Idle musings by a once again bookseller, always bibliophile, current copyeditor and proofreader. Complete with ramblings about biblical studies, the ancient Near East, bicycling, gardening, or anything else I am reading (or experiencing). All more or less live from Red Wing, MN
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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