NERGAL  , the name of a

solar deity in Babylonia, the main seat of whose cult was at Kutha or Cuthah, represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim . The importance of Kutha as a religious and at one time also as a political centre led to his surviving the tendency to concentrate the various sun-cults of Babylonia in Shamash (q.v.) . He becomes, however, the representative of a certain phase only of the sun and not of the sun as a whole . Portrayed in hymns and myths as a god of war and pestilence, there can be little doubt that Nergal represents the sun of noon-time and of the summer solstice which brings destruction to man-kind . It is a logical consequence that Nergal is pictured also as the deity who presides over the nether-world, and stands at the head of the special pantheon assigned to the government of the dead, who are supposed to be gathered in a large subterranean cave known as Arabi or Irkalla . In this capacity there is associated with him a goddess Allatu, though there are indications that at one time Allatu was regarded as the sole mistress of Arlin, ruling 3 8 8 NERBUDDA Marguerite de Valois, sister of Francis I., of Jeanne d'Albret, and of the second Marguerite de Valois, wife of Henry IV., who held a brilliant court there . Nerac, the inhabitants of which had adopted the Reformed religion, was seized by the Catholics in 1562 . The conferences, held there at the end of 1578 between the Catholics and Protestants, ended in February 1579 in the peace of Nerac . In 158o the town was used by Henry IV. as a base for attacks on the Agenais, Armagnac and Guienne . A Chambre de 1'Edit for Guienne and a Chambre des Comptes were established there by Henry IV . In 1621, however, the town took part in the Protestant rising, was taken by the troops of Louis XIII. and its fortifications dismantled . Soon after it was deprived both of the Chambre de 1'Edit and of the Chambre des Comptes, and its ruin was completed by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 .