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Ninsianna
Ninsianna (Sumerian language, Sumerian: "Red Queen of Heaven") was a Mesopotamian deity considered to be the personification of Venus. This theonym also served as the name of the planet in Mesopotamian astronomy, astronomical texts until the end of the Old Babylonian period. There is evidence that Ninsianna's gender varied between locations, and both feminine and masculine forms of this deity were worshiped. Due to their shared connection to Venus, Ninsianna was associated with Inanna. Furthermore, the deity Kabta appears alongside Ninsianna in many texts, but the character of the relation between them remains unclear. The oldest evidence for the worship of Ninsianna comes from the Ur III period, and includes references to the construction of two temples of this deity. Many further attestations are available from the Isin-Larsa period, Isin-Larsa and Old Babylonian Empire, Old Babylonian periods, including royal inscriptions, personal letters, seals and theophoric names. The use of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mesopotamian Deity
Deities in ancient Mesopotamia were almost exclusively Anthropomorphism, 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 substance which "covered them in terrifying splendor" and which could also be worn by heroes, kings, giants, and even demons. The effect that seeing a deity's ''melam'' has on a human is described as ''ni'', a word for the "Paresthesia, physical creeping of the flesh". Both the Sumerian language, Sumerian and Akkadian languages contain many words to express the sensation of ''ni'', including the word ''puluhtu'', meaning "fear". Deities were almost always depicted wearing horned caps, consisting of up to seven superimposed pairs of ox-horns. They were also sometimes depicted wearing clothes with elaborate decorative gold and silver ornaments sewn into them. The ancient Mesopotamians believed that their deities lived in Heaven, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pinikir
Pinikir, also known as Pinigir, Pirengir, Pirinkir, and Parakaras, was an Ancient Near Eastern astral goddess who originates in Elamite religious beliefs. While she is only infrequently attested in Elamite documents, she achieved a degree of prominence in Hurrian religion. Due to her presence in pantheons of many parts of the Ancient Near East, from Anatolia to Iran, modern researchers refer to her as a "cosmopolitan deity." Early scholarship incorrectly identified her as one and the same as Kiririsha, an unrelated goddess from a different part of Elam. Name Wilfred G. Lambert considered Pinikir's origin to be Elamite. Hittitologist Gary Beckman proposes that Pinikir’s name has Sumerian origin and has been derived from ''pirig.gal'', "great feline." However, according to Piotr Taracha, this proposal cannot be proven conclusively. While it was assumed in the past that a deity named Pirig-gal appears in the inscriptions of the Hurrian king Tish-atal of Urkesh, subsequent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Delebat
Delebat (also read Dilbat) was the most commonly used name of the planet Venus in Mesopotamian astronomy. The etymology of this term is unknown. Information about the Mesopotamian perception of Venus is available from sources such as astronomical texts, for example MUL.APIN, or astrological omen compendiums, such as ''Enūma Anu Enlil'' (in particular its sixty-third tablet, the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa). One of the Mandaic names of Venus, Libat, is a loanword derived from Delebat. Meaning Delebat is the most common name of the planet Venus attested in cuneiform texts from ancient Mesopotamia. It was written as ''muldele-bat'' or '' ddele-bat''. The reading Delebat depends on the Greek transcription Delephat, though Dilbat has been proposed as well. The etymology of this term is unknown. Hermann Hunger notes that the standard Akkadian reading of the signs used to write it would be ''nabû'' or ''nabītu'', "shining brightly", but stresses that it remains uncertain if this rea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kabta
Kabta, inscribed d''kab-ta'', d''ka-ab-ta'', dTA''-gu-nû'', or later dTAxMI, was a rather obscure Mesopotamian deity who appears in texts and seals of the second and first millennium BC. He is frequently paired with Ninsianna, the “Red Lady of the Heavens” or Venus star, who immediately follows him on the Weidner god-list. Provenance He was first attested during the Ur III period, sometimes under the Sumerian name Maḫdianna, inscribed d''maḫ-di-an-na'', the “Lofty one of heaven.” This suggests an astral character and explains his pairing with “Ištar (of) the star” (Ninsi’anna). Unfortunately, due to a break in the god-list An = Anum, further elucidation is unavailable and even the god’s gender is uncertain. Lambert suggested that he was her spouse and seal impressions from Larsa during the Isin-Larsa period seem to confirm this. Kabta appears as the theophoric element in several names of the Old Babylonian and Kassite period, such as Nūr-Kabta, Amat-Kabta, K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annunitum
Annunitum (; also romanized as Anunītu) was a Mesopotamian goddess associated with warfare. She was initially an epithet of Ishtar of Akkad exemplifying her warlike aspect, but by the late third millennium BCE she came to function as a distinct deity. She was the tutelary goddess of the cities of Akkad and Sippar-Amnanum, though she was also worshiped elsewhere in Mesopotamia. Name As attested in cuneiform texts from the Old Akkadian period onward, Annunitum's name was typically written as ''an-nu-ni-tum''. Starting with the Old Babylonian period it was prefaced with the "divine determinative" ('' dingir''). While ''an-nu-ni-tum'' remained the most common spelling in the Kassite period as well, in sources from the first millennium BCE ''a-nu-ni-tum'', already known from a single Old Babylonian text and from a late Kassite inscription of king Meli-Shipak, became standard. An Old Babylonian prayer (CBS 19842) additionally preserves the shortened form ''a-nu-na'', romanized b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ninshubur
