ii) Throughout the text, where scholars argue over rendering Sh as Š, I have generally chosen the former.
iii) The term "Mesopotamia":
It should also be noted that there is really no such things as a "Mesopotamian god and goddess", though there are gods and goddesses of the Sag-Giga (Sumerians), or the Akkadians in the earliest times of recorded history; the "Assyrians" and Babylonians (and even "Persians"), in later times; and various other peoples who came and went across the Middle East, who also worshipped the same variants of the same deities, by their own or different names, their own or different spellings; and of course the region described as Mesopotamia also grew and shrank and altered and found itself renamed throughout the epochs, the intention here is simply to list the deities of the region, and to describe them. A fuller explanation of this is appended at the end of this blogpage.
My references to ancient Sumerian texts sometimes come with links, sometimes without; in every case, if that text still exists, the ORACC website is the place to go to find it: click here and use its search engine. It comes under "Creative Commons", so it is free to use, without fear of patents, copyrights or any other obstacles; but please do give them the credit, as I am doing here, because it is an absolutely amazing scholarly project and deserves the acknowledgement.
HAIA: The Sumerian god of storehouses and goods. He was best known as the father of the goddess of grain, Nin-Lil, whose rape (or seduction, the tales differ and disagree on this) by En-Lil formed the basis of the founding fertility myth. He was also the spouse of Nidaba/Nissaba, herself the goddess of grain as well as scribes, through whom he too is associated with the scribal arts.
But in the god-lists of the 1st millennium, he is described as something like the patron deity of "door-keepers", usually in partnership with D'lugal or sometimes D'lugal-ki-Sha-a, and both received offerings at the "gate" of the temple where they were positioned - so again we seem to have something of the Bo'az and Yachin type, with an indication that perhaps Bo'az and Yachin were rather more bo'abs (concièrges) than security guards.
The connection to the scribal arts, other than through his wife, appears to be an etymological coincidence. A "school tablet" (yes, they had schools even then, and they used tablets, made of slate though, rather than silicone) from the 26th century BCE, found at Shuruppak (modern Fara) in southern Iraq, speaks of tools used for writing, and names them "gish dha-ià", which could be translated as "tools of Haia", but probably shoudn't be. There is then "dha-iàmushen", which means "peacock", and which also appears to use his name, but probably doesn't; the connection from the "writing tool" to the "peacock" is, however, very straightforward - Shakespeare himself was still using what the French call a "plume", which is a pen as well as a feather, because nothing better than a good bird's feather dipped in ink for writing, and a peacock feather is amongst the sturdiest of them all.
Neverthessless the link to Haia, or Dha-ià now, was made, and it was still in place at the time that Sennacherib (he who defeated the northern kingdom of Yisra-El, and only gave up the siege of Yeru-Shala'im because other wars called him away) drew up the designs for a temple in his honour - impossible to say where, but presumably Ninveh (Nineveh), as that was his capital and he was spending fortunes on its expansion and beautification. Even without the Temple, he is still noted as presiding over a procession of the "gods of Subartu" at a festival in Ashur, and of participating in the New Year's Festival at Ashur - so maybe the temple would have been at Ashur too.
HUMBABA: The patron deity of Ebenezer Scrooge? Perhaps! For certain, the Sumerian daimon and guardian of the great Cedar Forest who is killed by Gilgamesh and Enkidu in "The Epic of Gilgamesh". He is depicted as a hairy giant with lion's claws and a monster's face.
IGIGI: The Babylonian god of the heavens, but specifically that region of the heavens which lies beyond the clouds, though not necessarily the farther regions beyond the "ceiling" of the sky. Not to be confused with IGIGU, which was the collective name for all the gods (either seven or eight, depending on the epoch) who dwelt beyond the clouds - the Babylonian equivalent of Valhalla, Olympus, Sinai.
But see my note to ANUNNAKI at the top of this page.
But see my note to ANUNNAKI at the top of this page.
The difference between them is highlighted at the opening of the "The Atra-Hasis", the Babylonian precursor to "The Epic of Gilgamesh". It begins:
"When the gods like men bore the work and suffered the toil, the toil of the gods was great, the work was heavy, the distress was much, and the seven great Anunnaki were making the Igigu suffer the work".
The Igigu gods, not surprisingly, were unwilling to do this work (zero-hours contracts, non-disclosure clauses ...) so the Anunnaki had the brilliant idea of creating human beings to do the slavery.
And in the prologue to the "Code of Hammurabi" it is indicated that the Anunnaki elevated the god Marduk from among the Igigu gods, so we can now identify one of the seven; though really we can't, because Marduk belongs to a later people, in a later era. Among the suppositions made by the scholars are Ishtar, Asarluhi, Naramṣit, Nin-Urta, Nuska, and Shamash, but several of these are surely more obvious candidates for the Anunnaki than the Igigu, and really it can only be speculation until archaeology provides more forensic evidence.
Igigu is an Akkadian word; the Sumerian equivalent is "Nun-gal-e-ne", which translates as "the great princes" or "the great rulers." The name only comes up once in known texts, ascribed to the princess Enheduanna, a daughter of king Sargon I, the founder of the Old Akkadian dynasty.
IMDUGUD: The Sumerian version of Anzu, Pazusu and Zu, who had a tendency to whip rainstorms into whirlwinds by flapping his wings. He was especially venerated in the region around the City of Ur, where, it was believed, IMDUVERYGOOD.
INANNA: The most important of all the female figures of the ancient world, and far too much to write about in this brief catalogue. For my full page on her, click here. But also see Ishtar, below, as they are really the same goddess, Inanna an earlier
incarnation, or simply that Ishtar was Akkadian, Inanna Sumerian. She
was En-Lil's mother in the Sumerian versions, the goddess of Love and War.
The ORACC website has a huge amount of further information about her, including textual material.
ISHTAR: The First Lady of the goddesses - as with Inanna, above. For my full page on her, click here.
IRKALLA: See ERESHKIGAL.
ISHARA: sometimes rendered as Isara, she was the Mesopotamian goddess of the oath, and therefore known as "Queen of Judgment". She was also associated with love, war, and divination, and sometimes appears as a mother goddess or an underworld deity - different emphases in different epochs and locations. According to scholar Jeremy Black she was "more closely connected with the Semitic tradition than the Sumerian" ("Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia", p110) and was eventually assimilated into Inanna. In that Semitic tradition she was clsoely associated with the god Dagan.
ISHKUR: Also known as Iskur, Adad and Addu (and probably Biblical Hadad too, but I shall hold on that until later in this entry), depending on which part of Mesopotamia, and at which era - Ishkur in Sumer, Adad in Akkad. He was both of their god of the weather, particularly the storms, and very much dualistic in that form, which is to say he was respected for the life-giving properties of the rain with which he inseminated the earth, but also feared for the destructive properties of hail and flood. That dualism may also reflect the very different climates and geographies of northern and southern Mesopotamia, and certainly this difference would provide a good argument that they were originally separate gods, but eventually syncretised.
Being a storm-god inevitably connects you with warfare among humans, with your arrows of rain and spears of lightning and the loud thunder of your cannons and your bombs; and so it was with Ishkur. One Sumerian hymn has him destroying "the rebellious land like the wind. He makes it barren like the ashagu plant" (camelthorn, apparently).
Ishkur's father was either the sky-god An/Anu, or his son En-Lil, depending again on the age of the text; there is also a Babylonian prayer which names him as the son of Urash. The name of his mother is unknown, but guessable, as the Mesopotamian gods did not generally have the philanderous habits of their later Greek counterparts. Ishkur's wife was the goddess Medimsha; Adad's Šala or Shala - another indication that they were once two gods, who became syncretised. The god list "An = Anum" lists five children for Ishkur/Adad: two sons, and three daughters. He was regarded as the twin brother of Enki in some myths.
In the earliest time Ishkur's cult appears to have been centred at Karkar, where his temple was named E-u-gal-gal-la, "The House of Great Storms"; later on Zabban, in the north. He also had a temple at Bavel (Babylon), known as "The House of Abundance", and shrines or sanctuaries in Sippar, Nippur, Ur, and Uruk.
Ishkur-Adad's main shrine was at Ashur, and known as "The House Which Hears Prayers"; it was converted into a double temple for Adad and Anu by king Shamshi-Adad 1, somewhere around 1800 BCE; later his cult-centre moved to Kurba'il, though other temples dedicated to him have been found, in Kalhu and Ninveh (Nineveh) inter alia. We must always remember, when we base our understanding on the dedicatees of temples, that they probably got their names in the same way that churches did in Europe later on: naming it for, say, St Margaret of Antioch, probably means that it was previously a Celtic shrine to Guinevere, while naming it for Saint Clement is likely to mean the Guild of Bakers congregated there; but other names could just as well be the favourite saint of the priest appointed, or the architect who designed it, or the coincidence that the wife of the rich man who paid for its rood screen was named Mary.
At some point of what is called the "Old Babylonian" period, Ishkur-Adad found himself promoted from a minor deity to one of the seven "great gods" of the pantheon, and this is probably the same point at which other storm-deities became identified with him, or him with them, and other attributes therefore attached. Being both a creator and a destroyer added dimensions anyway, so that he is "the bringer of plenty" in "Enki and the World Order", while in "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta" he causes a storm whose outcome is the growing of wheat on what was previously a mountainside - quite possibly a rendering of the emergence of the Bread Wheat itself. And in the "Old Babylonian" version of the poem of Atra-Hasis, it is Adad who causes the first drought and famine, and he who Enki calls upon to provide the waters for the flood with which he intends to wipe out humankind.
