Nergal is the Mesopotamian god of war, of plague, of the scorching heat of the midday sun, and of the underworld, a fierce and destructive deity who brings death by fire and pestilence. He gathers together the powers that kill without mercy: the fever, the epidemic, the burning drought and the violence of battle, and he is associated with the planet Mars, the red star of war. His chief city was Kutha, whose great temple made it a centre of his cult, and his name became almost a byword for the deadly and the infernal. Nergal's path to lordship of the underworld is told in a myth of how he came to share the throne of the dead.
Invited to a banquet of the gods, the ruler of the underworld Ereshkigal sends her messenger up to fetch her portion; Nergal offends the messenger and is summoned below to answer for it. There, in the version best preserved, Nergal and Ereshkigal become lovers, and after an attempt to leave he returns to remain with her as king of the dead at her side. The story explains how a god of the burning surface world came to rule the dark realm beneath it, uniting in one figure the sun's deadly heat above and the silence of the grave below.