Any enmity between Ninĝišzida & Sin?

[m1thr0s]

Continuing in my quest to lay obscure and enigmatic questions at the feet of this body of experts ( ) I have another rather strange issue I am hoping you may shed some light on.

In my own defense, I have at least tried to research this but it's simply too nebulous for me to gain any clear insight alone...

I need to know if there is, or might have been, any known enmity between Ninĝišzida and Sin, else between Sin and Ninazu or anyone else that may have involved Ninĝišzida indirectly.

A *no* is as good as a *yes* on this so long as you are reasonably assured the answer is correct...I am tracking a persistent intuition about something not strictly historical in nature but a puzzle nonetheless that might be resolved if it turned out that there was, in fact, some kind of conflict between Ninĝišzida and Nanna...

Perhaps geographical or related to timelines or something other...

Anyway...sorry I cannot be more explicit at this juncture.

Thanks in advance for any insights you may have on this.

m1

[madness]

I was saving this for a new thread dealing with snakes, but since I've put that aside for now (it's a thick subject and I'm failing to find the motivation to get through it all). And since you've brought up a good topic to explore.

As far as I am aware, there is no tension between Sin and Ningišzida directly.

However

--

F. A. M. Wiggermann, "Tišpak, his seal, and the dragon mušhuššu," in To the Euphrates and Beyond.
Theodore J. Lewis, "CT 13.33-34 and Ezekiel 32: lion-dragon myths," JAOS 116. -- Available online: here.

There exists a text named "The Labbu-Myth" [CT 13 33-34] (see article link for full translation). The antagonist of this myth is the monster mušhuššu (who is also called labbu = "Raging One" or "lion"). We know that mušhuššu is the dragon of Ninazu/Tišpak and Ningišzida.

Tišpak is elected by Sin to slay the dragon - but why would Tišpak slay his own animal? Well Wiggermann suggests that this myth translates history - although found in Assurbanipal's library, it may actually be a hand down from a much earlier period, if Wiggermann is correct, from the time when Tišpak replaced Ninazu as city god of Ešnunna. The relationship between Ninazu and mušhuššu was harmonious, but then came along Tišpak to conquer the city and the symbolic animal of his predecessor; so this myth provides justification for Tišpak's take over.

The dragon threatens the gods of Heaven, and they turn to Sin for help. Wiggermann suggests that the reason why Sin makes his appearance is because they could not turn to Enlil, as he is absent (and after all it was Enlil who designed the dragon's form in Heaven) so the duty falls to his firstborn son, Sin.

--

But we could not be blamed for considering that there might be a deeper meaning to it. Beaulieu's article points us in the right direction.

Paul-Alain Beaulieu, "The Babylonian Man in the Moon," JCS 51.


Drawing on astrological tablet VAT 7851 (Seleucid period)

On the bright face of the moon we see a hero in battle with a leonine dragon, its rear body coiling back into the moon. The monster here may well be mušhuššu/labbu who is also a leonine dragon. The hero could be any deity that acts as dragon slayer, such as Tišpak, Marduk, Nergal, etc. The Mesopotamian king himself enjoyed lion hunts; the "motif of the king fighting a lion was viewed as a reenactment of the battle between the divine hero and the dragon."

Beaulieu looks to mystical texts which shed further light.

KAR 307, rev. (Neo-Assyrian period)
4. Forty leagues is the circumference of the sun. Sixty leagues is the circumference of the moon.
5. That which is inside of the s[un is Ma]rduk. That which is inside of the moon is Nabû. Inside the sun there is a bašmu, [his] …
6. Inside the m[oon] is its [mot]her (?). The dagger above the lion is of the hand [of …].

STC II pl. 67ff. (Seleuco-Parthian period)
11. Tiamat [is se]en inside of the moon [x x x];
12. Marduk [is se]en inside of the sun [x x x].

The "mother" of line 6 in the first text refers to the bašmu of the line above, i.e. "mother of the bašmu" which we could identify as Tiamat as the second text confirms.

A lot of cultures feature female moon deities, and I've always wondered why the Mesopotamians held their primary moon deity to be male. Here we see that Sin hides a terrible secret: within the moon is the mother of all mothers, the dragon Tiamat.

