Lernaean Hydra but no literary accounts have this feature. The Hydra had many parallels in ancient Near Eastern religions. In particular, Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian mythology celebrated the deeds of the war and hunting god Ninurta, whom the "Angim" credited with slaying 11 monsters on an expedition to the mountains, including a seven-headed serpent (possibly identical with the Mushmahhu) and Bashmu, whose constellation (despite having a single Head) was later associated by the Greeks with the Hydra. The constellation is also sometimes associated in Babylonian contexts with Marduk's dragon, the Mushhushshu. Eurystheus sent Heracles to slay the Hydra, which Hera had raised
Lerna a "salpinx," while a lamb was cast into the waters as an offering for the "Keeper of the Gate." The keeper of the gate to the Underworld that lay in the waters of Lerna was the Hydra. Excavations at the site were initiated under John L. Caskey in 1952, whose efforts initiated the series of publications of Bronze Age Lerna, "Lerna" I-V, inspiring many other publications. Lerna was occupied in Neolithic times, as early as the fifth millennium BCE, then was abandoned for a time before the sequence of occupation from the Early Bronze Age (Helladic period through the Mycenaean).