Ninkarrak

Ninkarrak (cuneiform: 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒋼𒀀𒊏𒀝, dnin-kar-ra-ak) was a goddess of medicine worshiped chiefly in Syria and northern Mesopotamia. It os assumed her origin is Akkadian or Syrian, rather than Sumerian. A particularly notable temple dedicated to her was unearthed in Terqa. Finds from its excavations are regarded as very significant in dating the history of the region.

Ninkarrak
Divine physician
A depiction of a healing goddess (Gula, Ninisina or Ninkarrak) with a dog on a kudurru.
Major cult centerSippar; Terqa
Symboldog
Personal information
ParentsAnu and Urash
ConsortPabilsag
ChildrenDamu
Equivalents
Isin equivalentNinisina
Umma equivalentGula
Nippur equivalentNintinugga

She was regarded as a divine physician,[1] a role shared with the goddesses Gula, Ninisina, Nintinugga and Bau.[1] Dogs were a symbol of her, as well as multiple other healing goddesses. While she was sometimes identified with other similar deities, certain traits, such as association with the Syrian goddess Ishara, were unique to her. Together with the distribution of evidence of her cult they serve as an indication that even if partially syncretised, individual Mesopotamian goddesses of medicine had distinct origins.

Origin

Ninkarrak's name was absent from glossaries of emesal forms, indicating she wasn't of Sumerian origin.[2]

While her oldest attestations come from Mesopotamia and from the treaty of Naram-Sin with an Elamite king,[3] she most likely originated in Syria, with Terqa in particular being proposed due to presence of a prominent temple dedicated to her.[4]

The etymology of her name is currently unknown, though various proposals have been made.[5] Early assyriologist Knut Tallqvist understood it as a topographical name, "Lady (Nin) of Karrak."[5] Thorkild Jacobsen suggested derivation from Sumerian word kar (harbor, quay) in a genitive form (thus karak) in the 1970s.[5] Maurice Lambert in the 1950s and Piotr Steinkeller in the 1990s both connected it to terms alluding to prostitution.[6]

Joan Goodnick Westenholz regarded past proposals as flawed, noting in particular that Lambert's and Steinkeller's bears no connection to Ninkarrak's sphere of activity.[2] She instead assumed that the name was of foreign origin (much like that of Tishpak or the Dilmunite deities Inzak and Meskilak) and the addition of Nin was meant to make it resemble Sumerian deity names, which often started with this term (ex. Ninurta, Ninshubur).[2] She considered it possible that Ninkarrak was one of the deities belonging to so-called "Syrian substratum."[4] In the context of study of religions of Ancient Near East, this term refers to deities known from sources from ancient Syria whose names appear to come from an unknown language predating the era of predominance of speakers of Semitic languages and Hurrian in the region.[7][8] The proposed category of "Syrian substratum" deities includes a number of gods for the most part first attested in Ebla: Kura, Barama, Hadabal, Adamma, Ishara, Aštabi, as well as Kubaba.[7][8][9][10] Many of them were later incorporated into Hurrian religion.[8] Dagan, the main god of the upper Euphrates area, is regarded as a "substratum" deity in some recent studies too, due to the implausibility of proposed Semitic etymologies of his name.[11]

Character

Ninkarrak was regarded as "the great doctoress" in texts such as Ĺ urpu.[12] Mesopotamian goddesses of medicine, including Ninkarrak, were imagined as surgeons, and various sources describe Ninkarrak cleaning wounds and applying bandages.[1] She was regarded as skilled in both providing medical remedies and in exorcisms.[13]

References were often made to Ninkarrak's dogs, regarded as fearsome.[14] She can be identified on seals from Sippar based on the presence of these animals.[15]

Occasionally Nikarrak was also invoked to ward off the demon Lamashtu (as was Ninisina), indicating that healing goddesses were viewed as guardians of pregnant women as well as mothers and newborns, particularly endangered by this creature according to Mesopotamian beliefs.[16]

Due to her role in curses, in which she was invoked to inflict various diseases upon potential transgressors, historian Jan Assmann refers to her as "goddess of maladies."[17]

Cult

In Mesopotamia Ninkarrak is already attested in incantations, inscriptions, personal names and toponyms in the Old Akkadian and Ur III periods,[18] though she only started appearing in god lists in the Old Babylonian period.[2] In the later god list An = Anum she is the first of the healing goddesses listed.[19] Evidence from god lists indicates that theologians perceived her as the default Akkadian goddess of medicine.[19]

