conflict between the pantheons of Babylon and Nippur, led respectively by Marduk and Enlil, though its details are uncertain. The forces of Nippur lose, and the conflict is eventually resolved through Damgalnuna's intervention, prompted by a message about the battle delivered to her by Neretagmil, the sukkal of the god Nāru. Lambert argued that to that end, she released an object referred to as a "bond" (il-let-sa) in his translation, the nature of which is left unstated but which according to hi was something possible to display, perhaps a clay tablet. Oshima instead refers to it as a "burden" and concludes that it might have been some sort of plague or natural disaster. The colophon of the Neo-Babylonian copy states that the contents of the tablet were a secret and revealing them to anyone from outside its intended audience of ancient scholars was considered a taboo of Marduk. Damgalnuna appears in Enūma Eliš as Marduk's mother. However, the text provides her with no genealogy, and no account of her birth is included. The form of her name used in this text is Damkina. According to Nathan Wasserman, one of the inscriptions of king Ipiq-Ishtar of Malgium might contain a reference to a flood myth involving Ea (Enki) and Damkina (Damgalnuna). It states that when an unspecified disaster was about to befall this city, Ea instructed his wife to save it by "insuring long dynastic kingship," which according to Raphael Kutscher should be understood as an euphemism for placing an usurper on the throne. A hymn dedicated to Damgalnuna, identified in a subscript as a šir-šag-ḫula ("song of a joyful heart"), is also known. It focuses on her spousal relation to Enki. References Bibliography External links A hymn to Damgalnuna in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Mesopotamian goddesses Hurrian deities Characters in the Enūma Eliš