Lugalbanda
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.
Children
Variant accounts
- divine-phantom-lord-of-Kulaba-as-actual-father
Powers
- Run with superhuman speed
- Survive sickness in the wild
Relations
- spouse: NinsunAn = Anum god lists (Lugalbanda-Ninsun standard pairing); the Lugalbanda-Ninsun marriage myth (fragmentary) (primary)
- father of: GilgameshStandard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh I.34 ("Son of Lugalbanda, Gilgamesh, perfect in strength, / Son of the lofty cow, the wild cow Ninsun"); Sumerian King List (Gilgamesh as son of Lugalbanda); royal hymns of Ur III (primary)
- father of: ŠulgiŠulgi of Ur III claimed Lugalbanda and Ninsun as his divine parents — the same claim as Gilgamesh, applied to a historical 21st-c.-BCE king as ideological self-elevation. Same Mongán-pattern of historical king with sincere mythological divine-paternity claim.Šulgi royal hymns claiming Lugalbanda and Ninsun as his "holy parents" (primary)