Ninkarrak

Ninkarrak was a goddess of medicine worshiped chiefly in northern Mesopotamia and Syria. It has been proposed that her name originates in either Akkadian or an unidentified substrate language possibly spoken in parts of modern Syria, rather than in Sumerian. It is presumed that inconsistent orthography reflects ancient scholarly attempts at making it more closely resemble Sumerian theonyms. The best attested temples dedicated to her existed in Sippar and in Terqa. Finds from excavations undertaken at the site of the latter were used as evidence in more precisely dating the history of the region. Further attestations are available from northern Mesopotamia, including the kingdom of Apum, Assyria, and the Diyala area, from various southern Mesopotamian cities such as Larsa, Nippur, and possibly Uruk, as well as from Ugarit and Emar. It is possible that references to "Ninkar" from the texts from Ebla and Nikarawa, attested in Luwian inscriptions from Carchemish, were about Ninkarrak.
Like a number of other healing goddesses, Ninkarrak was described as a divine physician. She shared her role in the Mesopotamian pantheon with deities such as Gula, Ninisina, Nintinugga, and Bau. Dogs frequently are found associated with Ninkarrak and are interpreted as a symbol for her as well as for multiple other divine physician goddesses. While she was sometimes identified with other similar deities, certain traits 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. It is possible that Ninkarrak only developed into a healing goddess due to already being associated with disease in curse formulas, in which she appears frequently as early as in the Akkadian Empire. In the context of those texts she could be paired with Išḫara.

Name and origin

While the standard spelling of Ninkarrak's name is ^dnin-kar-ra-ak, it is not attested before the second millennium BCE, and the orthography shows a degree of variety in cuneiform texts. Spellings from the Ur III period include ^dnin-kar₇ and ^dnin-kar-ra, while in texts from the Old Babylonian period, forms such as ^dnin-kar, ^dnin-kar-ra, ^dnin-kar-ak, ^dnin-ni-ka-ra-ak, ^dnin-kar-ak, ^dnin-ḫar-ra, and possibly ^dnin-ḫar-ra-ak and ^dnin-kar₂ may be found. In Ugarit, her name was written as ni-ka-rak_x, while in an incantation from Alalakh a damaged name has been restored tentatively as ne-ni-ka-ra-ak. Two further spellings, ^dnin-kar₂-ra-ak₂ and ^dnin-ka-rak appear in Neo-Babylonian sources, despite the standard spelling being generally employed consistently through the Middle Babylonian period. A logographic writing of the name, ^dNIN.IN.DUB, is likely derived from ^dNIN.IN, used to represent the name of another goddess of medicine, Ninisina, although according to Antoine Cavigneaux and Manfred Krebernik, a second and less likely possibility is that it was based on a connection with the term indub, "embankment." The deity list An = Anum also gives Ninekisiga, possibly to be understood as "lady of the house of funerary offerings," as an alternate name of Ninkarrak.
The etymology of the theonym, Ninkarrak, is unknown. Early Assyriologist Knut Tallqvist understood it as a topographical name, "Lady of Karrak". William W. Hallo, expanding on this proposal, suggested that it might have been derived from the name of the city of Larak, which would require a hypothetical form Lakrak to be in use at some point, eventually leading to the spelling Karrak, although this suggestion was evaluated critically by Manfred Krebernik. Thorkild Jacobsen suggested derivation from the genitive form of the Sumerian word kar in the 1970s. This view is also accepted by a number of other researchers. Maurice Lambert in the 1950s and Piotr Steinkeller in the 1990s both suggested that Ninkarrak's name was an allusion to prostitution, arguing it can be translated roughly as "the one who 'does' the harbour", in their proposal a to be understood as synonym of "prostitute". Irene Sibbing-Plantholt notes that past popularity of this proposal relied on the presumption that goddesses were connected to supposed practices of "temple prostitution." Joan Goodnick Westenholz rejected this view due to lack of a connection to Ninkarrak's sphere of activity. Douglas Frayne suggested that the name was a phonetic Akkadian rendering of Sumerian nin-gir-ak, "Lady of the scalpel", although this view is generally considered implausible. Sibbing-Plantholt proposes the derivation from nin-kara₂, "Lady of the mourning cloth", which according to her would fit Ninkarrak's "liminality," although in her survey of past scholarship on the matter, she ultimately concludes that none of the proposals can be accepted with certainty, and she agrees with the view that the variable orthography and apparent lack of connection between the meaning of the sign "KAR" and Ninkarrak's character might indicate that her name did not originate in Sumerian. Westenholz, who also voiced support for this view, pointed out Ninkarrak's name is absent from glossaries of dialectical emesal forms, which would be expected for a Sumerian theonym, although this argument is not accepted by Sibbing-Plantholt as convincing evidence. Westenholz argued that the name was of foreign origin and the addition of the sign NIN was meant to make it resemble Sumerian theonyms, which often started with this sign. This view is also supported by Sibbing-Plantholt, who concludes that the Sumerian appearance of the name "could have been carefully created by scholars who attempted to give the goddess a meaningful position within the religious framework". Westenholz proposed that Ninkarrak might have originally been one of the deities whose names belong to a proposed substratum, originally proposed by Alfonso Archi. It has been argued that a number of deities known from sources from various ancient cities located in modern Syria bear names that originally came from an unknown language predating the era of predominance of speakers of Semitic languages and Hurrian in the region. The proposed category of "Syrian substratum" deities includes a number of deities for the most part first attested in Ebla: Kura, Barama, Hadabal, Adamma, Išḫara, Aštabi, as well as Kubaba. Dagan, the main deity of the upper Euphrates area, is regarded as a "substratum" deity in some recent studies too due to the implausibility of various proposed etymologies of his name.
According to Westenholz's proposal, the area where Ninkarrak was originally worshiped "could be in the Habur river basin, one side of the triangle formed by the Habur river ending at Terqa and the other side by the Tigris river ending at Akkad". However, it is generally accepted that the point of origin for Ninkarrak should be considered uncertain in the light of available evidence.

