Nisaba

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Nisaba
Goddess of writing, accounting, surveying and grain[1]
Sumerian goddess Nisaba, the name of Entemena is inscribed, c. 2430 BC, from Southern Mesopotamia, Iraq.jpg
Fragment of a vase, likely from Girsu, with a depiction of a goddess often identified as Nisaba in modern scholarship[2]
Other namesNanibgal, Nunbarshegunu[3]
AffiliationThe court of Enlil
Major cult centerEresh, later Nippur[4]
Symbollapis lazuli tablet,[3] golden stylus[5]
Personal information
Parents
  • Urash and Anu
  • Urash and Ea (identified with Irhan)
  • Enlil (and an unknown mother)
ConsortḪaya[6]
ChildrenSud (Ninlil)
Equivalents
Babylonian equivalentNabu

Nisaba was the Mesopotamian goddess of writing and grain. She is one of the oldest Sumerian deities attested in writing,[7] and remained a prominent goddess through many periods of Mesopotamian history. She was commonly worshiped by scribes, and many Sumerian texts end with the doxology "praise to Nisaba" as a result. She declined after the Old Babylonian period due to the rise of the new scribe god, Nabu, though she did not fully vanish from Mesopotamian religion and attestations from as late as the neo-Babylonian period are known.

In myths and god lists, she was a part of the circle of Enlil, alongside her husband Haya. In the myth Enlil and Sud she features prominently as the mother of the eponymous deity. Enlil seeks her permission to marry Sud with the help of his sukkal (attedant deity) Nuska. Both this narrative and other sources attest that she and her daughter were regarded as very close.

Outside Mesopotamia her name was used to logographically represent these of other gods, not necessarily similar to her in character, including Syrian Dagan, Hurrian Kumarbi and Hittite Halki.

Name[]

The origin of Nisaba’s name is unknown.[7] The widely accepted reading, Nisaba, has been confirmed by Akkadian lexical texts spelling the name syllabically as ni-sa-ba.[8] The evidence for the reading Nidaba, originally favored by some assyriologists, for example Miguel Civil, is regarded as very scant (possibly limited to scribal errors), making it implausible.[9]

It was originally written using a combination of the cuneiform sign