Ninmena was a

Mesopotamian goddess Deities in ancient Mesopotamia were almost exclusively anthropomorphic. They were thought to possess extraordinary powers and were often envisioned as being of tremendous physical size. The deities typically wore ''melam'', an ambiguous substan ...

who represented the deified

crown A crown is a traditional form of head adornment, or hat, worn by monarchs as a symbol of their power and dignity. A crown is often, by extension, a symbol of the monarch's government or items endorsed by it. The word itself is used, partic ...

. She was closely associated with the deified

scepter A sceptre is a staff or wand held in the hand by a ruling monarch as an item of royal or imperial insignia. Figuratively, it means royal or imperial authority or sovereignty. Antiquity Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia The ''Was'' and other ...

Ninĝidru Ninĝidru ( dNin-PA; alternatively read Ninĝešduru) was a Mesopotamian goddess who most likely represented a deified scepter. She played a role in coronation rituals. She often appears in association with Ninmena, who represented the deified cro ...

, and with various goddesses of birth, such as

Ninhursag , deity_of=Mother goddess, goddess of fertility, mountains, and rulers , image= Mesopotamian - Cylinder Seal - Walters 42564 - Impression.jpg , caption=Akkadian cylinder seal impression depicting a vegetation goddess, possibly Ninhursag, sitting ...

Name and character

The name Ninmena means "mistress of the crown," and is an example of a typical Sumerian

theonym A theonym (from Greek ''theos'' (Θεός), "god"'','' attached to ''onoma'' (ὄνομα), "name") is the proper name of a deity. Theonymy, the study of divine proper names, is a branch of onomastics (the study of the etymology, history, and u ...

formed as a combination of the

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sha ...

sign '' nin'' and the name of a location or object. It is not certain if the goddess Men ("crown") known from Early Dynastic ''zami'' hymn, apparently worshiped in

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.Harm ...

and

Sippar Sippar ( Sumerian: , Zimbir) was an ancient Near Eastern Sumerian and later Babylonian city on the east bank of the Euphrates river. Its '' tell'' is located at the site of modern Tell Abu Habbah near Yusufiyah in Iraq's Baghdad Governorate, some ...

, should be considered analogous to Ninmena. However, the deity ''^dMen'' or ''^dMen-na'' known from late copies of the

Weidner god list Weidner god list is the conventional name of one of the known ancient Mesopotamian lists of deities, originally compiled by ancient scribes in the late third millennium BCE, with the oldest known copy dated to the Ur III or Isin-Larsa period. Furth ...

is agreed to be a form of Ninmena. Ninmena appears among the nine goddesses of birth enumerated after

Šulpae Šulpae was a Mesopotamian god. Much about his role in Mesopotamian religion remains uncertain, though it is agreed he was an astral deity associated with the planet Jupiter and that he could be linked to specific diseases, especially ''bennu''. ...

in the Nippur god list and in a similar enumeration of six deities in the

Isin Isin (, modern Arabic: Ishan al-Bahriyat) is an archaeological site in Al-Qādisiyyah Governorate, Iraq. Excavations have shown that it was an important city-state in the past. History of archaeological research Ishan al-Bahriyat was visited b ...

god list, but she is absent from the analogous section of ''

An = Anum ''An = Anum'', also known as the Great God List, is the longest preserved Mesopotamian god list, a type of lexical list cataloging the deities worshiped in the Ancient Near East, chiefly in modern Iraq. While god lists are already known from the ...

'', which only lists

, Ninmah, Dingirmaḫ, Aruru and Nintur. It is a matter of scholarly debate if by the

Old Babylonian period The Old Babylonian Empire, or First Babylonian Empire, is dated to BC – BC, and comes after the end of Sumerian power with the destruction of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and the subsequent Isin-Larsa period. The chronology of the first dynasty ...

these names were understood as belonging to different goddesses who came to be conflated with each other, or local variants of a single deity.

Joan Goodnick Westenholz Joan Goodnick Westenholz (1 July 1943 – 2013) was an Assyriologist and the chief curator at the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem. She held positions related to academic research at the Oriental Institute (University of Chicago), Harvard Unive ...

argued that in the case of Ninmena, syncretism would be limited to literary texts. The so-called ''Archive of Mystic Heptads'' labels Ninmena as the "Bēlet-ilī of the city of Utab" alongside other goddesses of birth and their cult centers.

In textual sources

Multiple sources attest the existence of a connection between Ninmena and the deified scepter,

. Both are mentioned in a coronation ritual text connected to the

Eanna E-anna ( sux, , ''house of heavens''), also referred to as the Temple of Inanna, was an ancient Sumerian temple in Uruk. Considered "the residence of Inanna" and Anu, it is mentioned several times in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epi ...

temple which according to Jeremiah Peterson cannot be dated with certainty. A hymn attributed to the

Sealand Dynasty The First Sealand dynasty, (URU.KÙKIWhere ŠEŠ-ḪA of King List A and ŠEŠ-KÙ-KI of King List B are read as URU.KÙ.KI) or the 2nd Dynasty of Babylon (although it was independent of Amorite-ruled Babylon), very speculatively c. 1732–1460 B ...

mentions Ninmena in association with

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: '' ...

as a caretaker of the "Lady-of-Nippur" (

Nin-Nibru Ninnibru, also transcribed Nin-Nibru, was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the wife of Ninurta. She is attested in sources from between the Ur III and Kassite periods, including offering lists, the god list ''An = Anum'', and the poem '' Angim' ...

) though a connection between her and this city is not present in any other known sources. A lexical text from

Emar ) , image = View_from_the_Byzantine_Tower_at_Meskene,_ancient_Barbalissos.jpg , alt = , caption = View from the Byzantine Tower at Meskene, ancient Barbalissos , map_type = Syria , map_alt = , map_size = 200 ...

presents Ninmena as analogous to the

Hurrian The Hurrians (; cuneiform: ; transliteration: ''Ḫu-ur-ri''; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri or Hurriter) were a people of the Bronze Age Near East. They spoke a Hurrian language and lived in Anatolia, Syria and Northern ...

mountain goddess

Lelluri Lelluri (also spelled Lilluri, Liluri) was a Hurrian goddess worshiped in southeastern Anatolia and northern Syria. She was associated with mountains, and in known sources appears in connection with the god Manuzi. Character Lelluri most likely ...

References

Bibliography

* * * * * *{{cite journal, last=Peterson, first=Jeremiah, title=Christopher Metcalf: Sumerian Literary Texts in the Schøyen Collection, Volume 1: Literary Sources on Old Babylonian Religion. (Cornell University Studies in Assyriology and Sumerology 38) (review), url=https://www.academia.edu/49818931, journal=Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und vorderasiatische Archäologie, publisher=Walter de Gruyter GmbH, volume=111, issue=1, date=2020, issn=1613-1150, doi=10.1515/za-2020-0025 Mesopotamian goddesses Mother goddesses