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Nanaya (Sumerian , DingirNA.NA.A; also transcribed as "Nanāy", "Nanaja", "Nanāja", '"Nanāya", or "Nanai"; antiquated transcription: "Nanâ"; in Greek language: Ναναια or Νανα; , ) was a Mesopotamian goddess of love closely associated with Inanna.
While she is well attested in Mesopotamian textual sources from many periods, from the times of the Third Dynasty of Ur to the Fall of Babylon and beyond, and was among the most commonly-worshipped goddesses through much of Mesopotamian history, both her origin and the meaning of her name are unknown. It has been proposed that she originated either as a minor Akkadian Empire goddess or as a hypostasis of Inanna, but the evidence is inconclusive.
Her primary role was that of a goddess of love, and she was associated with eroticism and sensuality, though she was also a patron of lovers, including rejected or betrayed ones. Especially in early scholarship, she was often assumed to be a goddess of the planet Venus like Inanna, but this view is no longer supported by most Assyriologists.
In addition to Inanna, she could be associated with other deities connected either to love or to the city of Uruk, such as Išḫara, Kanisurra or Uṣur-amāssu.
Two theories which are now regarded as discredited but which gained some support in past scholarship include the view that Nanaya was in origin an Arameans deity, implausible in the light of Nanaya being attested before the Arameans and their language, and an attempt to explain her name as derived from Elamite language, which is unlikely due to her absence from oldest Elamite sources. Occasionally Indo-European etymologies are proposed too, but the notion that there was an Indo-European substrate in Mesopotamia is generally considered to be the product of faulty methodology and words to which such an origin had been attributed in past studies tend to have plausible Sumerian, Semitic or Hurrian language origin.
Frans Wiggermann proposes that Nanaya was originally an epithet of Inanna connected to her role as a goddess of love, and that the original form of the name had the meaning "My Inanna!" but eventually developed into a separate, though similar, deity. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz considers it a possibility that Nanaya was initially a hypostasis of "Inanna as quintessence of womanhood," similar to how Annunitum represented her as a warrior. However, Joan Goodnick Westenholz argued that the view that Nanaya was a manifestation of Inanna in origin should be considered a misconception.
An artificial Sumerian etymology was created for the name in late Babylonian texts, deriving it from NA, "to call," with a feminine suffix, A. A possible translation of this ancient scholarly explanation is "the one who keeps calling" or "the calling one". Invented etymologies were a common topic of late cuneiform commentaries.
A characteristic frequently attributed to Nanaya as a goddess of love, present in the majority of royal inscriptions pertaining to her and in many other documents, was described with the Sumerian word ḫili and its Akkadian equivalent kubzu, which can be translated as charm, luxuriance, voluptuousness or sensuality. Joan Goodnick Westenholz favors "sensuality" in translations of epithets involving this term, while Paul-Alain Beaulieu - "voluptuousness." Such titles include belet kubzi, "lady of voluptuousness/sensuality," and nin ḫili šerkandi, "the lady adorned with voluptuousness/sensuality." An inscription of Esarhaddon describes her as "adorned with voluptuousness and joy." However, it was not an attribute exclusively associated with her, and in other sources it is described as a quality of both male and female deities, for example Shamash, Aya, Ishtar and Nisaba.
Nanaya was also associated with kingship, especially in the Isin-Larsa period, when a relationship with her, possibly some type of hieros gamos, was "an aspect of true kingship". Joan Goodnick Westenholz rules out any association between Nanaya and nursing in the context of royal ideology.
Nanaya was also one of the deities believed to protect from the influence of the demon lamashtu, in this role often acting alongside Ishtar.
Nanaya eventually developed a distinctly warlike aspect, mostly present in relation to the so-called "Nanaya Eurshaba", worshipped in Borsippa independently from Nabu. She was instead associated with the god Mār-bīti, described as warlike and as a "terrifying hero", and, like in Uruk, with Uṣur-amāssu. Like Inanna, she could also be identified with Irnina, the deified victory.
