Ušumgallu

Ušumgallu or Ushumgallu^[2] (Sumerian: 𒁔 𒃲ušum.gal, "Great Dragon")^[5] was one of the three horned snakes in Akkadian mythology, along with the Bašmu and Mušmaḫḫū. Usually described as a lion-dragon demon,^[1] it has been somewhat speculatively identified with the four-legged, winged dragon of the late 3rd millennium BCE.

Mythology

Tiamat is said to have "clothed the raging lion-dragon with fearsomeness" in the Epic of Creation, Enuma Elish. The god Nabû was described as "he who tramples the lion-dragon" in the hymn to Nabû.^[6] The late neo-Assyrian text "Myth of the Seven Sages" recalls: "The fourth (of the seven apkallu's, "sages", is) Lu-Nanna, (only) two-thirds Apkallu, who drove the ušumgallu-dragon from É-ninkarnunna, the temple of Ištar of Šulgi."^[7]

Aššur-nāṣir-apli II placed golden icons of ušumgallu at the pedestal of Ninurta.^[8] Its name became a royal and divine epithet, for example: ušumgal kališ parakkī, "unrivaled ruler of all the sanctuaries".^[9] Marduk is called "the ušumgallu-dragon of the great heavens".

In the god list An = Anum Ušumgal is listed as the sukkal (vizier) of Ninkilim.^[10]

See also

• Anzû, a massive bird whose death was sometimes credited to Ninurta
• Dragon, killed by Ninurta
• Seven-headed serpent, killed by Ninurta

References

1. ušumgallu, CAD U/W, pp. 330–331.
2. Syllablized as Ú-šum-gal-lu.^[1]
3. F. A. M. Wiggermann (1992). Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts. Styx Publications. p. 167. ISBN 978-9072371522.
4. Irene Winter (2009). On Art in the Ancient Near East: Of the First Millennium B.C.E, Volume 1. Brill. pp. 28–29.
5. Wiggermann instead proposes "prime venomous snake”.^[3] Winter translated it as "predator".^[4]
6. KAR 104, 29.
7. E. Reiner (1961). "The Etiological Myth of the "Seven Sages"". Orientalia (30): 1–11.
8. A. Leo Oppenheim (2011). "Assyrian and Babylonian Historical Texts: The Banquet of Ashurnasirpal II". In James Bennett Pritchard (ed.). The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton University Press. p. 253.
9. Kyle Greenwood (2011). "A Shuilla: Marduk 2". In Alan Lenzi (ed.). Reading Akkadian prayers and hymns : an introduction. SBL. pp. 317, 323.
10. R. L. Litke, A Reconstruction of the Assyro-Babylonian God-lists, AN:^dA-nu-um and AN:Anu Ŝá Amēli, 1998, p. 172