maintained that she was the same deity as Ninmug, but according to Gianni Marchesi they were only confused with each other. In the god list ''

An = Anum ''An = Anum'', also known as the Great God List, is the longest preserved Mesopotamian god list, a type of lexical list cataloging the deities worshiped in the Ancient Near East, chiefly in modern Iraq. While god lists are already known from the ...

'' the former appears alongside Lugala'abba, apart from the latter, who is paired with

Ishum Ishum (Išum; possibly the masculine form of Akkadian ''išātum'', "fire") was a Mesopotamian god of Akkadian origin. He is best attested as a divine night watchman, tasked with protecting houses at night, but he was also associated with vari ...

. It also equates her with Ninkarrak, while the ''Emesal Vocabulary'' - with Gula. Lambert also presumed that Abzumaḫ, "exalted Apsu," was a female deity who functioned as Lugala'abba's spouse in

Attestations

According to Wilfred G. Lambert, the worship of Lugala'abba is attested in a source from

. A

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

to deities named ''^dlugal-ab-a'' and ''^dabzu-maḫ'' existed in this city during the reign of

Samsu-iluna Samsu-iluna (Amorite: ''Shamshu-iluna'', "The Sun (is) our god") (–1712 BC) was the seventh king of the founding Amorite dynasty of Babylon. His reign is estimated from 1749 BC to 1712 BC (middle chronology), or from 1686 to 1648 BC (short chron ...

. The writing ''^dlugal-ab-a'' also occurs in the Nippur god list. Manfred Krebernik assumes that it represents an older orthography of Lugala'abba's name. However, Jeremiah Peterson argues that this view is incorrect, and suggests this writing refers to a separate god, Lugaleša. Lambert considered the view that ''^dlugal-ab-a'' was a different deity, as well as the reading Lugaleša ("lord of the dwelling"), to be erroneous, and described the latter as "an improbable and unparalleled deity." Active worship of Lugala'abba is not otherwise attested from any other city, though an

Old Babylonian Old Babylonian may refer to: *the period of the First Babylonian dynasty (20th to 16th centuries BC) *the historical stage of the Akkadian language Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Enc ...

seal from the

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

collection designates the owner as a "slave of Lugala'abba" (''ìr ^dlugal-a-ab-ba''). In the god list ''

'', Lugalabba appears twice, in the end of tablet V, and in tablet VI in a group of

theonym A theonym (from Greek (), 'god', attached to (), ) is a proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics, the study of the etymology, history, and use of proper names. Theonymy helps develop an und ...

s beginning with the word ''lugal''. A different god list, which apparently only contains the names of gods associated with the underworld, places Lugala'abba after a damaged entry and before Lugal-Ḫubur, a god whose name refers to an underworld river, Ḫubur. Lugala'abba is also present in a list of '' Asakku'' demons, in which he occurs alongside Equ, Muḫra, Kūšu, Lugaledinna, Sakkut, Šulak and Latarak. It is presumed that his inclusion in it was based on his connection to the underworld. However, he is absent from a number of other similar documents which list many other members of this group. In the incantation series '' Šurpu'', Lugala'abba opens a sequence of invoked deities which consists of Lugalidda,

Laguda Laguda (''dla-gu-da'', rarely ''dla-gù-dé'') was a Mesopotamian god most likely associated with the Persian Gulf. Character It is assumed that Laguda was a god of the sea, specifically the Persian Gulf. According to Wilfred G. Lambert, the possi ...

, Inzak and Meskilak. Lugalidda, "king of the river," was a similar god frequently associated with him, Laguda was a sea god associated with the

Persian Gulf The Persian Gulf, sometimes called the Arabian Gulf, is a Mediterranean seas, mediterranean sea in West Asia. The body of water is an extension of the Arabian Sea and the larger Indian Ocean located between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula.Un ...

, and Inzak and Meskilak were a pair of deities from

Dilmun Dilmun, or Telmun, ( Sumerian: ,Transliteration: Similar text: later 𒉌𒌇(𒆠), NI.TUKki = dilmunki; ) was an ancient East Semitic–speaking civilization in Eastern Arabia mentioned from the 3rd millennium BC onwards. Based on contextual ...

References

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *{{cite book, last=Peterson, first=Jeremiah, title=God lists from Old Babylonian Nippur in the University Museum, Philadelphia, url=https://www.academia.edu/27631505, publisher=Ugarit Verlag, publication-place=Münster, year=2009, isbn=978-3-86835-019-7, oclc=460044951 Mesopotamian gods Sea and river gods Underworld gods