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323 Euphrates valley toward Nippur, and Ninurta organized Elamite troops to fight them. As we read and reread the record of those trying times, we find that to accuse an enemy of atrocities is not a modern innovation. The Babylonian text—written, we must keep bearing in mind, by a worshiper of Marduk—attributes to the Elamite troops, and to them alone, the desecration of temples, including the shrines of Shamash and Ishtar. The Babylonian chronicler goes even farther: he accuses Ninurta of falsely blaming on the followers of Marduk the desecration of Enlil's Holy-of-Holies in Nippur, thereby pro- voking Enlil to take sides against Marduk and his son Nabu. It happened, the Babylonian text relates, when the two opposing armies faced each other at Nippur. It was then that the holy city was despoiled and its shrine, the Ekur, desecrated. Ninurta ac- cused the followers of Marduk of this evil deed; but it was not so: it was his ally Erra who had done it! How Nergal/Erra suddenly appears in the Babylonian chronicle will remain a puzzle until we return to the Erra Epic; but that this god is named in the Khedorlaomer Texts and is accused of the de- filement of the Ekur, there can be no doubt: Era, the pitiless one, entered the sacred precinct. He stationed himself in the sacred precinct, mt His mouth he opened, he said to his young men: "Carry off the spoil of Ekur, take away its valuables, destroy its foundation, break down the enclosure of the shrine!" When Enlil, "loftily enthroned." heard that his temple had been destroyed, its shrine defiled, that "in the holy of holies the veil was torn away," he rushed back to Nippur. "Riding in front of him were gods clothed with radiance"; he himself "set off brilliance like lightning" as he came down from the skies (Fig. 104); "he made the holy place shake" as he descended to the sacred precinct. Enlil then addressed himself to his son, "the prince Ninurta." to find out who had defiled the sacred place. But instead of telling the truth, that it was Erra, his ally, Ninurta pointed the accusing finger at Marduk and his followers. . . . The Nuclear Holocaust he beheld the Ekur.