Kutha

Kutha is the name of two places, one factual and one mythical.

The real Kutha was a town in the land of Akkad on the right bank of the eastern branch of the Upper Euphrates north of Nippur. It was the cult city of Nergal.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Kutha was also the capital of the underworld, Irkalla, and poetry refers to this underworld.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

Controversy

The author of a modern occult book called the Simon Necronomicon (after the fictional Necronomicon) claimed that the name Cthulhu used in the works of H.P. Lovecraft is based upon this name. It was argued that Cthulhu was actually Kuthalu, which was reported as meaning "Man of Kutha" or "Man of the underworld" and thus a god of the dead, or more specifically Nergal. This was offered as part of many claims that Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos fiction was based upon Sumerian mythology.

There is actually no evidence to support this claim, and Chris Siren, author of the Sumerian Mythology FAQ, states that "Lu" meaning "man" was only used as a prefix and not a suffix (so the name, had it actually existed, would have been Lukutha and not Kuthalu) and specifically referred only to mortal men and not gods.

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