Ninazu
Ninazu | |
---|---|
God of the underworld, snakes and vegetation | |
Major cult center | Enegi, originally also Eshnunna |
Symbol | snake |
Personal information | |
Parents |
|
Consort | Ningirida[1] |
Children |
|
Equivalents | |
Eshnunnean equivalent | Tishpak |
Ninazu (
His original cult centers were
Character and iconography
According to Julia M. Asher-Greve, Ninazu was initially considered a "high-ranking local god," similar in rank to
It is possible that Ninazu was the oldest Sumerian god of the netherworld, and that he was only overshadowed by Ereshkigal and Nergal in later periods.[9] He was referred to as a "steward of the great earth," "great earth" being a euphemism for the underworld, or as "lord of the underworld," an epithet shared with many deities, including his son Ningishzida, Nergal, Nirah and the primordial deity Enmesharra.[10]
Ninazu was also regarded as a warrior deity, especially in Eshnunna.[4] He was both described and possibly depicted as armed with two maces.[10] While no artistic representations of him have been identified with certainty,[11] his symbols mentioned in textual sources include snakes and the "snake-dragon" mushussu.[10] In an Early Dynastic zami hymn he is also compared to a black dog, known from later Mesopotamian incantations and compendiums of omens as a symbol of death.[12] "The Elam star," one of the Mesopotamian names of the planet Mars, was associated with Ninazu in astronomical texts.[13]
Associations with other deities
Multiple traditions regarding Ninazu's parentage existed. He was regarded either as a son of Ereshkigal and a "Great Lord" (possibly to be identified with Gugalanna, known from the god list An = Anum and from the myth Inanna's Descent to the Nether World), who might have been analogous to anonymous deities described as "mighty cow" and "untamable bull" attested as his parents elsewhere,[4] of Enlil and Ninlil (an association originating in Eshnunna but present also in other sources, including the myth Enlil and Ninlil), or of Suen.[4] Frans Wiggermann assumes that the genealogies where Ereshkigal is listed as his mother represent the original tradition, and making Ninazu a son of Enlil and Ninlil was the result of absorption of some features of Nergal.[4] In an Early Dynastic text from Shuruppak the god of Enegi, presumably Ninazu, is already referred to as "Nergal of Enegi."[12] The existence of a tradition in which Gula was Ninazu's mother, occasionally proposed in scholarship, should be considered baseless according to Andrew R. George.[14]
The god
In most sources the goddess
Ninazu has no sukkal (attendant deity) in the major god lists, but it is possible that the viper god Ippu (or Ipahum), later known as the sukkal of Ningishzida, originally was a courtier of his father instead.[8] According to Irene Sibbing-Plantholt, he might be one and the same as the vegetation god Abu known from the myth Enki and Ninhursag.[17]
In the god list An = Anum Ninazu appears in a sequence including Ereshkigal, Ningishzida, Tishpak,
A single god list from the first millennium BCE equates Ninazu with
Outside Mesopotamia
A trilingual god list from Ugarit explains Ninazu as ši-ru-hi (meaning unknown) in the Hurrian column and possibly as il mutema (“god of death”) in Ugaritic.[12]
Worship
Ninazu's primary cult center was
A second cult center of Ninazu was Eshnunna, where his temple was the Esikil, "pure house."[12] Frans Wiggermann maintains that the Ninazu of Eshnunna was identical with the Ninazu of Enegi,[4] but according to Irene Sibbing-Plantholt, it is uncertain if the latter was indeed identical, and thus a southern deity imported to a northern city, a different deity sharing the same name, or an epithet of a separate deity identical with the name of the god of Enegi.[28] Starting in the Akkadian period, Ninazu apparently competed with the god Tishpak in Eshnunna, and ceased to be mentioned in documents from it altogether after Hammurabi's conquest.[12] It is usually presumed that the later had foreign origin, and he might have been introduced to this city as early as in the late fourth and early third millennium BCE.[28] While similar in character, Ninazu and Tishpak were not fully conflated, and unlike Inanna and Ishtar or Enki and Ea were kept apart in god lists.[12][29]
In Lagash, Ninazu was one of the deities who were part of the official pantheon during the reign of Urukagina,[30] but he is otherwise not attested there in the Early Dynastic period,[31] with the exception of some theophoric personal names.[32] Later Gudea built a temple dedicated to him, but its precise location and ceremonial name are not known.[33]
From Enegi, Ninazu was also introduced to Ur, where his cult survived until late periods.[12] A temple dedicated to him in this city was also named Egidda,[30] and it has been proposed that it might have been where the center of his cult was relocated after the decline of Enegi suggested by its absence from records from the first millennium BCE.[34] Other cities from which offerings to him are attested are Nippur, Umma[16] and Adab.[35] In the first millennium BCE, he was also venerated in Assur.[12] Furthermore, the name of a temple dedicated to him, Ekurmaḫ, "house, exalted mountain," is known from the Epic of Anzû, but its location is unknown.[36]
The last available evidence for cult of Ninazu are theophoric personal names from Ur invoking him, present in sources from the period of Persian rule over Mesopotamia.[30][16] According to Paul-Alain Beaulieu, he must have remained a relatively popular deity in Ur.[37] A peculiarity associated with the late worship of Ninazu in Ur is the use of both the basic form of his name and its Emesal equivalent, Umunazu, in personal names, with the latter being slightly more common - 25 names with Ninazu and 30 with Umunazu are presently known.[38] It is possible that this situation was influenced by the role played by lamentation priests, who traditionally memorized texts written in the Emesal dialect, in the survival of Ninazu's cult.[39] Other underworld deities, like his son Ningishzida, the deified snake Nirah and the incantation goddess Ningirima, also retained a degree of popularity, likely due to being envisioned as members of Ninazu's court.[40]
References
- ^ a b c Wiggermann 1998a, p. 368.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 7.
