22. _ki-šù-bi-im_ 22. It is a service of prostrations. LITURGY OF THE CULT OF KES (NIPPUR FRAGMENTS AND ASHMOLEAN PRISM.) Keš and Opis, two closely associated but unlocated southern cities of Sumer, lay apparently somewhere in the region between Erech and Šuruppak. So closely were they united that the same cult of the great mother goddess obtained in both.(413) According to II Raw. 60_a_ 26, Innini of Hallab was the queen of Keš. The Sumerian liturgy, BL. p. 54, names Nintud as the goddess of this city, but the list of mother goddesses in PSBA. 1911 Pl. XII calls her by the name Ninharsag,(414) where she is associated with Ninmenna, epithet of the earth mother in Adab a city near Šuruppak. A fragment, No. 102 in BL., reads her title at Keš as Aruru. These various epithets all refer to the earth mother whose principal married type is Ninlil. In fact one liturgy actually names Ninlil as the goddess of Keš, SBP. 24, 74. On the other hand, a cult document of the Neo-Babylonian period names Kallat Ekur, the bride of Ekur, as the goddess of _U-pi-ia_ or Opis, VS. VI. 213, 21.(415) The bride of Ekur is Ninlil. Thus the twin cities Keš and Opis of Sumer with their cult of the earth mother Ninharsag or Nintud were imitated in later times in Akkad and located on the Tigris where Opis survived into Greek times (ωπις) and Keš seems to have become confused in writing with Kiš a famous city near Babylon. At Opis in Akkad a male satellite _Igi-du_ was associated with the mother goddess and we may be safe in assuming that he was borrowed from the original southern cult.(416) Of the names Ninharsag, Aruru, Nintud, Ninmah, Innini of Hallab, we are not certain which one applied especially to Keš and Opis. In any case the liturgy which we are about to discuss had some special name for the goddess here. In a refrain which recurs at the end of each melody the psalmists say that the god of Keš, that is probably Igidu,(417) was made like Ašširgi, or Ninurta, and that its goddess was made like Nintud, hence the _special_ name of the mother goddess in this liturgy cannot have been Nintud.