Marduk was too much like Ashur to find a place at his side.

Nabu was a totally different deity, and in worshipping him who was the son of Marduk, the Assyrian kings felt that they were paying due regard to the feelings of their Babylonian subjects.

The cult of Nabu thus became widely extended in Assyria.

Statues of the god were erected and deposited in shrines built for the purpose, although the fact was not lost sight of that the real dwelling-place of the god was in Borsippa.
At the end of the ninth century B.C.this cult seems to have reached its height.

We learn of a temple at Calah, and of no less than eight statues of the god being erected in the days of Ramman-nirari III., and the terms in which the god is addressed might lead one to believe that an attempt was made to concentrate the cult in Assyria on him.[134] This, however, was an impossibility.