There is also a hymn among the finds at Sargon's capital Dur-Sharrukin: "bring the rains from heaven and the floods from underground in good season ... make his subjects lie down in safe pastures amidst plenty and abundance", the first part of which has a perfect echo in the special phrase added to the Amidah between Shemini Atseret and Pesach ("mashiv ha ru'ach u morid ha gashem"), the second part of which evokes Psalm 23.
And which clever segue also brings us to Biblical Hadad, or sometimes Ba'al Hadad, and maybe even Chadad (my entry on Chadad, which is the link below that name, may well amuse you, but it won't help you very much in this regard; the link from Hadad will be more useful, and then the brief notes that follow here). There are also the north Babylonian/Assyrian Wer, the Hurrian Teššub, and the Hittite-Luwian Tarhun(t), all of whom were virtually identical in role and character, and different only in their names.
Our earliest knowledge of Ishkur comes from god-lists of the mid-third millennium, exactly the same time that the same is true of the Semitic storm-god Hadda, who was worshipped at Ebla and at Mari. Was Hadda then a dialect variation of Adad, and thence Hadad as a confluence of the two?
Being a storm-god inevitably connects you with warfare among humans, with your arrows of rain and spears of lightning and the loud thunder of your cannons and your bombs; and so it was with Ishkur. One Sumerian hymn has him destroying "the rebellious land like the wind. He makes it barren like the ashagu plant" (camelthorn, apparently).
Ishkur's father was either the sky-god An/Anu, or his son En-Lil, depending again on the age of the text; there is also a Babylonian prayer which names him as the son of Urash. The name of his mother is unknown, but guessable, as the Mesopotamian gods did not generally have the philanderous habits of their later Greek counterparts. Ishkur's wife was the goddess Medimsha; Adad's Šala or Shala - another indication that they were once two gods, who became syncretised. The god list "An = Anum" lists five children for Ishkur/Adad: two sons, and three daughters. He was regarded as the twin brother of Enki in some myths.
In the earliest time Ishkur's cult appears to have been centred at Karkar, where his temple was named E-u-gal-gal-la, "The House of Great Storms"; later on Zabban, in the north. He also had a temple at Bavel (Babylon), known as "The House of Abundance", and shrines or sanctuaries in Sippar, Nippur, Ur, and Uruk.
Ishkur-Adad's main shrine was at Ashur, and known as "The House Which Hears Prayers"; it was converted into a double temple for Adad and Anu by king Shamshi-Adad 1, somewhere around 1800 BCE; later his cult-centre moved to Kurba'il, though other temples dedicated to him have been found, in Kalhu and Ninveh (Nineveh) inter alia. We must always remember, when we base our understanding on the dedicatees of temples, that they probably got their names in the same way that churches did in Europe later on: naming it for, say, St Margaret of Antioch, probably means that it was previously a Celtic shrine to Guinevere, while naming it for Saint Clement is likely to mean the Guild of Bakers congregated there; but other names could just as well be the favourite saint of the priest appointed, or the architect who designed it, or the coincidence that the wife of the rich man who paid for its rood screen was named Mary.
At some point of what is called the "Old Babylonian" period, Ishkur-Adad found himself promoted from a minor deity to one of the seven "great gods" of the pantheon, and this is probably the same point at which other storm-deities became identified with him, or him with them, and other attributes therefore attached. Being both a creator and a destroyer added dimensions anyway, so that he is "the bringer of plenty" in "Enki and the World Order", while in "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta" he causes a storm whose outcome is the growing of wheat on what was previously a mountainside - quite possibly a rendering of the emergence of the Bread Wheat itself. And in the "Old Babylonian" version of the poem of Atra-Hasis, it is Adad who causes the first drought and famine, and he who Enki calls upon to provide the waters for the flood with which he intends to wipe out humankind.
There is also a hymn among the finds at Sargon's capital Dur-Sharrukin: "bring the rains from heaven and the floods from underground in good season ... make his subjects lie down in safe pastures amidst plenty and abundance", the first part of which has a perfect echo in the special phrase added to the Amidah between Shemini Atseret and Pesach ("mashiv ha ru'ach u morid ha gashem"), the second part of which evokes Psalm 23.
And which clever segue also brings us to Biblical Hadad, or sometimes Ba'al Hadad, and maybe even Chadad (my entry on Chadad, which is the link below that name, may well amuse you, but it won't help you very much in this regard; the link from Hadad will be more useful, and then the brief notes that follow here). There are also the north Babylonian/Assyrian Wer, the Hurrian Teššub, and the Hittite-Luwian Tarhun(t), all of whom were virtually identical in role and character, and different only in their names.
Our earliest knowledge of Ishkur comes from god-lists of the mid-third millennium, exactly the same time that the same is true of the Semitic storm-god Hadda, who was worshipped at Ebla and at Mari. Was Hadda then a dialect variation of Adad, and thence Hadad as a confluence of the two?
Ishkur/Adad is typically represented brandishing lightning bolts and standing on or beside a bull or lion-dragon. The lion-dragon was the symbolic animal of the storm god in all third-millennium BCE art, supplanted though not entirely replaced by the bull from the Ur III period onwards. The same depiction is true of Hadda and Hadad. The adjacent image is of Ba'al Hadad.
The Sumerian sign (pre-cuneiform let alone pre-alphabet) for Ishkur was IM, "wind", but no one has yet traced the etymology of the name itself, and the assumption is that it was borrowed from another language, now lost. Akkadian Adad is much simpler, and here is the moment to note that he was sometimes known as Addu rather than Adad; both forms are derived from the Semitic root HADAD, meaning "to thunder"; and in fact there are several other variants among the western Semitic nations, those in Kena'an in paricular: Hadda, Haddu and Hadad being the prevalent. In Akkadian ADDU means "thunderstorm".
The Sumerian sign (pre-cuneiform let alone pre-alphabet) for Ishkur was IM, "wind", but no one has yet traced the etymology of the name itself, and the assumption is that it was borrowed from another language, now lost. Akkadian Adad is much simpler, and here is the moment to note that he was sometimes known as Addu rather than Adad; both forms are derived from the Semitic root HADAD, meaning "to thunder"; and in fact there are several other variants among the western Semitic nations, those in Kena'an in paricular: Hadda, Haddu and Hadad being the prevalent. In Akkadian ADDU means "thunderstorm".
ISHTARAN: The male patron deity of Der, associated with justice by the scholars, mostly on account of a document from the time of Gudea the ruler of Girsu (2144-2124 BCE), who defended his edict defining the borders of Umma and Lagash by claiming that "I justly decide the lawsuits of my city, like Ishtaran" (ETCSL 2.1.7, line 273). Several poems likewise praise Shulgi, who ruled at Ur just a few years later, (2094-2047 BCE), and whose justice is "comparable to that of Ishtaran" (ETCSL 2.4.2.02, line 264), while a song to the god Nergal praises him with: "Like Ishtaran ... you reach correct judgments"(ETCSL 4.15.3: 41).
Egyptian depictions of their senior deities, especially Ra in the "Am-Tuat" and "The Book of Gates", present them in the company of serpents, who are anthropomorphisations of the elements and forces of Nature in the same way that the gods themselves are personifications, but also the face on the mask worn by the deliverers of oracles and prophecies, which are the true messages of the gods - both Aharon and Mosheh have walking-canes that turn into serpents when thrown on the ground before the delivery of the latest message from YHVH. So also with Ishtaran, though the later depictions, particularly the onces from Akkad, tend to separate the god and the serpent, making the serpent the messenger of the gods, and even naming him, as Nirah.
I am guessing anyway that Ishtaran was an epithet or sobriquet rather than the god's name,and am therefore not surprised to find Ishtaran associated with, even equated with "Anu rabû", which is to say "Great Anu", nor to find him named in the Babylonian Chronicles of Esarhaddon (680-669 BCE) as An-Gal. In the god list "AN = Anum" serpent Nirah is replaced by vizier Qudmu, and a second "serpent-equivalent", counsellor Rasu, while his son is named Zizanu, and two "standing gods", named Turma and Itur-matiššu, also advise him. His spouse or consort was known as Sharrat-Deri, but this was a title not a name, in the same way that Hadassah became Esther (Ishtar) when she became consort to Achashverosh in the Purim tale: Sharrat-Deri translates as "Queen of Der", and elsewhere she is named Deritum, which has effectively the same meaning. Serpent Nirah turns up again in the later texts, now reckoned to mean "Little Snake", and treated as a minor male chthonic deity in his own right, bearer of the title, "the radiant god, the son of the house of Der".
Der, for the geographically interested, is now known as Tell al-'Aqar, near Badra, on the ancient border between Mesopotamia and Elam, or now on the still-strifetorn broder between Iraq and Iran. A stamped brick of the Kassite king Kurigalzu II (1332-1308 BCE), which was found near Badra, records the renewal of a temple of Ishtaran, the E-dim-gal-kal-am-ma, "The House of the Great Bond of the Land", which sounds remarkably like the "covenants" drawn up with the Biblical patriarchs for possession of Kena'an.
ISHUM: The Babylonian god of fire.
