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Nintinugga was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with medicine and cleansing. She belonged to the local pantheon of Nippur. While she has been compared to other similar goddesses, such as Ninisina and Gula, and in a number of ancient texts they appear to be syncretised with each other or are treated as interchangeable, she was nonetheless a distinct deity in her own right. She was associated with Enlil and Ninlil, and was worshiped in their temples, though houses of worship dedicated only to her are also attested.
Bau, also read Baba or Babu (cuneiform: 𒀭𒁀𒌑 dBa-U2), was a Mesopotamian goddess. The reading of her name is a subject of debate among researchers, though Bau is considered the conventional spelling today. While initially regarded simply as a life-giving deity, in some cases associated with the creation in mankind, over the course of the third and second millennia BCE she also acquired the role of a healing goddess. She could be described as a divine midwife. In art she could be depicted in the company of waterfowl or scorpions.
Ishara (Išḫara) was a goddess originally worshipped in Ebla and other nearby settlements in the north of modern Syria in the third millennium BCE. The origin of her name is disputed, and due to lack of evidence supporting Hurrian or Semitic etymologies it is sometimes assumed it might have originated in a linguistic substrate. In Ebla, she was considered the tutelary goddess of the royal family. An association between her and the city is preserved in a number of later sources from other sites as well. She was also associated with love, and in that role is attested further east in Mesopotamia as well. Multiple sources consider her the goddess of the institution of marriage, though she could be connected to erotic love as well, as evidenced by incantations. She was also linked to oaths and divination. She was associated with reptiles, especially mythical bašmu and ḫulmiẓẓu, and later on with scorpions as well, though it is not certain how this connection initially developed. In Mesopotamian art from the Kassite and Middle Babylonian periods she was only ever represented through her scorpion symbol rather than in anthropomorphic form. She was usually considered to be an unmarried and childless goddess, and she was associated with various deities in different time periods and locations. In Ebla, the middle Euphrates area and Mesopotamia she was closely connected with Ishtar due to their similar character, though they were not necessarily regarded as identical. In the Ur III period, Mesopotamians associated her with Dagan due to both of them being imported to Ur from the west. She was also linked to Ninkarrak. In Hurrian tradition she developed an association with Allani.
Damu was a Mesopotamian god. While originally regarded as a dying god connected to vegetation, similar to Dumuzi or Ningishzida, with time he acquired the traits of a god of healing. He was regarded as the son of the medicine goddess Ninisina, or of her equivalents such as Gula or Ninkarrak. It is unclear which city was originally associated with him, but he is best attested in association with the cult center of his mother, Isin.
Pabilsaĝ was a Mesopotamian god. Not much is known about his role in Mesopotamian religion, though it is known that he could be regarded as a bow-armed warrior deity, as a divine cadastral officer or a judge. He might have also been linked to healing, though this remains disputed. In his astral aspect, first attested in the Old Babylonian period, he was a divine representation of the constellation Sagittarius.
Abu was a Mesopotamian god. His character is poorly understood, though it is assumed he might have been associated with vegetation and with snakes. He was often paired with the deity gu2-la2, initially regarded as distinct from Gula, but later conflated with her.
Ama-arḫuš was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with compassion and healing or epithet of goddesses designating them as compassionate.
Gunura was a Mesopotamian goddess, best known as a daughter and member of the entourage of the medicine goddess Ninisina. She was also associated with other similar goddesses, Gula and Nintinugga. Her original cult center is unknown, though she was worshiped in Isin, Nippur, Ur, Babylon and Assur. She is attested in a number of laments, in which she mourns the death of her brother Damu, and in a narrative about a journey of her mother Ninisina to Nippur.
Tishpak (Tišpak) was a Mesopotamian god associated with the ancient city Eshnunna and its sphere of influence, located in the Diyala area of Iraq. He was primarily a war deity, but he was also associated with snakes, including the mythical mushussu and bashmu, and with kingship.
