But he had been a ghost who was associated with the dawn, and he thus became identified in the early Semitic age with the rising sun. His solar character raised him to the rank of a Baal, and, consequently, of a god. His older attributes, however, still clung to him. He was a sun-god who had risen out of the earth and of the darkness of night, and in him, therefore, the darker and more violent side of the sun-god was reflected.(281) He became essentially a god of war, and as such a special favourite of the Assyrian kings. He it was who carried destruction over the earth at the time of the Deluge, while the Anunna-ki followed him with their blazing torches; and he is the brother of En-nugi, the god from whose hands there is no escape. With the spread of solar worship, the solar features of Nin-ip naturally grew more marked. At times he was the god of the noonday as well as of the dawn, for it was at noon that the rays of the sun were fiercest and most deadly to man; at times he was assimilated to his fellow sun-god Merodach, and made a son of Ea. The syncretic epoch of Babylonian religion had truly arrived when Ea and En-lil were thus interchanged, and the teaching of Nippur and Eridu united in the solar cult!
But we have glimpses of a time when Nin-ip was not yet a god in human form, much less a solar Baal. His name is a title merely, and originally denoted the sexless spirit, who was indifferently "lord" and "lady of the veil."(282)
The veil was worn in sign of mourning, for the head was covered in sleep and death. Like the cloak which enfolded the shade of Samuel, it symbolised the denizen of the underworld. At first it would seem to have been merely a veil that covered the head and face, like the _keffîya_ of the modern Arab; in course of time it was extended to the cloak in which the sleeper or the dead man could be wrapped. But in either case it was a symbol of the world below, and as such became in the Semitic age the garment of the mourner. The god who was "lord of the veil" must once have dwelt beneath the earth, and been himself one of those spirits of darkness whose faces were veiled from the sight of the living.
Nin-ip, then, must have been one of the Anunna-ki, a spirit of the earth and the land of Hades, before he assumed the form of a Semitic Baal, and clothed himself with the attributes of the sun-god. And the shape in which he appeared to his worshippers was that of a swine. We are told that Nin-ip was one with Nin-sakh, "the lord of the swine"(283) and the servant of El-lil, who was adored at Lagas in Sumerian days, and to whom a temple was erected even at Erech. That the swine should be connected with the underground world of the dead, is not surprising. We find the same connection in Keltic mythology. There, too, the swine are the cattle of Hades, and it was from the subterranean fields of Hades that they were transported by Pryderi to the earth above.(284) The swine turns up the ground in his search for food; even to-day he is used to hunt for truffles, and primitive man saw in his action an attempt to communicate with the spirits of the underworld.(285)