KABTA: The Sumerian god of pickaxes, construction and bricks, brother of Mushdamma, the god of foundations and buildings, and one of the many sons of Nin-Hursag. (I suspect that it was very useful to divide the responsibilities in this way, so that if, say, a building caught fire because it had no or the wrong cladding, Kabta could blame it on Mushdamma, and Mushdamma on Kabta, and probably both will have declared bankruptcy in the meanwhile anyway.)
KI: Goddess of the Earth, wife of An. Sometimes identified with Ishtar, sometimes with Nin-Hursag. Or is that really the same thing?
KISHAR: The Babylonian goddess of the earth (lower case "e": the soil), but also of the Earth (upper case "E": the planet), - and of fertility. Her name, which combines "Ki" with "Shar" and thereby confirms both the lower and upper cases, means "the entire earth", so she is considered to bear responsibility for the compostic growth below as well as the shrubs and blooms and saplings that sprout above the ground, all of which helps us to understand what the Underworld meant to the ancients, long before Dante and Milton and their sources rendered it a mere abode of demons. She is the mother of Anu in some myths, and associated with Anshar (the heavens).
KITTU: The Sumerian god of justice, brother of Misharu. In some sources Misharu is the god of the Law itself (or "the laws themselves" might be a better way of stating it), and Kittu the god of justice which proceeds from the law, and was hopefully in the mind of those who legislated them into existence in the first place.
KULITTA: The Babylonian goddess of music who served Ishtar with beautiful songs for Tammuz. Presumably it was a cover-version of one of Kulitta's greatest hits that the women of Yeru-Shala'im were singing in Ezekiel 8:14.
KITTU: The Sumerian god of justice, brother of Misharu. In some sources Misharu is the god of the Law itself (or "the laws themselves" might be a better way of stating it), and Kittu the god of justice which proceeds from the law, and was hopefully in the mind of those who legislated them into existence in the first place.
KULITTA: The Babylonian goddess of music who served Ishtar with beautiful songs for Tammuz. Presumably it was a cover-version of one of Kulitta's greatest hits that the women of Yeru-Shala'im were singing in Ezekiel 8:14.
KUSAG: The Babylonian god of the priesthood, patron deity of priests, which is to say the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest among the gods who officiated at their rites.
KUR: The Netherworld, which is nighttime in the daily cycle, the three days between full and new in the lunar monthly cycle, winter in the annual cycle, and the place where everything that dies is buried, so that it can biodegrade and become a new source of fertility. KUR was the Sumerian word for "mountain", but it was specifically used for the high abode of the gods, equivalent of Valhalla, Olympus, Sinai, and for the inversion of the heavens which was the imagined form of that vast expanse beneath the Earth's surface denoted as the Underworld. It is worth keeping this in mind when considering that the name of Av-Ram's deity was El Shadai, Av-Ram whose family began life in Ur Kasdim in Babylonia, then moved to Charan in northern Mesopotamia, before his migration to Kena'an - the Shad of El Shadai can be translated figuratively as "breast", or literally as "mountain".
LAHAR: The Sumerian goddess of cattle. She and her sister, Anshar, were originally created to feed and adorn the Anunnaki.
LAHMU and LAHAMU: Two early Babylonian gods, the first born of Absu and Tiamat, from whom all the other gods were born. Having seen them phoneticised as Laḫmu (Laḫamu), with a strange squiggle underneath the "h", and as Lakhmu (Lakhamu), I am going to suggest that they should probably be pronounced LACHMU and LACHAMU (ch as in loch, not church), and that they are the source of the word LECHEM in Yehudit, which means "bread", but also provides the root for (and genrally the route to as well!) MILCHAMAH = "war".
LULLU: not to be confused with Lillu, though clearly their stories overlap; he was the first Humanoid Creature, created by Ninhursanga (a variant form of Ninhursag) to take charge of the world. A minor god originally, he was slain (sacrificed?) and his flesh and blood mixed with clay in order to fashion Humankind.
LAMA: In the Buddhist world, which is itself an evolution from the Hindu world, which was itself the easternmost corner of the Hittite empire which provides the common source for so many of these deities and myths, a Lama is a Kusag (see above), a Kohen Gadol, a High Priest, the ultimate protector of the esoterica of the cult. No surprise then to find, just west of the Indus Valley, a Sumerian goddess whose name has precisely the same meaning: "protective spirit" (not to be confused with the Akkadian Mushhushshu, whose name also means "protective spirit". To the Akkadians she was Lamassu, and either depicted as a woman in a long, tiered robe, or symbolically as a winged bull or lion with a woman's face or head - exactly the same imagery as Ishkur/Adad, except that they were standing on her, presumably in order to be protected by her. Lama often appeared on cylinder seals, and was widely petitioned for intercession with the gods.
At some point along the evolutionary way, just as we can see she must have transitioned from being male (Lama) to being female (Lamassu), and then back again, she also became pluralised, and her last known manifestation, in Ashur (Assyria), was again named Lamassu, but now "The Lamassu", a group of winged bull-men rather like the Minotaur of Crete, who sat outside palaces and temples in the form of Keruvim, to frighten off the forces of chaos and any other approaching evil. How these were different from Gugalanna, the Bull of the Heaven, is very hard to say; both were depicted as human above the waist and bull below, though some depictions of the Lamassu render them as human-headed bulls, or lions with wings.
LAMASHTU: A Babylonian demoness who was particularly malevolent towards women in childbirth, and who would steal away infants while breastfeeding. Her nemesis was the demon Pazuzu, who was often invoked for protection of women and children. An early source for the "wicked witch" of European folk-tales - see for example Hansel and Gretel.
LILLU: a demon or night-spirit, originally male, she became in Rabbinic writings Lilit, Adam's first wife (see En-Lil above).
LUGALBANDA: The third king of the city of Uruk, husband of the goddess Nin-Sun, and the father of Gilgamesh. He is featured as a legendary hero in several stories.
LUGALIRRA and MESLAMTAEA: who almost invariably appear as a pair of gods, both of them Underworld deities, and known as "The Divine Twins". They were associated with the Underworld god Nergal. Later traditions imagined them as guardians to the entrance of the Underworld, making them demoniacal equivalents of Bo'az and Yachin; but the probability is that they were simply clay ikons placed at the entrances to tombs, or perhaps like stones on the surface of graves. One splendid piece of mythology that was unearthed (what other word is viable in this context!) from the burial grounds of history, and known as the Maqlû, describes them as the "guard-gods who tear out the heart and compress the kidneys", and then goes on to note that Lugalirra tore out the right kidney, but Meslamtaea tore out the left.
Lugalirra was married to a deity named Ku'annesi, while Meslamtaea was married to Nin-Shubur, otherwise known as the minister of either the goddess Inanna, or An himself. At one time they may have been the patron deities of Kisiga, and later they were definitely linked with Durum (near Uruk); "definitely" because another of the unearthings from the general genizah is a letter written in the name of Nin-Shatapada, daughter of Sin-Kashid, king of Uruk, in which she refers to herself as the high-priestess of Meslamtaea. Association of the cult with the city of Kutha is probably because this was Nergal's centre, and the twins were part of his entourage. One last oddity: a single document, relating to the Early Dynastic III period (c. 2900–2350 BCE) conjoins the twins as Lugalmeslama, and declares them "King of the Meslam Temple". One cannot help but wonder if the etymological root of MESLAM isn't the same one that yields Shelomoh and Yeru-Shala'im in the Yehudit, Islam elsewhere (it is).
LULLU: not to be confused with Lillu, though clearly their stories overlap; he was the first Humanoid Creature, created by Ninhursanga (a variant form of Ninhursag) to take charge of the world. A minor god originally, he was slain (sacrificed?) and his flesh and blood mixed with clay in order to fashion Humankind.
MAGILUM BOAT: Also known as "The Boat of the West", the Magilum Boat carried the souls of the dead to the underworld, sinking into the west over the horizon. It is most famously mentioned in "The Epic of Gilgamesh: "All living creatures born of the flesh shall sit at last in the boat of the West, and when it sinks, when the boat of Magilum sinks, they are gone."MAMMETUM: Also known as Mamitu, she was the Akkadian goddess of fate and destiny. According to some myths, she dwelt in the Underworld and simply made up the fates of humans on a whim; but whatever fate she decreed would come to pass.
MARDUK: the son of Enki, he was also called Bel, whence Ba'al; and in some cults is known as Bel-Marduk, which suggests (as so many of these pairings do) the amalgamation or assimilation (the technical term is synchretisation) of two cults. He later became the chief of the gods, in a patriarchal trinity that was really a form of the Hindu trimurti, and which is echoed in Ouranos-Chronos-Zeus as well as in Av-Raham, Yitschak and Ya'akov.
For my full page on him, click here.
MISHARU: The Sumerian god of law and justice, brother of Kittu.
MUMMU: The Babylonian god of craftsmen. The god Ea is known as Ea Mummu in his role as the creator of human beings and the word "mummu" is understood to mean "genius", but in the proper sense of the word, like the Latin "mystery" - simply apprenticed expertise in a specific craft.
MUSHDAMMA: The Sumerian god of foundations and buildings, brother of Kabta (god of pickaxes, construction and bricks) and one of the sons of Nin-Hursag.
