Nisaba's Astral Observations
This thread makes it fairly clear I have no great perspective for the origin of Astral sciences in Mesopotamia, so my taking notes seems justified. At this point Im trying to review some of the earliest textual mentions of Astral knowledge, but am uncertain to what extent the Sumerians distinguished between what we call Astronomy and Astrology (the belief that human affairs are correlated with the positions of celestial objects.) I believe the below would present some mythologized evidence for the former and perhaps a minimal case for the of the latter.
Quite a ways back, Id been able to skim '
Mesopotamian Astrology: An introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Divination' by Ulla Koch-Westenholz, whose comments on Third millennium sources and particularly on Nisaba I found interesting - some of which I summed as
:She is said to measure heaven and earth, to know the secrets of
calculation, and , together with Suen, to "count the days." She was
associated in some way with the stars already in the Fara period. Her
temple in Eresh was called e-mul-mul, "House of the Stars". Among
many other tablets she had a lapis-lazuli tablet which is sometimes
called the dub mul-an, "tablet with the stars of the heavens", or dub
mul an-ku, "tablet with the stars of the pure heavens". It was kept
in her "House of Wisdom".
Further Id summed
: Cross referenceing this at ETCSL, I notice she is called "the
celestrial star" in the exploits of Ninurta, and concerning her, a
few lines later the text reads: "whose every work accomplished meets
with complete success, to her …… which is not unravelled, to her for
whom the days are counted according to the phases of the moon". Koch-Westenholz states that she she worked with Suen, to "count the days" - and to this is added "the knowledge of astronomy attributed to her was
used to correct the vagaries of the lunar calendar." Such knowledge
of astronomy that is attested in "The herds of Nanna" where cows seem to be a metaphor for stars - a line reads: "Nisaba has taken their grand total; Nisaba has taken their count, and she is writing it on clay."
Such is all I had on this for a time.
On the Earliest Sumerian Literary Tradition JCS 1976
However Ive recently been able to access Alster's article which highlights archaic texts from Abu Salabikh and some from Fara as well, both corpus are beleived to date to approx 2600 B.C. Among the objects of interest given in this article are instance's of Nisaba and the stars from the Fara texts, which must be what Koch-Westenholz referred to above ("associated with stars in some way already in the Fara period.") The relevent parts of these texts are given by Alster as:
(The concluding lines only are given, no translations, Ive copied 3 examples out of seven below)
"Deimel Fara 2 SF 18 vii:
nisaba EZEN
XAN
nisaba men lul
EZEN
XAN EZEN
XAN
mul.an
dinanna zag.me dug
4(?)
Deimel Fara 2 SF 55 r.xii:
men LAK 654 lul tuku nisaba
nisaba EZEN
XAN
EZEN
XAN EZEN
XAN
mul.an-zu
x (MI)
Deimal Fara 2 SF 56 r.x:
dnisaba zag.me
en tuku LAK 654 lul nisaba
nisaba EZENXAN
EZENXAN EZ[ENXAN]
mul.[an]-zu
x(MI)
dnisaba [zag].m[e]
"Alster's commentary is the valuable part here:
"Althougth we cannot translate these concluding lines word by word, we can observe two constant features of interest, the mention of the goddess Nisaba, and of stars (mul.an). With this we may compare the mention of stars both in the conclusion of the archaic and of the Old Babylonian version of "The Instructions of $uruppak." Normally we are used to thinking of Nisaba as a grain goddess, for good reasons, but the ideas involved here find a clear expression in the doxology of an unpublished hymn to Nusku, CBS 8548: [munus] zi mul.an-da kúš-ù
dnisaba zag-mí "praise be to Nisaba, good woman who consults the stars of heaven!" This is not a unique statement, for the doxology of one of the major pieces of Sumerian literature, the myth "lugal-e" is to be reconstructed accordingly: [munus] zi mul.an-da šà kúš-ù [dnisa]ba zag.mí. In what follows I quote the remaining passages from Sumerian texts where similar ideas may be involved.
In the conclusion of "Lugal-e," lines 694-695, we read:
munus mul.an nun-e abzu-ta gal-le-eš-šè sig
7-ga
in.nin é.GE$TU
2.
dNISABA šà-ge gìš dug
4Woman, "heaven star," whom the Lord (=Enki) has made
appear brilliantly from the Abzu,
Note 1queen, conceived in(?) "Nisaba's House of Wisdom."
