world is an idealised representation of life on earth we may recognise, in the goddesses
at least, aspects of the life of some of the more privileged women that actually lived.
Let us now take a closer look at the city of Nippur during the UR III period
(between 2100 – 2000 BC). In the written sources of that time we find the names
of many goddesses. Most of them had a long tradition and were also worshipped in
places other than Nippur. When we look at the manner in which they are addressed,
the questions asked from them in prayers, and note what kind of goods accumulated
in their temples in Nippur, we see that these goddesses had only a limited number
of distinct roles and functions. Some goddesses are particularly important in a political
sense, in that they support the king and the realm, some are only connected with
the underworld, some specialise in medical matters and the interpretation of dreams,
and others are responsible for the harvest of wheat or grapes. Each of these categories
will be noted in some detail.
SUPPORTING THE KING AND THE REALMThis cluster is related to the maintenance of royal power. This aspect has a long
tradition in the figure of the Goddess Ninsun, ‘mistress of the wild cows’, the wife
of Lugalbanda and mother of the legendary King Gilgamesh (Wilcke 2001 : 501 – 504 ).
Ninsun is addressed and revered in temples of the highest divine couple but also in
the royal palace (Such-Gutiérrez 2003 : 358 – 361 ). Her inclusion in the royal cult may
have had a political motivation in that the king wished to link himself to the legendary
predecessors. Ninsun was closely connected to the cult of the ancient legendary king
Lugalbanda, predecessor of Ur III kings in the ‘cult of ancestors’ but she remained a
goddess of minor importance.
In the period of the Third Ur Dynasty Nippur was – next to Ur – the religious
centre of a political-ideological entity known as ‘Sumer’ but it has never been the
seat of a king (Sallaberger 1997 : 148 ). It gained importance by being the main
dwelling of Enlil, the chief deity in Sumer, in his temple E-kur, ‘House, Mountain’.
His wife was Ninlil, the main goddess of grain. In Nippur, Enlil was served by the
messenger god Nuska. Apart from the temple of the chief gods of the realm, Nippur
also had its own city god, Ninurta, whose wife was the goddess Nin-Nibru, ‘Mistress
of Nippur’. Even a thousand years later these chief gods of Nippur, Enlil and Ninurta,
are still mentioned in their function as maintaining the state (Dalley 2000 : Myth of
Anzû; Groneberg 2004 : 78 ff.). In this later period we also still find Nin-Nibru men-
tioned as ‘Mistress of Nippur’ in hymns of praise to goddesses, such as Inanna and
Gula (Lambert 1969 , 1976 ; Biggs 2001 : 476 f.).
Most prominent among the group of goddesses that played a special role in royal
ceremonies was Inanna-Ishtar, at the same time goddess of war and goddess of love
and fertility (cf. Westenholz in this volume). Her significance for the royal cult can
hardly be overstated. It is she who bestowed sovereignty. This goddess not only
controlled the fertility of plants and animals, as well as humans, and thus was ultimately
responsible for all wealth and offspring, but, in addition, she stabilised the king’s
power, allowing him to protect his realm also by destroying his enemies. The latter
function is clearly visible since the Akkade Period (from 2300 BC) when she was
known as Anunitum, ‘the fighting one’. It ought to be noted, however, that she did
not possess a separate temple in Nippur related to the latter aspect.
— Brigitte Groneberg —