MUSHHUSHSHU: The Babylonian "protective spirit", which featured prominently on the Ishtar Gate in Babylon, and whose name translates as "furious snake" - probably the best example of onomatopoeia ever! The Mushhushshu was a creature shaped like a slender dog, with a scaly body and tail, bird's talons, a long neck, forked tongue and a protruding horn. The god who controlled the Mushhushshu was considered the supreme god, for which reason many early gods were associated with this creature, until, finally, it became linked with Marduk.
Not to be confused with the Akkadian Lamassu, whose name also means "protective spirit".
MYLITTA: The Assyrian goddess of fertility and childbirth (that really should be transliterated as "my litter"! Maybe it's the source of our English word). See also Nin-Lil.
NABU: A son of Marduk, he was worshipped particularly at Borsippa near Babylon. Mosheh died on Mount Nevo (Nebo); the Yehudit word "Nevi" = Prophet almost certainly comes from Nabu. From the weekly calendar he appears to be identified with Mercury/Hermes.
For my full page on him, click here.
There is also a Babylonian goddess of the same name who is associated with fresh water but is a more minor deity; or possibly what was left of the Great Mother, after Tiamat had deposed her.
And there was a very important king, who took the regal name Ur-Nammu and ruled in the city of Ur from 2047 until 2030 BCE, establishing the Third Dynasty, and leaving behind the oldest (known) law-code, centuries before Hammurabi let alone Mosheh, both of whom leaned heavily upon it and largely copy it - click here to read it.
NAMTAR: The Sumerian demon-god of fate, but only, it would seem, when fate led to, or evaded, death. So he was known as "The Herald of Death", in which role he was associated with Ereshkigal, carrying messages for him, or from him, between the Underworld and the upper realms of the gods. He was once famously insulted by Nergal, at a banquet thrown by the gods, and which he was attending as Ereshkigal's representative because she could not attend. This insult resulted in Nergal eventually falling in love with Ereshkigal, and living with her in the underworld, so I guess the story is itself an analogy for the working of fate in the realm of death.
NANA: A virgin mother goddess whose name was a dialect variation of Inanna, or whose attributes were so similar that they were eventually assumed by Inanna.
And precisely the same is true of NANAJA, who was once a Sumerian goddess of sex and war, until she too found herself incorporated into Inanna.
And the reason for this happening, I will speculate, is because Inanna is close enough to Nanna to cause confusion, but Nana and Nanaja are simply guaranteed to bemuse, bother and bewilder (I avoided saying "bewitch" because that is definitely not one of her/their attributes). Male Nanna will make his appearance in this list very shortly.
But first, to stay alphabetical, there is NANIBGAL, a very minor goddess, but that is no reason to ignore her. The consort of Ennugi, who was the god of dykes and canals, she was frequently associated with the goddess Nisaba (Nidaba) in her capacity as keeper of accounts and records.
NANNA: The moon god. But first we have to ask, because the similarity of names is unavoidable, was there a point in Mesopotamian-Babylonian history when, just as Yah became Yahu in the patriarchal latter years of the Bible, so it appears that Inanna was masculinised into Nanna, though there is also a very ancient god named Nannar who might be the source. In Mitsrayim (Egypt) the heavens were female and the Earth male, as in Genesis - the heavens being Hat-Hor and later Nut, the Earth Geb, the two separated by Shu, the air-god. And in the Aramaic world of Padan Aram, the white moon goddess who is Ha Lavanah in Yehudit, becomes the white moon god, Lavan (Laban) in the Ya'akov myths (in Sumerian, the word for white is babbar - see below). So we can see that this alternation between the genders in their attribution to the Cosmos occurs throughout the region at different times, and it is entirely possible that Inanna became male Nanna in one part of Mesopotamia, even while she was becoming female Ishtar in others.
Speculation and hypothesis! And to balance it, there is also a very ancient god named Nannar who might be the source, though very little is known about him.
And using the moon as an example segues perfectly into option three, because Sumerian Nanna was also known as Nanna-Suen, and sometimes Sin in Akkadian, and no question that Sin was always a male moon god (there is also the completely obscure Dilimbabbar, but I cannot provide any background on that beyond the obvious whiteness noted above). So perhaps Nanna-Suen reflects a merging of Inanna with Sin? Hypothesis and speculation!
However he got there, Nanna was the Sumerian god of the full moon and of wisdom (generally a female attribute in the myths, and in the realities as well), father of Inanna in some stories (a very convenient way of merging them), and the father, with Nin-Gal, of Utu/Shamash, the sun god; though there are texts in other languages of the region which name Nin-Gublaga as their son, and Amarra-azu and Amarra-he'ea as their daughters, plus Numushda, whose gender is unclear. Himself regarded as a son of En-Lil and Nin-Lil (his brothers were the underworld deities Nergal-Meslamtaea and Nina-Azu, and Enbililu, who was responsible for irrigation), he had a significant role in the original act of creation. His symbol is the crescent moon (waxing, like the Moslem moon, between 2 and 7 on the clock; u-sakar in Sumerian, u-ashqāru in Akkadian) and he was associated with the power of the bull and the lion-dragon - and yes, we have seen that symbolic association before, with Ishkur/Adad and with Lama. Best known through the work of the poet/priestess Enheduanna, Nanna is reckoned to be one of the oldest gods in the Mesopotamian pantheon, and is first mentioned at the dawn of writing in Sumer c. 3500 BCE - which is the only available fact that we have to resolve the above hypotheses and speculations.
The centre of his cult was Ur, where Av-Ram grew up; his temple there was named the E-kiš-nu-gál, and the daughter of the reigning king was appointed to be its high-priestess, which explains why Sargon's daughter wrote all that wonderful poetry mentioned a few lines back. Shrines and temples have also been identified at Ga'eš, in the neighbourhood of Ur, and at Urum, modern Tell 'Uqair, east of Babylon - that is where the obscure name Dilimbabbar occurs. And mentioning Av-Ram was not by chance, because the other great shrine to the male moon god was at Charan, which is where Av-Ram's tribe fled for refuge when Ur was destroyed (Genesis 11:28 ff); south-east of modern Shanliurfa, if you want to look it up on a map. The temple at Charan was named E-húl-húl "The House of Rejoicing", and we have to assume that this was the language Av-Ram and his family spoke before they moved to Kena'an.
That he was a god of the highest importace is best attested from the number of kings who incorporated his name into theirs when they took the throne. Naram-Sin in Old Akkadian; Amar-Su'en, Šu-Sin and Ibbi-Sin in the Ur III period; Sin-Iddinam in the Old Babylonian; and the most famously infamous of all of these, the Neo-Assyrian Sennacherib, which really should be Sin-ahhe-eruba.
And if king-names are insufficient to give him due honour, there are numerous dedication texts for the openings of canals, civic buildings, and that ultimate splendour of the Mesopotamian world, the likely source of the myth of the Tower of Babel, the great Temple Tower, the "Ziggurat" of Ur, built during the reign of Ur-Nammu.
Scholars generally agree that the male moon god predominated until around 1500 BCE, then fell out of favour, the gender roles being reversed in respect of the sun and moon, the sun now the dominant deity, but was revived around 1000 BCE. Av-Ram and co left Ur because of the destruction of the moon cult, and went to Charan because it was still vibrant there; and when Av-Ram moved to Kena'an he settled in the vicinity of Yareyacho (Jericho), with Lot actually moving into the city: Yareyach in Yehudit means "the moon", but every other town in Kena'an was sun-worshipping. Coincidence?
Scholars generally agree that the male moon god predominated until around 1500 BCE, then fell out of favour, the gender roles being reversed in respect of the sun and moon, the sun now the dominant deity, but was revived around 1000 BCE. Av-Ram and co left Ur because of the destruction of the moon cult, and went to Charan because it was still vibrant there; and when Av-Ram moved to Kena'an he settled in the vicinity of Yareyacho (Jericho), with Lot actually moving into the city: Yareyach in Yehudit means "the moon", but every other town in Kena'an was sun-worshipping. Coincidence?
NANSHE (also Nanse): The Sumerian goddess of social justice, who looked after orphans and widows (long before Muhammad enshrined it in the Qu'ran!). She also oversaw fairness, fresh water, birds and fishes, fertility in general, and favoured prophets, giving them the ability to interpret dreams. She was also known as "The Lady of the Storerooms" and, in this capacity, oversaw that weights and measures were correct (long before Mosheh enshrined it in the Torah!). Her consort was Haia, the god of storerooms - and probably we should understood by "storerooms" the silos in which harvested grain was stored and preserved, rather than the backrooms of the grocers. She was adept at interpreting dreams and, in one famous myth, the pious king Gudea consulted her regarding a dream about the proper time to build a temple.
NEDU: The Babylonian guardian of the gates of the underworld. In the earlier world of Sumer he was named NETI, and it was under that name that he played a prominent role in the tale of "The Descent of Inanna". Neti was also a scribe; I can find no evidence that Nedu was as well.
NERGAL: Also known as Erra/Irra, he was the Sumerian god of war, pestilence, destruction, death, and the Underworld, co-ruler there with Ereshkigal, but originally associated with Shamash, the sun god, and a solar deity - hints of the fallen Lucifer, which means "bright star"?
