“Besides the offerings which Gudea made of his free will to Ningirsu and to the goddess Bau, daughter of Anna, his beloved consort, he has made others to his god Ningiszida. “That year he had a block of rare stone brought from the country of Magan; he had it carved into a statue of himself. “On the day of the beginning of the year, the day of the festival of Bau, on which offerings were made: one calf, one fat sheep, three lambs, six full grown sheep, two rams, seven _pat_ of dates, seven _sab_ of cream, seven palm buds. “Such were the offerings made to the goddess Bau in the ancient temple on that day.” [28] Evetts, _New Light on the Bible_, p. 162. Ningirsu, the god--so highly exalted in this and in other inscriptions found in the mounds of Telloh--has been identified with the god Ninib[29] of the Babylonians. Much difference of opinion prevails as to what astronomical ideas were connected by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia with the god Ninib. [29] Maspero, _Dawn of Civilization_, pp. 637, 645. Jensen admits that the generally received opinion as to Ninib is that he represents the “southern sun.”[30] He, however, contends, with great eagerness, that this is a mistaken opinion, and that Ninib is really the eastern or rising sun. Many of Jensen’s arguments against the possibility of Ninib representing the southern sun are based on the assumption that the epithet “southern,” applied to the sun, denotes the power of the mid-day sun; whereas, in other descriptions of Ninib, he appears as struggling with, though in the end triumphant over, storm, and cloud, and darkness. [30] Jensen, _Die Kosmologie der Babylonier_, p. 460. The sun in his _daily_ course attains the southern meridian at noon, and that may well be described by Jensen as the “alles verzehrenden und versengenden Süd- oder Mittagssonne,” but if we think of the sun in his _annual_ course, the words “southern sun” may more fitly in an astronomical sense mean the struggling and finally triumphant sun of the winter solstice. And if we so understand the expression, the apparently contradictory references to Ninib are easily explained. At mid-winter the sun rises and sets more to the south than at any other time of the year; at noon on the day of the winter solstice the sun is forty-seven degrees nearer to the south pole of the heavens than it is at the summer solstice. If, instead of adopting Jensen’s contention, and looking upon Ninib as the eastern rising sun, we revert to the generally held opinion that Ninib was the god of the southern sun, and if we understand the southern sun in its astronomical sense as the winter, or more strictly speaking the mid-winter sun, it will naturally lead us to the conclusion that “the day of the beginning of the year,” the day of the festival of Bau, Ningirsu’s (= Ninib’s) “beloved consort,” was held at the time of the winter solstice.