Nisaba
Nisaba was the Mesopotamian goddess of writing and grain. She is one of the oldest Sumerian deities attested in writing, and remained prominent through many periods of Mesopotamian history. She was commonly worshiped by scribes, and numerous Sumerian texts end with the doxology "praise to Nisaba" as a result. She declined after the Old Babylonian period due to the rise of the new scribe god, Nabu, though she did not fully vanish from Mesopotamian religion and attestations from as late as the neo-Babylonian period are known.
In myths and god lists, she was a part of the circle of Enlil, alongside her husband Haya. In the myth Enlil and Sud she plays an important role due to being the mother of the eponymous deity. Enlil seeks her permission to marry Sud with the help of his sukkal Nuska. Both this narrative and other sources attest that she and her daughter were regarded as very close.
Outside Mesopotamia her name was used to logographically represent these of other gods, not necessarily similar to her in character, including Syrian Dagan, Hurrian Kumarbi and Hittite Ḫalki.
Name
The origin of Nisaba's name is unknown. The widely accepted reading, Nisaba, has been confirmed by Akkadian lexical texts spelling the name syllabically as ni-sa-ba. The reading Nidaba, originally favored by some Assyriologists, for example Miguel Civil, is now regarded as implausible, as the evidence is very scant, and might simply constitute recurring scribal errors. The name Nisaba was originally written using a combination of the cuneiform sign, called NAGA, accompanied by the dingir,, so-called "divine determinative" preceding names of deities. The NAGA sign is assumed to be a pictogram representing a plant, possibly later interpreted as a sheaf of barley. The same sign, though with a different determinative added, was also used to write the name of Nisaba's main cult center, Eresh. While the true etymology of Nisaba's name is generally considered impossible to determine, Wilfred G. Lambert proposed that it was derived from a hypothetical form nin.sab.ak, "Lady of Saba," but as no such a place name is attested in Sumerian sources this is regarded as implausible. Another proposal explains it as nin-še-ba-ak, "lady of grain rations."It has been proposed that a variant form of the name, Nišpa, was used in Mari, perhaps as a syllabic rather than logographic spelling. However, it has also been argued that this deity, attested only in a single Amorite personal name, Ḫabdu-Nišpa, instead corresponds to Nišba rather than Nisaba. Nišba was most likely a deified mountain, and appears in inscriptions of Iddin-Sin of Simurrum and Anubanini of Lullubum. It has also been argued that the mountain was regarded as holy by the Gutians. Furthermore, a certain KA-Nišba was the ruler of Simurrum during the reign of the Gutian king Erridupizir. The mountain corresponding to Nišba is assumed to lie northeast of modern Sulaymaniyah, though there is no agreement which landmark bore this name.
An alternate name of Nisaba was Nanibgal, though this name also functioned as a name of a distinct goddess. Yet another name applied to her was Nunbarshegunu.
Epithets
Nisaba's epithets include "lady of wisdom," "professor of great wisdom" "unsurpassed overseer", and "opener of the mouth of the great gods." Names of a number of distinct goddesses could also serve as epithets of Nisaba, including Aruru, Ezina-Kusu and Kusu, without necessarily implying identification of the deities with each other.Functions
Piotr Michalowski describes Nisaba as "the goddess of grain and the scribal arts in the widest sense of this word, including writing, accounting and surveying." She was also associated with literature and songs. It is commonly assumed that she was an agricultural deity in origin, but started to be associated with writing after its invention. However, it is agreed that in Sumerian texts the latter association is regarded as primary. In the texts forming the curriculum of scribal schools she is the deity most commonly associated with literacy, numeracy and related implements.Due to her primary function Wilfred G. Lambert regarded her gender as unusual, noting that "female scribes were very rare" in historical records. However, as proven by Eleanor Robson, it was not uncommon for goddesses to be regarded as literate in Sumerian mythology, and individual goddesses are regarded as such twice as often as individual gods in texts from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Various compositions include references to many other goddesses writing, using measuring tools or performing other tasks associated with literacy and numeracy, including Inanna, Manungal, Geshtinanna, Ninisina, Ninshubur and even a minor lamma goddess serving Bau.
As a goddess of wisdom Nisaba was believed to bestow it upon rulers, as attested in compositions associated with Lipit-Ishtar and Enlil-bani. Scribes' right to teach others their craft was likewise believed to be bestowed upon them by her.
