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 wished to describe a man as being a great hunter, they spoke of him as 'like Nimrod'" (Dri.).—The expression doubtless belongs to the proverb: the precise meaning is obscure (v.i.).

A perfectly convincing Assyriological prototype of the figure of Nimrod has not as yet been discovered. The derivation of the name from Marduk, the tutelary deity of the city of Babylon, first propounded by Sayce, and adopted with modifications by We., still commends itself to some Assyriologists (Pinches, DB, iii. 552 f.; cf. KAT$2$, 581); but the material points of contact between the two personages seem too vague to establish an instructive parallel. The identification with Nazi-Maruttaš, a late (c. 1350) and apparently not very successful king of the Kaššite dynasty (Haupt, Hilprecht, Sayce, al.), is also unsatisfying: the supposition that that particular king was so well known in Palestine as to eclipse all his predecessors, and take rank as the founder of Babylonian civilisation, is improbable. The nearest analogy is that of Gilgameš, the legendary tyrant of Erech (see v.$3$), whose adventures are recorded in the famous series of Tablets of which the Deluge story occupies the eleventh (see p. 175 above, and KAT$10$, 566 ff.). Gilgameš is a true Gibbôr—"two parts deity and one part humanity"—he builds the walls of Erech with forced labour, and his subjects groan under his tyranny, until they cry to Aruru to create a rival who might draw off some of his superabundant energy (KIB, vi. 1, 117, 119). Among his exploits, and those of his companion Ea-bani, contests with beasts and monsters figure prominently; and he is supposed to be the hero so often represented on seals and palace-reliefs in victorious combat with a lion (see ATLO$3$, 266 f.). It is true that the parallel is incomplete; and (what is more important) that the name Nimrod remains unexplained. The expectation that the phonetic reading of the ideographic ''GIŠ. ṬU. BAR'' might prove to be the Bab. equivalent of the Heb. Nimrod, would seem to have been finally dispelled by the discovery (in 1890) of the correct pronunciation as Gilgameš (but see Je. l.c.). Still, enough general resemblance remains to warrant the belief that the original of the biblical Nimrod belongs to the sphere of Babylonian mythology. A striking parallel to the visit of Gilgameš to his father Ut-napištim occurs in a late Nimrod legend, preserved in the Syrian Schatzhöhle (see Gu. Schöpf. 146$2$; Lidz. ZA, vii. 15). On the theory which connects Nimrod with the constellation Orion, see Tu. ad loc.; Bu. Urg. 395 f.; KAT$2$, 581$3$; and on the late Jewish and Mohammedan legends generally, Seligsohn, JE, ix. 309 ff.