Nanaya
Nanaya was a Mesopotamian goddess of love closely associated with Inanna.
While she is well attested in Mesopotamian textual sources from many periods, from the times of the Third Dynasty of Ur to the Fall of Babylon and beyond, and was among the most commonly-worshipped goddesses through much of Mesopotamian history, both her origin and the meaning of her name are unknown. It has been proposed that she originated either as a minor Akkadian goddess or as a hypostasis of Sumerian Inanna, but the evidence is inconclusive.
Her primary role was that of a goddess of love, and she was associated with eroticism and sensuality, though she was also a patron of lovers, including rejected or betrayed ones. Especially in early scholarship, she was often assumed to be a goddess of the planet Venus like Inanna, but this view is no longer supported by most Assyriologists.
In addition to Inanna, she could be associated with other deities connected either to love or to the city of Uruk, such as Išḫara, Kanisurra or Uṣur-amāssu.
Name and origin
It is accepted in modern literature that "Nanaya" is more likely to be the correct form of the goddess' name than "Nana," sometimes used in past scholarship. The meaning of the name is unknown. Joan Goodnick Westenholz notes that based on the suffix it is most likely Akkadian in origin. She also considers the only possible forerunner of Nanaya to be a goddess whose name was written Na-na, without a divine determinative, known from a few personal names from the earliest records from the Gasur and Diyala areas. The land later known as Namri might be located particularly close to the metaphorical birthplace of Nanaya. However, she notes the evidence is contradictory, as Nanaya herself is not common in later records from the same area, and her cult was centered in Uruk, rather than in the periphery.Two theories which are now regarded as discredited but which gained some support in past scholarship include the view that Nanaya was in origin an Aramean deity, implausible in the light of Nanaya being attested before the Arameans and their language, and an attempt to explain her name as derived from Elamite, which is unlikely due to her absence from oldest Elamite sources. Occasionally Indo-European etymologies are proposed too, but the notion that there was an Indo-European substrate in Mesopotamia is generally considered to be the product of faulty methodology and words to which such an origin had been attributed in past studies tend to have plausible Sumerian, Semitic or Hurrian origin.
Frans Wiggermann proposes that Nanaya was originally an epithet of Inanna connected to her role as a goddess of love, and that the original form of the name had the meaning "My Inanna!" but eventually developed into a separate, though similar, deity. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz considers it a possibility that Nanaya was initially a hypostasis of "Inanna as quintessence of womanhood," similar to how Annunitum represented her as a warrior. However, Joan Goodnick Westenholz argued that the view that Nanaya was a manifestation of Inanna in origin should be considered a misconception.
An artificial Sumerian etymology was created for the name in late Babylonian texts, deriving it from NA, "to call," with a feminine suffix, A. A possible translation of this ancient scholarly explanation is "the one who keeps calling" or "the calling one". Invented etymologies were a common topic of late cuneiform commentaries.
Functions and iconography
Nanaya's primary function was that of a goddess of love, and she was referred to as bēlet ruʾāmi, "lady of love". The physical aspect of love was particularly strongly associated with her, and texts dedicated to her could be explicit. For example, a cultic song describes her in the following terms: "When you lean the side against the wall, your nakedness is sweet, when bow down, the hips are sweet," and indicates that the goddess was believed to charge fees for sexual services. She was also viewed as a guardian of lovers, according to a text from Sippar titled "The Faithful Lover" and to some spells especially the disillusioned or rejected ones. Joan Goodnick Westenholz describes her character as seen through the Sumerian texts as that of a "sweet erotic lover" and "perpetual lover and beloved".A characteristic frequently attributed to Nanaya as a goddess of love, present in the majority of royal inscriptions about her and in many other documents, was described with the Sumerian word ḫili and its Akkadian equivalent kubzu, which can be translated as charm, luxuriance, voluptuousness or sensuality. Joan Goodnick Westenholz favors "sensuality" in translations of epithets involving this term, while Paul-Alain Beaulieu - "voluptuousness." Such titles include bēlet kubzi, "lady of voluptuousness/sensuality," and nin ḫili šerkandi, "the lady adorned with voluptuousness/sensuality." An inscription of Esarhaddon describes her as "adorned with voluptuousness and joy." However, it was not an attribute exclusively associated with her, and in other sources it is described as a quality of both male and female deities, for example Shamash, Aya, Ishtar and Nisaba.
Nanaya was also associated with kingship, especially in the Isin-Larsa period, when a relationship with her, possibly some type of hieros gamos, was "an aspect of true kingship". Joan Goodnick Westenholz rules out any association between Nanaya and nursing in the context of royal ideology.
Nanaya was also one of the deities believed to protect from the influence of a lamashtu demon, in this role often acting alongside Ishtar.
Nanaya eventually developed a distinctly warlike aspect, mostly present in relation to the so-called "Nanaya Eurshaba", worshipped in Borsippa independently from Nabu. She was instead associated with the god Mār-bīti, described as warlike and as a "terrifying hero", and, like in Uruk, with Uṣur-amāssu. Like Inanna, she could also be identified with Irnina, the deified victory.
According to Joan Goodnick Westenholz, a further aspect of Nanaya that presently cannot be determined may be alluded to in an incantation from Isin, according to which she was the denizen of a location usually regarded as profane rather than sacred, the šutummu, understood as treasury, storehouse or granary. The text contrasts her dwelling place with the dais on which Ishtar sits.