Here Nisaba is described as a star rising from the subterranean ocean, Abzu. Similarly, in the collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns, line 529, her house is described as if it were the starry sphere: é mul.(mul.)an é za.gìn dar-a kur-kur-ra šu mu-un-bad, "House, heaven-star, spreading the hands on all mountains." In the conclusion of the same text she is said to be the determiner of the cosmic dimensions, lines 538-541:
dub za.gìn-ta ad gi
4-gi
4-gi
4kur-kur-ra ad.ša
4 gá-gá-gá
munus zi naga k ù-ga gi.dù-e tu-da
an.né kúš ra-ra ki éš ra-ra
Continually she consults the lapis lazuli tablet,
continually she shouts to the mountains,
the good woman, holy lye plant, borne by a growing reed,
measures of heaven, throws the measuring cord on earth.
"Alster explains the first first mention of the lapis lazuli tablet occurs in a hymn to Nisaba [6n t 788] reading "who consults the lapis lazuli tablet". In Gudea Cylinder A a line reads "She [Nisaba] placed the tablet "heaven-star" on her knees and consulted it" and this accord well with a line from another hymn to Nisaba (published by W.Hallo 1970) reading "He opened "Nisaba's House of Wisdom," he placed the lapis lazuli tablet on his knees, and consulted the pure tablet 'heaven-star." The auther continues:
"Here one would probably have to visualize the lapis lazuli tablet as a star chart, used as a horoscope. Noticeable is the introduction to the same hymn, where it is said: nin mul.an-gim dar-a dub za-gìn šu du
8, "Queen, shining like the heaven-star, holding the lapis lazuli tablet in her hand." In the "Nanše Hymn," line 98, in connection with the judgment which takes place on New Year's Day, it is said that Nisaba "places the very precious tablet on (her) knees" (dub kal-kal du
10-ba nam-mi-in-gar).
The House of Nisaba's Wisdom" (é GE$TU
2.
dNISABA) is mentioned in line 695 of "Lugal-e" (quoted above), and is called "the great house of heaven" in "Enmerker and the Lord of Aratta" 322-23. By entering it Enmerker invents a plan which he caries out in the following section of the poem. According to the hymn of Enlilbani (A.Kapp, ZA 51 76-87), line 53, the king is blessed with being capable of finding justice from the lapis lazuli tablet in that house (dub za.gìn é GE$TU
2.
dNISABA-ka-ni). In Gudea's Cylinder A xvii 15, it is mentioned as the place from which the plan of the new temple is revealed. In "$ulgi Hymn B" 307-310 we read that a star will be born in honor of king $ulgi, and that his fame (níg-dé-a) has been manifested in Nippur, in "the House of Nisaba's Wisdom, in the star of my song" (é GE$TU
2.
dNISABA mul èn.du-gá-ka). The same house is mentioned in connection with ḫaja, a god of scribal art, in a hymn to Rimsin, UET 6 101 3, and in a fragment of a lamentation, ISET 2 137, Ni. 4205:9.
" So I think Alster has very adequetly sketched early ideas about Nisaba, and not only is mythologized evidence for early Sumerian Astral observation present, but some very interesting religious convictions are suggested, specfically the deep connections between the Wisdom of Enki and Nisaba - the Hymn to Nisaba A is full of such connection. In light of Alster's discussion its also interesting to consider again Hal-an-kug, where Enki went before pondering creation in 'Enki and Ninmah'. Im under the belief that Hal-an-kug is in, or is same as the "House of Wisdom", in part due to a line from a Hymn to ḫaia, in which that deity is called "Accountant of Hal-an-kug, having the final overview of the arts of Nisaba's house of wisdom." Certainly the House of Wisdom seems to imbued with its qualities of guidance and inspiration by merit of Nisaba's own astral observations and of course the knowledge that endows her with - Im not sure if when plans or designs are obtained there if these would be better thought of as astronomical or astrological, assuming either term exactly fits.
Note 1 Here Alster notes this would appear to illustrates a key point in Sumerian mythology - that part of the world order is that stars emerge every evening from the subterranean ocean of Enki, whose roles as "giver of the cosmic measure (me) goes closely together with the concept that light arises from his ocean." See also Temple hymns 16, his Ziggurat is the "place where he calls upon the Sun," and in Enki and the World Order he obtains control over "fixing the terms at the place where the Sun rises."