Eblaite Ninkar

Joan Goodnick Westenholz proposed that the name "Ninkar" attested in texts from Ebla, stand for Ninkarrak rather than the similarly named, but more obscure southern Mesopotamian goddess of daylight. Occasional shortening of Ninkarrak's name to "Ninkar" is known from Mesopotamian sources as well. This theory is also accepted by Alfonso Archi, who notes that identification of the Eblaite Ninkar 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. Irene Sibbing-Plantholt also presumes Ninkarrak was worshiped in Ebla.

Luwian Nikarawa

It is 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. The identification of Nikarawa with Ninkarrak has a long history in modern scholarship. Ignace Gelb already proposed it in his translation of the Carchemish inscription in 1938. That translation has been challenged in a recent publication by Sylvia Hutter-Braunsar, although as of 2022, the identification of Nikarawa as an alternate spelling of Ninkarrak's name is still regarded as plausible.

Character

Ninkarrak was regarded as a healing goddess and functioned as a divine physician. Evidence from deity lists such as An = Anum indicates that theologians perceived her as the default Akkadian goddess of medicine. Šurpu addresses her as the "great doctoress". Mesopotamian goddesses associated with medicine were portrayed as surgeons in literary texts, cleaning wounds and applying bandages. One healing incantation invokes Ninkarrak with the formula "May Ninkarrak bandage you with her gentle hands". Her other area of expertise was believed to be exorcisms. As attested for the first time in texts from the Old Assyrian period, she could be invoked to ward off the demon Lamashtu, which is also attested for Ninisina and might indicate that healing goddesses were viewed as guardians of pregnant women, as well as mothers and newborns, who are demographic groups particularly endangered by this creature according to Mesopotamian beliefs. Notably Ninkarrak was not described as a divine midwife, however.
Ninkarrak was also invoked in curses. In this capacity, she was implored to inflict various diseases upon potential transgressors, which led Jan Assmann to refer to her as the "goddess of maladies". Irene Sibbing-Plantholt goes as far as suggesting that Ninkarrak might have been primarily a curse deity, and only acquired an association with healing as an extension of this role. She already appears in a curse formula from the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad. The Babylonian king Hammurabi invoked Ninkarrak in a curse formula on one of his steles, calling her the "goddess who promotes my cause at the Ekur temple" and imploring her to punish anyone who damages the monuments with diseases "which a physician cannot diagnose".
References were often made to Ninkarrak's dogs, which were regarded as fearsome. She can be identified on seals from Sippar through the presence of these animals. A dog statuette was found during excavations of her temple in Terqa. However, according to Sibbing-Plantholt it is not certain whether Ninkarrak's connection with dogs necessarily reflects her role as a healing deity, and might instead reflect the liminal character of dogs in Mesopotamian beliefs.