david
dubĝal (scribes assistent)
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Post by david on Dec 30, 2008 21:06:33 GMT -5
I was wondering, does anyone know if there's any good information on Ereshkigal's Cult from any ancient Mesopotamian culture (whether it's Sumerian, Babylonian, Assyrian, etc). I would really appreciate any info at all that anyone has on Ereshkigal, and/or her ancient Cult.
Thanks for any help at all.
David.
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Post by sheshki on Dec 30, 2008 21:57:08 GMT -5
hi david, well i dont know much about the cult of Ereshkigal, but i think the name is very interesting.     the name is written dingir eresh-ki-gal. eresh is also the sign nin, so if you read it that way it means nin-ki-gal, which means great mistress of earth. i think this eresh and nin thing has to do with sumerian grammar. didnt we had a thread about this?bill?...cannot remember right now... |
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Post by ummia-inim-gina on Dec 31, 2008 17:22:27 GMT -5
As you probably already know Ereškigal(a) was the queen of the underworld. Her husband was the god Nergal and she was mother to Nungal, Namtar, and Ninazu. In Inanna's descent to the netherworld she is referred to as Inanna's sister which would make her the daughter of Nanna-Suen according to at least one myth.
Her cult was based out of the Mešlam district of the city of Kutha during Sumerian times. Later she had a temple in the city of Maškin-Shapir during the Isin-Larsa period. I'm not sure what became of her in Babylonian and Assyrian times I don't know much about later Near East history.
Is there something in specific you would like to know about the cult of Ereškigal(a)?
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david
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Post by david on Jan 1, 2009 20:40:28 GMT -5
Thanks for that, I don't know too much about Sumerian grammar, but, the fact that her name means 'Great Mistress of Earth' might give me some clues as to her nature.
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david
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Post by david on Jan 1, 2009 21:50:55 GMT -5
Thanks for that info too, I was also wondering, is there any information on how she was worshipped, or if she has any things that are Sacred to her (e.g. animals, plants, cities, professions, etc), for example, other Sumerian Gods, such as Inanna, seem to have Sacred animals, like the Lion, etc.
Thanks again for your help.
David.
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Post by xuchilpaba on Jan 5, 2009 22:05:31 GMT -5
I would think along the lines that underworld symbols would be sacred to her. Possibly owls?
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david
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Post by david on Jan 10, 2009 11:42:10 GMT -5
Thanks for that info, it's nice to meet another worshipper of Ereshkigal, if you don't mind me asking, have you got any clues as to what is considered Sacred to her (e.g. animals, plants, food, etc)?.
David.
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david
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Posts: 43
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Post by david on Jan 10, 2009 11:43:23 GMT -5
I would think along the lines that underworld symbols would be sacred to her. Possibly owls? Thanks for that, I might also ask ryversylt, I know Owls are associated with Lilith, but, I'm not sure if they are associated with Ereshkigal. I am getting some good info on her, from various people. |
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Post by xuchilpaba on Jan 10, 2009 21:31:17 GMT -5
Well Lilitu is the word for owls and the spirit(s) that cause harm. They are said to dwell in desolate places and be a symbol for various evil spirits. But owls also are symbols of the underworld. (And quite associated with Inanna as well. See the Burney relief thread)
One thing however, is that one of the reasons the Burney relief was tied to Ereshkigal was because of it's underworld symbolism. Owls being one of the major underworld symbols. I would think if anything, this would be one of her sacred animals.
However, i am not to sure about other underworld animal atm. ;D But I may make a thread for animal and their religious correlations. I especially like underworld things and owls so it makes it fascinating in any case to me.
