hange of seasons. The question,
however, must for the present remain an open one.

A god associated with the nether world who again appears to be a solar
deity is Nin-azu. His name points to his being 'the god of healing.' A
text states[1232] that Allatu is his consort. Such a relationship to the
chief goddess of the nether world may be regarded as a survival of the
period when Nergal had not yet been assigned to this place. The
introduction of a distinctly beneficent god into the pantheon of the
lower world, and as second in rank, shows also that the gloomy
conception of the lower world was one that developed gradually. Tammuz,
Nin-gishzida, and the like are held enthralled by Allatu, and remain in
the nether world against their will; but if Allatu chooses as her
consort a 'god of healing,' she must have been viewed as a goddess who
could at times, at least, be actuated by kindly motives. The phase of
the sun symbolized by Nin-azu is, as in the case of Tammuz and others,
the sun of the springtime and of the morning. If it be recalled that
Gula, the great goddess of healing, is the consort of Ninib,[1233] it
will be clear that Nin-azu must be closely related to Ninib--and is,
indeed, identified with the latter.[1234] With Nergal in control,
Nin-azu had to yield his privilege to be the husband of Allatu. The
substitute of the fierce sun of the summer solstice for the sun of
spring is a most interesting symptom of the direction taken by the
Babylonian beliefs, regarding the fate of the dead. It may be that in
the earlier period, when more optimistic views of Aralu were current,
Gula, who is called the one 'who restores the dead to life,' may have
had a place in the pantheon of the lower world; not that the Babylonians
at any time believed in the return of the dead, but because the living
could be saved from the clutches of death. Ninib and Gula, as gods of
spring, furnished the spectacle of such a miracle in the return of
vegetation. In this sense, we have seen that Marduk, the god of spring,
was also addressed as 'the restorer to life.' But while the
revivification of nature controls the conception of gods of healing,
like Nin-azu, Ninib, and Gula, the extension of the idea would lead,
naturally, to the association of these gods with the ruler of the nether
world, at a time when it was still believed that this ruler could be
moved by appeals to loosen her hold upon those whom she was about to
drag to her kingdom. But it