His cult center was at Kutha, where he was first known as Meslamtaea, the other "Divine Twin" with Lugalirra, but at that time an agricultural god associated with the heat of the sun in its negative aspects. The intensity of the summer sun (or the sun at midday) was thought to be caused by Meslamtaea's fury; at some point he evolved from being a mere regional god to a universal god associated with the negative aspects of life, though Meslamtaea was never more than an aspect of the greater Nergal.
Nergal is best known for insulting Namtar, Ereshkigal's representative at the feast of the gods, and having to make amends to her, which resulted in their love affair and his eventual move to the underworld to live with her - a male Persephone-Proserpine. In some myths he is credited with creating human beings, and in incantations is invoked for protection because of his great strength. As Erra he is famous from the work "The Wrath of Erra", in which he destroys Babylon for no obvious reason.
As a war god, Nergal accompanied the king into battle, delivering death to the enemy - presumably in symbolic form, carried on a banner in the way that Mosheh had his serpent-banner, Nechushtan, and Henry V carried St George on his flag.
Key to Nergal's armoury were an entire Guild of demons and evil forces, sufficient to populate a Dantean Inferno, most notorious among them the "Ilū Sebettu", the "Seven Gods" who are particularly prominent in "The Wrath of Erra" as agents of death and destruction. So potent was the fear generated by the tale, it would appear that figurines of Nergal were used as amulets in houses, objects of superstition equivalent to the Egyptian Utchat (Eye of Ra or Horus) and the Jewish mezuzah.
Before making his love-journey into the Underworld, Nergal - who was the son of En-Lil and either Nin-Lil or Belet-ili, depending on which region you inhabit - Nergal had several spouses. The first was Lash, a little-known goddess of possibly non-Sumerian origin. After her, again regionally variant, Mamma, Mammi or Mammitum, another minor deity. Third was Nin-Shubur, who was a maid-in-waiting of of Inanna/Ishtar. Fourth Admu, a West Semitic goddess about whom the only thing that is known is that Nergal left her for Ereshkigal. In the mythological narrative "Nergal and Ereshkigal", she is the queen of the underworld to whom Nergal is sent to apologise, having offended Namtar, her representative at a banquet of the gods. She seduces him, but he manages to trick his way out of what is called "the land of no return"; beside herself with grief at the loss of her lover, she arranges for him to be brought back to her and from this point onwards they rule the Underworld together.
While Kutha was his cult centre, shrines in his honour are also known from Mashkan-Shapir, Dilbat, Isin, Larsa, Nippur, Ur and Uruk.
He is usually depicted with a scimitar or a mace, the mace topped by a double lion's head.
NIDABA: The Sumerian goddess of (cuneiform) writing and astrology, and in the city of Eresh, of which she was the patroness, the grain as well. And actually it was probably as a grain goddess that she began, in the earliest days of agriculture, before writing let alone astrology had emerged; though in that capacity she also overlaps with another grain goddess, Ashnan.
When Nabu muscled his way to power in the Old Babylonian period, her notebook, so to speak, was simply snatched by him, and her status duodecimated in the realm of astrology.
NIN-AGAL: The Babylonian god of the forge, and patron god of smiths.
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| Hermes' Caduceus pole |
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| Asclepius' Staff |
The patron deity of the cities of Enegi, in southern Sumer, and Eshnunna, which was in the north, he was also known by the epithet "The Steward of the Underworld", which of course equates him with Biblical Yoseph, an association strengthened when he is associated with the grain in the Sumerian lamentation "In the Desert in the Early Grass", and mourned in a manner akin to that for Tammuz when the corn is threshed; his epithet at that festival, which took place in Ur, was Umun-azu, and was marked by offerings to deceased kings and priestesses. And in the hymn "How Grain Came to Sumer", he and his brother bring barley and flax to humans, who "used to eat grass with their mouths like sheep", while in "En-Lil and Nin-Lil" he is called "The Lord who stretches the measuring line over the fields" - precisely what Yoseph did during the seven years of abundance, before reducing the entire nation to feudal vassaldom during the seven years of famine (Genesis 41 ff). But also see my note to YIKAVU in Genesis 1:9.
The serpent connection is hugely important, though there are clearly two very different types of serpent in these ancient myths, the ones associated with male gods of power generally being memories of the jurassic beasts or associations with the mighty living creatures, whereas the ones associated with goddesses of fertility and gods and goddesses of healing are more like the worms in your flower-pot, the ones that eat away at the biodegradables to transform them into compost, and whose own processes of cell-division (cut a worm in half and it will two form heads and live on) and skin-sloughing (the ultimate symbol of resurrection-within-life) reflect the regenerative capacities of Nature.
So with Nin-Azu, who is named "King of the Snakes" in several Ur III and Old Babylonian incantations - the same role of course as the serpent in the Biblical Garden of Eden, who would have been Chavah's shaman before the Redaction turned him into pre-Lucifer.
Was "The King of Snakes" the same as "The Lion-Dragon", which was the epithet of Tishpak, and "Snake-Dragon" (see MUSHHUSHSHU, above), which was the symbol of Nin-Gishzida? And if so, as seems likely, was Nin-Azu the source, and they mere aspects? The scholars seem to think so.
As to genealogy, at Enegi he was regarded as the son of Ereshkigal and "The Great Lord", which logically should mean her husband Gugalanna, but his attributes suggest it could as well have been Nergal. Elsewhere, eg in the Sumerian Temple Hymns, En-Lil and Nin-Lil are his parents, but that is true of all Creation, regardless of who actually parented them. Nin-Azu's brother is Nin-Mada, tjough in the epic "En-Lil and Nin-Lil" he has three brothers, Meslamtaea, Enbilulu and Sin - furthering the speculation that he was fathered by nergal, not Gugalanna.
As to genealogy, at Enegi he was regarded as the son of Ereshkigal and "The Great Lord", which logically should mean her husband Gugalanna, but his attributes suggest it could as well have been Nergal. Elsewhere, eg in the Sumerian Temple Hymns, En-Lil and Nin-Lil are his parents, but that is true of all Creation, regardless of who actually parented them. Nin-Azu's brother is Nin-Mada, tjough in the epic "En-Lil and Nin-Lil" he has three brothers, Meslamtaea, Enbilulu and Sin - furthering the speculation that he was fathered by nergal, not Gugalanna.
Nin-Azu's wife was the goddess Nin-Girida, although occasionally Ereshkigal and a woman whose name is different to read in the damaged cuneiform, but either Kulla or Ukulla or perhaps Ukullab, and who was officially the consort of Tishpak (and therefore cheating on him with Nin-Azu?), appear in this role. Nin-Gishzida is definitely "their" son, whoever the female part of "their" might be. The god list "An = Anum" also lists three sisters of Nin-Gishzida, and another seven "children of Nin-Girida", though alas it neither names them nor describes them - seven is a sacred number, in Mesopotamia as in Yisra-El, and seven daghters born to a deity usually signifies a priestess guild.
My parenthetical dig at Tishpak is because, at Eshnunna, during the Old Akkadian period, Nin-Azu was identified with Tishpak, and eventually Tishpak replaced him as the city's god, so probably (U)kulla(b) was the Akkadian name for Nin-Girida.
Nin-Azu's temple at Enegi was known as the E-gíd-da or "Storehouse", and at Eshnunna the E-sikil-la, "The Pure House". He seems to have had a huge fan-club at Ur, but all the deities were honoured there, so we can only state this as being significant because a major festival was held for him in the 6th month, during the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods: the sixth month in the Babylonian calendar was Adar, and it is not particularly associated with any other deity. Nin-Azu also received offerings at Lagash, Umma, and Nippur.
And then there are the Sumerian Temple Hymns, in which Nin-Azu is depicted "playing loudly on a zanaru instrument, sweet as a calf' ("The Egidda" at Enegi, l.183) and "snarling like a dragon against the walls of rebel lands" in the "Hymn to Esikil" at Eshnunna, l.434). Alas, I can find no one who can tell me what kind of instrument was a Zanaru.
NIN-GAL: A Sumerian fertility goddess associated with the sun. As per my comment about Nidaba, above, the complexities of the lunar and solar calendars end up with her as the mother of Utu/Shamash, of the sun itself, and as the wife/consort of Nanna, the moon-god, and of course she would have been all of their sisters too - the same is true, by the way, of Av-Ram and Sarai (Genesis 12:11 ff and 20:2 ff), and of Yitschak and Rivkah (Genesis 26:7 ff), in the Yisra-Eli myths, and was likely the source of the Oedipus myth as well. Her name means "Great Lady".
NIN-GISHZIDA: Or Dnin-giš-zi-da, though the "da" is usually aspirated; other regional variations include Niggissida, Nikkissida and even Umun-muzzida. A Sumerian god of the underworld, patron deity of the town of Gishbanda, which lies upstream from Ur, near Ki'abrig. He was sometimes the son of Ereshkigal and Gugullana, sometimes of Anu, the sky god, sometimes of Nin-Azu and Nin-Girida. His wife is usually Nin-Azimua, "The Lady who lets the good juice grow" in the hymn "Enki and Nin-Hursaga", though at Lagash his wife was Geshtinanna.
His symbol was the serpent Basmu, entwined around a staff much like the later Rod of Asclepius, or with two snakes copulating, like the Caduceus of Hermes (see my notes to Nin-Azu and Nin-Shubur). He was known as the "Lord of the Good Tree" (which the serpent of Eden probably was too!) and was associated with protection and fertility. He was also known as Geshida, and it is under that name that he appears with Tammuz as the dying-and-reviving god-figure who watches over the gates of the gods in "The Myth of Adapa".
