Bēltu-ša-Rēš was a

Mesopotamian goddess 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'', a ...

associated with a temple, or temples, bearing the name Rēš. She is only attested in sources from

Uruk Uruk, the archeological site known today as Warka, was an ancient city in the Near East, located east of the current bed of the Euphrates River, on an ancient, now-dried channel of the river in Muthanna Governorate, Iraq. The site lies 93 kilo ...

from the

Neo-Babylonian The Neo-Babylonian Empire or Second Babylonian Empire, historically known as the Chaldean Empire, was the last polity ruled by monarchs native to ancient Mesopotamia. Beginning with the coronation of Nabopolassar as the King of Babylon in 626 BC ...

and

Seleucid The Seleucid Empire ( ) was a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period. It was founded in 312 BC by the Macedonian general Seleucus I Nicator, following the division of the Macedonian Empire founded by Alexander the Great, a ...

periods. In the former, she belonged to the pentad of main deities of the city alongside

Ishtar Inanna is the List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, love, and fertility. She is also associated with political power, divine law, sensuality, and procreation. Originally worshipped in Sumer, she was known by the Akk ...

Nanaya Nanaya ( Sumerian , DNA.NA.A; also transcribed as "Nanāy", "Nanaja", "Nanāja", '"Nanāya", or "Nanai"; antiquated transcription: "Nanâ"; in Greek: ''Ναναια'' or ''Νανα''; , ) was a Mesopotamian goddess of love closely associated ...

Uṣur-amāssu Uṣur-amāssu (also spelled Uṣur-awāssu or Uṣur-amāssa) was a Mesopotamian deity. While originally viewed as male, she later came to be regarded as a goddess. Regardless of gender, Uṣur-amāssu was considered as a child of Adad and Shala ...

and

Urkayītu Urkayītu, also known as Urkītum, was a Mesopotamian goddess who likely functioned as the divine representation of the city of Uruk. Her name was initially an epithet of Inanna, but later she came to be viewed as a separate goddess. She was clos ...

. In the latter, she served as the protective deity of a new temple complex dedicated to Anu and Antu.

Name and character

The theonym Bēltu-ša-Rēš can be translated as "Lady-of-the-Rēš" or "Mistress of the Rēš Temple." Her identity remains uncertain, though according to

Paul-Alain Beaulieu Paul-Alain Beaulieu is a Canadian Assyriologist, a Professor of Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Beaulieu earned a master's degree from the Université de Montréal in 1980 under the supervision of Marcel Leibovi ...

, her name might be related to the ceremonial name of a

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

Lugalbanda Lugalbanda was a deified Sumerian king of Uruk who, according to various sources of Mesopotamian literature, was the father of Gilgamesh. Early sources mention his consort Ninsun and his heroic deeds in an expedition to Aratta by King Enmerkar ...

located in Kullab, É.SAG, "foremost temple." However, whether the É.SAG is related to a temple of Anu and Antu attested in documents from the Seleucid period, known as either as É.SAG, Rēš or Bīt Rēš, remains uncertain. Julia Krul in a recent study concludes that the origin of the name remains a mystery, as no certain attestation of a temple referred to as Rēš predating first references to Bēltu-ša-Rēš is presently known. She considers it possible that the Rēš in mention might have been the name of a structure built in Uruk in the

Neo-Assyrian period The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus, Nort ...

which was later abandoned but whose name was preserved until the Seleucid period, when it was assigned to the new complex. Jeremiah Peterson suggested in a 2009 study of god lists that the theonym ''^dLu₂-saĝ-ĝa'', found in the

Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, N. G. L. Hammond, ''The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory'': Vol. 1, Part 1, Ca ...

god list but otherwise entirely unknown, which according to him might represent a deity representing the divine counterpart of a "court eunuch" (''lu₂-saĝ''), could be related to later Bēltu-ša-Rēš, as the Akkadian translation of the name of the corresponding office is ''ša reši(m)''. However, he subsequently retracted this proposal in an errata published in the

Assyriological Assyriology (from Greek , ''Assyriā''; and , ''-logia''), also known as Cuneiform studies or Ancient Near East studies, is the archaeological, anthropological, historical, and linguistic study of the cultures that used cuneiform writing. The fie ...

periodical ''Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires'', as Bēltu-ša-Rēš's name is not etymologically related to ''ša reši(m)''. The most common spelling of the name in

sources is ^dGAŠAN ''šá'' SAG, though ^dGAŠAN ''šá re-e-šú'' and ^dGAŠAN ''šá reš-šú'' are also attested. A further variant occurs in later Seleucid sources, ^dGAŠAN ''šá'' ^éSAG.

Worship

The only known references to Bēltu-ša-Rēš come from texts from

and

. However, it has been proposed that she might have already been worshiped there in the preceding

. According to Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Bēltu-ša-Rēš belonged to a pentad of main goddesses of Neo-Babylonian Uruk, with the other four members of this group being

and

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), Ha ...

instead concluded that she, Ishtar and Nanaya formed a triad, though she considered the pentad proposal a possibility as well. Like other members of Ishtar's entourage, Bēltu-ša-Rēš was worshiped in the

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

temple complex. Commodities offered to her included salt, dates, barley, emmer, flour, ''mersu'' (a type of cake), as well as meat of various animals, including oxen, sheep, geese, ducks and turtledoves. Jewelry described as her property, including a crescent-shaped chest ornament, is also mentioned in the Eanna archive. In the Seleucid period, Bēltu-ša-Rēš occurs both in ritual and legal texts. Like other deities from the entourage of Ishtar, she was relocated into a new temple, Irigal. It is also presumed that she functioned as a protective goddess of the Rēš temple complex, a new structure dedicated to Anu and Antu. However, it cannot be presently established with certainty whether a separate shrine dedicated to her existed in its inner sanctum, as sometimes proposed. No

theophoric name A theophoric name (from Greek: , ''theophoros'', literally "bearing or carrying a god") embeds the word equivalent of 'god' or a god's name in a person's name, reflecting something about the character of the person so named in relation to that d ...

s invoking Bēltu-ša-Rēš are known. According to Julia Krul, her absence from them might be tied to her role as a protective deity of the Rēš, as the structure itself could be invoked in names instead, with the name Arad-Rēš appearing over a hundred times in Seleucid documents.

References

Bibliography

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