deities and the king, provisioning the cult, and accompanying the divine images in
procession.
The daily, monthly, and annual duties of the encan only be deduced through their
literary compositions. Her customary tasks are enumerated by Enh
̆
eduana in her
poems; in particular, the ˇu-luhs
̆-purification rites that belong to the cult service and
sacred spheres. She also bore the obligation to grind the groats for the meal offering,
and to bring in the masab-basket, providing thus daily bread for the god Nanna. She
lifted her voice in holy songs, in particular the chanting of the asila, the song of
jubilation. Enanedu recorded her organisation of the regular sá-du 11 –offerings, the
regular daily outlays for both Nanna and Ningal, on a stone monument found smashed
to smithereens in the courtyard of the Ningal Temple.
Of the annual festivals in the city of Ur, the participation of the en-priestess is only
known from Nanna’s journey to Eridu and the akiti-festival. Nanna’s journey to Eridu
was probably celebrated as part of the New Year celebrations. One Ur III administrative
document records a royal offering in connection with such a trip of the en-priestess of
Nanna to Eridu. Thus, one of the duties of the en-priestess was to accompany the
divine image of Nanna on his journeys, most of which are known only from literary
compositions.
The akiti-festivals were the pivotal annual rites of the Sumerian religious year. They
were observed semi-annually in Ur at the beginning of the first and the seventh
months. In Ur, the city of the moon, the moon-god Nanna departed on the darkest
night of the month. The procession was led by king and priestess from the capital at
Ur to Karzida, where the akiti-building was erected, the temporary residence of the
moon-god Nanna before his glorious re-entry into the city. While administrative
documents provide much information about the rites, we know little about the
participants in these rites. We find just a bare mention of the en-priestess of the moon-
god Nanna of Karzida in these bi-annual festivals.
On the other hand, the literary compositions as well as administrative documents
and the archaeological evidence demonstrate the participation of the en-priestess of
Nanna in the esoteric ‘sacred marriage’ rite. The ‘sacred marriage’ rite was a unio
mystica, a metaphorical union between the human, who symbolised the communitas,
and the deity, the source of all things, thus representing the close relationship between
human and divine. It portrays the physical and spiritual union of the human and
divine worlds. In particular, the rite of ‘sacred marriage’ in the cult of the moon-god
Nanna did not involve the king and did not necessarily involve actual sexual
intercourse but was rather a symbolic act in which the priestess lies down on the sacred
bed in Nanna’s bedchamber. Administrative documents record offerings connected
with the setting up of the bed (Sallaberger 1993 : Band I 51 , II T 7 a, 75 ). Enanedu
mentions the bed of Ningal in her broken inscription (Frayne RIME 4 224– 231 ,
4. 2. 13. 15 Frgm. 17 : 9 ). Direct testimony to such an act of participation on the part of
Enh
̆
eduana occurs in the verse: ‘I did not reach out my hands to the flowered bed’
(Ninmesˇarra 118 , see ETCSL 4. 07. 02 ). In the Lamentation over Sumer and Ur, mention
is made of the destruction of these most sacred localities: ‘In the sacred bedchamber
of Nanna musicians no longer played the balagˆ-drum.... The divine bed was not set
up, it was not spread with clean hay’ (lines 441 , 443 , see ETCSL 2. 2. 3 ). It was rebuilt
by Nu ̄r-Adad of Larsa: ‘for his life (the king) built (for Ningal) the holy Agrun, her
dressing-room, the bedchamber of the youthful Sîn’ (Frayne RIME 4 143– 44 ,–– The ministering clergy ––