Damu

Damu was a Mesopotamian god. While originally regarded as a dying god connected to vegetation, similar to Dumuzi or Ningishzida, with time he acquired the traits of a god of healing. He was regarded as the son of the medicine goddess Ninisina, or of her equivalents such as Gula or Ninkarrak. It is unclear which city was originally associated with him, but he is best attested in association with the cult center of his mother, Isin. Damu is also a theophoric element in many personal names from Ebla. It has been proposed that in this context the term should be understood as a deified kinship group rather than a deity, and it is assumed it is not connected to the Mesopotamian god. Character It is assumed that Damu was originally regarded as a dying god. In that capacity he might have been associated with trees. He was most likely envisioned as a child, possibly an infant, in contrast with other dying gods who were instead described as young men, and were often referred to with the term g̃uruš, conventionally translated as "lad". Dina Katz suggests that high rates of infant mortality in antiquity influenced traditions pertaining to him, and that the rare examples of passages referring to him as g̃uruš might be the result of conflation of various similar gods. From the Old Babylonian period onward Damu was known chiefly as a healing deity instead. This aspect of his character is absent from texts pertaining to his death, which according to Katz might indicate that his character had been altered at some point, likely in the Old Babylonian period. She proposes that the change might had been facilitated by the loss of his original cult center and relocation of his clergy to Isin, where he was incorporated into the circle of the city goddess Ninisina and acquired similar traits as a result; she assumes that the laments which connect the dying Damu with the medicine goddess were composed later. Irene Sibbing-Plantholt instead suggests that Damu originally developed alongside Gunura as an independent deity personifying healing, and in later periods took a role complementary to that played by goddesses associated with this sphere of activity, such as Ninisina.