[madness]

A couple of things I want to point out about the Labbu myth.

Wiggermann says:
It cannot be objected that on Old Akkadian seals the dragon of Tišpak is alive, not dead as the myth gives to expect. He does not differ in this respect from the first millennium dragon of Marduk (and Aššur), killed by him in the battle against Tiamat. Through the ages iconography simply reproduced (with minor adaptations) what once had been established, the dragon consorts and identifies his master, or stands watch. Generally speaking, monsters once alive stay alive, even battle scenes are rare and restricted to certain types. Mythology apparently is allowed a certain freedom in using the fixed types of iconography; it interprets the relation of monster and god as one of servitude, and fixes the monster in the pantheon as a courtier or defeated enemy. From the defeated enemies an extremely powerful scheme of mythological explanation is developed, the combat myth. Good and evil can be distributed among the protagonists of a story, and the triumph of good establishes order in a moral universe.

The point that I want to highlight here is that monsters cannot be killed. No matter how many times they are slain in myth, they always reappear later and get up to more mischief.


Secondly, the name of the monster on the obverse side of the Labbu text is not certain, due to the break in the tablet.
Only the sign MUŠ is preserved. Possible restorations are MUŠ.[HUŠ] and MUŠ.[ŠÀ.TÙR]. Wiggermann prefers MUŠ.[HUŠ].


--

I hope that some of this has been of help, m1thr0s

[madness]

On various kudurru "boundary stone" we see a snake partially encircling other astral symbols: the crescent moon, the sun disk, and the eight-pointed star of Ištar.

Both the natural snake (=Nirah/Irhan) and the horned snake (=bašmu) appear on kudurru-stones.

Nirah/Irhan is the son and vizier of Ištaran.
Nirah is the deified snake.
Irhan is the deified river Euphrates (represented as a snake).

bašmu is the vizier of Tišpak.

Nirah/Irhan is also associated with Ningišzida in late texts (possibly even in an Ur III text); bašmu is associated with Ningišzida in iconography (on the Gudea vase, the entwined snakes are identified as bašmu; on a Gudea cylinder seal, two bašmu rise from Ningišzida's shoulders).

--

But the relationship of the snake to the other astral symbols, on the kudurru-stones, is not one of conflict. A possible explanation is given by Lambert [cited by Marten Stol, "The Moon as seen by the Babylonians," in Natural Phenomena]

Professor Lambert wrote: "This deity [Nirah, or Irhan] is identified with the river Euphrates, as a cosmic entity, the River, which also runs around the edge of the universe. Thus when on the boundary stones the snake is put in a position suggesting it has a special place in relation to the other symbols, such as being on the very top of the stone, or having its body extending around the other symbols, this reflects its cosmic function of surrounding the universe."


This more or less corresponds to the position of Tiamat. On a Late Babylonian "map of the world" tablet [Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography, pp. 20-42] the world is surrounded by ^id₂marratu "ocean" (written with the id₂ "river" determinative). The text on the tablet then goes on to identify the ocean with tâmtu, and relates how Marduk settled the ruined gods inside the Sea, with other beasts including bašmu and mušhuššu.


For the stones, see
L. W. King, Babylonian Boundary-Stones and Memorial-Tablets in the British Museum: Text and Plates.
Ursula Seidl, Die babylonischen Kudurru-Reliefs. OBO 87.

[madness]

A quick note on the death dealing nature of the dragon.

In Tišpak, Wiggermann's pet names for mušhuššu are "angel of death" (p. 122) and "death demon" (p. 125).

Apart from being the symbolic animal of netherworld/death gods, and causing much death in the Labbu-myth, this peculiar feature is observed in the Assyrian underworld vision:

Death (^dMūtu) had the head of a mušhuššu, his hands were human, his feet [...].

Thus the very personification of Death (messenger of Ereškigal) itself is not enough, it needs the image of the mušhuššu to convey its character.

