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Ninkarrak
Ninkarrak ( akk, 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒋼𒀀𒊏𒀝, '' dnin-kar-ra-ak'') was a goddess of medicine worshiped chiefly in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. It has been proposed that her name originates in either Akkadian or an unidentified substrate language possibly spoken in parts of modern Syria, rather than in Sumerian. It is assumed that inconsistent orthography reflects ancient scholarly attempts at making it more closely resemble Sumerian theonyms. The best attested temples dedicated to her existed in Sippar in modern Iraq and in Terqa in modern Syria. Finds from excavations undertaken at the site of the latter were used as evidence in more precisely dating the history of the region. Further attestations are available from northern Mesopotamia, including the kingdom of Apum, Assyria and the Diyala area, from various southern Mesopotamian cities like Larsa, Nippur and possibly Uruk, as well as from Ugarit and Emar. It is also possible that Ninkar from the texts from Ebla and Nikaraw ...
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Ninisina
Ninisina ( Sumerian: "Mistress of Isin") was a Mesopotamian goddess who served as the tutelary deity of the city of Isin. She was considered a healing deity. She was believed to be skilled in the medical arts, and could be described as a divine physician or midwife. As an extension of her medical role, she was also believed to be capable of expelling various demons. Her symbols included dogs, commonly associated with healing goddesses in Mesopotamia, as well as tools and garments associated with practitioners of medicine. While Ninisina was initially considered to be an unmarried and childless goddess, the god Pabilsag eventually came to be viewed as her husband. Her children were Damu and Gunura, like her considered to be healing deities, as well as Šumaḫ, who also served as her sukkal, a type of divine attendant. Further members of her court included Ninarali, a goddess associated with the underworld, harpist goddesses Ninigizibara and Ninḫinuna, and sometimes Ninshubur. ...
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Gula (goddess)
Gula ( Sumerian: "the great") was a Mesopotamian goddess of medicine, portrayed as a divine physician and midwife. Over the course of the second and first millennia BCE, she became one of the main deities of the Mesopotamian pantheon, and eventually started to be viewed as the second highest ranked goddess after Ishtar. She was associated with dogs, and could be depicted alongside these animals, for example on ''kudurru'' (inscribed boundary stones), and receive figurines representing them as votive offerings. While Gula was initially regarded as unmarried, in the Kassite period she came to be associated with Ninurta. In Babylon his role could also be fulfilled by Mandanu, while the god list ''An = Anum'' links Gula with Pabilsag and Abu. The circle of deities closely associated with her also included Damu and Gunura, who eventually started to be regarded as her children, as well as her sukkal (divine vizier) Urmašum, who might have been imagined as a dog-like being. Through vari ...
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Terqa
Terqa is the name of an ancient city discovered at the site of Tell Ashara on the banks of the middle Euphrates in Deir ez-Zor Governorate, Syria, approximately from the modern border with Iraq and north of the ancient site of Mari, Syria. Its name had become Sirqu by Neo-Assyrian times. History Little is yet known of the early history of Terqa, though it was a sizable entity even in the Early Dynastic period. In the early 2nd millennium BC it was under the control of Shamshi-Adad (c. 1808–1776 BC) of the Amorite Kingdom of Upper Mesopotamia, followed by Mari beginning with the reign of the Amorite ruler Yahdun-Lim one of whose year names was "Year in which Yahdun-Lim built the city walls of Mari and Terqa". Control by Mari continued into the time of Zimri-Lim (c. 1775 to 1761 BC). One year name of Zimri-Lim was "Year in which Zimri-Lim offered a great throne to Dagan of Terqa". Control shifted to Babylon after Mari's defeat by Hammurabi (c. 1810 – c. 1750 BC) of ...
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Nikarawa
Nikarawa (Nikarawas) or Nikaruha was a Luwian deity known from inscriptions from Carchemish and other nearly locations. It is commonly, though not universally, assumed that she corresponds to the Mesopotamian goddess Ninkarrak. Attestations Nikarawa's name is spelled in Luwian hieroglyphs as ''dni-ka+ra/i-wa/i-sa2''. She is known from the curse formula "May the dogs of Nikarawas eat away his head" from Carchemish from the ninth or eighth century BCE, more precisely dated to the reign of Yariri, the successor of Astiruwa. She is the only deity invoked in it. Sylvia Hutter-Braunsar argues that a temple dedicated to her might have existed in this city, and points out a statuette of a dog has been found in 2012 during the excavations of the structure known as Temple B or the Hilani building. The inscription of Katamuwa from Samʼal also mentions Nikarawa, as well as the deities Hadad of ''Qrpdl'', Hadad of the vineyard, Shamash and Kubaba, and states she was one of the recipients of th ...
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Damu
Damu ( sux, 𒀭𒁕𒈬) was a Mesopotamian god. While originally regarded as a dying god connected to vegetation, similar to Dumuzi or Ningishzida, with time he acquired the traits of a god of healing. He was regarded as the son of the medicine goddess Ninisina, or of her equivalents such as Gula or Ninkarrak. It is unclear which city was originally associated with him, but he is best attested in association with the cult center of his mother, Isin. Damu is also a theophoric element in many personal names from Ebla. It has been proposed that in this context the term should be understood as a deified kinship group rather than a deity, and it is assumed it is not connected to the Mesopotamian god. Character Damu was originally a dying god. In contrast with Dumuzi, who was described as a shepherd and was associated with herding animals, Damu was most likely connected with trees. From the Old Babylonian period onward he was known chiefly as a healing deity instead. This aspect ...