Epithets attached to him include "Lord of pastures and fields" and "like fresh grass", while the "tree" associated with him turns out to be rather more Bacchic than Edenic, if it is indeed rooted in, or cultivated from, E-ĝeštin, which means "the wine-house". However there are inscriptions that connect him with the beer-god Sirish, and his female counterpart Nin-kasi. Being known as "The Lord of the Innkeepers" doesn't resolve this, as any decent inn sells beer and wine.
Because the roots of trees and plants and vegetables are of necessity down there in the Underworld, Nin-Gishzida is said to travel there "at the time of the death of vegetation", which, in some parts of Mesopotamia, can mean anywhere from July to... July, but technically mid-summer to mid-winter. Texts in both Sumerian and Akkadian bear the title "Nin-Gishzida's Journey to the Netherworld", and we need to start understanding the pursuit of David through the desert of the Aravah by King Sha'ul (She'ol is the Yisra-Eli Underworld) as an equivalent, like the Orpheus myth among the Greeks which parallels it. In the Adapa legend, Nin-Gishzida, under the name Gishzida, is one of the two deities who are said to have disappeared from the land - a mythological description of a drought or famine.
Nin-Gishzida is also entitled Gishgu-za-lá-kur-ra, "the throne-bearer of the Netherworld", which title we have already witnessed with Nidaba. Together with Pedu, who is the chief gate-keeper of the Netherworld, he stood at the entrance to the Underworld, which role we have also seen previously with Nedu or Neti. Perhaps, like the gatekeepers of the heavens, and those of the temples, they always worked in pairs, one on each entrance pillar.
All Underworld deities turn out to be snakes, or at the very least worms, and this, as explained above, is because of the crucial role of the worm in the composting of your garden (and probably because the worm is the most primitive but visible manifestation of cell-division). So Nin-Gishzida too is associated with dragons, with the Mushhushshu, and in his case also with balm - a healing agent. Another of his epithets is Mush-mah, which (and I am afraid I can only quote this, but not explain it) "associates him with the Hydra constellation in the astrological compendium MUL-Apin." Click here.
His entitlement as Nin-Gishzida, "the military governor of Ur", in one document from that city, is more likely the taking of a god-name as a title than any specific role of the deity. Nonetheless, in the god list "An = Anum" he is listed as "Dgúd-me-lám", which means "splendid warrior", and his symbol is the pāshtu, which is a sickle sword.
As mentioned above, his "home" was the town of Gishbanda, which means "little tree"; whence Gishbanda also became an epithet of Nin-Gishzida. His temple there was named the Kur-a-she-er-ra-ka, which means "The Mountain of Lament" - so clearly it was a cemetery or crematorium or both. In Ur he had what was either a shrine, or more likely the naming of its cemetery, and the chapel connected with it was named E-níg-gi-na, "The House of Justice". He appears to have been worshipped at Eshnunna (modern Tell Asmar, northeast of Baghdad), and at his father's cult centre in Lagash, where the great king Gudea chose him for his personal god, and built Nin-Gishzida a new temple at Girsu, with dedicated statues; he also received offerings at that time at Puzrish-Dagan, which was, so to speak, the Canberra of Gudea's Australia. Archaeological fragments suggests that there were probably also shrines (or cemeteries, in this writer's opinion) at Isin, Larsa, Babylon and Uruk.
NIN-GIZZIA: The Babylonian guardian of the gates of the heavens who watches over the eastern gate, the most prominent, as it is the gate of the morning. See also GISHIDA.
NINHURSANGA (Ninhursag): "Our Lady of the Mountain(side)". The Sumerian Mother Goddess, which is to say the womb of all fertility, all of Nature, all of life on Earth (Chavah/Eve in the Biblical version). Elsewhere she was known as Nin-Hursag, Belet-Ili, Damgalnunna, Ki, and Nin-Tu, "the lady who gives birth", Nin-Tur, Aruru, Nin-Mah, Mami, "the mother-goddess", and Mama (those latter just as they sound: Mummy in English, Mommy in American: "the mother"). Robert Graves would call her "The Triple Goddess"; if so, she would have been an early version of the daughters of al-Lah.
Her primary duty was to take care of pregnant women and young children, watching over every phase, from conception, through gestation, and even providing the child with food after parturition - see also Nin-Tur/Nin-Mah, below. As with all the female deities in Mesopotamia, Nin-Hursanga suffered a loss in status during the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon (1792-1750 BCE), and was eventually replaced as a supreme power by male gods.
NIN-ILDU: The Babylonian god of carpentry and patron of carpenters. It is definitely worth comparing the system of Guilds in England in the Middle Ages with the artisan-god structures of the Biblical world; English Guilds all had "patron saints", and were associated with specific churches, where they met for prayer, and why they were named "Worshipful Companies", but which also provided social support structures and community, and in many cases work. The likelihood is that something very similar was in place for the crafts and "mysteries" of old, and that when we read of the sons of Korach (Beney Korach) as the Temple choir and orchestra, or the "schools" of Prophets, the same is true.
NIN-ISINNA: who we have already encountered under another of her names, Gula.
NIN-LIL: Enki's wife, their equivalent to Venus. She was the Sumerian "Lady of the Air", though her name was originally Sud (she changed it when she married En-Lil: Nin-Lil probably means "Queen of the Air"), and she was then the patroness deity of the city of Shurrupak. In the principal version of their saga, En-Lil was banished to the Underworld as a punishment for seducing Nin-Lil. She followed him there, and mothered with him the moon god Nanna (Su'en in the Sumerian tale "En-Lil and Nin-Lil"), the war-and-death god Nergal, as well as Nin-Azu, the god of the Underworld, healing and magic incantations, and Enbilulu, the god of rivers and canals. These gods then rose from the Underworld, either to the Earth or the skies - in exactly the same way that the gods accompanying Ra through the Am-Tuat emerge at his command at dawn and go out into the living world: once again a very clear depiction of the Underworld as the realm of Creation and Regeneration, and not the fiery Hell to house the wicked that it would become in Europe later.
As En-Lil's wife, she gained the status of being consort to the head of the Mesopotamian pantheon, and this would continue in Ashur later on, though she would have to undergo anoher name-change: as En-Lil became Ashur, so she became Sheru'a, which of course is itself a variant of Sarai, Sarah and Asherah. Her longevity is in fact quite prodigious, first known to archaeologists from the late fourth millennium BCE, and still in the ascendancy in the first centuries CE - her last mention as a living goddess rather than a figure from history is as Mylitta in Herodianus's "Peri Orthographias", somewhere in the 2nd century CE. She was at times syncretised with various other healing and mother goddesses, and particularly with Babylonian Ishtar. Regional variations of Nin-Lil name her as Mulliltu, Mullissu and Mylitta. By the first millennium BCE, Nin-Lil had become identified with Ishtar, and then absorbed into her completely.
Naming her Mylitta is down to Herodotus, who did so in his "Histories" (1.131.3 and 1.199.3), describing her as the Assyrian version of Aphrodite, who was the Greek goddess of love.
Nin-Lil would have been worshipped wherever her husband was worshipped, though as consort, not equally as queen. Her main temple was at Nippur, and called the Eki'ur; another is known from texts, but has not yet been found by archaeologists, at Tummal, probably in the vicinity of Nippur.
"Astronomically" (so I read in the scholarly works, but have no expertise of my own in this field, so again I can only quote, and trust) "she is identified with the constellations Ursa Major (mulmar-gíd-da ereqqu = "wagon") and Lyra (mulUZ3 enzu = "goat")." I am intrigued to see Lyra, because this was the star associated with the beloved son of the moon goddess in both Yisra-Eli (David) and Greek (Orpheus) mythology, and logic says that Hera-Kles, having the same name as David, but in Greek, would also have been associated with Lyra.
Which leaves one splendid debate among the scholars: was Nin-Lil the "air", or the "breeze", or a fully-fledged "wind"? Those who blow a gentle "breeze" on the subject bend their arrows towards the Akkadian word Zaqīqu, though it is beyond my ability to explain why. Those who sigh for a fully-fledged wind are accused of flatulating when they insist on North wind, and are themselves then accused of expelling hot air for having done so. I will let this one blow over in its own way and time, and move on to calmer things (but first I willl note that the "wind", in Yehudit, is Ru'ach - and then direct you to my notes at Genesis 1:2).
Which leaves one splendid debate among the scholars: was Nin-Lil the "air", or the "breeze", or a fully-fledged "wind"? Those who blow a gentle "breeze" on the subject bend their arrows towards the Akkadian word Zaqīqu, though it is beyond my ability to explain why. Those who sigh for a fully-fledged wind are accused of flatulating when they insist on North wind, and are themselves then accused of expelling hot air for having done so. I will let this one blow over in its own way and time, and move on to calmer things (but first I willl note that the "wind", in Yehudit, is Ru'ach - and then direct you to my notes at Genesis 1:2).
NIN-MAH: "Magnificent Queen", yet another version of the Mother Goddess, the Sumerians knew her as Nin-Tud ("Queen of the Womb") or Nin-Tur ("Queen of the Birthing Hut"), the Akkadians as Belet-Ili ("Queen of the gods"), others as, Aruru, Dingirmah, and indeed Nin-Hursanga, who we have already encountered. Like Nin-Hursanga, she was in charge of pregnancy, parturition and the feeding of the infant; in earlier periods, she appears as the creator of Humankind. Which leaves open the question, much debated among the scholars: is this type of Mother-Goddess also a fertility goddess, responsible for all of Nature, or was she charged only with this specifically human role?
