Kulullu

Kulullû (inscribed ku6-lú-u18/19-lu, “Fish-Man”) is a Mesopotamian monster possibly inherited by Marduk from his father Ea. He had the head, arms and torso of a human and the lower body and tail of a fish and was portrayed in sculptures found in palaces and on kudurrus. With a bitumen smeared clay figurine, he seems to have found special purpose attracting prosperity and divine benevolence to households, as his icon was inscribed ri-da hi-ṣib KUR-i er-ba taš-mu u ma-ga-ru, “come down abundance of the mountain, enter intercession and compliance.”

He appears in Mesopotamian iconography from the Old Babylonian period onward. The Agum-Kakrime Inscription places his apotropaic icon on the gate of the ká-su-lim-ma, the chamber of Marduk and his divine consort Zarpanītu. He was one of the eleven monstrous spawn of Tiāmat in the Epic of Creation, Enûma Eliš. He is one of the demons listed in tablet VIII of the Šurpu incantation series, the ritual to counter a curse of unknown origin. He also features in a hymn to Marduk and the gods of the Esagila.[3]

His depiction in Assyrian reliefs is limited to a marine scene in Sargon II's palace at Khorsabad, ancient Dur-Šarru-kên, a small relief at Tell Halaf and on an ornamental brass ring found at Har Sena'im, an Ituraean cult site on the southern slopes of Mount Hermon.

Depictions of entities with the tails of fish, but upper bodies of human beings appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards. These figures are usually mermen, but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been kuliltu, meaning "fish-woman". Later in Assyria kulullu was associated with kuliltu and statues of them were apparently located in the Nabûtemple in Nimrud, ancient Kalhu, as referenced on a contemporary administrative text.