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Nintinugga
Nintinugga (also transcribed Nintinuga) 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. Character Nintinugga's name is conventionally translated from Sumerian as "Mistress who revives the dead." However, Barbara Böck notes this interpretation might only reflect an "ancient scholarly etymology." 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." An epithet someti ...
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Uruk
Uruk, also known as Warka or Warkah, was an ancient city of Sumer (and later of Babylonia) situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.Harmansah, 2007 Uruk is the type site for the Uruk period. Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC. By the final phase of the Uruk period around 3100 BC, the city may have had 40,000 residents, with 80,000-90,000 people living in its environs, making it the largest urban area in the world at the time. The legendary king Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the ''Sumerian King List'' (henceforth ''SKL''), ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. The city lost its prime importance around 2000 BC in the context of the struggle of Babylonia against Elam, but it remained inhabited throughout the Seleucid (312–63 BC) and Parthian (227 BC to 224 AD) periods until it was finally aband ...
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Diyala River
The Diyala River (Arabic: ; ku, Sîrwan; Farsi: , ) is a river and tributary of the Tigris. It is formed by the confluence of Sirwan river and Tanjaro river in Darbandikhan Dam in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate of Northern Iraq. It covers a total distance of . Course It rises near Hamadan, in the Zagros Mountains of Iran. It then descends through the mountains, where for some 32 km it forms the border between the two countries. It finally feeds into the Tigris below Baghdad. Navigation of the upper reaches of the Diyala is not possible because of its narrow defiles, but the river's valley provides an important trade route between Iran and Iraq. The river flows southwest of the Hamrin Mountains. Name Its Aramaic origin is "Diyalas" and in Kurdish it is called "Sirwan", meaning 'roaring sea' or 'shouting river'. In early Islamic period, the lower course of the river formed part of the Nahrawan Canal. The Diyala Governorate in Iraq is named after the river. History The river ...
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Babylonia
Babylonia (; Akkadian: , ''māt Akkadī'') was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in the city of Babylon in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq and parts of Syria). It emerged as an Amorite-ruled state c. 1894 BCE. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called "the country of Akkad" (''Māt Akkadī'' in Akkadian), a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire. It was often involved in rivalry with the older state of Assyria to the north and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi ( fl. c. 1792–1752 BCE middle chronology, or c. 1696–1654 BCE, short chronology) created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom. Like Assyria, the Babylonian state retained ...
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Larsa
Larsa ( Sumerian logogram: UD.UNUGKI, read ''Larsamki''), also referred to as Larancha/Laranchon (Gk. Λαραγχων) by Berossos and connected with the biblical Ellasar, was an important city-state of ancient Sumer, the center of the cult of the sun god Utu. It lies some southeast of Uruk in Iraq's Dhi Qar Governorate, near the east bank of the Shatt-en-Nil canal at the site of the modern settlement Tell as-Senkereh or Sankarah. History The historical "Larsa" was already in existence as early as the reign of Eannatum of Lagash (reigned circa 2500–2400 BCE), who annexed it to his empire. The city became a political force during the Isin-Larsa period. After the Third Dynasty of Ur collapsed c. 2000 BC, Ishbi-Erra, an official of the last king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, Ibbi-Sin, relocated to Isin and set up a government which purported to be the successor to the Third Dynasty of Ur. From there, Ishbi-Erra recaptured Ur as well as the cities of Uruk and Lagash, whi ...
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Nippur
Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory': Vol. 1, Part 1. Accessed 15 Dec 2010. Akkadian language, Akkadian: ''Nibbur'') was an ancient Sumerian city. It was the special seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil, the "Lord Wind", ruler of the cosmos, subject to An (mythology), An alone. Nippur was located in modern Nuffar in Afak District, Afak, Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq (roughly 200 km south of Baghdad). Occupation at the site extended back to the Uruk period, the Ubaid period, and the Jemdet Nasr period. History Nippur never enjoyed political hegemony in its own right, but its control was crucial, as it was considered capable of conferring the overall "kingship" on monarchs from other city-states. It was distinctively a sacred city, important from the possession of the famous Ekur temple of Enlil. Ninurta also had his main Cult (reli ...
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Kudurru
A kudurru was a type of stone document used as a boundary stone and as a record of land grants to vassals by the Kassites and later dynasties in ancient Babylonia between the 16th and 7th centuries BC. The original kudurru would typically be stored in a temple while the person granted the land would be given a clay copy to use to confirm legal ownership. Kudurrus are often linked to what are usually called "ancient kudurrus", land grant stones from the third millennium (typically Sargonic and Ur III) which serve a similar purpose though the word kudurru did not emerge until the 2nd millennium (Middle Babylonian in fact). Background The objects are traditionally called kudurru which is Akkadian for "frontier" or "boundary". because early epigraphers frequently found that word in the text and assumed they were placed in agricultural setting, not the temples they actually were. While there is consensus on the main group of kudurru there are other "debatable kudurru for which opinion ...
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