Ninkarrak was mentioned in various royal curse formulas, including some from the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad.[20] The Babylonian king Hammurabi invoked Ninkarrak in a curse formula[21] on one of his stelae, calling her "goddess who promotes my cause at the Ekur temple" and imploring her to punish anyone who damages the monuments with diseaseas "which a physician cannot diagnose."[22]

Sippar in northern Babylonia was a prominent site of Ninkarrak worship in Mesopotamia.[23] A temple dedicated to her was located there,[23] though Ninisina was venerated in this city as well.[24] It is possible that large scale migration from Isin to Sippar was responsible for the interchangeability of Ninisina/Gula and Ninkarrak in some sources from Sippar.[25]

In the first millennium BCE, Nebuchadnezzar built a new Ninkarrak temple in Sippar, as well as in a number of other cities, likely due to personal devotion to this goddess.[26]Ninkarrak was sometimes worshiped in centers related to the cult of other healing goddesses: she had a small chapel in Nippur (where the main healing goddess was Nintinugga) and possibly in Isin.[27] Sporadic references to her are also known from cities further south, notably Larsa and Uruk.[27]

In Assyrian sources she appears in the Takultu text, listing deities greeted by the king during a long ritual, and in a number of hymns from Assur.[28]

The worship of Ninkarrak is also well attested in sources from Syria.[29] In Ugarit she is attested in an Akkadian formula against eye disease.[30] A curse formula from Emar invokes her alongside Ishara.[31] In the kingdom of Apum in the upper Khabur valley she was one of the deities invoked in oath formulas in treaties, with her statue likely being present during related ceremonies.[32] In Mari she appears in a list of deities and offerings to them from the reign of Zimri-Lim and in therapeutic incantations.[29] Terqa was a prominent site of her worship in that area.[29]

Terqa

A prominent temple of Ninkarrak was located in Terqa.[33]

The temple was identified as such based on a tablet with a list of offerings which starts with her name, which was originally most likely used as a point of reference by priests maintaining it, seals mentioned the goddess, and other epigraphic evidence.[33] 6637[34] beads made out of a variety of materials (agate, carnelian, gypsum, hematite, lapis lazuli and rock crystal), including some shaped like animals (a frog, a cow and a duck) and nine[35] Egyptian-style scarabs, all of which likely were originally an offering to Ninkarrak or a temple deposit, were also excavated.[36][35] Archaeologists found a number of small bronze figurines of dogs inside the temple as well.[33] Further excavations additionally uncovered a ceremonial axe and a scimitar with a devotional inscription mentioning Ninkarrak, both bronze.[37] Early occupation of the structure has been dated to roughly the same period as the reigns of three kings of Terqa:

  • Yadikh-abu, a contemporary of Samsuiluna of Babylon, defeated by the latter in 1721 BCE[38]
  • Kashtiliash, initially estimated as ruling c. 1690 BCE;[38] a date later than 1650 BCE has been proposed as well, based on closer analysis of artifacts.[39] The beads, likely serving as a temple deposit, were specifically dated to his reign.[38] His name has Kassite origin.[40]
  • Shunuhru-ammu, ruling c. 1650 BCE according to the initial estimates.[38]

However the temple remained in use later as well.[38] Archaeologists assume that it was remodeled multiple times.[34]

The scarabs found in the temple of Ninkarrak are artifacts of particular archaeological significance, as they represent the easternmost known example of such objects in a sealed deposit dated to the Old Babylonian period,[34] in addition to being possible to date with relative accuracy, as certain features evident in them aren't attested before 1650-1640 BCE (the reign of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt).[41] The hieroglyphs inscribed on them are regarded as "poorly executed and sometimes misunderstood," indicating Levantine, rather than Egyptian, origin, with similar ones being known from Byblos, Sidon and Ugarit.[41]

Ebla

Joan Goodnick Westenholz proposed that like the "Syrian substratum" deities, Ninkarrak was worshiped in Ebla, and the references to "Nin-kar" in Eblaite texts stand for Ninkarrak rather than the similarly named but more obscure southern Mesopotamian goddess of daylight.[4] Occasional shortening of Ninkarrak's name to "Ninkar" is known from Mesopotamian sources as well.[5] This theory is also accepted by Alfonso Archi, who notes that identification of the Eblaite Nin-kar with a minor Sumerian goddess of daylight would make it difficult to explain why devotion to her is relatively common for example among women of the royal house.[42]

Luwian sources

It os possible that Ninkarrak, under the name Nikarawa, appears in a hieroglyphic Luwian inscription from Carchemish, which asks the goddess' dogs to devour anyone who damages the inscribed monument.[28] The identification of Nikarawa with Ninkarrak has a long history in the study of Ancient Near East. Ignace Gelb proposed it in his translation of the Carchemish inscription in 1938.[43] However, it has been challenged in a recent publication by Sylvia Hutter-Braunsar.[44]