Ninkarrak was a goddess of medicine worshiped chiefly in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. It has been proposed that her name originates in either Akkadian or an unidentified substrate language possibly spoken in parts of modern Syria, rather than in Sumerian. It is presumed that inconsistent orthography reflects ancient scholarly attempts at making it more closely resemble Sumerian theonyms. The best attested temples dedicated to her existed in Sippar and in Terqa. Finds from excavations undertaken at the site of the latter were used as evidence in more precisely dating the history of the region. Further attestations are available from northern Mesopotamia, including the kingdom of Apum, Assyria, and the Diyala area, from various southern Mesopotamian cities such as Larsa, Nippur, and possibly Uruk, as well as from Ugarit and Emar. It is possible that references to "Ninkar" from the texts from Ebla and Nikarawa, attested in Luwian inscriptions from Carchemish, were about Ninkarrak.
Ninisina was a Mesopotamian goddess who served as the tutelary deity of the city of Isin. She was considered a healing deity. She was believed to be skilled in the medical arts, and could be described as a divine physician or midwife. As an extension of her medical role, she was also believed to be capable of expelling various demons. Her symbols included dogs, commonly associated with healing goddesses in Mesopotamia, as well as tools and garments associated with practitioners of medicine.
Šanta (Santa) was a god worshiped in Bronze Age Anatolia by Luwians and Hittites. It is presumed that he was regarded as a warlike deity, and that he could additionally be associated with plagues and possibly with the underworld, though the latter proposal is not universally accepted. In known texts he frequently appears alongside Iyarri, a deity of similar character. He is first attested in documents from Kanesh dated to the Old Assyrian period, and continues to appear in later treaties, ritual texts and theophoric names. He is also present in an offering lists from Emar written in Akkadian, though he did not belong to the local pantheon and rituals involving him were only performed on behalf of the Hittite administration by local inhabitants.
Luwian religion was the religious and mythological beliefs and practices of the Luwians, an Indo-European people of Asia Minor, which is detectable from the Bronze Age until the early Roman empire. It was strongly affected by foreign influence in all periods and it is not possible to clearly separate it from neighbouring cultures, particularly Syrian and Hurrian religion. The Indo-European element in the Luwian religion was stronger than in the neighbouring Hittite religion.
Manzat (Manzât), also spelled Mazzi'at, Manzi'at and Mazzêt, sometimes known by the Sumerian name Tiranna (dTIR.AN.NA) was a Mesopotamian and Elamite goddess representing the rainbow. She was also believed to be responsible for the prosperity of cities.
Kubaba was a goddess of uncertain origin worshiped in ancient Syria. Despite the similarity of her name to these of legendary queen Kubaba of Kish and Phrygian Cybele, she is considered a distinct figure from them both. Her character is poorly known. Multiple local traditions associating her with other deities existed, and they cannot necessarily be harmonized with each other. She is first documented in texts from Kanesh and Alalakh, though her main cult center was Carchemish. She was among the deities worshiped in northern Syria who were incorporated into Hurrian religion, and in Hurrian context she occurs in some of the Ugaritic texts. She was also incorporated into Hittite religion through Hurrian intermediaties. In the first millennium BCE she was worshiped by Luwians, Arameans and Lydians, and references to her can be found in a number of Greek texts.
Adamma was a goddess worshiped in Ebla in the third millennium BCE, later also documented in Hurrian sources and in Emar. The origin and meaning of her name remain a matter of debate among researchers. It is commonly assumed that it originated in one of the Semitic languages and that it can be compared to Hebrew ʾădāmâ, "soil" or "earth". An alternate view is that it belongs to a linguistic substrate at some point spoken in part of modern Syria. Hurrian origin has been proposed as well, but is considered implausible. In Ebla, Adamma received sacrificial sheep on behalf of the royal palace. She also had clergy of her own, as evidenced by references to a dam-dingir priestess in her service. Eblaite texts indicate she was also venerated in Hadani and Tunip. She was locally regarded as the spouse of Resheph, though the connection between them is not attested in later sources. After the fall of Ebla, she was incorporated into Hurrian religion, and in this context appears in Hittite and Ugaritic sources as well, often forming a pair with Kubaba. Furthermore, she was worshiped in Emar, where under the name Adammatera she might have been perceived as a deity associated with storage areas and the underworld. It is also possible that the goddess Admu known from Mari and from the Mesopotamian god list An = Anum was the same deity.