Ninshubur (,; Ninšubur, "Lady of Subartu" or "Lady of servants"), also spelled Ninšubura, was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the ''sukkal'' (divine attendant) of the goddess Inanna. While it is agreed that in this context Ninshubur was regarded as female, in other cases the deity was considered male, possibly due to syncretism with other divine messengers, such as Ilabrat. No certain information about her genealogy is present in any known sources, and she was typically regarded as unmarried. As a ''sukkal'', she functioned both as a messenger deity and as an intercessor between other members of the pantheon and human petitioners. Due to the belief that she could intercede with higher ranking deities, Ninshubur was popular in everyday religion, and many theophoric names invoking her and other references to personal worship are known. Her original cult center was Akkil, but in the Early Dynastic Period (Mesopotamia), Early Dynastic Period she was already worshiped in nearby Ur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cylinder Seal
A cylinder seal is a small round cylinder, typically about one inch (2 to 3 cm) in width, engraved with written characters or figurative scenes or both, used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. According to some sources, cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary sites of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia and slightly later at Susa in south-western Iran during the Proto-Elamite period, and they follow the development of stamp seals in the Halaf culture or slightly earlier. They are linked to the invention of the latter's cuneiform writing on clay tablets. Other sources, however, date the earliest cylinder seals to a much earlier time, to the Late Neolithic period (7600-6000 BC) in Syria, hundreds of years before the invention of writing. Cylinder seals are a form of impression seal, a category which includes the stamp seal and finger ring seal. They survive in fairly large numbers and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Haruspicy
In the religion of ancient Rome, a haruspex was a person trained to practise a form of divination called haruspicy, the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry. Various ancient cultures of the Near East, such as the Babylonians, also read omens specifically from the liver, a practice also known by the Greek term hepatoscopy (also hepatomancy). The Roman concept is directly derived from Etruscan religion, as one of the three branches of the '' disciplina Etrusca''. Etymology The Latin terms ''haruspex'' and ''haruspicina'' are from an archaic word, ''hīra'' = "entrails, intestines" (cognate with ''hernia'' = "protruding viscera" and ''hira'' = "empty gut"; PIE '' *ǵʰer-'') and from the root '' spec-'' = "to watch, observe". The Greek ἡπατοσκοπία ''hēpatoskōpia'' is from '' hēpar'' = "liver" and '' skop-'' = "to examine". Ancient Near East The Babylonians were famous for hepatoscopy. This ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rim-Sîn I
Rim-Sîn I (, Dri-im- Dsuen) ruled the ancient Near East city-state of Larsa from 1822 BC to 1763 BC ( MC). His sister En-ane-du was high priestess of the moon god in Ur. Rim-Sin I was a contemporary of Hammurabi of Babylon and Irdanene of Uruk. . Fitzgerald, "The Rulers of Larsa", Yale University Dissertation, 2002 His father, Kudur-mabuk, may have been of Elamite descent, notwithstanding his Akkadian name. Reign Rim-Sin’s reign of started sometime around 1822 BC (in ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venus Tablet Of Ammisaduqa
The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa (''Enuma Anu Enlil'' Tablet 63) is the record of astronomical positions for Venus, as preserved in numerous cuneiform clay tablet, tablets dating from the first millennium BC. Scholars believe that this astronomical record was first compiled during the reign of King Ammisaduqa (or Ammizaduga), the fourth ruler after Hammurabi. Thus, the origins of this text could probably be dated to around the mid-seventeenth century BC (according to the Middle Chronology) despite allowing two possible dates. The tablet gives the rise times of Venus and its first and last visibility on the horizon before or after sunrise and sunset (the heliacal risings and settings of Venus) in the form of lunar dates. These positions are given for a period of 21 years. Sources This Venus tablet is part of ''Enuma Anu Enlil'' ("In the days of Anu and Enlil"), a long text dealing with Babylonian astrology, which mostly consists of omens in the form of celestial phenomena. The earli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Goodnick Westenholz
Joan Goodnick Westenholz (1 July 1943 – February 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 University, Ruhr University Bochum (Germany), New York University, Princeton University, and the W. F. Albright Institute of Archaeological Research at Jerusalem. She was one of the first people to research gender studies in relation to the Ancient Near East and she co-founded and edited the inter-disciplinary NIN – Journal of Gender Studies in Antiquity. Early life and education Westenholz was born in 1943 in Philadelphia and attended the University of Pennsylvania, where she graduated at the age of 21 with a degree in anthropology. She completed her PhD in Near Eastern Languages and Literatures from the University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research uni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sumerians
Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. Like nearby Elam, it is one of the cradles of civilization, along with Egypt, the Indus Valley, the Erligang culture of the Yellow River valley, Caral-Supe, and Mesoamerica. Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Sumerian farmers grew an abundance of grain and other crops, a surplus of which enabled them to form urban settlements. The world's earliest known texts come from the Sumerian cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr, and date to between , following a period of proto-writing . Name The term "Sumer" () comes from the Akkadian name for the "Sumerians", the ancient non- Semitic-speaking inhabitants of southern Mesopotamia.Piotr Michalowski, "Sumerian," ''The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages." Ed. Roger D. Woo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
