NERGAL, the name of a solar deity in Babylonia, the main seat of whose cult was at Kutha or Cuthah, represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim. The importance of Kutha as a religious and at one time also as a political centre led to his surviving the tendency to concentrate the various sun-cults of Babylonia in Shamash (q.v.). He becomes, however, the representative of a certain phase only of the sun and not of the sun as a whole. Portrayed in hymns and myths as a god of war and pestilence, Nergal represents the sun of noon-time and of the summer solstice which brings destruction to mankind. Nergal is pictured also as the deity who presides over the nether-world, and stands at the head of the special pantheon assigned to the government of the dead, who are supposed to be gathered in a large subterranean cave known as Arallis or Irkalla. In this capacity there is associated with him a goddess Allatu or Erishkigal, though there are indica tions that at one time Allatu was regarded as the sole mistress of Aralu. Ordinarily the consort of Nergal is Laz. Nergal was pic tured as a lion and his symbol is a griffin with panther's head, sometimes supporting his other symbol, a weapon with two panther heads.
As in the case of Nin-urta, Nergal appears to have absorbed a number of minor solar deities, which accounts for the various names or designations under which he appears, such as Lugalgira, Sharrapu ("the burner," perhaps a mere epithet), Ira or Gira, Gibil (though this name more properly belongs to Nusku, q.v.). A certain confusion exists in cuneiform literature between Nin urta and Nergal, perhaps due to the traces of two different con ceptions regarding these two solar deities. Nergal is called the "raging king," the "furious one," and the original Sumerian name consists of three elements, Ne-urugal, "might of the great dwell ing" and thus at the head of the nether-world a pantheon is indi cated. In the astral-theological system he is the planet Mars, while
in ecclesiastical art the great lion-headed colossi serving as guardi ans to the temples and palaces seem to be a symbol of Nergal, just as the bull-headed colossi probably typify Nin-urta.
The name of his chief temple at Kutha was E-shid-lam, from which the god receives the designation of Shidlamtdea, "the one that rises up from Shidlam." The cult of Nergal does not appear to have been as widespread as that of Nin-urta. He is frequently invoked in hymns and in votive and other inscriptions of Baby lonian and Assyrian rulers, but we do not learn of many temples to him outside of Kutha. Sennacherib speaks of one at Tarbisu to the north of Nineveh, but although Nebuchadrezzar II. (6o6 586 B.c.), the great temple-builder of the neo-Babylonian mon archy, alludes to his operations at E-shid-lam in Kutha, he makes no mention of a sanctuary to Nergal in Babylon. Local associa tions with his original seat—Kutha—and the conception formed of him as a god of the dead acted in making him feared rather than actively worshipped. He is often spoken of as a god who passed judgment on the souls of the dead, and in the late period arose the theory of compensation at his hands in Arallu for the righteous, and thus arose the late Hebrew belief in rewards after death to explain the problem of providence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Josef Bollenriicher, Gebete and Hymnen an Nergal (Leipzig, 1904), where earlier monographs are mentioned; Thureau Dangin, Revue d'Assyriologie, xi. 103-104 on Nergal as patron of pas tures (Paris, 1914). On the "Seven Gods," messengers of the god Nergal-Girra, see F. Jean, ibid., xxi. 93-104 (Paris, 1924).