Deities with snakes issuing from the shoulders

[dodo]

Hello experts and enthusiasts,
I just joined Enenuru and I really enjoyed what I've read so far.

I have a question which I wasn't sure wether to post it in the deities forum or in the General one.
Some time ago, while I was compiling my phd thesis (not in Ancient Near Eastern matters, by the way) I came across some illustrations with cylinder seals (in Frankfort's Cylinder Seals, I guess) where some male deities had snakes issuing from the shoulders (one snake each). I don't remember wether it was Ninghiszida or some other god.
I am presently investigating some iconographic topics in Oriental Art, among which are the flaming Budddhas and the Chinese 'dragons' in Far Eastern in general and islamic art. Both kind of figures have flames issuing from different parts of the body, especially the shoulders. This is clearly a sing of spiritual 'energy' (ki) which the buddhas or the dragons emanate, and which for some reasons come out from that anatomical parts.
I was trying to ascertain wether the latter iconography may be genetically related to the former. I need material to confirm this intuition of mine, but so far I haven't found any articles (let alone essays) regarding this feature of those ancient Near Eastern deities. Van Buren and Frankfort say nothing about that, and also a search in the net was not fruitful. I'll check the Ninghiszida thread, but I'm not confident I can find something even there, for it is a rather specific and minor feature.
If no bibliography is available even to specialists, I will greatly appreciate also your opinions and suggestions.

(PS. I hope my English is good enough to express my points properly. I'm no mothertongue)

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[us4-he2-gal2]

Hello Dodo:




Well when it comes to two snakes emanating from the shoulders of a Mesopotamian god, you are usually looking at Ningishzida to be sure. Because I am semi-familiar with the Ningishzida thread, I will isolate a few sections which report the opinions of scholars on the these distinctive features of that god:


From the Ningishzida Thread :



- Reply #5 reports on the suggestions of T. Jacobsen, who is considered a visionary in our field, except that now his pioneering steps are be re-examined and refined in many places. Still a good place to start. He believed that the Sumerians say an ideological connection between tree roots and snakes, and this to him explained why in some myths Ningishzida was mixed up with thems of vegatation and fertility, while at the same time his physical representatins included snakes at the shoulders:

"....this seeming inconsistency of a god of trees who is also a god of serpents resolves itself once it is realized that the ancients considered the roots of trees in some ways "identical" with serpents....That they did so consider them is clear from the sign for tree root, arina, which consists of two crossed signs for serpent (MUŠ). A variant sign adds the sign for tree, g̃iš. In its earlier pictographic form this sign-group would have constituted a slightly abbreviated form of the 'caduceus." which thus shows itself as representing the trunk of a tree with its roots in sepent form. In fact, the representations of Ningišzida on Gudea's monuments may well be a humanized version of the "caduceus," the serpents' heads remain, but their bodies and the tree trunk having been made into a human figure."

On Gudea's vase - - What is this vase?

Jacobsen Comments: " On monuments he is pictured with serpents heads protruding from his shoulders and, in his preanthropomorphic form, as a "caduceus," a pole around which two symmetrical serpents wind themselves." (an accompaning note refers specifally to the vase and reads: "...The relief shows the gate of the god's cella through which the cult image is visible." The read is referred to L. Heuzeu, Catalogue des antiquites chaldiennes (Paris, 1902, no. 125 for an image. Does Jacobsen mean Gudea's cup I wonder? (See Nov.29 above.) I dont see how this is a gate, seems more link two semi-anthropomorphic beings holding a pole. )"



- In reply #30 we have some description of the snakes at the god's back from Anthony Green, a ANE scholar who is noted for his contribution to the study of Mesopotamian iconography, among other things.



"Another underworld god was Ningishzida. As he was the personal deity of Gudea, ruler of Lagash, he is depicted in the art of that time- for example, on Gudea's own cylinder seal, where the god introduces the ruler to the water-god Enki. Ningishzida is represented with horned Bašmu snakes (the horned viper Cerastes cerastes) rising from his shoulders (see fig.5 no. 4)."


When we refer to "fig.5 no.4" , which is on pg. 1848 (green14.jpg), we see that no.4 is a little drawing of a horned snake. The accompanying information tells us, that this image is attested from the Akkadian (?) period, down to the Kassite period. It's proposed identity, its names in semitic language, are 1. bašmu and 2. ušumgallu and the proposed translation for both is "poisonous snake."



By this we had learned that scholars suspect that the snakes that Sumerian artists depicted on Ningishzida's shoulders were probably modeled from real life snakes - because in this area of the Middle east, one can still find a snake that appears to have little horns on it's head, the snake is known today as Cerastes cerastes, but in ancient times it was probably called Bašmu. Below is a picture:

So what is the character of the Bašmu? We had noted Graham Cunningham's excellent observations, that author discusses snakes in the context of Ninazu, a netherworld god who is the father of Ningishzida:



"Ninazu - whose name (Lord Physician) suggests an involvement with healing - is a chthonic god associated with the underworld. Thus one tradition refers to him the "šita of the underworld, given birth by Ereškigal; ('šita-ki-gal-la dereš-ki-gal-la-ke4 tu-dal')7. Snakes are also associated with the underworld: for example, one royal inscription requests the underworld goddess Ninki to punish a transgressor by sending 'a snake from the underworld' (muš ki-ta)8. The Chthonic god has associations with the chthonic animal: for example, on $ulgi hymn relates Ninazu, in a broken content, to 'the fearsome snake' (muš-ḫuš)9 and another describes him as 'born on the kurmušša (possibly snake mountain)' ('kur-muš-ša tu-da-a')10. The deity is therefore appropriately invoked in Text 58 which is directed against the mythical ušumgal snake. This incantation confirms Ninazu's association with snakes given that its speaker addresses the ušumgal: 'Snake your king has sent me to you, your king Ninazu has sent me to you you' ('muš lugal-zu mu-ši-gi4 lugal-zu dnin-a-zu mu-ši-gi4'). 11"


