Nuha is a

deity A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greate ...

that was worshipped among the Northern Arabian tribes in

pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizations. Informatio ...

. Associated with the sun, she formed part of a

trinity The Christian doctrine of the Trinity (, from 'threefold') is the central dogma concerning the nature of God in most Christian churches, which defines one God existing in three coequal, coeternal, consubstantial divine persons: God th ...

of gods, along with Ruda and Atarsamain. In Southern Arabia, Shams was her equivalent.

Meaning

Nuha, from the triconsonantal Semitic root N-H-Y, may mean "the ultimate".Retsö, 2003, p. 602. An early

Akkadian Akkadian or Accadian may refer to: * Akkadians, inhabitants of the Akkadian Empire * Akkadian language, an extinct Eastern Semitic language * Akkadian literature, literature in this language * Akkadian cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic ...

inscription from the annals of the kings of

Assyria Assyria ( Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , romanized: ''māt Aššur''; syc, ܐܬܘܪ, ʾāthor) was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization which existed as a city-state at times controlling regional territories in the indigenous lands of the A ...

mention Nuha with the

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

"the elevated sun". While this reference can be read literally to mean that Nuha was associated with the sun, it can also be read metaphorically as a reference to special kind of wisdom.

Worship

Dierk Lange writes that Nuha formed part of a

of gods worshipped by what he calls the Yumu'il confederation, which he describes as a northern Arab tribal confederation of Ishmaelite ancestry headed by the "clan of Kedar" (

Qedarites The Qedarites ( ar, قيدار, Qaydār) were a largely nomadic ancient Arab tribal confederation centred in the Wādī Sirḥān in the Syrian Desert. Attested from the 8th century BC, the Qedarites formed a powerful polity which expanded its ...

).Lange, 2004, pp. 268-269. According to Lange, Nuha was the sun deity, Ruda the moon deity, and Atarsamain the main deity was associated with

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

. A trinity of gods representing the sun, moon and Venus is also found among the peoples of the South Arabian kingdoms of Awsan, Ma'in, Qataban and Hadramawt between the 9th and 4th centuries BC. There, the deity associated with Venus was

Astarte Astarte (; , ) is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess Ashtart or Athtart ( Northwest Semitic), a deity closely related to Ishtar ( East Semitic), who was worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name ...

, the sun deity was Yam, and moon deity was variously called Wadd, Amm and Sin.

Inscriptions

Inscriptions in a North Arabian dialect in the region of

Najd Najd ( ar, نَجْدٌ, ), or the Nejd, forms the geographic center of Saudi Arabia, accounting for about a third of the country's modern population and, since the Emirate of Diriyah, acting as the base for all unification campaigns by the ...

referring to Nuha describe emotions as a gift from her and the other gods. For example, one reads, "by Nuha is the flying into a rage", while another reads, "by Nuha is the jealousy of a lover".Hoyland, 2001, p. 207. Other inscriptions indicate that all things good and bad were thought to come from the gods, such as in the inscription".

References

Bibliography

* * * {{refend Arab history Arabian goddesses Solar goddesses