[The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria by Morris Jastrow]@TWC D-Link book
The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria

CHAPTER IV
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The consort of Ea who is Dam-kina also occurs in the historical texts of the first period.
The origin of Babylonian civilization at the Persian Gulf, together with the dependence of Babylonia for her fertility upon the streams and canals, account for the numerous water-deities to be found in the ancient Babylonian pantheon, some of which have already been discussed.
We will meet with others further on.

Every stream, large or small, having its special protecting deity, the number of water-deities naturally increases as the land becomes more and more dissected by the canal system that conditioned the prosperity of the country.
Ea, as we shall see, appears under an unusually large number of names.[44] One of these is Nin-a-gal, which, signifying 'god of great strength,' is given to him as the patron of the smith's art.[45] A god of this name is mentioned by Ur-Bau,[46] who speaks of a sanctuary erected in honor of this deity.

But since the king refers to Ea (as En-ki) a few lines previous, it would appear that at this period Nin-agal is still an independent deity.

The later identification with Ea appears to be due to the idea of 'strength' involved in the name of Nin-agal.

In the same way, many of the names of Ea were originally descriptive of independent gods who, because of the similarity of their functions to those of the great Ea, were absorbed by the latter.


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