Nabu (Mercury)

NAH-boo

babylonian: Nabû

Definition

Nabû is the Babylonian god of writing, wisdom, and scribes — the patron of the scribal trade, with his main temple, Ezida, at Borsippa. When Babylonian priests read the sky as religion, they paired Nabû with the planet Mercury (the Akkadian planet-name Šiḫṭu, Sumerian sign GU4.UD; in MUL.APIN the same UDU.IDIM.GU4.UD is instead paired with Ninurta — both pairings are attested). The Mercury-Nabû match is the dominant one in Rochberg's list of planet-gods and in Hunger's Sargonid Reports.

In Tradition

Assyriologists read the Nabû-Mercury pairing through Rochberg's "indicator not agent" framing: planets are read as forms taken by particular gods rather than as causes, so watching Mercury gives omens tied to Nabû's domain of writing, scribal craft, and communication, while the temple god at Ezida-Borsippa and the body in the sky stay distinct things you can tell apart. Hunger and Pingree treat Šiḫṭu and Nabû as names attested separately, with the pairing mostly active inside omen readings.

In Practice

The Sargonid SAA 8 Reports keep several Mercury-Nabû omens. In Report 2, the scribe Issar-šumu-ereš notes Venus and Mercury (GUD.UD = Nabû) about to set, a visibility note attached to an omen about a halo round the Moon; in Report 437, the scribe Tabiya reads Mercury's first appearance in the month of Elul as a harvest omen — and the cultural note still flags Nabû's scribal-and-communication side even where the omen treats Mercury as a generic planet. Rochberg observes that Mercury-Nabû omens read as fairly neutral next to Mars (Nergal, destructive) and Saturn (Ninurta, variable). Scholars are careful to separate Nabû's purely religious settings — the Ezida temple at Borsippa, the scribal-patron myth, the theology that makes him Marduk's son (AMAR.UD) — from the omen contexts where watching Šiḫṭu triggers a Nabû-themed reading.

Historical Origin

The Mercury-Nabû pairing is canonical in Rochberg's list of planet-gods in *The Heavenly Writing* (Cambridge 2004), Akkadian and Astronomical Terminology, pp. xxv-xxvi. The SAA 8 Reports to Assyrian Kings (Hunger 1992) preserve Mercury-Nabû omens (Reports 2 and 437). Hunger & Steele's *MUL.APIN* (2019) records the alternative Mercury-Ninurta pairing at I ii 16-17 and II i 66-67, noting that both god-pairings sit side by side in the cuneiform record.

Further Reading

  • Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture
  • Hermann Hunger, Astrological Reports to Assyrian Kings (SAA 8)
  • Hermann Hunger & John Steele, The Babylonian Astronomical Compendium MUL.APIN