[6] Sommerfield suggests this is used to explain the name Marduk in the Enuma Elish: as "He is the "son of the sun[a]" of the gods, radiant is he.

[25] Enlil was still recognized as the highest authority, and Marduk was far from being the pantheon head,[26] instead appearing to be a mediator between the great gods and Hammurabi.

[38] There are two administrative documents from Nippur from the reigns of two Kassite kings, perhaps Nazi-Maruttash and Shagarakti-Shuriash, that mention the celebration of the akitu festival connected to Marduk.

[39] Another text claims the late Kassite king Adad-shuma-usur embarked on a pilgrimage from Babylon to Borsippa and Kutha, Marduk, Nabu and Nergal respectively.

[36] However, there are reasons to doubt the historicity of these texts, especially the alleged journey of Adad-shuma-usur since the trio of Marduk, Nabu and Nergal fit the ideology of the 1st millennium BC.

[41] A private document dating to the reign of Ashur-uballit I in Assyria refers to a sanctuary of Marduk in the city of Assur.

[44] By the time of the Isin II dynasty, an established syncretism of Babylon and Nippur (and by extension Marduk and Enlil) was in place.

[52] A kudurru from the reign of Enlil-nadin-apli calls Marduk the "king of the gods, the lord of the lands," a title that Enlil traditionally held.

[54] The earliest copy of the Enuma Elish, the Babylonian epic of creation, was found in the city of Assur and dated to the 9th century,[55] although the text could go back to the Isin II period.

[63] In continuation from the Middle Assyrian times, an actual cult of Marduk seemed to have also existed in the Neo-Assyrian period.

The Assyrian Divine Directory mentioned that a shrine to Marduk existed in the temple of Gula in Ashur in the Neo-Assyrian period.

[42] One exception was Sennacherib, who after a series of revolts and the extradition of the crown prince Assur-nadin-shumi to the Elamites (who then probably killed him), decided to destroy Babylon.

[60][69] However, the more radical reforms were reversed under the reign of his successor Esarhaddon, who also oversaw the reconstruction of Babylon and the eventual return of the statue of Marduk under Šamaš-šuma-ukin.

[70][b] Nabonassar claimed that Marduk proclaimed him lordship and had ordered him to "plunder his enemy's land" (referring to Assyria), who only ruled Babylonia due to divine anger.

He claimed that he killed the Assyrian and laid waste to his lands by the command of Marduk and Nabu and with the weapons of Erra,[73] which was the main trio of the First Millennium Babylonian ideology.

[36] In literary texts from the Achaemenid and Seleucid eras, Marduk is said to have commissioned Nabonassar to take revenge on the land of Akkad (Babylonia).

[79] Nabonidus’ reverence for the moon god may have been because of familial roots to the city of Harran, and later he even revived the religious institutions of Ur, the main sanctuary of Sin.

[105] Sin-iddinam's prayer to Ninisina also identified Idlurugu (the river ordeal) as the father of Marduk/Asalluhi, in contrast to the standard genealogy.

[112] The Enuma Elish, generally believed to have been composed in the Isin II period, details Marduk's rise to power as the king of the gods.

[113] A ritual tablet mentions how the Epic of Creation would be recited and possibly reenacted during the Akitu festival, on the fourth day of the month of Nisannu.

Tiamat then decides to wage war against the younger generation of the gods, giving Kingu the Tablet of Destinies and appointing him as the commander.

The world was fashioned from Tiamat's corpse with Babylon as the center, and Marduk assumes kingship and receives his fifty names.

[115] One of his titles, bēl mātāti (king of the lands) originally belonged to Enlil, who was conspicuously missing from the epic except when he gave this title to Marduk[116] Also known as the "Babylonian Job,[117]" the poem describes the narrator's suffering caused by Marduk's anger, causing him to lose his job and to experience hostility from his friends and family.

[121] Written in the Assyrian dialect,[122] versions of the so-called Marduk Ordeal Text are known from Assur, Nimrud and Nineveh.

[69] Using sceneries and language familiar to the procession of the Akitu Festival, here Marduk is instead being held responsible for crimes committed against Ashur and was subject to a river ordeal and imprisonment.

[123] Meanwhile, Marduk was being held captive, the color red on his clothes was reinterpreted to be his blood, and the case was brought forward to the god Ashur.

After various alternate cultic commentaries, the Assyrian version of the Enuma Elish was recited, proclaiming Ashur's superiority.

[126] Known from only one copy and with a badly damaged top half, Enmesharra's Defeat is likely composed in the Seleucid or Parthian era.

[128] Structurally similar to the Enuma Elish, the text starts with Enmesharra and his seven sons going against Marduk, who subsequently defeated them and threw them into jail with Nergal as the prison warden.

[135] Johandi also suggests that keeping Marduk and Asalluhi separate was a deliberate act on the part of Samsu-iluna to reclaim authority over the southern cities,[136] which were centers of rebellion during the early years of his reign.