The comparative insignificance of the place is one of the factors that accounts for the minor importance of the god, and the second factor is the popularity enjoyed by another child of the great Ea, his child _par excellence_, Marduk, who is best known as the patron god of the city of Babylon.

By the side of Marduk, the other children of Ea, the minor water-deities, disappear, so that to a later generation Dumuzi-zu-aba appears merely as a form of Marduk.
With Dumuzi-zu-aba, we must be careful not to confuse Dumu-zi, who in the old Babylonian inscriptions is mentioned once by Sin-iddina,[86] in connection with the sun-god.

Dumu-zi, signifying 'child of life,' has a double aspect--an agricultural deity and at the same time a god of the lower world.

He plays an important part in the eschatological literature of the Babylonians, but hardly none at all in the historical and incantation texts.

A fuller treatment may therefore be reserved for a future chapter.
Lugal-erima.
A purely local deity, if the reading and interpretation offered by Jensen, 'King of the city Erim,' is correct.