A blog full of Mesopotamian Polytheism, anthropology nerdery, and writer moods. Devotee of Nisaba. Currently obsessed with: the Summa Perfectionis.
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On Nisaba: Epithets
On Nisaba: Epithets
This is just a quick way to dust my brain of ideas before bed, but also a thing I've been interested in. I should be a good scribe and list sources, do some superscript numbers, and all that jazz. I am a sleepy scribe who needs to earn money in the morning, so I'm taking shortcuts like a college student.
Historical terms used for Nisaba:
Mother of the Burning
Priestess of the Country
Purity-Adorned
Noble Lady whose body is the flecked barley
Splendid Radiance
Righteous Wild Cow
Exceedingly Wise
Foremost of the Land
Righteous woman
Woman who swells with joy
Lady who radiates
Exalted Scribe of An
Land-Registrar of Enlil
Beautiful Woman
Lady Colored Like The Stars
Dragon Emerging in Glory at the Festival
Lady Of Broad Wisdom
Lady of the Protective Spirits
Lady of the House of Wisdom
She whose Heart knows Counting
Throne-Bearer of Ninlil
These are not all limited to her, but they have been used to reference her. Her "spheres" if you want to be picky about it are barley, astronomy, mathematics, the act of writing, and literature among other things. There are nuances to her, as with most people.
UPG epithets:
Goddess of Information Technology
Great Librarian
Keeper of the Book of Names
She Who Holds the Book of Life
Lady with hair like mulberry silk
Lady of the Gold Standard
She who is the beauty of the reed wedge pressed into clay
She who dwells in the college coffee shops
Dragon of the book-hoard
Lady of the printing press
She who speaks multitudinous tongues
She who dwells in binary code
Also as a side note, please appreciate the pun in my offering apples and blackberries. In my experience she has a preference for vanilla, too. Check out the chemical breakdown of books as they age and you'll find some vanillin, which is involved in that sacrosanct "book smell". Also almonds, which I'll be trying soon.
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More Posts from Mastabas-and-mushussu
the fight is harder each year.
If I might cut in to this waltz:
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The main reason my altar(s) are so pared down is because, if you haven't glanced over my blog, I'm car-homeless. I would like my devotional spaces, if and when I choose to share them, to be an example of what you can do even when you have nothing. They are not to be used to disparage other people's religious choices.
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I am not practically an ascetic by choice, though there is nothing wrong with choosing that path. I reiterate: I'm homeless. Before that, I was rather literally in the closet, and I used a set of shoe cubbies as my altar.
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My dream endgoal is actually a cedar shed behind my eventual house. Stone flooring, bead curtains, statuary, peacock feathers, flowers. Copper offering vessels, ridiculously expensive cuneiform tablets from Etsy, lamassu statues from a museum gift shop in Berlin, star maps and barley sheaves and lanterns. Everything with a meaning, a purpose. A certain amount of personal pride, sure. But I want that space FOR MY GODS.
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Because I'm a visual person, an artist, and when I'm in love with someone or something I kiss their ring while throwing the contents of my wallet in their general direction. Also, I write a lot of sappy poetry. Hence my blog.
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Live and let live. Be in good health, and don't cause yourself such undue stress at the sight of a post on the internet that you proceed to stalk the person like some sort of offended ekimmu. At the very least, there are better things to obsess over, like the influence of the printing press on the Protestant Reformation, or whether all that we see or seem is aught but a dream within a dream.
you say for the shrines don’t focus on elaborate displays? everything is secondary? listen to your own advice then
Hello again hate anon. I’m assuming this is in reference to my comments on @mastabas-and-mushussu altar?
Let’s use your BS hatred to teach others for a moment:
🔹An altar/ shrine can be as little as one wants or as large as one wants.
🔹An altar/shrine can have the bare necessities or have many additional objects and tools. Or only representations as a space to be a focal point for the Gods.
🔹An altar/shrine can be in a plain clean spot or it can be decked out with decorations.
🔹An altar/shrine can be a practical simple space for the person’s religion or it can be a piece of art.
🔹Altars / Shrines will also take different forms based on different traditions. Not everyone is the same.
🔹Someone else’s altars or shrines are no one else’s business. No one, I repeat no one, has the right to look at someone elses altar/shrine and say “thats wrong.” Or as you said in the last ask “gaudy” and “not focused on the gods”
🔹Any altar/shrine made with sincerity and love towards the Gods is acceptable and beautiful.
Mine are a personal piece of art, are very decorated, and usually have more than the minimum necessities on it. However, this isn’t always the case.
