BAU-GULA. 85 
I have regarded this goddess, seated, with long hair, but usually holding no 
special emblem in her hands, as Bau-Gula. We shall also consider her as probably 
the mother-goddess holding the king or worshiper on her knees in the discussion 
of the figs. 401-406. Another name is Gasigdug, apparently, although also differ- 
entiated; and Gudea speaks of her, under the latter name, as his “mother who 
produced him”’ (Jastrow, “ Religion,” p- 60). She was an ancient goddess, whose 
aaa Soe 
Fae? | es ies 

Ail 
* ‘243 
name was an element in that of King Ur-Bau as early as 3000 B. C., and she was 
constantly invoked and honored by Gudea. Indeed she seems to have been, in the 
view of Lagash, the chief of all the deities, and it was she that was honored with 
special marriage gifts on the New Year’s Day. Her husband Ningirsu, or Ninib, 
seems to have been regarded as hardly equal to her, if we can judge from the repre- 
sentations of the two in early art. She gives birth to mankind, is the source of all 
fertility, of plants as well as men; she fills Gudea with speech; a quarter of the city 
of Lagash was given to her. She was the daughter of Anu, and so the head of the 
female pantheon, and was the mother of Ea, the second 
in the Chaldean trinity. As the mother of Ea, she may 
waters of Heaven. She may have had streams of her 
own, as we see in fig. 238; and it must be considered 
whether it is Bau even in the case where, in connection 
with the dragon, the goddess is accompanied with floods 
or streams (fig. 129). We shall also know her as the 

Bau-bab, Bau of the Gate, in the discussion of figs. Nkwen 
. : Hy aye nia 
349-361; and she may have been the goddess with MR 
wheat (figs. 381-383), although that is quite as likely to “py, 
have been Nisab. If we may accept Hrozny (“Mythen tee 
von Ninrag,” pp. 115, 116), Bau was not only the goddess of plants, but also of 
the rainbow, and thus the Oriental Iris. 
The figure of Bau and with her that of her consort Ningirsu are determined not 
only by her name on the kudurru, seen in fig. 1275, which bears the name Gula, but 
also by a bas-relief seen in fig. 243. (De Sarzec, “Découvertes,”’ plate 25, fig. 5; 
Heuzey, “Catalogue des Antiquités Chaldéennes,” p. 143; ‘ Découvertes,”’ plate 
25, 5, not plate 22 as in text of both works.) Here all that can be read of the illeg- 
ible inscription is “To the goddess Bau, his sovereign”’ (so Heuzey, “ Découvertes, ” 
p. 215), but fortunately this is enough. We have the statement that the goddess 
sitting on the knees of the god is Bau, and the god is therefore Ningirsu. The 
goddess on his knees 1s parallel to the cylinders in which the goddess holds on her 
knees a small human figure, as in figs. 401-406. We recognize in the goddess the 
