Nabu was the Babylonian god of writing, wisdom, and prophecy.
Nabu was especially revered as the patron of scribes, literacy, learning, and the rational arts. Mesopotamian tradition portrayed him as a divine scribe who recorded the fates assigned to human beings. His emblem was a stylus resting on a clay tablet, the essential tools of cuneiform writing.
Nabu’s principal cult center was Borsippa, near Babylon. By the first millennium BCE, Babylonian theology identified him as the son of Marduk. During the New Year festival, his cult statue traveled from Borsippa to Babylon to visit his father, reinforcing the close relationship between the two cities and their gods.
He was also connected with prophecy and divination. In the Hellenistic period, Greek writers sometimes compared him with Apollo as a giver of prophecies, while other traditions linked him with Hermes, Mercury, and Thoth. Shamash was instead associated with the sun, justice, and truth; Ea was the god of freshwater, wisdom, and magic, making both plausible but incorrect alternatives here.