Association with other deities

Pabilsag was regarded as the husband of Ninkarrak or other healing goddesses (the exact identity of his wife varies between sources).[18] Her father was Anu,[3] and her mother was Urash, indicating her parentage was understood to be identical to that of Ninisina, another healing goddess.[45] The son of Ninisina, Damu, was sometimes said to be Ninkarrak's child instead.[18]

Other healing goddesses

While the healing goddesses of the Mesopotamian pantheon - Ninkarrak, Nintinugga (Nippur),[46] Ninisina (Isin)[47] and Gula (Umma)[47] were initially separate deities,[48] they were at times either partially conflated or treated as equivalents of each other.[49] Nintinugga was a notable exception, almost always treated separately.[50] Ninkarrak was commonly associated with both Gula and Ninisina (who were themselves interchangeable to a degree).[51] A syncretistic hymn to Gula, composed at some point between 1400 BCE and 700 BCE by Bullussa-rabi, equates all other major healing goddesses, including Ninkarrak, with her.[1]

However, there is also evidence indicating they were not fully one and the same: Ninkarrak was never associated with the daughter of Ninisina, Gunura.[18] In the sphere of worship (rather than theology) the individual goddesses were also generally separate.[14]

In Mari Kakka, seemingly a local healing goddess, was associated with Ninkarrak, but also with Ninshubur.[52] This goddess is regarded as distinct from Kakka, the sukkal of Anshar, known from the god list An = Anum (where the former Kakka herself appears in Ninkarrak's section) and from the later mythical composition Enuma Elish.[53]

Ishara
A Hurro-Hittite relief from Yazilikaya depicting Ishara in procession with Allani (left) and Nabarbi (right)

A few sources attest an association between Ishara and Ninkarrak, including an Old Assyrian treaty, a curse formula from Emar and the god list from Mari.[4] Additionally both appear, though not next to each other, in Naram-Sin's treaty with Elam.[4] This connection most likely was rooted in their shared origin in Syria.[4]

While Ishara was generally not a healing goddess in her own right, she could serve as both a goddess of disease and of healing in Hurro-Hittite sources.[54]

The name Meme was attributed to both Ishara and Ninkarrak in god lists.[55]

References
  1. Böck 2015, p. 3.
  2. Westenholz 2010, p. 381.
  3. Westenholz 2010, p. 378.
  4. Westenholz 2010, p. 397.
  5. Westenholz 2010, p. 380.
  6. Westenholz 2010, pp. 380–381.
  7. Archi 1997, p. 418.
  8. Archi 2013, p. 15.
  9. Taracha 2009, p. 119.
  10. Wilhelm 1989, p. 55.
  11. Feliu 2003, pp. 278–287.
  12. Westenholz 2010, p. 394.
  13. Westenholz 2010, p. 388.
  14. Westenholz 2010, p. 395.
  15. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 252.
  16. Böck 2015, p. 4.
  17. Assmann 1992, p. 159.
  18. Westenholz 2010, p. 383.
  19. Westenholz 2010, p. 382.
  20. Westenholz 2010, p. 379.
  21. Allen 2013, p. 7.
  22. Westenholz 2010, pp. 377–378.
  23. Westenholz 2010, p. 385.
  24. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 265.
  25. Böck 2015, p. 6.
  26. Westenholz 2010, p. 391.
  27. Westenholz 2010, p. 386.
  28. Westenholz 2010, p. 390.
  29. Westenholz 2010, p. 387.
  30. Westenholz 2010, pp. 389–390.
  31. Westenholz 2010, p. 389.
  32. Westenholz 2010, p. 384.
  33. Liggett 1982, p. 14.
  34. Ahrens 2010, p. 431.
  35. Ahrens 2010, p. 434.
  36. Liggett 1982, p. 16.
  37. Liggett 1982, p. 24.
  38. Liggett 1982, p. 23.
  39. Ahrens 2010, pp. 435–436.
  40. Ahrens 2010, p. 433.
  41. Ahrens 2010, p. 435.
  42. Archi 2019, p. 43.
  43. Gelb 1938, p. 201.
  44. Hutter-Braunsar 2019, pp. 518–530.
  45. Westenholz 2010, pp. 382–383.
  46. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 67.
  47. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 82.
  48. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 79.
  49. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 100.
  50. Westenholz 2010, p. 396.
  51. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 253.
  52. Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 273.
  53. Litke 1998, p. 25.
  54. Murat 2009, p. 177-183.
  55. Krebernik 1997, p. 56.

Bibliography
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.