Nintinugga

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Nintinugga ("Mistress who revives the dead"[1]) was one of Mesopotamian healing goddesses. Her cult was largely limited to Nippur.[2] She was regarded as a divine physician,[3] a role shared with the goddesses Gula, Ninisina, Ninkarrak and Bau.[3]

Character[]

Nintinugga was described as a physician, changing bandages, cleaning wounds and dealing with the musculoskeletal system.[3] It was also believed that she was capable of keeping the demon Asag at bay.[3]

An epithet sometimes applied to her was "the lady of life and death."[4] Possibly due to the meaning of her name she was connected to the underworld.[3] She was associated with Nungal, the goddess of prisons,[5] also associated with the death penalty,[6] and in a fragmentary text both of them appear alongside Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld, possibly due to all 3 sharing a connection to death.[6] It's possible it was believed that Nintinugga provided the dead with clean water in the underworld.[4] Many texts indicate that there was no water for the dead to use in the rivers of the land of the dead.[7]

According to a late medical incantation, she was regarded as a daughter of Ninazu.[8]

Worship[]

In Nippur, the primary center of her cult,[9] Nintinugga had a temple of her own, though its name is uncertain.[10] The personal lamma (tutelary deity) of the king, dlamma-lugal, was worshiped inside Nintinugga's temple.[11]

Nintinugga was also worshiped in one of the four chapels located in the temple of Ninlil;[1] the other 3 belonged to Nanna, Nisaba and Ninhursag.[1] Its scope declined with time alongside the importance of many sourthern cities.[12] In litanies, her name was preserved until the Seleucid period.[13]

There are attestations of physicians serving as cultic officials of Nintinugga in the Ur III period.[3]

A text from Nineveh mentions reeds and cornel wood among cult objects associated with Nintinugga.[14]

Due to her underworld connection it's been proposed that she was connected to funerary libation rituals.[4]

Nintinugga and other healing deities[]

Nintinugga was regarded as separate from Gula, Ninisina and Ninkarrak.[2] Only the late syncretic hymn to Gula equates all of them with each other, as well as with goddesses not normally connected to healing, such as Nanshe and Ningizibara (a minor goddess from the entourage of Inanna, described as a harpist).[15]

A text affirming that Nintinugga and Ninisina weren't necessarily interchangeable mentions the former traveling to visit the latter in Isin.[9]

References[]

  1. ^ a b c Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 67.
  2. ^ a b Westenholz 2010, p. 396.
  3. ^ a b c d e f Böck 2015, p. 3.
  4. ^ a b c Peterson 2009, p. 237.
  5. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 86.
  6. ^ a b Peterson 2009, p. 234.
  7. ^ Peterson 2009, p. 238.
  8. ^ Wiggermann 1998, p. 331.
  9. ^ a b Böck 2015, p. 5.
  10. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 73.
  11. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 196-197.
  12. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 83.
  13. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 84.
  14. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 118.
  15. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 115.

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.
  • Böck, Barbara (2015). "Ancient Mesopotamian Religion: A Profile of the Healing Goddess". Religion Compass. Wiley. 9 (10). doi:10.1111/rec3.12165. hdl:10261/125303. ISSN 1749-8171.
  • Peterson, J. (2009). "Two New Sumerian Texts Involving The Netherworld and Funerary Offerings". Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie. 99 (2). doi:10.1515/ZA.2009.006. S2CID 162329196.
  • Westenholz, Joan G. (2010). "Ninkarrak – an Akkadian goddess in Sumerian guise". Von Göttern und Menschen. BRILL. doi:10.1163/9789004187474_020.
  • Wiggermann, Frans A. M. (1998), "Nin-azu", Reallexikon der Assyriologie, retrieved 2021-10-01
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