Damu (god)

Damu is the son of the healing goddess Gula/Ninkarrak and a healing god himself.

Functions

Damu is a healing deity credited both as asû "healer" and āšipu, "exorcist TT ", which says as much about the close link between the two professions as about the deity's capabilities. Accordingly, Damu accompanies his mother Gula/Ninkarrak in incantations but is also credited as healer in his own right: "Damu binds the torn ligaments" (Ebeling 1938: 115).

Divine Genealogy and Syncretisms

Damu's two siblings are the god Ninazu and the goddess Gunurra, both much less prominent than him. In the god-list An = Anum, Damu appears once as sukkal, "vizier", to the elusive ^dGIŠ.HUR.x.x (Litke 1998). According to Jacobsen 1962: 190, Damu is an aspect of Dumuzi/Tammuz due to his regenerative qualities. Kramer 1983: 75 suggests that such a syncretism is partly due to a confusion of the two.

Cult Place(s)

Damu had cults in Isin [~/images/Isin.jpg], Larsa [~/images/Larsa.jpg], Lagaš [~/images/Lagash.jpg], Ur [~/images/Ur.jpg] and Girsu [~/images/Girsu.jpg].

Time Periods Attested

Damu's earliest attestation is dated to the Ur III period. While his official cult appears not to have continued after the Old Babylonian Period (Black and Green 1998: 57), his name is found with increasing frequency in personal names of the following Kassite period (Ebeling 1938: 115).

Iconography

Damu's iconography is unknown as yet.

Name and Spellings

Written forms:

^dda-mu, ^dda-a-mu, ^ddam-mu

Normalised form:

Damu

Damu in Online Corpora

• The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative
• The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
• The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Royal Inscriptions
• The Corpus of Ancient Mesopotamian Scholarship

Further Reading

• Avalos 1995, Illness and Healthcare.
• Ebeling 1938, "Damu."
• Jacobsen 1962, "Toward the image of Tammuz."
• Kramer 1983, "The weeping goddess."

Yaǧmur Heffron

Yaǧmur Heffron, 'Damu (god)', Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy, 2019 [http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/amgg/listofdeities/damu/]