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Post by enkur on Oct 4, 2010 15:55:22 GMT -5
It's not easy to speak about Her who is most appealing to me, but why not if I am in the right place with the right people? The human ME is defined by the vertical axis of gravitation and the horizontal axis of our resistance against the gravitation which is the axis of time, of human life-time. Whatever we do during our life time is to resist against gravitation, yet it has the upper hand after all. That's why I'm most interested in the goddess who is most appealing to me - the Mother Gravity Herself, the Lady of the Great Land Below, who exists as the only compensation of all life's frustration. There is no justice except the Queen of All Peoples, but She is also the initiator into the Anunna gods' mysteries. What makes them gods is that unlike us, they have all returned from the Land of No Return. I do daily prostrate myself before Her asking Her to grant me a merciful release since life is dying and death is when dying stops. This collage of mine depicting Inanna's descent is my sweet praise to the most holy Ereshkigal. Attachments:
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Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Oct 8, 2010 15:21:24 GMT -5
Enkur: You really have an interesting way with words, certainly metaphysical language is something not employed when describing Mesopotamian myth and yet you have a good understanding of the important issues as your descriptions correspond nicely with what plain English interpretations say. I really like the picture as well!  I must email you shortly, have a few documents. |
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Post by enkur on Oct 13, 2010 19:25:43 GMT -5
What Thorkild Jacobsen says about the Sumerian concept of the numinous applies to me as well - to me the numinous is also immanent  Great thanks for your email - I'm slowly preparing a response doing meanwhile many other things |
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Post by muska on Mar 11, 2011 9:40:12 GMT -5
In Inanna's descent to the netherworld she is referred to as Inanna's sister which would make her the daughter of Nanna-Suen according to at least one myth. In the same myth Inanna called each of three deities (Enlil, Nanna and Enki) her father. It could be the term of respect to older and more high-ranking person while calling Ereshkigal her sister probably reflected Inanna s claim for equal status with mistress of Underworld. It could be compare with the kinship terminology in some ancient and medieval political usages - brother in addressing to equal ruler, father to sovereign and son to vassal. Maybe it reflected the fusion of different myth in one (on kinship terminology in myths see also my post in Shara thread). Back to Ereshkigal s family ties - in Udug Hul incantations (IV R 1-2, lines 7-8) Namtar is son of Enlil and Ereshkigal. It seems very logical explanation of Namtar s origin but what about the myth about Enlil and Ereshkigal union that leads to birth of Namtar? Possibly it happen during Enlil s exile to Underworld. |
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Post by enkur on Mar 12, 2011 12:37:08 GMT -5
What you say makes sense as ever Inanna and Ereshkigal could be seen as the positive and the negative of the same film, so being "sisters" suits them very well. Yet allow me, please, to put aside the scholar factology and speak of my heart only: Ereshkigal is the most ancient one, she is in fact Ki the earth herself experienced all the frustration of the cosmic existence after she was separated from An in his primal totemic form as the Great Bull of Heaven. All the emotional frustrations, tortures, rapes, birth pains, abortions, widow and mother sorrow, every distress, everything negative the feminine principle could take upon herself is she. No Christian female sainthood and martyrdom could be even compared with her timeless experience. Ereshkigal is a lonely nun dedicated wholeheartedly to her care for the dead. She is addressed most holy (kug gal ere$kigal-la) because of her unreserved compassion for everything dying - she is the final relief for all life's pain, despite of all projections and speculations of the living unto and about the Land of No Return. She knows NOTHING, though she has preserved the memories of everything once lived. When one presents oneself before her, one is stripped down to the bone of all one's memories. Human MEs are noise which obstructs the silence of her mystery - the MEs return back to Abzu and rise again into unrecognizable new configurations. Physically she is always present as the force of gravitation itself, the total peace of the entropy, the Queen of All Peoples. The injustices of existence may have no other compensation. As Death in Terry Pratchett's books likes to say: "NO JUSTICE, ONLY I EXIST" (my own paraphrase since I haven't seen the original saying in English yet). The confrontation between Inanna and Ereshkigal was fateful for both goddesses. Neither has Inanna ever felt such a compassion, nor has Ereshkigal ever seen such a passion dying an orgasmic death before her gaze... |
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Post by enkur on Mar 12, 2011 12:43:22 GMT -5
Yet it seems as if Enki knows something more about Ereshkigal's mystery more than anybody else of the Anunna gods who returned from the Land of No Return.
In "Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the nether world", after the primordial distribution of cosmos "when An had taken the heavens for himself, when Enlil had taken the earth for himself, when the nether world had been given to Ereshkigala as a gift" we are said that "Enki set sail for the nether world..." and came across some resistance of falling stones upon his boat. Here Kramer starts to speculate about some alleged combat between Enki and Kur who was allegedly captured Ereshkigal - I personally don't believe it. In my own psychocosm as well as in the underworld of my native folklore there is a sacred well of living water on its very bottom, so the heroes who travel and adventure through "the Lower Land" seek to reach that sacred well and drink of its living water, which can bring to them solutions to their problems and even immortality. For me in the beginning Enki set sail for the netherworld after Ereshkigal just to occupy Abzu for himself. The scholars argue about the vertical, or the horizontal location of the netherworld but for the sorcerers it's reachable from both the vertical and horizontal ends of the known world, or the consensus reality. As far as I remember, I've written about it somewhere in the Ningishzidda thread. Abzu is on the bottom of the nether/underworld anyway, yet its currents of living water/sperm spring out back to the upperworld...
In my own Necronomicon it's written:
"That is not dead which in Abzu may eternal lie,
And with strange aeons even death may die."
