If our forerunners of eight or nine thousand years ago were in a noonday glare of civilization, where shall we look for the much-talked-of "dawnings of history" ?
I watched a couple that were fast locked in each other's embraces, in a little sunny valley amid the chips, now at noonday prepared to fight till the sun went down, or life went out.
Whether this phase is that of the morning sun or of the springtime with which beneficent qualities are associated, or that of the noonday sun or of the summer solstice, bringing suffering and destruction in its wake, is still a matter of dispute, with the evidence on the whole in favour of the former proposition.
Those who would consult him had first to surprise and bind him during his noonday slumber in a cave by the sea, where he was wont to pass the heat of the day surrounded by his seals.
In this way Ninib, whose chief seat appears to have been at Shirgulla (Lagash), became the sun-god of the springtime and of the morning, bringing joy and new life to the earth, while Nergal of Kutha was regarded as the sun of the summer solstice and of the noonday heat - the harbinger of suffering and death.
