CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
THE ROLE AND
FUNCTION OF GODDESSES
IN MESOPOTAMIA
Brigitte Groneberg
W
hen looking at some Mesopotamian goddesses, for example at the mightiest,
Inanna-Ishtar, or the healing goddesses, Gula and her ‘sisters’, one is impressed
by the power they exercised. Often they are symbolic leaders of towns and cities, the
so-called city-deities. They may accompany kings into war but, on other occasions,
they may function as their symbolic sexual partners, in both ways sustaining royalty.
They can lead sick people out of the underworld, back to good health towards a new
and successful life. They have their own rituals in many of the main Babylonian cities
and enormous wealth is kept in their names, including real estate, animals, buildings,
treasure of gold and silver. They also have their personnel, such as administrators and
slaves. In all these respects the chief goddesses are equal to their male counterparts.
The religious imagination of a particular people reflects the conditions of their
society, their norms and values. Therefore, when we notice the might of goddesses,
the wealth of their property and the importance of their roles, how female deities are
important members of an imaginary elite of a city’s pantheon, we may conclude that
this mirrors conditions in the real, human world of the people who ascribed to these
beliefs. Societies and their ideologies are in constant flux, however, and only by
examining a local pantheon in a particular space of time can we attempt to correlate
the reconstruction of a concrete historical situation with the imagined conditions of
a pantheon. I have chosen the time of the kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur (Ur III)
( 2100 – 2000 BC), which preceded the Old Babylonian period, and, in addition, I
concentrate upon evidence from the city of Nippur. The chief reason for choosing
this time and place lies in the relatively large body of written evidence that is available.
Furthermore, Ur III Nippur has been the subject of several useful studies (Sallaberger
1993 , 2003 and Such-Gutiérrez 2003 ) which form a backgound to the present
examination of the role and function of Mesopotamian goddesses.
Geographically Nippur is situated in Babylonia but during the Ur III period
cultural life was not yet dominated by Babylonian inhabitants. The extension of Baby-
lonian influence over the southern Mesopotamian alluvial region can be dated to the
beginning of the second millenium. But even during the first hundred years of their
rule they accepted classical Sumerian as their main written language, studied mainly
Sumerian literature and practised some of the old local religious rites and traditions.