[madness]

For further interpretation of Nirah, his role on kudurru stones, his relation to the sun-god, and reflections on Early Dynastic seals depicting a deity (possibly the moon-god but more likely the sun-god) riding a snake-boat (possibly Nirah), I recommend:

Christopher E. Woods, "The Sun-God Tablet of Nabû-apla-iddina Revisited," JCS 56.


Who examines this famous tablet (which belongs to the kudurru corpus):



Caption I (left):
1. Image of Šamaš, the great lord,
2. the one who dwells in the Ebabbar,
3. which is within Sippar.

Caption II (right, above the canopy):
1. Sîn, Šamaš, and Ištar depicted
2. opposite the Apsû, between Nirah (and) the pillars.

Caption III (right, under the canopy):
1. The herald of Šamaš,
2. the two-faced snake.

[madness]

Regarding the moon as apparently containing the great mother, note also a hymn to the moon god cited by Jacobsen in Treasures of Darkness pp. 7-8.

"Father Nanna" is described in typical masculine fashion, being a "fierce young bull," with a "lapis lazuli beard," a "merciful forgiving father" etc.

Yet the hymn goes on to describe the moon:

fruit, created of itself, grown to full size,
good to look at, with whose beauty one is never sated;
womb, giving birth to all, who has settled down
in a holy abode;

[madness]

Some examples of Early Dynastic and Sargonic period (third-millennium) seals:

img89.imageshack.us/i/102v.jpg/

img17.imageshack.us/i/103qud.jpg/

img17.imageshack.us/i/105hks.jpg/

img44.imageshack.us/i/333wxw.jpg/

Depicting a scene (in fact this is "the most common mythological scene that is documented on third millennium seals") which is generally interpreted as the sun-god (since the seated deity sometimes has rays projecting from his body) riding in a snake-boat through a cosmic ocean (possibly the Abzu).


Sun-god or Moon-god?

Even though the deity seated in the snake-boat has rays, this does not necessarily mean that he is the sun-god, as Collon argues.

Dominique Collon, "Moon, boats and battle," in Sumerian Gods and Their Representations.


Collon points out:

img10.imageshack.us/i/111dhq.jpg/
1) This famous scene showing the sun-god holding his saw, and in front of him is the moon-god holding his mace. Yet both gods have emanating rays.

img87.imageshack.us/i/109z.jpg/
img233.imageshack.us/i/110ron.jpg/
2) That the moon-god is associated with a boat in texts and on seals.

3) That the deity riding the boat, and his attendants, sometimes have crescent shaped horned head-dresses (such as in the first example above) (compare with the moon-god in this seal: img43.imageshack.us/i/101pog.jpg/).

4) That the crescent moon or crescent standard are frequently associated with the boat-god scene.

Collon continues: I should therefore like to propose that in some, if not all, cases the journey of the moon god is depicted. The sphinx-like creature, which invariably moves in the same direction, might indeed represent the sun god, and the plough, vessel and scorpion would depict the earth's fertility which depends on the orderly succession of day and night.


Woods acknowledges this and admits that (JCS 56, n. 241) "there is no obvious reason why both gods [sun and moon] cannot share this theme, as their respective daily and nightly journeys take them along the same cosmic path."

Wiggermann is skeptical (Scenes from the Shadow Side, n. 110) "Even though the god travelling in the barge is depicted with rays or even with rays and a saw (?), his identity is not completely ascertained. The Moon God, on the other hand, is present on most of the seals in the shape of a crescent, and thus might not be the god travelling in the barge."


The Snake-Boat

A possible identification of the snake-boat is Nirah.

The Sun-god tablet mentioned in the above reply predominantly shows Šamaš and Nirah. Since the tablet itself is based on archaic iconography (the first-millennium scholars of Ebabbar were quite likely familiar with Early Dynastic and Sargonic images) it could be a derivative of the snake-boat scene.

However Woods cautions: The scholars and priests of the Ebabbar may have been as ignorant about [the snake-boat] scene as we. They may simply have recognized the seated deity as Šamaš and then equated the Boat-god with Nirah/Ištaran based purely on the visual similarity.

[m1thr0s]

I hope that some of this has been of help, m1thr0s

absolutely - thank you so much for your responses madness...