Sunday, January 07, 2024

And weapons? Are they gods?

Divine weapons belonging to gods are most frequently attested in the Sumerian world, although a few are still mentioned in texts in Neo-Assyrian times. An entity called simply “Saw” is listed in the Fara God Lists with a DINGIR sign, as we have already seen, and seems likely to have been the weapon of a god, like the saw of Šamaš in later times. In Neo-Sumerian Lagash, a weapon presented to Ningirsu by Gudea is labeled with the divine determinative and given the name dLugal-kur-dub ‘the Lord who Smashes the Mountains’ or ‘the Lord who Smashes the (foreign) Lands,’ a name that suggests this object was imagined not just as alive and active, but as energetically violent.—Barbara N. Porter in What Is a God?, 180

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