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Post by sheshki on Aug 16, 2011 19:33:07 GMT -5
from:
The Metamorphosis of Enlil in Early Mesopotamia, Xianhua Wang, 2011
Part III: ENLIL IN THE PRE-SARGONIC PERIOD
3.2.7. The Parrative Parts
3.7.2.1. sa-šuš-gal dEn-líl
page 143
footnote 382
382 dNin-ki may be identical with dEresh-ki-gal as suggested in Selz 1995, p.255.
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Post by nininimzue on Aug 18, 2011 3:01:17 GMT -5
I'm currently writing a paper on Ereshkigala; as soon as I'm done with it, I'll post the relevant results here. There are quite a few instances pointing towards an identification of Ereshkigala and Ninki, i.e. the Stele of Vultures (rev. iii:5-vi:42 [or so, quoting from memory]).
I also regularly work with Ereshkigala..
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Post by enkur on Aug 18, 2011 4:03:01 GMT -5
Looking forward to read it.
Here I will quote again the Hittite summoning attributed to the queen Puduhepa, the Egyptian princess, who married Hatussili III (1275 -1250 BCE), where the Storm-god of Nerik is addressed:
"Come Storm-god from the city of Nerik - come from heaven, if you are with your father, or, come from the dark earth, if you are with your mother Ereshkigal!"
(Puduhepa wasn't an Egyptian princess. See below.)
As for the magical working nowadays, it's wise to pay homage to Ereshkigal because what is willing to leave for the netherworld is better to be allowed to do it, to let it go with the gravitation and get rid of life's struggling. Otherwise it would weigh down more and more and may prematurely draw down what is not willing to go there yet.
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Post by muska on Aug 19, 2011 3:31:13 GMT -5
On Hittite worship of Ereshkigal: According to local tradition of the city of Kanesh half of year from summer to a winter solstice was called half-year of Ereshkigal. (N.Jankovskaya in materials of the conference "Edubba is everlasting". 2005). The author also specifies in such function of Ereshkigal, as suppression of aggression among people and in the nature (=depression of day-light).
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Post by enkur on Aug 19, 2011 4:34:29 GMT -5
That sounds similar to what could be resumed of Emelianov's interpretations on the Nippurian calendar - that the half year from the summer solstice to the winter solstice was related to the netherworld.
By the way, in his book "La Mesopotamie", Jean-Jacques Glassner writes that the Nippurian calendar was adopted as an official state calendar just during the reign of Hamurapi (1792 - 1750 BCE according to the chronology in this book). He says the Ur III empire failed in establishing an adequate sole state calendar but he hasn't specified what an attempt had been made by the Ur III kings in this respect. Instead Glassner has given a tablet with the calendars of Ur, Umma, Lagash, and Nippur to be compared with each other. It's interesting to note that while the Nippurians celebrated Kin-Inanna, the Lagashians celebrated Ezen-Dumuzi . While the Nippurians celebrated NE.NE.gar, the Urians celebrated Ezen-Ninazu etc. Generally said, these calendars had little in common with each other.
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Post by nininimzue on Aug 20, 2011 5:07:21 GMT -5
I would be careful with Emelianov's stuff. He has some good ideas, but his treatment of sources is... terrifying. In a bad way.
For Ur III calendars see Cohen 1993, Cultic Calenders of the Ancient Near East , and Sallaberger 1993, Der kultische Kalender der Ur-III Zeit.
If I am not entirely mistaken, NE.NE.ĝar has been interpreted by Selz 1995 (UGASL) as 'the festival of the lighting of the torches' ,with close associations to the cult of the dead.
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Post by enkur on Aug 20, 2011 9:26:53 GMT -5
Yes, I agree as regards Emelianov - but I find his summary on the Nippurian calendar as decent. Yes, he says the same what you said that Selz has said about NE.NE.gar - 'the festival of the lighting of the torches' with close associations to the cult of the dead. Thanks for the other references. |
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Post by sheshki on Aug 20, 2011 14:28:45 GMT -5
Here I will quote again the Hittite summoning attributed to the queen Puduhepa, the Egyptian princess... Puduhepa wasn´t an Egyptian princess, she was from a Kizzuwatnian (Cilician) town. Here is a quote from Encyclopedia Britannica: Thirteen years later, a further bond was created by the marriage of his daughter to the pharaoh. This girl’s mother was Puduhepa (Pudu-Kheba), the daughter of a Kizzuwadnian priest, whom Hattusilis had married.Another reason she couldnt be an Egyptian princess is this: Egypt, with the exception of one desperate correspodence with Hatti at the end of the Amarna period, did not offer princesses in marriage to foreign kings. Bryce (2003, 108) ; Schulman (1979, 179) |
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Post by enkur on Aug 20, 2011 17:32:37 GMT -5
I said this summoning was "attributed to" being not sure because my only two sources of information about this summoning are contradictory: the one, "Mythology of Hittite Anatolia" by Maciej Popko (1983), a Polish Hittitologist, says the same what you quote from Encyclopedia Britannica but the other one, "The Birth of the Gods" by Ivan Venedikov (1992), a Bulgarian Thracologist reads: "...This was said quite clearly in the invocation of the queen Puduhepa, an Egyptian princess, married to Hatusilis III, 1275 - 1250 BCE, or according to another chronology two decades earlier..." I preferred to rely on the latter because that book is a valuable work on comparative mythology while the "Mythology of Hittite Anatolia" though about the Hittites only sounded to me a bit more popular but nobody is insured against mistake...
