The Babylonian World - Historia Antigua

— Brigitte Groneberg —
this personal deity could disappear and thus leave the populace to their fate (Lambert
1960: 33: 45–46; 38: 4–5). The importance of Nintinugga is confirmed by the fact
that she also received extra offerings in the temple of the Goddess Ninlil, wife of
Nippur’s chief deity, where we may expect the queen to make her offerings, in order
to care for her husband’s welfare.
The third important healing deity in Nippur during Ur III was called Ninisinna
‘Mistress of Isin’. In Isin, where the centre of her cult was located, about which we
still know too little, she was the city goddess (Edzard 2000: 287f.; Groneberg 2000b;
Such-Gutiérrez 2003: 353).
The differentiated, richly endowed cult of the healing goddesses in Nippur may
be taken as an indication of the importance of these deities, both for the well-being
of the ruler and for the other inhabitants. The citizens of Nippur apparently had a
choice of therapeutic goddesses, some of whom had their cult centre in a far away
region. Whether this implies the presence of a clientele that had migrated to Nippur
from that region and who had brought their own goddess with them, or whether
this means that the cult of a regional deity had gained such a reputation that she
could successfully compete with Nintinugga, has not yet been determined.
Another prominent therapeutic deity with a long history is the goddess Baba. She
interpreted dreams and had a healing function from Ur III right up to the second
half of the first millennium BC. Later, her name was synonymous with the meaning
‘guardian angel’. Her husband from earlier times is known as Nin-Girsu ‘Leader of
(the city) Girsu’. But already in Ur III times Nin-Girsu had merged with Ninurta,
the city god of Nippur (Streck 2001: 512–522). In the palace of Nippur, Baba received
offerings, whereby it is remarkable that she is referred to before her husband and
received more sacrificial offerings. In her temple administration sixty workers were
employed and many individuals had chosen her name as part of their names, and
even a street in Nippur was named after her (Such-Gutiérrez 2003: 321–322).
FERTILITY
Nippur was surrounded by an agricultural belt and the city depended for its prosperity
on its produce. One of the central tasks of the city was the regular cult of those
deities that made the land fertile and safeguarded the crops. Prominent were goddesses
who had been assigned the responsibility for agricultural matters such as the yield of
the fields, the grain harvest, the ripening of fruit on the trees and grapes on the vines.
Besides Ninlil, the highest city-goddess, who owned the temple district Tummal
outside the city, we found in the first place Nisaba (Michalowski 2001: 575–579),
but also the names Kusu, Ashnan, Ninkasi (Cavigneaux and Krebernik 2001: 442–445)
and Ninkirsigga may be found` in the texts (Such-Gutiérrez 2003: 141–142; 335–337;
354–356). The logogram of the name Nisaba shows a plant, sometimes interpreted
as ‘an ear of barley’. Kusu means ‘ripe stalk’ and Ashnan means ‘grain’, so that we
are here dealing with three names of the same goddess. Ninkasi is ‘Mistress who pours
wine and beer’, an important task, for beer in Mesopotamia was staple food. Ninkirsigga
‘Mistress of gentle lambs’ cared for cattle. These evocative names are only applied to
goddesses and clearly indicate their function. To these we may add Ninegunu ‘Mistress
of the many-coloured house’ who also is addressed as Geshtinanna, ‘vine of heaven’
(Cavigneaux and Krebernik 2000: 347f.). She looked after all cultivated plants.
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