The tale opens with a feast of Ninurta with the gods, where his wife conveys the word of the (human) king. The divine weapon
Šar’ur reports to Ninurta that the á-sàg demon, who has been appointed by the plants, has raided the border cities with his warriors, the rebellious stones who have tired of Ninurta's NAMTAR (Akkadian:
šīmtu, "allocating tasks"). The demon "tore the flesh of the Earth and covered her with painful wounds." This causes Ninurta impetuously to set out to preempt further attack. He is temporarily thwarted by a dust storm, until
Enlil provides relief with a rainstorm, thus enabling Ninurta to overcome á-sàg and release the waters which have been trapped in mountain ice, preventing its irrigation of the Mesopotamian plains, and replenish the diminished flows of the river Tigris. He then placates the concerns of his mother,
Ninlil or
Ninmaḫ (depending on text), before exercising judgement over the stones who have collaborated with Azag. Finally he returns to
Nippur to receive the praise of his father and the gods. Ninurta assigns various fates to the minerals that have been conquered in his cosmic battle. The
kurgarrānum-stone is destined to be raw material for funerary figurines, “May you be made beautiful at [the festival] of ghosts, […for] nine [days] may the young men in a semi-circle make for you a doorway,” whereas the unfortunate
šagara-stone is doomed to be discarded, "You will be thrown onto your bed", where no one will miss it and none will complain of its loss. The parallels with many of Gudea’s inscriptions have suggested that the work mythically retells his campaigns against
Anšan and
Elam. The work may have been composed during or shortly after his reign (ca. 2150 BC) to honor Ningirsu, the titulary deity of
Lagaš, and then transferred to Nippur when subsumed by Ninurta. The intended purpose of the composition, whether didactic or cultic, is uncertain although it may have been sung or recited following that of its sister work,
Angim, in performance of a temple ritual. There are
sâlu and
mukallimtu commentaries on the work listed in late
Assyrian library catalogues. Its survival into the first millennium was due to the importance of Ninurta to the
Assyrian cult. ==References==