Founder of the cities, renewer of the sanctuaries,[10]
a title quite appropriate for an earthly king but seemingly rather incongruous when applied to a god.
It is Nusku, leader and counsellor of the great gods,[11] Ninib is
Ninib, mighty god, warrior, prince of the Annunaki, commander of the Igigi.[12]
It may be said here that we probably owe to the court style the ever recurring adjectives: “strong,” “mighty,” “powerful,” “perfect,” “unique,” “glorious,” “noble,” “exalted,” and such nouns as “ruler,” “governor,” “judge,” “lord,” “prince,” “king,” which have been transferred from the earthly sovereigns to the gods they worshipped. Here too it may be pointed out that it is altogether in harmony with court style that the god’s prowess as a warrior, or wisdom as a counsellor, or ethical virtues as a ruler should be expressed in his titles, even as such qualities have been expressed in the titles of earthly kings.
Not all hymns, however, of class I are, strictly speaking, temple hymns. The Assyrian deities were not limited to their temples and the cities over which their sway extended. They were also identified with natural forces and the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon and the stars. The Babylonians and Assyrians were impressed by the glory of the rising and the setting sun, the beauty of the waxing and waning moon; by the brilliancy of the evening star and the planets and by the grandeur of the thunder-storm. Certain phenomena also had their deep significance. An eclipse of the moon might well bode disaster for king and court and land. The rising of the sun was the auspicious moment for the banishing of all the demons and all the powers of darkness.
Accordingly we have a group of hymns which do not belong so much to the temple as to the great out-of-doors. In other words they are nature hymns. They have such invocations as the following:
O lord, chief of the gods, who alone is exalted on earth and in heaven.[13]
or thus:
O Sin, O Nannar, mighty one,[14]