According to Joan Goodnick Westenholz it is possible that a further aspect of Nanaya which presently cannot be determined is alluded to in an incantation from Isin, according to which she was the denizen of a location usually regarded as profane rather than sacred, the šutummu, understood as treasury, storehouse or granary. The text contrasts her dwelling place with the dais on which Ishtar sits.
Neo-Babylonian archives from Uruk contain extensive lists of cultic paraphernalia dedicated to Nanaya, including a feathered tiara (presumably similar to that depicted on the kudurru of Meli-Shipak II), a crown, multiple breast ornaments (including breastplates decorated with depictions of snakes and fantastic animals), assorted jewelry and other small valuables like mirrors and cosmetic jars, and a large variety of garments, some of them decorated with golden rosette-shaped sequins).
In a single late text Nanaya is associated with an unidentified spice, ziqqu.
Corona Borealis was associated with Nanaya in astronomical texts.
Another possible depiction of Nanaya is present on a kudurru from Borsippa from the reign of Nabu-shuma-ishkun.
On an Aramean pithos from Assur Nanaya is depicted in robes with a pattern of stars and crescents.
A number of Hellenized depictions of Nanaya are known from the Parthian Empire period, one possible example being the figure of a naked goddess discovered as a tomb deposit, wearing a crescent-shaped diadem. Late depictions also often show her with a bow, but it is uncertain if it was a part of her iconography before the Hellenistic period.
Many sources present Nanaya as a protégée of Inanna, but only three known texts (a song, a votive formula and an oath) also describe them as mother and daughter, and they might only be epithets implying a close connection between the functions of the two rather than an account of a theological speculation. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz assumes that the evidence only makes it plausible that king Lipit-Ishtar regarded Nanaya as a daughter of Inanna. Joan Goodnick Westenholz describes the relationship between the two goddesses as "definite if unspecified". Only in very late sources from the first millennium BCE they could be fully conflated with each other. Laura Cousin and Yoko Watai argue that their character was not necessarily perceived as identical even in late periods, and attribute the predominance of Nanaya over Ishtar in Neo-Babylonian to her nature being perceived as less capricious.
A variety of epithets associate Nanaya both with Inanna and the Eanna temple, for example "ornament of Eanna", "pride of the Eanna", "the deity who occupies the high throne of the land of Uruk".
As early as in the Ur III period, Nanaya came to be associated with the goddess Bizilla. Her name might mean "she who is pleasing" in Sumerian. God lists could equate them with each other. It is assumed that Bizilla occurs among deities from the court of the prison goddess Nungal in some sources too, though Jeremiah Peterson considers it possible that there might have been two deities with similar names, one associated with Nungal and the other with Nanaya. It is possible that Bizilla was regarded as the sukkal of Enlil's wife Ninlil in Ḫursaĝkalama.
Much like Ninshubur, Nanaya was frequently associated with the Lamassu goddesses, a class of minor deities believed to intercede between humans and major gods, and in some texts she is called the "lady of lamma." One example comes from inscriptions of Kudur-Mabuk and Rim-Sîn I, who apparently regarded Nanaya as capable of mediating on their behalf with Anu and Inanna, and of assigning lamma deities to them.
Uṣur-amāssu is another deity who is well attested in connection with Nanaya. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz notes that some publications regard Uṣur-amāssu to be a cognomen of Nanaya rather than an independent deity. However, they were two distinct deities in Neo-Babylonian Uruk, and Uṣur-amāssu's origin as an originally male deity from the circle of Adad is well attested.
The Elamite goddess Narundi, in Mesopotamia best known for her connection to the Sebitti, was possibly associated with Nanaya or Ishtar.
It is commonly assumed that both Kanisurra and Gazbaba were daughters of Nanaya. However, as remarked by Gioele Zisa there is however no direct evidence in favor of this interpretation. In the Weidner god list, the line explaining whose daughter Kanisurra is, is not preserved.