Gula was a Mesopotamian goddess of medicine, portrayed as a divine physician and midwife. Over the course of the second and first millennia BCE, she became one of the main deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, and eventually started to be viewed as the second highest ranked goddess after Ishtar. She was associated with dogs, and could be depicted alongside these animals, for example on kudurru, and receive figurines representing them as votive offerings.
Meme or Memešaga was a Mesopotamian goddess possibly regarded as a divine caretaker. While originally fully separate, she eventually came to be treated as one and the same as Gula, and as such came to be associated with medicine. The god list An = Anum additionally indicates she served as the sukkal of Ningal.
Karhuha (Karḫuḫa), also known as Karḫuḫi, was the tutelary god of the ancient city of Carchemish. He was associated with deer, and it is presumed his character was similar to that of Hittite Kurunta. He is first attested in texts from the second half of the second millennium BCE, and there is no agreement among researchers if he was a Hurrian god in origin or if similarly to closely associated goddess Kubaba he predated Hurrian control over the region. He appears in a variety of Hittite and Luwian texts, and continued to be worshiped through the first millennium BCE.
Bulluṭsa-rabi was a Babylonian author and āšipu who most likely lived in the Kassite period. While sources from the first millennium BCE indicate at the time it was assumed that Bulluṭsa-rabi was a man, and this assumption was also initially followed by Assyriologists, further research showed that all individuals bearing this name recorded in earlier sources were women. A composition known from Nineveh, the Catalogue of Texts and Authors, attributes the authorship of a well known hymn to Gula and a number of unidentified texts to her.
References
- 1 2 3 Westenholz 2010, p. 390.
- 1 2 Hutter 2017, p. 117.
- 1 2 Sibbing-Plantholt 2022, p. 108.
- 1 2 Hutter-Braunsar 2019, p. 519.
- ↑ Hutter-Braunsar 2019, pp. 527–528.
- 1 2 Hutter-Braunsar 2019, p. 520.
- ↑ Hutter 2017, p. 116.
- ↑ Gelb 1938, p. 201.
- ↑ Gelb 1938, p. 202.
- ↑ Hutter-Braunsar 2019, p. 518.
- ↑ Hutter-Braunsar 2019, p. 527.
- ↑ Sibbing-Plantholt 2022, p. 112.
Bibliography
- Gelb, Ignace J. (1938). "The Dogs of Nikarawas". The American Journal of Semitic Languages and Literatures. 55 (2). University of Chicago Press: 200–203. doi:10.1086/amerjsemilanglit.55.2.3088096. ISSN 1062-0516. JSTOR 3088096. S2CID 170093750 . Retrieved 2022-08-26.
- Hutter, Manfred (2017). "Kubaba in the Hittite Empire and the Consequences for her Expansion to Western Anatolia". Hittitology today: Studies on Hittite and Neo-Hittite Anatolia in Honor of Emmanuel Laroche's 100th Birthday. Institut français d'études anatoliennes. ISBN 978-2-36245-083-9. OCLC 1286359422.
- Hutter-Braunsar, Sylvia (2019). "Die Gottheit Nikarawa in Karkamiš". Hrozný and Hittite. The First Hundred Years. Culture and History of the Ancient Near East (in German). Vol. 107. Brill. pp. 518–530. doi:10.1163/9789004413122_030. ISBN 9789004413122. S2CID 213448417.
- Sibbing-Plantholt, Irene (2022). The Image of Mesopotamian Divine Healers. Healing Goddesses and the Legitimization of Professional Asûs in the Mesopotamian Medical Marketplace. Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-51241-2. OCLC 1312171937.
- Westenholz, Joan G. (2010). "Ninkarrak – an Akkadian goddess in Sumerian guise". Von Göttern und Menschen. Brill. pp. 377–405. doi:10.1163/9789004187474_020. ISBN 9789004187481.