ns is Gal-alim.[79] From him he has received
great rule and a lofty sceptre. The phrase is of a very general nature
and reveals nothing as to the special character of the god in question.
An earlier king, Uru-kagina, refers to the temple of the god at Lagash.
Gal-alim may have been again a merely local deity belonging to one of
the towns that fell under Gudea's rule, and whose attributes again were
so little marked that this god too disappeared under the overshadowing
importance of Nin-girsu. He and another god, Dun-shagga, are viewed as
the sons of Nin-girsu.

* * * * *

Coming to some of the deities that we may designate as minor, it is to
be noted that in the case of certain ones, at least, it will be found
that they may be identified with others more prominent, and that what
seem to be distinct names are in reality descriptive epithets of gods
already met with. This remark applies more particularly to such names as
begin with the element Nin, signifying either 'lord' or 'lady,' and
which, when followed by the name of a place, always points to its being
a title, and, when followed by an ideographic compound, only diminishes
that probability to a slight degree. We have already come across several
instances; thus Nin-girsu, the lord of Girsu, has been shown to be a
form of Ninib, itself an ideogram, the reading of which, it will be
recalled, is still uncertain; and again, Nin-khar-sag has been referred
to, as one of the titles of the great goddess Belit. Similarly,
Nin-gish-zida, whose name signifies 'the lord of the right-hand (or
propitious) sceptre,' becomes a title and not a name, and when Gudea
speaks of this god as the one who leads him to battle, and calls him
'king,' he is simply describing the same god who is elsewhere spoken of
as Nin-girsu. By the side of Nin-girsu and Nin-gish-zida appears
Nin-shakh, who, as Oppert[80] has shown, is like Nin-girsu the prototype
of the well-known god of war, Ninib. However, Nin-shakh occupies, in
contradistinction to Nin-gish-zida and others, a position in the old
Babylonian pantheon of an independent character, so that it is hardly
justifiable, in such a case, to identify him completely with Ninib, and
place the name on a par with the epithets just referred to. The dividing
line between the mere title and an independent god thus becomes at times
very faint, and yet it is well to maintain it whenever called for. In
the following enumeration of