- ^ Wiggermann 1998, pp. 329–330.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiggermann 1998, p. 330.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 204.
- ^ a b Wiggermann 1998, pp. 331–332.
- ^ Wiggermann 1997, p. 47.
- ^ a b c d Wiggermann 1998, p. 331.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 19.
- ^ a b c Wiggermann 1998, p. 332.
- ^ Wiggermann 1997, p. 35.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Wiggermann 1998, p. 333.
- ^ Wiggermann 1998, p. 335.
- ^ George 1993, pp. 36–37.
- ^ Wiggermann 1997, p. 39.
- ^ a b c Stevens 2013.
- ^ Sibbing-Plantholt 2022, pp. 35–37.
- ^ Wiggermann 1997, p. 34.
- ^ Wiggermann 1997, pp. 47–48.
- ^ a b c Sibbing-Plantholt 2022, p. 34.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 100.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 114.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 116.
- ^ Dalley 1998, p. 214.
- ^ Wiggermann 1997, p. 33.
- ^ D'Agostino & Greco 2019, p. 470.
- ^ D'Agostino & Greco 2019, p. 469.
- ^ a b Sibbing-Plantholt 2022, p. 33.
- ^ Sibbing-Plantholt 2022, pp. 33–34.
- ^ a b c Wiggermann 1998, p. 334.
- ^ Kobayashi 1992, pp. 75–76.
- ^ Kobayashi 1992, p. 77.
- ^ George 1993, p. 167.
- ^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 165.
- ^ Such-Gutiérrez 2005, p. 25.
- ^ George 1993, p. 117.
- ^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 166.
- ^ Beaulieu 2021, pp. 165–166.
- ^ Beaulieu 2021, p. 170.
- ^ Beaulieu 2021, pp. 170–172.
Bibliography
- Asher-Greve, Julia M.; Westenholz, Joan G. (2013). Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources (PDF). ISBN 978-3-7278-1738-0.
- Beaulieu, Paul-Alain (2021). "Remarks on Theophoric Names in the Late Babylonian Archives from Ur". Individuals and Institutions in the Ancient Near East. De Gruyter. pp. 163–178. S2CID 244620728.
- ISBN 978-0-19-283589-5.
- D'Agostino, Franco; Greco, Angela (2019). "Abu Tbeirah. A Philological and Epigraphic Point of View". Abu Tbeirah excavations I. Area 1: last phase and building A – phase 1. Roma: Sapienza Università Editrice. OCLC 1107331347.
- George, Andrew R. (1993). House most high: the temples of ancient Mesopotamia. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. OCLC 27813103.
- Kobayashi, Toshiko (1992). "On Ninazu, as Seen in the Economic Texts of the Early Dynastic Lagaš". Orient. 28. The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan: 75–105. S2CID 191496612.
- [1]Kobayashi, Toshiko, "Ninazu, the Personal Deity of Gudea", Orient 30, pp. 142-157, 1995
- Sibbing-Plantholt, Irene (2022). The Image of Mesopotamian Divine Healers. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-51240-5.
- Stevens, Kathryn (2013), "Ninazu (god)", Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses, Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, UK Higher Education Academy
- Such-Gutiérrez, Marcos (2005). "Untersuchungen zum Pantheon von Adab im 3. Jt". Archiv für Orientforschung (in German). 51. Archiv für Orientforschung (AfO)/Institut für Orientalistik: 1–44. JSTOR 41670228. Retrieved 2022-08-19.
- Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (1998), "Nin-azu", Reallexikon der Assyriologie, retrieved 2022-02-03
- Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (1998a), "Nin-ĝišzida", Reallexikon der Assyriologie, retrieved 2022-02-03
- Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (1997). "Transtigridian Snake Gods". In Finkel, I. L.; Geller, M. J. (eds.). Sumerian Gods and their Representations. ISBN 978-90-56-93005-9.
External links
- How grain came to Sumer in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
- Enlil and Ninlil in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature