2002 : 162 – 163 , 182 – 195 ). During the city “queen’s” annual procession from Girsu to
Lagash and NINA/Sirara, additional sacrifices were made at the “drinking places.” Last
but not least, offerings to the dead were also made at the “malt-eating festivals of the
goddess Nanshe” in Lagash and the “malt-eating festivals of the god Ningirsu” in Girsu
(Beld 2002 : 158 – 161 ).
This short overview illustrates that we do have some, albeit limited information on
the mortuary practices of the royal family of Lagash. We have seen that we know about
the types of offerings made, about the recipients of these offerings, and about the places
where the offerings were made, even if we cannot always locate them. Unfortunately,
we know nothing about the actual rituals that must have taken place when such
offerings were made. For example, we have no evidence of prayers that may have been
recited on such occasions.
Our information is similarly fragmentary with regard to a practice that has been
regarded as central to the cult of the dead at Lagash. Since Deimel’s first edition of texts
from Lagash in the 1920 s, it has been assumed–based on certain passages in the
texts–that statues played an important role in Early Dynastic mortuary customs. Thus,
it has been suggested that statues that are mentioned together with names of deceased
persons, which appear in texts listing garments and jewelry for the Baba festival, could
indicate a custom of making statues of deceased people. An obscure passage in the text
DP 77 describes offerings to the dead and mentions ancestors, who are leaving, and one
ancestor, who is not leaving. Deimel ( 1920 : 46 ) suggested that this passage refers to acts
involving statues (cf. Jagersma 2007 : 290 – 291 ). We also know that the rulers and the
wives of the rulers of Lagash set up statues of themselves in the temples already during
their lifetimes, and that they made arrangements for the rituals that these statues
required. It is assumed that these statues, which were made of precious metal, were
placed together with the well-known “stone statues of worshipers” in front of or next
to a deity in the temple where they fulfilled the role of a worshiper praying for the life
and health of their donor (Braun-Holzinger 1991 : 227 – 230 ; Selz 1992 ; 2004 b). We do
not know if or how the function of such statues changed after their donor had passed
away, or if the statues may have turned into ancestral portraits to be used for mortuary
practices (but see Selz 2005 : 586 , fn. 36 ). One of the statue inscriptions of Gudea, who
ruled in Lagash about 300 years later, describes that Gudea made a statue of himself
specifically for his “place of libation” (Edzard 1997 : 30 – 38 Statue B Col. vii 54 – 55 ).
Based on this evidence, we can suggest that the rulers and the wives of the rulers of
Lagash may have followed a similar custom. This hypothesis is supported by texts that
show that mortuary practices at the “drinking place” were a prerogative of the ruling
house and a few other privileged persons (Selz 1995 a: 156 ; Jagersma 2007 : 295 ).
It has already been mentioned that the textual sources from Lagash always list the
name of a deceased person together with the amount of food that was offered to him
or her. It is difficult to prove the existence of the notion of a “soul” (or spirit or ghost,
Sumerian gidim; German “Totengeist”) already in the third millennium BC. This con-
cept, which becomes very important in literature and incantations from the first
millennium BC(see, for example, Cooper 2010 ; Katz 2010 ; Scurlock 2006 , 1995 ; Abusch
1999 , 1998 ), is difficult to prove on the basis of the Early Dynastic food lists alone.
However, one of the garment lists (VS 14 , 163 (Ukg. 3 )), which records information on
fabrics for the deceased, summarizes the entries as follows: túg gidim-e-ne-kam,
“garments of the ghosts” (Foxvog 2001 / 2002 : 175 ; for further pre-Sargonic evidence see
–– Helga Vogel ––