This name is supposed to mean "lord of the great habitation," which would be a parallel to that of his spouse Ereš-ki-gal. He was the ruler of Hades, and at the same time god of war and of disease and pestilence. As warrior, he naturally fought on the side of those who worshipped him, as in the phrase which describes him as "the warrior, the fierce storm-flood overthrowing the land of the enemy." As pointed out by Jastrow, he differs from Nirig, who was also a god of war, in that he symbolises, as god of disease and death, the misery and destruction which accompany the strife of nations. It is in consequence of this side of his character that he appears also as god of fire, the destroying element, and Jensen says that Nerigal was god of the midday or of the summer sun, and therefore of all the misfortunes caused by an excess of his heat. The chief centre of his worship was Cuthah (/Kutû/, Sumerian /Gudua/) near Babylon, now represented by the mounds of Tel Ibrahim. The identity with the Greek Aries and the Roman Mars is proved by the fact that his planet was /Muštabarrû-mûtanu/, "the death-spreader," which is probably the name of Mars in Semitic Babylonian. Amurru. Although this is not by any means a frequent name among the deities worshipped in Babylonia, it is worthy of notice on account of its bearing upon the date of the compilation of the tablet which has been taken as a basis of this list of gods. He was known as "Lord of the mountains," and his worship became very popular during the period of the dynasty to which Hammurabi belonged--say from 2200 to 1937 B.C., when Amurru was much combined with the names of men, and is found both on tablets and cylinder-seals. The ideographic manner of writing it is /Mar-tu/, a word that is used for /Amurru/, the land of the Amorites, which stood for the West in general. Amorites had entered Babylonia in considerable numbers during this period, so that there is but little doubt that his popularity was largely due to their influence, and the tablet containing these names was probably drawn up, or at least had the Semitic equivalents added, towards the beginning of that period. Sin or Nannara.