Babylonian god of the underworld whose main cult center was at the as yet unidentified city of Kutha. He first appeared in the Akkadian period, and by the second millennium B.C., he had supplanted the previously female chthonian deities, such as Ereshkigal. He was a god of death and epidemics as well as of fertility and vegetation.
See also IMMORTALITY; RELIGION.
Historical Dictionary of Mesopotamia. EdwART. 2012.