My altars can be elaborate:
Or only have the bare requirements of offering vessels and basic ‘tools’:
Or are tiny and plain without all the tools but are simply a shrine space I make for the Gods:
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Here are excerpts from a post I wrote about altars awhile back:
“ […] My altar and my idols are my everything inreligion. Prayers, offerings, any rituals, all come as a package deal to maintain my altar which is my relationship to the Gods. The importance to me is simply not fully describable, kind of like sometimes people can’t fully describe other spiritual experiences.”
and
“Some say that the gods can be anywhere they want to be, at any time, which I agree with. But animating an Idol makes the God tangible & visible, in my mundane, physical space. No astral, or dreams, or meditation; they are there [on the altar] and I am charged with taking care of this gift they have blessed me with.”
My altars are for the Gods. The piece of artwork, as I describe it, is specifically for the Gods. In all ways, it is offered to them and meant for them. If I want to craft one that is super simple or extra elaborate is none of your business. Altars are one of the fundamental necessary aspects of my religion. They are the core representation of my relationship with the Gods— just as the idols were to the ancient Sumerians. You know absolutely nothing anon, take a hike.
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Previous hate BS: https://michi-izkur-ereshkigal.tumblr.com/post/179488659203/your-altars-are-too-gaudy-and-not-focused-on-gods
Also, I have a side blog where I keep my altar related posts only, because they are important to me. My Altar Timeline
tag yourself!!!
red wine - desperately trying to study french in your spare time, reading poetry by the candlelight, coffee shops, silk bed sheets, smeared lipstick, having a passion towards everything
white wine - reading two books at the same time, niche humour, dried flowers, french pastry, flower scented hand creams, feeling your mascara on your cheeks after crying
vodka - angry logic, forgetting to go to bed because you were too busy thinking, short hair, reading dostoyevsky, trees covered in snow, cold hands, bruises appearing out of nowhere, smeared mascara
whiskey - leather jacket, falling asleep on the couch, under eye circles, vintage crime films, messy hand writing, has no mental stability, eye contact, unfinished letters, modernist books on bedroom floors
beer - night outs with your friends, old jean jackets, eating fast food instead of a healthy dinner, road trips, falling asleep on the backseats of your car
brandy - chocolate cake, keeping a dairy, the feeling of velvet on bare skin, lace lingerie, antique shops, hollywood classics, wavy hair, browsing through fashion shows instead of sleeping
cognac - blonde hair, watching french new wave films, black coffee, rose pink blushes, pearl necklaces, daydreaming about being in love in a foreign country, choppy bangs
rum - tousled hair, talking about greek mythology, sound of ocean waves, echoing laughter, messy ponytails, hawaiian shirts over black bikinis, dancing alone in your room
gin - empty perfume bottles, watching the sunset in your balcony, vintage lace shirts, petting street cats, jazz music playing from a distance, playing poker with your friends
scotch - quoting your favourite authors, midnight confessions, admiring good architecture, reading classics in rainy days, silver necklaces, stargazing from your window
(cue quiet sobbing in the corner) This is absolutely lovely and epic awesome. As for the season stuff, I tend to lean towards "Everything is dying, so Dumuzid is too" as well.
Trick or Treat! And if my calendar is right, happy Duku too.
Treat 🧡
had to go look up Duku because I’m a lazy Sumerian who doesn’t know the calendar
I found it on Temple of Sumer’s calendar, which is based on the Nippur calendar [UR III] calendar http://www.angelfire.com/oz/lessthanlucid/calendar0.html (I wanted to link you another calendar article that compares 3 of them but tumblr won’t let me)
OoOoo that actually sounds cool maybe I’ll look into it more. Though I’ll say “it was probably only practices by a select few. Sumerians of today should always consider themselves part of that select few where they can. It is important for each of us to understand the workings of the inner temples.” …. my first thought was… okay but why? Understanding yes, practice cuz select few ehhhhhh. I ain’t no priestess, whooph would that be a task.
Anyways,
The growing season in Mesopotamia was winter, which means the idea of the fertile season for us is flipped on its head. I wanted to write a post on it— since I legitimately cannot decide if at Enten (Fall Equinox / Sumerian winter) should I follow Sumerian tradition and invite back Dumuzi while everything around me is dying. Or match it up with my own climate and invite Dumuzi back at Emesh (Spring Equinox / Sumerian Summer) when my area is full of new life. Ah the modern polytheist struggles.
I don’t follow the Temple of Sumer’s calendar (Well I don’t follow any of their stuff, preference) So this little line, from the holiday before Duzu, made my eye twitch: “At the Vernal equinox you read from the exploits of Dumuzi and saw that Inanna’s actions led him to his unfortunate fate”
HEAVY SIGHING, there is only one version where it is Inana’s fault ONE. Hnng. The Desent Story now manages to get under my skin cuz apparently people forget all the other literature. is apparently an extremely old grump pretending to be young who doesn’t want kids on my yard.
Since its “close” to Enten (September 22, 2018) and everything around me is dying, I’ll follow my climate and say goodbye to Dumuzi (instead of Sumerian tradition) and share some of the cult versions of his death rather than the stuff that happens in the Decent Story. Following taken from Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jaconsen, bit hard to format so bare with me.
The large reasons behind the god’s death are mostly left vague […] only in one treatment […] is a specfic reason offered. Here the God is delivered up by his young wife, by Inanna, as substitute for herself. [… it] seems best to put this highly complex work to the side and to begin with a more traditional literary account, closer to that of the cult texts.
Turning [away] from the literary treatment in “Dumuzi’s Dream,” to the handling in the cult texts, one notes a similarity of underlying theme and myth in the text we shall call “The Most Bitter Cry.” The latter differs […] in its more forceful style and greater emotional participation. The text begins with compassion for the bereft young widow:
The most bitter cry of commiseration— because of her husband,
the cry of Inanna because of her husband,
to the queen of Eanna, because of her husband,
to the queen of Uruk, because of her husband,
to the queen of Zabalam, because of her husband,
Woe for her husband! Woe for her young man!
Woe for her house! Woe for her city!
For her captive husband, her captive young man,
for her dead husband, her dead young man,
for her husband lost Uruk and Kullab in captivity,
lost for Uruk and Kullab in death…
After further lines of condolence the lament is taken up by Inanna herself:
Inanna weeps bitter tears for her young husband:
“The day the sweet husband, my sweet husband, went away,
the day the sweet young man, my sweet young man, went away,
you went away— O my husband— into the early pastures,
you went— O my husband— into the late pastures.
My husband seeking pasture, was killed in the pastures.
My young man seeking water, was delivered up at the waters.
My young husband nowise departed town like the shrouded corpses,
O you flies of the early pastures!
He nowise departed town
like the shrouded!
To represent the laments that express the sorrow of Dumuzi’s young widow: Inanna, we choose one which may be called, “The Wild Bull Who Has Laid Down.” “Wild bull” […] a term for shepherd and serves as an epithet for Dumuzi. Inanna, going to visit Dumuzi in his fold in the desert has found him dead, his fold raided, the young men, woman, and flocks of his household killed. She asks the mountain for news of him only to be told that “the bison” has led him (that is, his shade) into the mountains which is to say into the realm of the dead […] Kur […] Wild animals now roam where Dumuzi’s camp was. Our rendering omits a long litnay of titles and epithets of Dumuz between the first and second stanzas:
The wild bull who has lain down, lives no more,
the wild bull who had lain down,
lives no more,
Dumuzi, the wild bull; who has lain down,
lives no more,
. . . the chief shepherd lives no more,
the wild bull who has lain down lives no more.
O you wild bull, how fast you sleep!
How fast you sleep ewe and lamb!
O you wild bull, how fast you sleep!
How fast you sleep goat and kid!
I will ask the hills and the valleys
I will ask the hills of the Bison:
“Where is the young man my husband?”
I will say;
“he whom I no longer serve food?”
I will say;
“he whom I no longer give drink?”
I will say;
“and my lovely maids?”
I will say;
“and my lovely young men?”
I will say;
“The Bison has taken thy husband away up into the mountains!
The Bison has taken my young man away up into the mountains!”
“Bison of the mountains with the mottled eyes!
Bison of the mountains with the crushing teeth!
Bison! Having taken him up away from me, having taken him up away from me,
having taken him I no longer serve food up away from me,
having taken him who I no longer give drink up away from me,
having taken away my lovely maids up away from me,
having taken my lovely young men up away from me,
the young man who perished from me at the hands of your men,
young Ababa who perished from me at the hands of your men:
May you not make an end to his lovely look!
May you not have him open with quaver of fear his lovely mouth!
On his couch you have made the jackals lie down,
in my husbands fold you have made the raven dwell,
his reed pipe— the wind will have to play it,
my husband’s songs— the north wind will have to sing them.
So there you have some of Inana’s laments shut up I didn’t get emotional or anything writing Inana’s sorrow. The last two lines are brutal.