Nintinugga

Template:Short description Template:Infobox deity Nintinugga (Template:Cuneiform; also romanized as NintinugaTemplate:Sfn) was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with medicine and cleansing. She belonged to the local pantheon of Nippur. While she has been compared to other similar goddesses, such as Ninisina and Gula, and in a number of ancient texts they appear to be syncretised with each other or are treated as interchangeable, she was nonetheless a distinct deity in her own right. She was associated with Enlil and Ninlil, and was worshiped in their temples, though houses of worship dedicated only to her are also attested.

CharacterEdit

Nintinugga's name is conventionally translated from Sumerian as "Mistress who revives the dead".Template:Sfn However, Barbara Böck notes this interpretation might only reflect an "ancient scholarly etymology."Template:Sfn It is possible it initially had a different meaning, with one proposal being "lady of the lofty wine," and only from the reign of Uruinimgina onward it started to be written with the cuneiform sign ug₅, "to die."Template:Sfn An epithet sometimes applied to her was "the lady of life and death," nin til₃-la ug₅-ga, attested both in royal inscriptions and in various god lists.Template:Sfn

Descriptions of Nintinugga's activity in Mesopotamian texts present her as physician, with her responsibilities including applying bandages, cleaning wounds and according to Böck specifically dealing with the musculoskeletal system.Template:Sfn The evidence for an association between her and healing first appears in sources from the Ur III period, and she is well attested as a medicine goddess in the Old Babylonian period.Template:Sfn Attestations of physicians serving as her cultic officials are considered to be early evidence of her healing role.Template:Sfn In texts where she and other healing deities are invoked together she might represent a specific form of healing rather than medicine as a whole.Template:Sfn She was additionally associated with incantations.Template:Sfn In a type of ritual, atua, she is connected with cleansing rather than healing, and Irene Sibbing-Plantholt proposes this might have been an aspect of her original character.Template:Sfn However, she also considers it a possibility that she developed as an extension of a healing aspect of Enlil.Template:Sfn

Possibly due to the meaning of her name, Nintinugga was connected to the underworld.Template:Sfn Jeremiah Peterson notes it is likely that it was believed that she provided the dead with clean water, and that she was connected to funerary libations.Template:Sfn She was also invoked against the demon Asag,Template:Sfn as relayed in the texts Letter-Prayer of Inanaka and A Dog for Nintinugga.Template:Sfn

Dogs are well attested as an attribute of most, though not all, Mesopotamian healing goddesses.Template:Sfn The connection might have been based on the observation of healing properties of dog saliva,Template:Sfn or on the perception of the animals as liminal and capable of interacting both with the realms of the living and the dead, similar as the goddesses associated with them.Template:Sfn Nintinugga was believed to possess dogs of her own,Template:Sfn and a text from the Ur III period relays that a throne decorated with two of these animals was prepared for her in Ur.Template:Sfn A Mîs-pî ritual from Nineveh mentions reeds and cornel wood among cult objects associated with her.Template:Sfn

Associations with other deitiesEdit

According to a late medical incantation, Nintinugga's father was Ninazu.Template:Sfn Despite the association between her and Ninisina, she was never referred to as a daughter of Anu.Template:Sfn Barbara Böck argues that Nintinugga and Ninurta were regarded as a couple,Template:Sfn but Irene Sibbing-Plantholt in a more recent publication concludes that this view, also present elsewhere in Assyriological literature, is not supported by textual evidence, which is limited to Nintinugga receiving offerings in Ninurta's temple, Ešumeša, which is attested for most members of the local pantheon and does not indicate a spousal relationship.Template:Sfn According to the god list An = Anum, her husband was Endaga (^den-dag-ga),Template:Sfn a god of unknown character already attested in the Fara and Abu Salabikh god lists from the Early Dynastic period, but there is no indication in any known sources that the relationship between them was considered significant.Template:Sfn In a single lament, Nintinugga appears in the role of the mother of Damu.Template:Sfn According to Böck the tradition according to which he was her son is known from Ur.Template:Sfn Sibbing-Plantholt points out that both Damu and Gunura appear in association with her in three texts from Nippur dated to the Ur III period.Template:Sfn