Neo-Babylonian archives from Uruk contain extensive lists of cultic paraphernalia dedicated to Nanaya, including a feathered tiara, a crown, multiple breast ornaments.
In a single late text Nanaya is associated with an unidentified spice, ziqqu.
Astral associations
One of the most recurring questions in scholarship about Nanaya through history was her potential association with classical planet Venus, or lack thereof. Many early Assyriologists assumed that Nanaya was fully interchangeable with Inanna and, by extension, a Venus goddess, but in the 1990s Joan Goodnick Westenholz challenged this view, and most subsequent studies accepted her conclusions. Westenholz argues that the evidence for an association between Nanaya and the planet Venus is scarce and that she was more often associated with the moon. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz, following her research, concluded in her monograph Mesopotamian Goddess Nanajā that Nanaya was not herself a Venus goddess, and at most could acquire some such characteristics due to association or conflation with Inanna/Ishtar. Michael P. Streck and Nathan Wassermann in an article from 2013 also follow the conclusions of Westenholz and do not suggest an association with Venus in discussion of Nanaya as a luminous deity. Piotr Steinkeller nonetheless asserted as recently as 2013 that Nanaya was simply a Venus goddess fully analogous to Inanna, and interchangeable both with her and with Ninsianna, without discussing the current state of research. Ninsianna is well attested as a Venus deity and was associated with Ishtar and the Hurrian form of Pinikir who had similar character, but Nanaya was regarded as a figure distinct from Ninsianna in Uruk and in Larsa.Corona Borealis was associated with Nanaya in astronomical texts.
Nanaya in art
While references to statues of Nanaya are known from earlier periods, with no less than six mentions already present in documents from the Ur III period, the oldest presently known depiction of her is the kudurru of Kassite king Meli-Shipak II, which shows her in a flounced robe and a crown decorated with feathers. This work of art is regarded as unusual, as the inscription and the deity depicted on the monument are integrated with each other. The other figures depicted on it are the king in mention, Meli-Shipak II, and his daughter Ḫunnubat-Nanaya, who he leads to the enthroned goddess. Above them the symbols of Ishtar, Shamash and Sin are placed, most likely in order to make these deities serve as a guarantee of the land grant described in the accompanying text.Another possible depiction of Nanaya is present on a kudurru from Borsippa from the reign of Nabu-shuma-ishkun.
On an Aramean pithos from Assur Nanaya is depicted in robes with a pattern of stars and crescents.
A number of Hellenized depictions of Nanaya are known from the Parthian period, one possible example being the figure of a naked goddess discovered as a tomb deposit, wearing a crescent-shaped diadem. Late depictions also often show her with a bow, but it is uncertain if it was a part of her iconography before the Hellenistic period.
Associations with other deities
Deities from the circle of Inanna
God lists consistently associated Nanaya with Inanna and her circle, starting with the so-called Weidner god list from the Ur III period. In the standard arrangement she is placed third in her entourage, after Dumuzi, Inanna's husband, and Ninshubur, her sukkal. Another text enumerates Ninshubur, Nanaya, Bizilla and Kanisurra as Inanna's attendants, preserving Nanaya's place right after the sukkal. In later times Ishtar and Nanaya were considered the main deities of Uruk, with the situation being comparable to Marduk's and Nabu's status in Babylon. While Ishtar was the "Lady of Uruk", Nanaya was the "Queen of Uruk".Many sources present Nanaya as a protégée of Inanna, but only three known texts also describe them as mother and daughter, and they might only be epithets implying a close connection between the functions of the two rather than an account of a theological speculation. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz assumes that the evidence only makes it plausible that king Lipit-Ishtar regarded Nanaya as a daughter of Inanna. Joan Goodnick Westenholz describes the relationship between the two goddesses as "definite if unspecified". Only in very late sources from the first millennium BCE they could be fully conflated with each other. Laura Cousin and Yoko Watai argue that their character was not necessarily perceived as identical even in late periods, and attribute the predominance of Nanaya over Ishtar in Neo-Babylonian theophoric names to her nature being perceived as less capricious.
A variety of epithets associate Nanaya both with Inanna and the Eanna temple, for example "ornament of Eanna", "pride of the Eanna", "the deity who occupies the high throne of the land of Uruk".
As early as in the Ur III period, Nanaya came to be associated with the goddess Bizilla. Her name might mean "she who is pleasing" in Sumerian. God lists could equate them with each other. It is assumed that Bizilla occurs among deities from the court of the prison goddess Nungal in some sources too, though Jeremiah Peterson considers it possible that there might have been two deities with similar names, one associated with Nungal and the other with Nanaya. It is possible that Bizilla was regarded as the sukkal of Enlil's wife Ninlil in Ḫursaĝkalama.
Much like Ninshubur, Nanaya was frequently associated with the lamma goddesses, a class of minor deities believed to intercede between humans and major gods, and in some texts she is called the "lady of lamma." One example comes from inscriptions of Kudur-Mabuk and Rim-Sîn I, who apparently regarded Nanaya as capable of mediating on their behalf with An and Inanna, and of assigning lamma deities to them.
Uṣur-amāssu is another deity who is well attested in connection with Nanaya. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz notes that some publications regard Uṣur-amāssu to be a cognomen of Nanaya rather than an independent deity. However, they were two distinct deities in Neo-Babylonian Uruk, and Uṣur-amāssu's origin as an originally male deity from the circle of Adad is well attested.
The Elamite goddess Narundi, in Mesopotamia best known for her connection to the Sebitti, was possibly associated with Nanaya or Ishtar.