In 1953 Samuel Noah Kramer and Thorkild Jacobsen proposed that Bilulu functioned as a personified thunderstorm or rain cloud.
[1] According to Daniel Schwemer this interpretation remains plausible, and finds support in the translation of the name of her son Girgire, "lightning bolt".
[2] Antoine Cavigneaux and Manfred Krebernik [de] assume Ninbilulu might be identified with Enbilulu,[5] a deity associated with irrigation[3] consistently regarded as male.
[7] According to Uri Gabbay, it is difficult to tell if it originally functioned as part of the scribal school curriculum, or as a liturgical text.
[9] According to Richard L. Litke, the latter deity might also be mentioned in the god list An = Anum (tablet IV, line 264) though the glosses provided there would imply that in this case the name, while written as dGÍR.GÍR, should be read as Ulul.
[2] The rest of the composition is focused on Inanna mourning Dumuzi's death alongside his sister Geshtinanna and his mother Duttur.