Historical king of Uruk (c. 2700 BCE — third king of the First Dynasty of Uruk after Enmerkar per the Sumerian King List; reigned in the period of Gilgamesh's genealogical proximity). Mortal at his lifetime; husband of Ninsun; father of Gilgamesh. Subject of the Sumerian poetic cycle Lugalbanda I (Lugalbanda in the Mountain Cave) and Lugalbanda II (Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird), describing his magical adventures during Enmerkar's Aratta campaign. Posthumous deification arose c. 300 years after his historical reign in the Ur III period (c. 2112-2004 BCE) — Sin-Kashid of Uruk built the É-KI.KAL temple to Lugalbanda and Ninsun together and called Lugalbanda his personal god. The mortal-at-conception, deified-posthumously pattern is structurally parallel to the Caintigern→Mongán case in Irish tradition: at the moment of the union producing the demigod, the parent's mortal status is established; later cult-elevation does not retroactively change the strict-criterion classification of the offspring.