The Curse of Agade lists her among the most prominent deities, alongside Sin, Enki, Inanna, Ninurta, Ishkur and Nuska. This grouping is regarded as unusual by researchers.
In late texts Nisaba commonly appears simply as the deification of grain, though there are exceptions. A prayer known from a compilation of texts about goddesses from neo-Assyrian Kalhu still refers to her as the "queen of wisdom." It also appears that in the first millennium BCE she acquired an association with exorcisms.
Iconography
It has been proposed that some depictions of so-called "vegetation deities" known from the art of the Early Dynastic and Akkadian periods are representations of Nisaba. For example, it is commonly assumed that the goddess with stalks of vegetation decorating her crown, depicted on a fragment of a stone vase, likely from Girsu, is Nisaba. Kathleen R. Maxwell-Hyslop points out that she is however not mentioned in the accompanying inscription, and other identifications are possible, including Bau.Association with other deities
As a grain deity, Nisaba was sometimes regarded as synonymous with the goddess Ashnan, though most primary sources, including god lists and offering lists, present them as fully separate. It has also been proposed that she was the same goddess as Ezina and Kusu, but all three of them appear separately in offering lists from Lagash. Syncretic associations possibly present in ancient scholarship did not necessarily translate into cultic practice.The goddess Ninimma, regarded as the personal scribe of Enlil, was sometimes associated with and possibly acquired some of the characteristics of Nisaba due to fulfilling a similar role in the pantheon of Nippur. In god lists she often follows the latter and her spouse.
Family and court
Nisaba's husband was Haia, possibly regarded as a god of seals. He was a deity of relatively low rank. Compared to other divine couples they are invoked together extremely rarely in seal inscriptions, with only one example presently known. In one explanatory text, Haya is described as "Nisaba of prosperity".Their daughter was Sud, the city goddess of Shuruppak, in later periods fully conflated with Enlil's wife Ninlil.
According to the god list An = Anum, Nisaba had two sukkals, Ungasaga and Hamun-ana.
In god lists, she usually appears in the section dedicated to relatives and servants of Enlil.
Multiple traditions regarding Nisaba’s origin are known, and her parentage is not regarded as fixed in ancient tradition. She was described either as the firstborn daughter of Enlil, as his mother in law, or possibly as his twin sister. Her mother is usually said to be Urash. In a first millennium BCE text from Kalhu, which is also the source attesting that she could be viewed as Enlil's twin, her father is Ea, equated with Irḫan, in this context understood as a cosmic river, "father of the gods of the universe." Elsewhere Irḫan was often associated with Ishtaran. Wilfred G. Lambert notes that the text "seems to imply a desire not to have Anu as Nisaba's father," though attestations of the sky god in this role are nonetheless known from other sources.
Nisaba and Nabu
gradually replaced Nisaba as a deity of writing in what has been described by Julia M. Asher-Greve as "the most prominent case of a power transferred to a god from a goddess" in Mesopotamian history. However, the process was complex and gradual. In the Old Babylonian and early Kassite periods Nabu’s cult was only popular in central Mesopotamia, had a limited extent in peripheral areas and there is little to no evidence of it from cities such as Ur and Nippur. Nabu has relatively few epithets in god lists from the second millennium BCE as well.In late bronze age Ugarit Nisaba and Nabu coexisted, and colophons of texts reveal that a number of scribes described themselves as "servant of Nabu and Nisaba." Similar evidence is also known from Emar.
Andrew R. George assumes the reason why Nabu replaced Nisaba, while other deities associated with writing did not, was due to the generalized character of his connection to this art. He points out that while Ninimma and Ninurta were also associated with writing, the former occupied a different niche from Nisaba, while the latter was only a divine scribe as an extension of his role as the archetypal good son helping his elderly father with his various duties.
dNISABA as logographic writing of other deities' names
In some documents from Syrian cities, for example Halab, the logogram dNISABA designates the god Dagan, while in Hurrian texts - Kumarbi. According to Alfonso Archi, both of these phenomena have the same source. In cities such as Ugarit, Dagan's name was homophonous with the word for grain, and the logographic writing of his and Kumarbi's names as dNISABA was likely a form of wordplay popular among scribes, relying on the fact that Nisaba's name could simply be understood as “grain” too. In theological texts, both Kumarbi and Dagan were compared to each other and Enlil rather than Nisaba due to all three of them playing the role of “father of gods” in their respective pantheons.The name of the Hittite grain goddess Ḫalki could be represented by the logogram dNISABA too.