seeker666utu:
As far as Meslamtaea is concerned, I would suggest the following threads for some additional information. First Sheshki has made an interesting post on Sept. 10 2014:
enenuru.proboards.com/thread/361/deities-ancient-mesopotamia-overview?page=4Also, on August 4 2011, see under Meslamtaea and under Nergal:
enenuru.proboards.com/thread/361/deities-ancient-mesopotamia-overview?page=2 It may be a good practice to make use of the enenuru search feature when starting a new topic, and I don't say that in the way that most forum adminstrators do, who are impatient with the same topic being brought up. Its fine by me if people want to discuss Mesopotamian topics endlessly. But I say that in the sense of - you will probably find some gems with the search feature. In fact, I use it before responding to most posts for the simple reason that I can't remember everything that has been posted in the last 7 years, and sometimes the old points are important. If you search for Meslamtaea, bear in mind that we had a member who used this name as his alias and this may result in some confusion.
So a third post of value here is one I made on Nov 4 2008:
enenuru.proboards.com/thread/412/temple-identification-guide So together with Sheshki's summarizations of Leick (a book which gives basic descriptions of many Mesopotamian gods) and the post I made in 2008, one can get a sense of who Meslamtaea was within the Mesopotamian pantheon. One thing I had noted earlier was:
"About the difficulty with Nergal`s cult center we must note that at least in the relevant period, it was definitely in Kutha. Meslam was a district within Kutha just as Girsu was a district within Lagash. And we have to note the confusing point that Gudua is one way to read the text which more often is read Kutha - Gudua or Kutha, same city. Mešlam was its district."
So the important take away here is that the relationship between Nergal and Meslamtaea has something to do with the overlapping geography of their divine abodes, home cities. The most authoritative discussion on this issue that I have yet seen comes from Dina Katz' work "The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources" (2003) which is an excellent resource for all things related to the netherworld. On page 420 the author gives an overview of the god Meslamtaea. In her estimation, Meslamtaea actually predated Nergal as the god of Kutha, and Nergal was introduced to the area during the reign of Naram-sin (in the Sargonic period). Page 427 states:
"I propose, therefore, that Meslamtaea was the principle god of Kutha when Naramsin transferred the cult of Nergal from KIš.UNU to Emeslam. Since old religious traditions cannot cease abruptly or vanish, certainly not in a complex socity, both deities were worshipped in parallel until the Ur III period. The offering-lists of that period prove that the cult of Meslamtaea did not decline and that of Nergal did not flourish before the Old Babylonian period."
So were are used to thinking of Nergal as *the* god of Kutha, but this was not fully standardized until the Old Babylonian period (1900s) some 1300 years after the dawn of Sumerian civilization. Indeed, not until the Sumerian language itself had all but ceased as a spoken language in the area. But it is from the OB period that the great majority of literary religious texts come from, from the copies of the Semitic speaking Babylonian scribes who worked hard to copy and perpetuate the Sumerian texts.. and so sometimes the notion of the gods we recover is colored by this situation. In any case, the deities Nergal and Meslamtaea did converge into one deity at some point, so that scholars often speak of Meslamtaea as 'another name for Nergal.'
As for name itself, scholar's aren't 100% certain on how to interpret the name. The more you read about Sumerian, the more clear it will become that it is not an exact science. Katz gives the following reading of the name, which I will label and discuss:
mes(a)-lam(b)-ta(c)-è(d)-a(e)
a) mes: this sign can either designate a hero/youth or it can designate a tree. Scholars differ as to which value should be read here. Katz argues for the value 'hero/youth'
b) lam: a type of tree, probably almond. (The Encyclopedia Britanica translation draws on another value of lam which entails luxuriance.)
c) ta: probably indicating the grammatical case, ablative (meaning: away from)
d) è: the Sumerian verb 'to go out'
e) a: another grammatical element, probably nominalizing (no translation)
Putting these elements together, Katz comes to a translation of 'lad who comes out of the almond tree.' (p.421). This implies to her that the divinity of Meslamtaea was associated with the fruit of the almond tree, which puts him in line with other dying gods whose life was connected with the changing of the seasons (to include Damu and yes Ningishzida). Although, that they had this in common doesn't mean that they were necessarily mean that similar or the same.
