Ninmada was a name applied to two separate Mesopotamian deities, a god and a goddess. The female Ninmada was a divine snake charmer, and in the myth Enki and Ninmah she appears as an assistant of the eponymous goddess. The male Ninmada was called the "worshiper of An" and was regarded as a brother of the snake god Ninazu. It is assumed that these deities could be partially conflated with each other or shared a similar origin, though proposals that there was only one Ninmada are also present in modern scholarship.
| Ninmada | |
|---|---|
Divine snake charmer | |
| Member of Šassūrātu | |
| Genealogy | |
| Siblings | Ninazu |
Character
editThe name Ninmada means "lord of the country" or "lady of the country" in Sumerian.[1] Nin is a grammatically neutral term and can be found in the names of both female (Ninisina, Ninkasi, Ninmena) and male (Ningirsu, Ninazu, Ningishzida) deities.[2] Some forty percent of earliest Sumerian deities had such names, including city gods, but also servants and children of major deities.[3]
It is assumed that there were two separate deities named Ninmada, but Antoine Cavigneaux and Manfred Krebernik consider it possible that they either shared the same origin or that they could have been partially conflated.[1] Wilfred G. Lambert considered only the female Ninmada to function as a divine snake charmer.[4] She fulfilled this role in the courts of Enlil and Anu.[5] Frans Wiggermann considers the male Ninmada, the brother of Ninazu, and the snake charmer deity to be one and the same.[5] This view is also supported by Frank Simons, who assumes there was only one Ninmada, both a snake charmer and the "worshiper of An,"[6] an epithet assumed to only refer to the male deity by other researchers.[1] The god list An = Anum refers to Ninmada both as a snake charmer and as the "worshiper of An," and apparently considers the deity to be male.[1]
According to Jeremiah Peterson, Ninmada's status as a brother of Ninazu might indicate he was considered to be a deity associated with the underworld.[7] He additionally points out that in different copies of the Nippur god list, Ninmada alternates with Ningishzida.[8]
Worship
editA temple of Ninmada is mentioned in the so-called Canonical Temple List after the temples of Ninkasi, but its location is presently unknown and its name is not preserved.[9]
Male Ninmada appears in an inscription of Gudea as one of the deities invoked to help with the construction of E-ninnu,[1] the temple of Ningirsu in Girsu.[10]
An exorcistic text referred to as "Gattung II" mentions Ninmada, the "worshiper of An."[11] This epithet is assumed to refer to male form of this deity.[1] The same sequence mentions Ninkurra, described as "lord who digs up lapis lazuli," Ninzadim, Ninnisig (the butcher of Ekur), Kusu (a purification goddess), Siris (here labeled as the cook of Anu, an otherwise unknown role[12]), and Nisaba.[11]
Theophoric names invoking Ninmada are also known, for example Ur-Ninmada from Sargonic Adab.[13]
Associations with other deities
editNinmada's brother was Ninazu.[7] Frans Wiggermann notes that this tradition is known from sources from both of Ninazu's cult centers, Eshnunna and Enegi.[14] While Enlil is referred to as their father in the myth How Grain Came to Sumer, Dina Katz points out that it is uncertain if he should specifically be understood as the father of Ninmada and Ninazu, or if he is simply addressed as such because of his senior status among the gods.[15] According to Andrew R. George, the female snake charmer Ninmada could be regarded as a daughter of the brewer goddess Ninkasi, and appears with her in enumerations of Enlil's courtiers.[16]
It has been proposed that male Ninmada can be identified with Umun-šudde (or Lugal-šudde), who appears with Ištaran and Alla in an Emesal litany.[1]
A goddess whose name was written as dnin-ma-da also appears alongside Dagan in a text from Nippur, possibly as his parhedra (spouse), but it is possible in this case the name should be read as Belet-matim.[1] No other sources which would support the assumption that Ninmada was regarded as related to Dagan are otherwise available.[17]
Mythology
editNinmada appears alongside Ninazu in the myth How Grain Came to Sumer.[18] He is considered to be a male deity in this case.[19] In the beginning of the myth, Enlil restricts the growth of the freshly created grain to mountains in the distant north.[18] Ninazu wants to bring it to the Sumerians living in the south.[18] Since he has no permission to do so, Ninmada advises him to ask the sun god Utu for help, but as the rest of the narrative is not preserved, it is unknown how did he aid them and in which way the crop eventually reached Sumer.[20] Frans Wiggermann notes that the information about grain preserved in the myth appears to match conclusions of archaeologists, as it is assumed domesticated cereals arrived in Mesopotamia from the so-called Hilly Flanks surrounding the area.[21]
Ninmada appears as one of the seven helpers of Ninmah in the myth Enki and Ninmah, alongside Ninimma, Shuzianna, Ninšar, Ninmug, Mumudu and Ninniginna.[22] In this text, all of them are understood as minor goddesses of birth.[4] Ninmah's helpers could be collectively called Šassūrātu.[23][24] This term was derived from šassūru, "womb," a Sumerian loanword in Akkadian.[25] In an Ugaritic god list, they were equated with Hurrian Hutena and Hutellura and local Kotharat.[25] The latter group is also known Mari, where they were known as Kûšarātum.[25] Their name is derived from the Semitic root kšr, "to be skilled."[25]
References
edit- ^ a b c d e f g h Cavigneaux & Krebernik 1998, p. 462.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, pp. 6–7.
- ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 7.
- ^ a b Lambert 2013, p. 506.
- ^ a b Wiggermann 1997, p. 42.
- ^ Simons 2018, pp. 132–133.
- ^ a b Peterson 2009, p. 56.
- ^ Peterson 2009, p. 55.
- ^ George 1993, p. 168.
- ^ George 1993, p. 134.
- ^ a b Simons 2018, p. 131.
- ^ Simons 2018, p. 133.
- ^ Such-Gutiérrez 2005, p. 27.
- ^ Wiggermann 1998, p. 330.
- ^ Katz 2003, p. 439.
- ^ George 1993, p. 24.
- ^ Peterson 2009, p. 50.
- ^ a b c Chen 2013, p. 90.
- ^ Katz 2003, p. 436.
- ^ Katz 2006, p. 115.
- ^ Wiggermann 2011, p. 670.
- ^ Lambert 2013, p. 337.
- ^ Stol 2000, pp. 80–82.
- ^ Archi 2013, p. 19.
- ^ a b c d Archi 2013, p. 14.
Bibliography
edit- Archi, Alfonso (2013). "The Anatolian Fate-Goddesses and their Different Traditions". Diversity and Standardization. De Gruyter. doi:10.1524/9783050057576.1.
- 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.
- Cavigneaux, Antoine; Krebernik, Manfred (1998), "Nin-mada", Reallexikon der Assyriologie (in German), retrieved 2022-05-15
- Chen, Y. S. (2013). The Primeval Flood Catastrophe: Origins and Early Development in Mesopotamian Traditions. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199676200.001.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-967620-0.
- George, Andrew R. (1993). House most high: the temples of ancient Mesopotamia. Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 0-931464-80-3. OCLC 27813103.
- Katz, Dina (2003). The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources. Bethesda, MD: CDL Press. ISBN 1-883053-77-3. OCLC 51770219.
- Katz, Dina (2006). "Appeals to Utu in Sumerian Narratives". Approaches to Sumerian Literature. BRILL. doi:10.1163/9789047410683_009.
- Lambert, Wilfred G. (2013). Babylonian creation myths. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-861-9. OCLC 861537250.
- Peterson, Jeremiah (2009). God lists from Old Babylonian Nippur in the University Museum, Philadelphia. Münster: Ugarit Verlag. ISBN 3-86835-019-5. OCLC 460044951.
- Simons, Frank (2018). "The Goddess Kusu". Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale. 112 (1). CAIRN: 123–148. doi:10.3917/assy.112.0123. ISSN 0373-6032.
- Stol, Marten (2000). Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting. Cuneiform Monographs. Brill Styx. ISBN 978-90-72371-89-8. Retrieved 2022-07-24.
- 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. ISSN 0066-6440. JSTOR 41670228. Retrieved 2022-05-15.
- Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (1998), "Nin-azu", Reallexikon der Assyriologie, retrieved 2022-05-15
- 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.
- Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (2011). "Agriculture as Civilization: Sages, Farmers, and Barbarians". Oxford Handbooks Online. Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199557301.013.0031.