In one text from the Maqlû corpus Ishtar, Dumuzi, Nanaya identified as "lady of love") and Kanisurra (identified as "mistress of the witches", bēlet kaššāpāti) were asked to counter the influence of a malevolent spell. In some love incantations, Ishtar, Nanaya, Kanisurra and Gazbaba are invoked together. Another goddess sometimes associated with combinations of them in such texts was Išḫara.
In late texts Kanisurra and Gazbaba are collectively labeled as "Daughters of Ezida". Most groups of such "divine daughters" are known from northern Mesopotamia: Ezida in Borsippa, Esagil in Babylon, Emeslam in Kutha, Edubba in Kish, Ebabbar in Sippar, Eibbi-Anum in Dilbat, and from an unidentified temple of Ningublaga, though examples are also known from Uruk, Nippur, Eridu and even Erbil in Assyria. Based on the fact that daughters of Esagil and of Ezida are identified as members of courts of Sarpanit and of Nanaya respectively, specifically as their hairdressers, it has been proposed by Andrew R. George that these pairs of goddesses were imagined as maidservants in the household of the major deity or deities of a given temple.
In some early sources Nanaya's spouse was the sparsely attested god Muati, though from the Kassite period onward she started to be associated with Nabu instead. She sometimes appeared as part of a trinity in which Nabu's original spouse Tashmetum was also included. In the role of Nabu's spouse Nanaya could be referred to as kalat Esagil, "daughter in law of Esagil", which reflected a connection to Nabu's father Marduk. Both Nanaya and Tashmetum could be called the "queen of Borsippa", though the former eventually overshadowed the latter in that city. Tashmetum however retains the role of spouse of Nabu in most Neo-Assyrian sources, and was worshipped in this role in Kalhu and Nineveh. The evidence of worship of Nanaya in the same areas is inconclusive.
In the first millennium BCE pairing Nabu with Nanaya in some cases, for example in Uruk, represented efforts to subordinate the pantheons of various areas of Mesopotamia to the dominant state ideology of the Babylonian empire, which elevated Marduk and Nabu above other deities.
One late Babylonian litany assigns the epithets of Tashmetum, but also Ninlil and Sarpanit, to Nanaya.
Texts from the reign of Rim-Sin I and Samsu-iluna are the oldest sources to identify her as a daughter of Anu, a view later also present in an inscription of Esarhaddon. Paul-Alain Beaulieu speculates that Nanaya developed in a milieu in which An and Inanna were viewed as a couple, and that she was initially envisioned as their daughter. However, as noted by Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz, direct references to Nanaya being regarded as the daughter of Inanna are not common, and it is possible that an epithet indicating closeness between the deities rather than a statement about actual parentage is meant. References to Nanaya as a daughter of Sin, likely a result of syncretism between her and Ishtar are also known, for example from a hymn from the reign of the neo-Assyrian king Sargon II.
In a bilingual Akkadian-Amorites Lexical lists dated to the Old Babylonian period, Nanaya's Amorite counterpart is Pidray, a goddess otherwise only known from later texts from Ugarit, in which she is treated as analogous to the Hurrian goddess Ḫepat instead.
Her principal cult center was Uruk, where she is already mentioned in year names of kings Irdanene and Sin-Eribam from the Old Babylonian period. Her main temple in that city was Emeurur, "the temple which gathers the me." She was also worshipped in a sanctuary within Eanna, the main temple of Inanna, which was called Ehilianna, "house of luxuriance of heaven." It is possible that it was originally built by the Kassite king Nazi-Maruttash. According to an inscription of Esarhaddon, Eriba-Marduk expanded it. It still functioned in the Seleucid Empire period. Another of her temples located in Uruk was Eshahulla, "house of the joyful heart," built by king Sin-kashid. In neo-Babylonian Uruk, Nanaya was second in rank only to Ishtar in the local pantheon. Paul-Alain Bealieu considers them to be the main pair among the city's quintet of major local goddesses, the other three being Bēltu-ša-Rēš (later replaced by Sharrahitu, a goddess identified with Ashratum, the spouse of Amurru), Uṣur-amāssu and Urkayītu (a theos eponymos of Uruk,) As early as in the Middle Babylonian period, Nanaya was called the "queen of Uruk and Eanna," as attested on a kudurru from Larsa. In Neo-Babylonian sources from Uruk, she is called the "queen of Uruk," while Ishtar was the "lady of Uruk."
Nanaya was among the deities taken away from Uruk when Sennacherib sacked the city, though she was subsequently returned to it by Esarhaddon. Ashurbanipal also claimed that he brought her statue back to Uruk, though he instead states that she spent 1635 years in Elam. It is presently unknown what event his inscriptions refer to, and it might merely be a rhetorical figure. If it refers to a historical event, it is possible that it occurred during the reign of Ebi-Eshuh, during which Elamites raided Sippar and perhaps Kish, though due to lack of any sources other than the aforementioned late annals this cannot be conclusively proven.
Offerings made to Nanaya in neo-Babylonian Uruk included dates, barley, emmer, flour, beer, sweets, cakes, fish and meat of oxen, sheep, lambs, ducks, geese and turtle doves.
After the reorganization of the pantheon of Uruk around Anu and Antu in the Achaemenid and Seleucid periods, Nanaya continued to be worshipped and she is attested as one of the deities whose statues were paraded in Uruk in a ritual procession accompanying Ishtar (rather than Antu) during a New Year celebration. The scale of her popular cult in Uruk grew considerably through Seleucid times.
The name Eshahulla, known from Uruk, was applied to a temple in Larsa built by Kudur-Mabuk and his son Rim-Sin I, which seemingly was also a temple of Inanna, unless two temples with the same name existed in the same city. In Larsa, Nanaya was one of the foremost deities, next to Utu (the city's tutelary god), Inanna, Ishkur and Nergal. Joint offerings to Inanna and Nanaya of Larsa are known from a number of documents. She is also attested as one member of a trinity whose other two members were Innanna and Ninsianna, in which Inanna's functions were seemingly split between the three goddesses, with Nanaya being allotted the role of the love goddess.
In offering lists from the archives of the First Dynasty of Sealand Nanaya appears alongside various hypostases of Inanna, including Inanna of Larsa, though the latter could also be associated with the rainbow goddess Manzat instead. In a single case, Nanaya is also accompanied by Kanisurra in an offering list.
A temple of Nanaya built by Lipit-Ishtar existed in Isin. The oldest recorded hymn dedicated to her also comes from this city. However, there is overall less evidence for the worship of Nanaya in Isin than in Larsa, as the kings of Isin apparently favored the goddesses Ninisina and Ninsianna instead.
In Babylon Nanaya is attested for the first time during the reign of Sumu-la-El, who ordered statues of her and of Inanna to be fashioned in his twenty sixth year on the throne. Later she was worshipped in the Eturkalamma, "house, cattle pen of the land," built by Hammurabi for deities of Uruk - Inanna, Nanaya, Anu and Kanisurra, and later on in the temples Emeurur and Eurshaba, "house, oracle of the heart." A temple named Eurshaba existed in Borsippa too, though Nanaya was worshipped in a chapel in Ezida, the temple of Nabu as well. A late ritual text describes the procession undertaken by Nanaya, her court and various other deities from Borsippa to Kish. A festival celebrating the marriage of Nanaya and Nabu is still attested from Borsippa from Seleucid times. A unique writing of Nanaya's name, dNIN.KA.LI, is known from documents related to it.
In the late Old Babylonian period the cult of Nanaya was also introduced to Kish, where the clergy of Uruk found refuge after abandoning the temporarily destroyed city.
Temples of Nanaya are also attested from Kazallu (Eshahulla, "house of the happy heart"), and from Nerebtum, though the name of the latter is not known, and it is simply called e dNa-na-a-a in known texts.
In Nippur Nanaya had no temple of her own, though offerings to her are attested from a temple of Ninurta located there.
It is possible that Nanaya was worshipped in Der, though the evidence is limited to a list of deities of that city taken away by Shamshi-Adad V during his fifth campaign against Babylonia. Some evidence also exists for offerings made to her in Sippar and in Dur-Kurigalzu.
In Assur, there was a gate named in honor of Nanaya and Uṣur-amāssu. However, it is uncertain if her cult had much presence in northern Mesopotamia.
There is a lot of evidence for private worship of Nanaya, including seals with the phrase "servant of Nanaya" seemingly owned by many women. In incantations related to love (for example asking for feelings to be returned) she is attested as early as in the Ur III and Old Babylonian periods. Numerous theophoric names are attested as well. However, none of them come from the Ur III period, and in the Old Babylonian period they are limited to only a few cities, including Dilbat, Kish, Sippar, Larsa, Ur and most likely Uruk. Over two thirds of the known Old Babylonian names come from the first two of these settlements alone. Both men and women with such names are listed in records. In the neo-Babylonian period, Nanaya was the deity most commonly present in theophoric names of women, with 106 individual women and 52 different names attested. Examples include: Qis-Nanaya ("Gift of Nanaya), Nanaja-šamhat ("Nanaya is the most beautiful"), Nanaya-ilu ("my deity Nanaya"). One historically notable individual bearing such a name was Ḫunnubat-Nanaya, daughter of Babylonian king Melišipak (ca. 1186-1172 BCE), depicted alongside her father and the goddess on a famous kudurru. Another was Iddin-Nanaya, a sanga priest of this goddess active during the reign of king Irdanene of Uruk, apparently responsible for various misdeeds, including the removal of a star symbol from the doors of the Nanaya temple.
The only known reference to worship of Nanaya among the Hittites comes from a single document mentioning her as the goddess of the town Malidaskuriya in the district of Durmitta, located in the proximity of the middle of the river Kızılırmak. It has been proposed that her worship in that location was a relic of Old Assyrian practices. Possible theophoric names are known from Hittite sources too.
Nanaya was also worshipped in Susa in Elam, where she is particularly well attested in Seleucid times. It is uncertain at which point was she introduced to this city, though it has been proposed her arrival in the local pantheon was connected with the theft of her statue during a raid. Greek authors regarded her as the main goddess of Susa.
In a mythical explanation of the rites of Egashankalamma (the temple of the Assyrian Ishtar of Arbela) pertaining to the mourning of Ishtaran's death, Nanaya is described as a goddess who provides Bel with an iron arrows.
In the Hurrian tale of Appu six deities are listed alongside the cities where they were worshipped, among them Marduk, Shaushka and Nanaya, whose cult center in this text is Kiššina. Joan Goodnick Westenholz considers it to be an unidentified location, but Volkert Haas assumes the name might be derived from Kish.
Nanaya is mentioned in the Second Book of Maccabees. She also appears in Acts of Mar Mu'ain, according to which Sasanian king Shapur II ordered the eponymous Syriac saint to make offerings to various deities, including her. Dedications to Nanaya, written in Pahlavi scripts, appear on some jewelry from the Sasanian Empire period. However, there is no evidence that the rulers from this dynasty were involved in her cult, similar evidence is also lacking for the Achaemenid emperors from the earlier period of Persian history.
The last Mesopotamian reference to Nanaya appears in a Mandean Aramaic spell from Nippur dated to the fifth or sixth century in which she appears alongside Shamash, Sin, Bel and Nergal, though all of these deities, including her, appear to be treated as male in this case, indicating that the precise identity of the figures invoked was already forgotten.
Some late references to a goddess partially derived from Nanaya are known from Sogdia, where a Greek and Kushan-influenced version of her was worshipped in Panjakent as late as in the eighth century. Her depictions in Sogdian art have no clear forerunners in earlier tradition, and appear to be based on four-armed Mahayana Buddhist art figures.
Syriac scholar Bar Bahlul, active around the year 1000, in his Syriac-Arabic dictionary defined Nanaya as a name which Arabs purportedly applied to the planet Venus. This is the last known pre-modern reference to Nanaya.
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