She held sufficiently high rank in the pantheon that she gets special mention in both "The Lamentation over the Destruction of Sumer and Ur", which is an important hymn in the context of Av-Ram, and in "The Lament over Nibru", where mentioning her alongside An, En-Lil and Enki makes her the supreme female. Later, the healing goddess Gula supplanted her, before herself being supplanted by the goddess of love and war, Ishtar.
In the Akkadian myth of Atra-Hasis, the Mesopotamian flood story, Nin-Tur creates Humankind by mixing clay with the blood of a slain god, and in the Sumerian tale "Enki and Nin-Mah", the two deities compete by creating various creatures out of clay, resulting ultimately in the creation of humans. The clay is said to come from the top of the Abzu, the cosmic underground waters. In this role Nin-Mah was similarly supplanted, this time by the male god Enki/Ea, as can be seen from the "Enūma Elish", where, like Elohim in the Genesis version, the male god is perfectly capable of making male humanity without needing the involvement of any mere female.
Who her parents were is unknown, though being the force of elemental creation it seems to me unnecessary for her to have had any. An, En-Lil, Enki, and Shulpae are all regarded as her husbands in different texts from different places and times, but again, given who she was, and given that Creation does really require a male and female involvement despite the patriarchal self-superiorisation, she will have needed to mate with all the other elements at different times, as will they with her. And again no surprise that the numbers of her offspring were as many as the seed of Ouranos in the Greek myth - all of Creation, throughout the Cosmos, stems from her.
The centre of her cult was Kesh, which is not to be confused with either Kish or Kush, though the archaeologists have not yet managed to located it. The best they can do is an inscription of the Neo-Babylonian king Nabonidus, which indicates that Kesh was still in existence in the first millennium - speculation reckons it was probably the name of the temple quarter in the city of Urusagrig (Irisagrig), close to Adab. She is also known at Ashur, Babylon, Lagash, Larsa, Malgium, Mari, Nippur, Sippar-Aruru, Susa, Umma, and Ur.
As per the illustration at the start of this entry, Nin-Mah's motif was the sign Ω, which is thought to represent a uterus; sometimes it is accompanied by a knife, which is interpreted as the tool that is used to cut the umbilical cord after birth.
NIN-SHAR: The Sumerian goddess of birth and stony ground who, with her brother En-Shar, encircle the earth to create the horizon.
NINSHUBUR: also known as Papsukkal = "chief messenger of the gods", and as Il-Abrat = "the god of wings"; he (I shall return to that pronoun shortly) was Inanna's second-in-command. Clay figureens of him show him wingless, but carrying a staff or wand in his right hand (cf Merlin/Aharon), and by no means obviously male. The prototype of Mercury/Hermes, he also guided souls to the Underworld - this may indeed have been his principal message. His staff is the caduceus, entwined with serpents. Hermes was accredited with inventing the lyre and firesticks, but probably Ninshubur had already done both.
So: was Nin-Shubur male or female - or androgynously, hermaphroditically neither, and therefore both? Being a worm, you can bifurcate her-him and easily have one of each! To the Sumerians definitely a she, goddess of the east who was the friend, confidant, defender, advisor and sometime travelling companion of Inanna, and rarely a tale of the one that does not include the other. In "Inanna and the God of Wisdom", for example, she protects Inanna and the sacred Meh, and in "The Descent of Inanna" she is the faithful friend who finds help to free Inanna from the underworld.
But then a remarkably similar name crops up (forgive the terrible pun) as a minor Akkadian agricultural deity, less a messenger for than a minister to the god Anu. But wait a moment - are we perhaps misreading the cuneiform, because some translators render him as Nin-Subur (see below), which is similar, but so are scones and stones, and so are... hundreds of easy examples so the point is made. But human history is the tale of the takeover of equality by the patriarchy, so no surprise that Nin-Shubur became syncretised with Nin-Subur, and a male deity born of the arranged marriage had absorbed her entirely by the time of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian epochs - around the time of King Solomon.
And in that later, male incarnation, Nin-Si'anna is linked to justice by Rim-Sin, king of Larsa around 1800 BCE, who describes him (him? but she was female until now) as "judge, supreme advisor, who distinguishes between truth and falsehood". The same inscription also credits Nin-Si'anna with delivering the king's enemies into his hands – perhaps an indication of warlike qualities taken over from Inanna/Ishtar, such as can be seen in the hymn for "Iddin-Dagan". There are cylinder seals, dug up like offal from the sacrificed parts of human history, which link Nin-Si'anna with an even more obscure deity named Kabta, who some scholars assume was her husband, but more likely Nin-Si'anna was only the morning star aspect of Venus, and Kabta the evening star. Certainly Kabta is epitheted, like Ishtar later, as "Kabta of the twilight" and "Kabta, goddess of the star".
Another find attributed to Rim-Sin, this time an inscription on one of the buildings in Ur, names her temple as E-esh-bar-zi-da, "The House of True Decisions", which sounds more like the male judge than the female Venus, and anyway no one knows where that temple was, only that it hasn't yet been turned up in Ur. Temples dedicated to her are known however, in Sippar and Larsa, while another was built for her in Uruk by Amar-Suen (or Amar-Sin, as you prefer), the third king of the Ur III dynasty (he ruled from 2046-2038 BCE), and another in an unknown location by his father Shulgi; while some form of worship was offered at the Enmeshara temple in Nippur - though that was primarily a shrine to Nin-Urta.
NIN-URTA: The South wind - among the Sumerians the god of war as well - he was a son of En-Lil and Nin-Hursag, best known for retrieving "The Tablets of Destiny" for Enki after they had been stolen by Abzu. Nin-Urta was depicted as a fierce god who more often used his brawn instead of his brains. In an early myth, his mother tried to kill him by hurling rocks at him. When the rocks failed to harm Nin-Urta in the slightest, Nin-Hursag took the life force out of them and they became dead stones: a classic example of mythology functioning as primitive science, for which the technical term is aetiology. She then instructed the rocks to throw themselves as weapons, but many refused, and were rewarded for doing so by Nin-Urta transforming them into precious gems: still more aetiology. The Babylonian god of the same name is derived from this Sumerian deity. He is usually depicted as an archer, either standing or running on the back of a monster which has the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion.
But then a remarkably similar name crops up (forgive the terrible pun) as a minor Akkadian agricultural deity, less a messenger for than a minister to the god Anu. But wait a moment - are we perhaps misreading the cuneiform, because some translators render him as Nin-Subur (see below), which is similar, but so are scones and stones, and so are... hundreds of easy examples so the point is made. But human history is the tale of the takeover of equality by the patriarchy, so no surprise that Nin-Shubur became syncretised with Nin-Subur, and a male deity born of the arranged marriage had absorbed her entirely by the time of the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian epochs - around the time of King Solomon.
NIN-SI'ANNA: the deity of the planet Venus, though obviously they didn't call it Venus (Dilbat was the most common name); perhaps better simply to say that she was an aspect of Inanna/Ishtar as Venus, venerated as both the morning and the evening star. And guess what, having started out as female, by the final millennium BCE she starts to appear as male, with Ishtar taking over all her remaining female attributes. Her name is associated with illumination and radiance, mostly in epithets such as "the holy torch who fills the heavens" - probably the same intention as the Lapidim and Lapidot in the early chapters of the Book of Judges. Her name probably means "Our Lady of the Heavens", though that would only be Nin and Anna - the Si part comes from Su, which means "red", which could be the colour generated by the morning star at sunrise or the evening star at sunset.
There is also the opportunity to show off a new word that I have just learned, which is "haruspicy" - though I have no idea how it should be pronounced; but if it were like salsa or tandoori the last two syllables would include an "e" before the "y". Its meaning I can tell you - it is the study of, and divination by use of, animal entrails, usually the offal left over after the decent meat from the sacrifice has been turned into tandoori or seasoned with salsa. The point here being, that Nin-Si'anna was the goddess, or later the god, most frequently invoked at these times.
And in that later, male incarnation, Nin-Si'anna is linked to justice by Rim-Sin, king of Larsa around 1800 BCE, who describes him (him? but she was female until now) as "judge, supreme advisor, who distinguishes between truth and falsehood". The same inscription also credits Nin-Si'anna with delivering the king's enemies into his hands – perhaps an indication of warlike qualities taken over from Inanna/Ishtar, such as can be seen in the hymn for "Iddin-Dagan". There are cylinder seals, dug up like offal from the sacrificed parts of human history, which link Nin-Si'anna with an even more obscure deity named Kabta, who some scholars assume was her husband, but more likely Nin-Si'anna was only the morning star aspect of Venus, and Kabta the evening star. Certainly Kabta is epitheted, like Ishtar later, as "Kabta of the twilight" and "Kabta, goddess of the star".
Another find attributed to Rim-Sin, this time an inscription on one of the buildings in Ur, names her temple as E-esh-bar-zi-da, "The House of True Decisions", which sounds more like the male judge than the female Venus, and anyway no one knows where that temple was, only that it hasn't yet been turned up in Ur. Temples dedicated to her are known however, in Sippar and Larsa, while another was built for her in Uruk by Amar-Suen (or Amar-Sin, as you prefer), the third king of the Ur III dynasty (he ruled from 2046-2038 BCE), and another in an unknown location by his father Shulgi; while some form of worship was offered at the Enmeshara temple in Nippur - though that was primarily a shrine to Nin-Urta.
Just for the information, the equivalent star in the Yisra-Eli cosmos was Heylel ben Shachar (הֵילֵ֣ל בֶּן שָׁ֑חַר), at least according to the Prophet Yesha-Yah, who hails him - him, not her - in Isaiah 14:12; and does so in a form that would be very recognisable to the poet John Milton. Having said which, Psalm 22 is addressed to Ayelet ha Shachar, which is generally reckoned to be Sirius, the Dog-Star, the brightest star in the sky just before dawn and just after dusk. Shachar is the Yehudit word for "dawn"; an Ayelet is the female of many types of animal, mostly deer, and is used as an image of female grace and beauty.
NIN-SUBUR: also known as Il-abrat, he was a "minister" to the god Anu - some kind of Chamberlain, probably - assimilated eventually into Pap-Sukkal, the minister to the general assembly of the gods. See under Nin-Shubur, above.
NIN-SUN: The Sumerian Mother Goddess, best known as the mother of Gilgamesh, and as the wife of Lugalbanda, king of Uruk. 
She was adept at interpreting dreams, and was very wise. Her name is sometimes translated as "Cow of The Wild Enclosure", which is ignorant on every level. Some simply render the name as "Great Lady", which is evasive, but at least polite.
She was adept at interpreting dreams, and was very wise. Her name is sometimes translated as "Cow of The Wild Enclosure", which is ignorant on every level. Some simply render the name as "Great Lady", which is evasive, but at least polite.And sometimes, and actually more correctly, she is Nin-Sumun, which means "Our Lady of the Wild Cows" and thus connects her with Egyptian Hat-Hor, and, perhaps more signfiicantly as this is Mesopotamia, with Lavan's elder daughter Le'ah.
Nin-Sumun's cult was primarily located in the city-state of Lagash, though she was also worshipped at Nippur, Ur and Umma, and probably started out in myth in Ku'ara, the home of the god Asalluhi, and the birthplace of both Dumuzi and Marduk. Her temple at Ur was built around 2000 BCE by Ur-Nammu, and named the E-Mah, which means ""Magnificent Temple", though it is called the Egalmah in "The Epic of Gilgamesh" (Tablet III, ll 15ff). Given that this temple was also associated with Gula, is there reason to think that the two were the same, or became the same?
The illustration is from the Louvre in Paris.
The illustration is from the Louvre in Paris.
NIN-URTA: The South wind - among the Sumerians the god of war as well - he was a son of En-Lil and Nin-Hursag, best known for retrieving "The Tablets of Destiny" for Enki after they had been stolen by Abzu. Nin-Urta was depicted as a fierce god who more often used his brawn instead of his brains. In an early myth, his mother tried to kill him by hurling rocks at him. When the rocks failed to harm Nin-Urta in the slightest, Nin-Hursag took the life force out of them and they became dead stones: a classic example of mythology functioning as primitive science, for which the technical term is aetiology. She then instructed the rocks to throw themselves as weapons, but many refused, and were rewarded for doing so by Nin-Urta transforming them into precious gems: still more aetiology. The Babylonian god of the same name is derived from this Sumerian deity. He is usually depicted as an archer, either standing or running on the back of a monster which has the body of a lion and the tail of a scorpion.
NIRAH: The Sumerian snake god, and also the god of snakes.
NISABA (also Nissaba and Nidaba, and associated with Nanibgal): She began life as the Sumerian goddess of grains, cereal and grasses, most notably the sturdy reeds which grew in the canals and which scribes would use in writing. Consequently, Nisaba became the patron goddess of writing, scribes and, particularly, accounting (and was regarded as the scribe of the gods, though none of these texts have yet been discovered).
Once she had achieved this extended status, she was also recognized as the mother of Nin-Lil (Sud), the wife of En-Lil, the supreme god of the sky. Schools were established in her name in Sumeria by 2000 BCE, and she was widely praised in hymns and inscriptions. She lost status during the reign of Hammurabi of Babylon (1792-1750 BCE) when she was replaced by Nabu as the god of writing (though it is feasible that she continued to do the scribing, but adopted the masculine pen-name Nabu in order to find a publisher). Afterwards she was sometimes depicted as Nabu's wife.
NUMUSHDA: the patron deity of the city of Kazallu, very close to Babylon, he was the son of the moon god Nanna/Suen, connected with the fertility of Nature, and closely connected to the gods Meslamtaea, Nin-Azu, and Marduk. During the third millennium BCE he appears to have been associated with underworld deites, but this role then disappeared.
Most of what is known about him is derived from a single line in a single text, a hymn to him, written in the name of king Sin-iqišam of Larsa around 1840 BCE, and all that it says is "[Numushda], foremost in warfare, [it is] you, who can compete with you?" ("Hymn to Sin-iqišam", l 17).
Astronomically, Numušda was part of the constellation Centaurus. Here on Earth, he was worshipped at Kiritab as well as Kazallu. Unfortunately being a city's patron deity does not also make you its defender, or at least there is no guarantee, despite your being a god, that you will be able to do so; and so it proved for Kazallu, when, around 1840 BCE, the king brought statues of Numushda, and of Namrat and Lugal-apiak as well, into the city to show the besieging enemy that the gods would not allow the city to fall, but it did, in the fifth year of the siege, and then the city was razed completely to the ground.
Not that many people had much faith in him anyway. The etymology of his name is not known, and definitely does not come from Sumerian or Akkadian, or the later Chaldean of Babylon; but folk tales are quite clear about the meaning of his name, and it is unquestionably the same god who directs the meteorological office in the United Kingdom: "Numushda: he who lets it rain constantly".
NUSKU: Or probably Nuska, and even more probably Dnuska, "Lord of the Sceptre", but with that aspirated "D" that we have witnessed repeatedly; the Babylonian god of fire and light, both heavenly and terrestrial, and the patron god of a civilisation which would not have thrived without fire.
As Sumerian Nuska he served as a "minister" to the god En-Lil - "minister" probably in the cabinet rather than the pulpit. In some versions he appears as En-Lil's son, but others parent him with Enul and Nin-Ul, who were also ancestors of En-Lil. His association with fire and light tends to be in a protective role, fighting against evil, rather than as the Logi of the Mesopotamian world. He was especially invoked as a protective guardian during the night, where he watched over sleeping people, brought them good dreams, and prevented those nightmares which were the unwanted gifts of the Lilim.
In Neo-Babylonian times, in the city of Charan, whence Av-Ram left his family for Kena'an, and whither Ya'akov returned to find wives and a career as a sheep-rustler, Nusku was the son of the moon god, named Sin in the Babylonian texts, but Lavan in the Yehudit.
Still later, in the Seleucid era, he is described as either the minister or the son of the god Anu, and by this time he has also become the father of the fire god Gibil.
Still later, in the Seleucid era, he is described as either the minister or the son of the god Anu, and by this time he has also become the father of the fire god Gibil.
Records of Old Babylonian food offerings to deities indicate that Nusku had a temple or chapel in the city of Nippur.
His role as En-Lil's minister is described in two second millenium Sumerian texts. In "En-Lil in the Ekur" he learns of En-Lil's intentions for the human world, and then carries out his master's instructions; a Sumerian praise poem of king Ishme-Dagan of the kingdom of Isin (1953-1935 BCE) describes Nusku handing the king a royal sceptre, symbolically giving En-Lil's divine sanction to Ishme-Dagan's kingship.
His role as En-Lil's minister is described in two second millenium Sumerian texts. In "En-Lil in the Ekur" he learns of En-Lil's intentions for the human world, and then carries out his master's instructions; a Sumerian praise poem of king Ishme-Dagan of the kingdom of Isin (1953-1935 BCE) describes Nusku handing the king a royal sceptre, symbolically giving En-Lil's divine sanction to Ishme-Dagan's kingship.
As fire-god he was invoked as part of a torch-lit nocturnal offering ceremony for the deities Anu and Antu, according to a Seleucid period text from the city of Uruk: the parade, presumably with pageant wagons as life-sized statues of the deities, including Nusku, were transported, followed a flaming torch into Anu's shrine, and then emerged again to parade around the temple amid brushwood fires. Nusku was also invoked as a night-light and protector during the first-millennium incantation series against those evil sorcerers known as the Maqlû.
Not difficult to deduce then that Nusku's symbol was a lamp - one of the Lapidot, probably, that we encounter, inter alia, in the story of Devorah in the Book of Judges (see my note to Judges 4:4 in particular). That lamp appears in much of the art of the the Kassite and Neo-Babylonian periods (see under Nin-Si'anna, above, for another example), but none more powerfully than the illustration at this link, from a Neo-Assyrian protective amulet designed to guard against the evil baby-killing demon Lamashtu, who visited women during childbirth; the lamp is pictured (far left) in the patient's bedroom, symbolizing Nusku guarding the room during the night, the time when when evil was thought more likely to attack.
For some reason that may or may not be connected with the strange Jewish custom of Kapparot, this protector against evil is also depicted on occasions as a rooster.
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