Lugal-e

The ancient Mesopotamian myth beginning Lugal-e ud me-lám-bi nir-ğál, also known as Ninurta's Exploits is a great epic telling of the warrior-god and god of spring thundershowers and floods, his deeds, waging war against his mountain rival á-sàg (“Disorder”; Akkadian: Asakku), destroying cities and crushing skulls, restoration of the flow of the river Tigris, returning from war in his “beloved barge” Ma-kar-nunta-ea and afterward judging his defeated enemies, determining the character and use of 49 stones, in 231 lines of the text.

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.

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,”[8] 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.

[7]: 172  In Ninurta’s blessing of the (diorite) esi-stone, the material of statues: “When the king who “sets” his name for long days (to come) fashions those statues for future days, when he places them at the libation place in the Eninnu, the house filled with rejoicing, may you (=the diorite) then be present for that purpose as befits you,” the king being recalled may be an explicit allusion to Gudea.

[10] 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.