7. Sargonic Hymn Cycle 182
8. Pre-Sargonic Inscriptions E'annatum 1 rev v 36
9. $ulgi Hymn D 308.
10. $ulgi Hymn X 93.
11. Text 58 5-7 . For Ninazu see further Wiggermann 1992 pp.151-52





So in short - I don't think that the snakes emanating from the shoulders of Ningishzida could easily be compared with flames or snakes of any culture that say these things as relating to ki, or to spiritual energy. What the Bašmu snakes likely symbolize is the cthonic or netherworld nature of this deity, whose father was Ninazu, a netherworld god. Ningishzida was originally some sort of netherworld god, whose mythology was at the end of the 3rd millennium confused with that of Dumuzi and Damu, dying gods with relevance the fertility of vegetation; subsequently, Jacobsen saw the need to explain the associaiton of tree roots and snakes, though mythological confusions aside, the snake is probably better understood in the context of the netherworld.


The snakes represent the netherworld so far as we can see, never do the texts state this in so many words, but by circumstantual evidence and association this seems the most reasonable suggestion. Although there is evidence for belief in ghosts, and dream spirits of a sort and this type of thing, the Mesopotamian werent given to spiritualism - they believed all were destined to enter the netherworld and to exist in a dreary and depressing state thereafter.

[dodo]

Thank you us4-he2-gal2 for your answer. Jacobsen’s tree roots connection is something I’m coming across for the first time, as regards to serpents (*). I think it is plausible, given the fertility metaphorical meaning of both trees and snakes. Therefore the snakes emanating from the shoulders could be – I dare to conjecture – a sign for the life giving force which the god is a bearer of.
This is only apparently in contrast with concepts like death and netherworld, for the chthonic serpent is (Mircea Eliade docet) also a symbol of positive aspects like fertility and wisdom (cf. van Buren).
Obviously the matter is far from simple and needs to be investigated, but from the elements I collected so far, it seems to me that the shoulder snakes are more the token of a benign trait of the god, than netherworld punishment monsters, or a simple sign of his family ties with Ninazu. It could also be all, since we know that mythic and religious symbolism is often multiple and multi-layered.


* Only in Nordic myth I found the connection root-snake, but in the enmity sense: there, a serpent is gnawing at the roots of the cosmic tree to make it collapse.

[us4-he2-gal2]

Dodo:





If it is an exercise in comparative religion, it may be well and good to suppose that Ningishzida was a god of wisdom or a god of healing or what have you based for example on expectations that may originate in visual analogies between the god's symbol and the Greek caduceus - van Buren, who was surely astute but whose work is now quite dated, may have yielded to that temptation when she suggested that the snake was *later* indicative of his curative powers. The flimsy evidence she used to state this was Ningishzida's *late* appearance in incantation literature, where he name was invoked to exorcise a demon - the truth is that the names of numerous gods were called upon to exorcise demons, but should this mean that everything about their iconography symbolizes healing? And Ningishzida is little attested in this context at all, certainly not before the later period. What did the snakes represent for the 2000 years of Mesopotamian mythology in which this god is absent from incantation lore?






Pg. 69: van Buren: " It has been suggested that Ningishzidda was originally god of the health-giving plant, the herb of life. Yet the plant which springs from the flowing vase is not peculiar to Ningizzida, and is symbolic of abundant vegetation produced by the fertilizing waters. The crested and crowned serpent was Ningizzida's symbol from very ancient times, and later it was certainly indicative of his curative powers.
One incantation text [exorcises] fever and 'every kind of bodily evil'; 'By Ningizzida, guzalû of the wide nether World, mayest thou be exorcised!' This passage has been interpreted to mean that Ningizzida, as a chthonian divinity, received the dead who were delivered over to him by Nedû, the Chief Porter of the Underworld. The reference is not to the dead however, but to the bodily evils which Nedû was adjured to seize and bring down into the land whence there is not return; whereas Ningizzida, in his character of physician, is merely called upon to exorcise them. "



Anyway, Ningishzida is a frustratingly vague Mesopotamian deity in so far as I can see, and whatever his original Mesopotamian traits were, they are infinitely more obscure the more we project our expectations from i.e. the Greek caduceus and so on.

[darkl2030]

Mar 17, 2012 12:17:17 GMT -5 dodo said:

Therefore the snakes emanating from the shoulders could be – I dare to conjecture – a sign for the life giving force which the god is a bearer of. This is only apparently in contrast with concepts like death and netherworld, for the chthonic serpent is (Mircea Eliade docet) also a symbol of positive aspects like fertility and wisdom (cf. van Buren).

It should certainly be noted that these concepts of fertility and wisdom are not at all at odds with a connection with the netherworld, since the netherworld was closely associated with the absu, home of Enki and the place from which the MEs of civilization first rose.

[dingo]

A very good piece of research on the serpent gods is Wiggermann's 'Transtigridian snake gods' found in pages 33-55 of 'Sumerian Gods and their Representations' ed Finkel & Geller, Styx 1997. He also provides some useful illustrations on pages 50-55.

[lilitudemon]

"Gudea the Sumerian ruler of Lagash regarded Ningishzida as a personal god who protected him. He recorded an appearence by the god from a dream. Ningishzida is represented by the horned vipers rising from the shoulders. Gudea built a temple of Ningirsu for the god and he even appears on Gudea's cylinder seal." - Summary from Gods, Demons, and Symbols.