Ninurta

The mountain had risen against the gods. Asag, a demon fathered by the sky on the cold stone of the highlands, had bred an army of stone children and crowned himself king of the uplands, and while he lived the rivers ran wrong and the fields went hungry. Ninurta climbed to meet him carrying a mace that could talk. Sharur was the weapon’s name, and it flew ahead of its master like a hunting hawk, read the enemy line, came back and reported, and when the god’s nerve faltered it argued him upright again. This is the power the Sumerians trusted to set the world straight when something had knocked it crooked.

He answers to two great names that were once two gods. In the old city of Girsu, in the land of Lagash, he was Ningirsu, lord of that place, the deity for whom Gudea raised temples and dug canals. Elsewhere, and above all at Nippur, he was Ninurta, son of the storm-lord Enlil. The two figures share the same myths and the same weapons so completely that they read as one being under two flags. His mother shifts with the telling. In one poem she is Enlil’s wife Ninlil; in another she is the birth-goddess Ninmah, whom Ninurta himself renames at the height of his triumph. As Ninurta his wife is Gula, the goddess who cures; as Ningirsu she is Bau. Healing runs in the household.

The oldest image of him is not the soldier at all. It is a farmer. His emblems are a perched bird and a plow, and the earliest hymns praise him as the god who breaks the sickness out of a body and drives off the demons that cause it. Only as Mesopotamia grew more warlike did the spear come to the front and the plow fall behind, until he stood in the art as a bearded fighter with a bow and a heavy mace, now and then with wings thrown up behind his shoulders. He never fully shed the older role. The god who could level a mountain was the same god a plowman prayed to for a straight furrow and a clean field.

The poem called Lugal-e, which opens with the words “O King,” follows him against Asag. He wades into the demon’s stone host, and the battle is close enough that Sharur must fly back to Enlil for counsel before Ninurta breaks the enemy. When Asag is dead the god does not simply leave the corpse. He gathers the mountains, judges the stones one by one, curses those that fought for the demon and blesses those that stood aside, and heaps up the foothills, the hursag, into the shape the land still keeps. Then he gives his mother the mountain he has made and a new name to go with it, Ninhursag, lady of the mountain. Last of all he takes the waters that had pooled useless in the highlands and channels them down into the Tigris and the Euphrates, so that the same flood that drowned the fields now feeds them. The war-god and the irrigation-god are one act apart.

His most famous fight is against a bird. In the Akkadian tale of Anzu, the monstrous thunderbird is set to guard Enlil’s bath-house and betrays the trust, snatching the Tablet of Destinies, the clay writ that holds the authority of the gods. With it Anzu can command fate itself, and the older gods will not go up against a thief who can rewrite the outcome of any blow. Ninurta goes. He looses his arrows and they come apart in the air, the reeds returning to the canebrake and the sinew to the animal, because the Tablet reverses whatever comes at it. It is the god Ea who finds the trick: let the arrow ride the wind so Anzu cannot see it, and cut the pinions from its wings. Ninurta strips the wings, kills the bird, and brings the Tablet home. For that he is given precedence among the gods, and afterward he rides back to Nippur with the bodies of the monsters he has killed lashed to his chariot, the six-headed ram and the great serpent and the rest, trophies of a champion coming home.

His powers all point one way, toward order restored. He breaks monsters, drives out sickness, master the floodwaters, and hands down the boundaries of the tamed land. His weaknesses come from the same place. Against the Tablet of Destinies his own weapons betray him, and he wins only because a cleverer god does his thinking for him. And his glory carried the seed of his own eclipse. Kings modeled themselves on Ninurta so eagerly that his story was worth stealing, and as Babylon rose the great deeds were handed up to Marduk, and in Assyria to Ashur, until the champion who once beat back chaos for the whole assembly was quietly demoted to a name in an older list. He put the world in order and then watched the world reassign the credit.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ninurta?

Ninurta is a major Mesopotamian god worshipped across Sumer, Babylonia, and Assyria as a warrior-champion who is also the god of farming and healing. He is the son of the storm-god Enlil and had his chief cult at Nippur, and he is closely identified with Ningirsu, the patron god of the city of Girsu. His oldest emblems are a perched bird and a plow.

What is Ninurta the god of?

Ninurta is the god of war, agriculture, and healing. In his earliest form he was praised as a farmer’s god who released people from sickness and the power of demons, and he later became a warrior deity as Mesopotamia grew more militarized, though he kept his agricultural role. He is the divine power that restores order after monsters or disasters break it.

What is the myth of Ninurta and Anzu?

In the Akkadian Anzu myth, the monstrous thunderbird Anzu steals the Tablet of Destinies from Enlil, gaining the power to control fate. When the older gods refuse to face him, Ninurta goes to battle, but the Tablet causes his arrows to fall apart in midair. On the advice of the god Ea he tears the wings from Anzu, kills the bird, and returns the Tablet, winning high rank among the gods.

What is Ninurta’s weapon called?

Ninurta’s signature weapon is Sharur, a talking mace capable of speech and reason. In the poem Lugal-e, Sharur flies ahead of Ninurta to scout the enemy, reports back, carries messages to the god Enlil, and even rallies Ninurta when his courage wavers during the fight against the demon Asag.

Who did Ninurta fight in Lugal-e?

In Lugal-e, Ninurta fights and kills Asag, a demon of the mountains who had bred an army of stone offspring and crowned himself king. After the victory Ninurta reorganizes the mountains, blesses and curses different stones, heaps up the foothills, and channels the highland waters into the Tigris and Euphrates to make them useful for irrigation. He then renames his mother Ninmah as Ninhursag, “lady of the mountain.”

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Enlil, Ninhursag, Enki, Asag, Inanna, Marduk, Nergal, Shamash, Hadad, Ereshkigal, Tiamat, Gilgamesh, Humbaba, Pazuzu