Nintinugga was also associated with Enlil Template:Sfn and could be designated as his šimmu, translated as "incantation priestess" or "sorcerer" by Joan Goodnick Westenholz,Template:Sfn but as "a type of healer and provider of medical plants" by Sibbing-Plantholt.Template:Sfn The latter author argues that the common assumption that this term designated a specialist similar to the ašipu is based only on sources from the first millennium BCE, and earlier texts instead indicate a role similar to that of a herbalist.Template:Sfn Another deity connected with Nintinugga was Nungal, the goddess of prisons.Template:Sfn In a fragmentary literary text both of them appear alongside Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld, possibly due to all three of them sharing a connection to the land of the dead.Template:Sfn

Nintinugga and other healing goddessesEdit

Various goddesses associated with healing, namely Nintinugga, Gula, Ninisina, Ninkarrak, Bau and Meme, formed an interconnected network in Mesopotamian religion, either due to analogous functions or shared associations with other deities.Template:Sfn The existence of multiple similar goddesses responsible for medicine reflected the well attested phenomenon of local pantheons typical for individual cities or regions.Template:Sfn However, while a degree of interchangeability is attested,Template:Sfn Nintinugga was usually regarded as distinct from the other similar goddesses.Template:Sfn Their individual character was reflected in distinct traditions regarding their parents and spouses, as well as in associations with separate cult centers.Template:Sfn For example, while Nintinugga was associated with Nippur, Ninisina was the goddess of Isin, Gula most likely originated in Umma,Template:Sfn and Ninkarrak was worshiped in Sippar.Template:Sfn

An association between Nintinugga and Ninisina is attested in sources from the Old Babylonian period, and might have been meant to strengthen the ties between their respective cities, Nippur and Isin.Template:Sfn However, they were not necessarily interchangeable, and references to the former traveling to visit the latter in Isin are known from literary texts.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

In the Gula Hymn of Bulluṭsa-rabi, a syncretistic work composed at some point between 1400 and 700 BCETemplate:Sfn which equates the eponymous goddess both with other medicine goddesses and with deities of different character, such as Nanshe and Ninigizibara (a minor goddess from the entourage of Inanna, described as a harpist), Nintinugga appears as one of the names assigned to her.Template:Sfn Despite the syncretistic approach, each section focuses on the individual traits of each deity,Template:Sfn and that dedicated to Nintinugga highlights both her character as a healing goddess and her connection to the underworld.Template:Sfn However, sources from Nippur indicate that local theologians equated Gula with Ninisina, not Nintinugga, possibly due to their respective characters being more similar.Template:Sfn

WorshipEdit

The cult of Nintinugga was centered in Nippur,Template:Sfn as already attested in sources from the Early Dynastic period.Template:Sfn It was closely connected to those of Enlil and Ninlil.Template:Sfn Initially she was likely worshiped in the temple of the former, while in the Ur III period one of the four chapels located in the temple of the latter belonged to her (the other three were dedicated to Nanna, Nisaba and Ninhursag).Template:Sfn She also had her own temple in Nippur, possibly named Eurusaga, "the foremost city," though it is left nameless in the Ur III sources.Template:Sfn The so-called "lamma (tutelary deity) of the king," ^dlamma-lugal, was worshiped inside it as well.Template:Sfn A further sanctuary dedicated to her, located within the E.NI.gula (reading of the second sign uncertain) of Enlil, was the Eamirku, "pure house of stormy weather," attested in a copy of a building inscription which might have been based on an original from the reign of Ur-Nammu.Template:Sfn It is possible that at one point Nintinugga was the personal goddess of Enlilalša, a governor of Nippur and gudu priest of Ninlil, and she might be depicted on his seal.Template:Sfn Another historically notable person known to be a worshiper of this goddess was Ubartum, regarded as the best documented female practitioner of medicine in ancient Mesopotamian sources.Template:Sfn

Outside Nippur, worship of Nintinugga is attested in texts from Ur and Isin.Template:Sfn A temple dedicated to her rebuilt by Enlil-bani which bore the ceremonial name Enidubbu, "house which gives rest," might have been located in the latter of those two cities.Template:Sfn

The cult of Nintinugga lost importance after the Old Babylonian period.Template:Sfn The reason might have been the gradual decline of southern Mesopotamian cities.Template:Sfn However, it did not fully disappear, as for example in an inscription on a Neo-Babylonian jar stopper she appears alongside Marduk, Ninisina and Meme (here a representation of Gula).Template:Sfn In litanies, her name was preserved until the Seleucid period.Template:Sfn However, Paul-Alain Beaulieu argues that it was already only understood as an epithet of Gula during the reign of Cyrus I.Template:Sfn

ReferencesEdit

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BibliographyEdit

External linksEdit

Letter from Inanaka to the goddess Nintinuga in the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature

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