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Post by enkur on Aug 22, 2011 2:48:14 GMT -5
Furthering my Hittite research I also came to the conclusion that the Hittite queen Puduhepa WAS NOT an Egyptian princess, and that the Bulgarian Thracologist has made a great mistake. Unfortunately it isn't the first time to be misled by persons of academic tittles from this country as was the case with the Nuragic temple-well officially supposed to be of Mesopotamian origin! The queen Puduhepa was a daughter of a priest from Kizzuwatna and herself a priestess of Ishtar whom the goddess personally recommended to Hattusili III to marry her according to his apology, I posted in www.enenuru.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=356&page=2 |
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asakku
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Post by asakku on Aug 23, 2011 9:56:01 GMT -5
Animal: Maybe snake?
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Post by enkur on Aug 24, 2011 2:32:06 GMT -5
No ancient tradition known to me. Snake is possible, probably a particular species. According to my subjective experience: the owl Strix aluco.
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Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Aug 26, 2011 20:38:10 GMT -5
Responding to the point about Ereshkigal and Ninki above - Sheshki your quote from Wang is certainly interesting In favor of the idea that studying signs and becoming a cuneiform nut can help one gain insight into these things - it seems Sheshki's observation in 2008 would be a big hint toward this identification. And that was without Wang (see reply #1 of this thread). Nininimzue - I'd certainly be interested in anything you have to add. Both Wang and Katz point to Selz' note in his 1995a Untersuchen .... book on ED Lagashite deities I think it is. Both Wang and Katz use his brief under the heading Ereshkigal as their reference here - Katz' summary on Ereshkigal in the back of the book is of course a very good comment I think. The basic problem (for people new to this issue) is that there is no attestation of the name Ereshkigal before the ED period, and yet, almost as soon as the name appears, she is a goddess of obvious importance and the mother of an (at the time) important god: Ninazu. For the experts, this doesn't make sense so they would rather suggest that she had been there all along in the Early Dynastic period, but under a different name. Ninki is the best candidate as the semantic meaning of name and the of Ereshkigal are potentially close... What I'd like to know is, is there other reasons for suggesting Ninki, as known from ED Sumerian literature (or to a lessor degree, later literature) may have been Ereshkigal? A really solid aregument for the identification of the two must has a study of Ninki in my opinion. As Nininimzue recalled, the Stele of Vultures is one such piece of possible evidence - Katz states that in this ED inscription contains a curse whereby whatever victim/trespasser has snakes sent on him by the goddess Ninki/.. or wording of some such. This may be suggestive of a Netherworld goddess according to Katz. I'm curious after glancing at the RLA entry for Ninki (in German) as Krebernik has referred to Ninki's role in purification in ED incantations and association with the tamarisk. I think he has (argg - German). Also I really need to get my hands on that damned article by Wiggermann which I understand has some things on Ninki or on the ancestors of Enlil - called: Mythical Foundations of Nature by Frans Wiggermann | Papers by Fransin D. Meijer (ed.), Natural Phenomena, Their Meaning, Depiction and Description in the Ancient Near East. Amsterdam 1992 The article is actually published in this obscure and uninteresting periodical concerning Natural Sciences published in the Netherlands. No wonder our department library doesn't carry it 0_0 must try the science library again hm. |
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Post by madness on Aug 27, 2011 2:56:50 GMT -5
Hmm yes I will need to look at Wiggermann's article again, I'll have to travel back home next week to get the book as I did not bring it with me to my dorm.
As I recall, Wiggermann argues that Enki-Ninki are the male-female forms of Ki. I'm not sure if Ereškigal is even discussed.
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Post by us4-he2-gal2 on Aug 27, 2011 5:51:56 GMT -5
Ah yes - I did recall that you had made the commendable move of acquiring this very inaccessible article. If the RIM library, the 13 floor humanities library and the university science library should let me down (and I'm pretty sure they are in this case!) it's good to have the back up here.. |
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I must email you shortly, have a few documents.
