Gula was a Mesopotamian goddess of medicine, portrayed as a divine physician and midwife. Over the course of the second and first millennia BCE, she became one of the main deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, and eventually started to be viewed as the second highest ranked goddess after Ishtar. She was associated with dogs, and could be depicted alongside these animals, for example on kudurru, and receive figurines representing them as votive offerings.
A healing goddess with a dog on a kudurru
Kudurru of Gula, displayed in the Louvre
The Kassites were people of the ancient Near East, who controlled Babylonia after the fall of the Old Babylonian Empire c. 1531 BC and until c. 1155 BC.
Cylinder seal of Kassite king Kurigalzu II (c. 1332–1308 BC). Louvre Museum AOD 105
Kassite Kudurru stele of Kassite king Marduk-apla-iddina I. Louvre Museum.
Kassite cylinder seal, c. 16th–12th century BC.
Kassite king Meli-Shipak II on a kudurru land grant presenting his daughter Ḫunnubat-Nanaya to the goddess Nanaya (pictured enthroned). The eight-pointed star seen above was Inanna-Ishtar's most common symbol. Here it is shown alongside the solar disk of her brother Shamash (Sumerian Utu) and the crescent moon of her father Sin (Sumerian Nanna) on a boundary stone of Meli-Shipak II, dating to the twelfth century BC.
