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Kanisurra (also Gansurra, Ganisurra) was a Mesopotamian goddess who belonged to the entourage of Nanaya. Much about her character remains poorly understood, though it is known she was associated with love. Her name might be derived from the word ganzer, referring to the underworld or to its entrance. In addition to Nanaya, she could be associated with deities such as Gazbaba, Išḫara and Uṣur-amāssu. She is first attested in sources from Uruk from the Ur III period, and continued to be worshiped in this city as late as in the Seleucid Empire.
Paul-Alain Beaulieu proposes that Kanisurra's name might represent an Akkadian or otherwise non-standard pronunciation of the Sumerian ganzer, a name of the underworld or specifically of its entrance, as a lexical text from Old Babylonian Nippur attests that kanisurra was one of the readings of the logogram IGI.KUR.ZA, which corresponded to this term. According to Beaulieu, early forms of Kanisurra's name, Gansura and Ganisurra, could be explained as intermediate stages between ganzer and the standard spelling of the theonym in the Old Babylonian period and later. The etymology of ganzer is uncertain, though it has been proposed that it can be explained as the phrase "let me destroy him." Dina Katz considers this proposal unlikely, and suggests it might have originated in a substrate language instead. She also notes ganzer occurs rarely in literary texts, and is best known from lexical lists. Based on the possible etymology of the name, Beaulieu proposes that Kanisurra was a deified part of the underworld in origin. A different proposal is that she was originally a hypostasis of Inanna, and represented the time when Venus is not visible on the sky.
Kanisurra could be referred with the epithet bēlet kaššāpāti, "lady of the sorceresses." This title appears in one Maqlû incantation, and in another similar text from outside this corpus.
An illness called the "hand of Kanisurra" is attested in a medical text alongside "hand of Nanaya," "hand of Iqbi-damiq" and "hand of Qibi-dumqi."
It is commonly assumed Kanisurra was a daughter of Nanaya. However, as remarked by Gioele Zisa in a recent publication, as of 2021 there is no direct evidence in favor of this view. In known copies of an explanatory version of the Weidner god list, the line explaining whose daughter Kanisurra was regarded as is not fully preserved.
Another deity associated with Kanisurra was Uṣur-amāssu, who appears alongside her in an account of a cultic journey of Nanaya to Kish, and like her was associated with the latter goddess as well as Ishtar. Walther Sallaberger suggests that Uṣur-amāssu functioned as an alternate name of Kanisurra in the first millennium BCE, while Jeremy Black and Anthony Green assume she was her Akkadian counterpart.
In a trilingual edition of the Weidner god list from Ugarit, Kanisurra is explained as Kanizuran in Hurrian language and Lēlu in Ugaritic. However, the value of this document as a source of information about religious beliefs of inhabitants of Ugarit, both Ugaritic and Hurrian religion, has been questioned, as many entries are simply phonetic renderings of Mesopotamian which do not occur elsewhere.
In the Old Babylonian period, during the reign of Sîn-gāmil, An-am built a temple of Kanisurra, most likely in Uruk. While it is known that he reigned as a king of Uruk himself, the inscription mentioning this construction project comes from before his ascent to the throne. Kanisurra is addressed as Nin-Iturungal, "lady of the Iturungal canal," in it. In the late Old Babylonian period, many of the functionaries of the cults of Inanna of Uruk, Nanaya and Kanisurra moved to Kish. In the same period, Kanisurra was also worshiped in the territories controlled by the First Sealand dynasty. However, only a single offering list from the latter area mentions her. Based on its context it is likely that it was connected to Uruk, perhaps because it was also the result of displacement of the cults native to that city. Kanisurra and Nanaya were also worshiped in Eturkalamma, a temple of Ishtar in Babylon.
In the first millennium BCE Kanisurra is attested on a kudurru (boundary stone) from the reign of Marduk-zakir-shumi I which mentions a certain Ibni-Ishtar, who held various positions among the clergy of Ishtar, Nanaya and Uṣur-amāssu. A gate, a street and a city quarter named after her existed in Uruk. She might be one of the deities collectively referred to as "the ladies" (dGAŠAN.MEŠ) who often appear alongside the five lead deities of this city (Ishtar, Nanaya, Uṣur-amāssu, Urkayītu and Bēltu-ša-Rēš) in Neo-Babylonian inscriptions, though this theory is presently impossible to prove conclusively. She continued to be associated with Uruk as late as in the Seleucid Empire. The late sources indicate that she was among the deities worshiped during the akitu festival of Ishtar.
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