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Belet Nagar

March 02, 2023

Belet Nagar ("Lady of Nagar") was the tutelary goddess of the ancient Syrian city Nagar (Tell Brak). She was also worshiped by the Hurrians and in Mesopotamia. She was connected with kingship, but much about her role in the religions of the ancient Near East remains uncertain.

Belet Nagar
Tutelary goddess of Nagar
A so-called "eye idol" from Tell Brak (ancient Nagar), possibly connected to a deity who was the forerunner of Belet Nagar.[1]
Major cult centerNagar, Shekhna
Equivalents
Hurrian equivalentpossibly Nabarbi

Character

Belet Nagar means "Lady of Nagar," and much like in the case of Ashur and its god, the name of the deity was the same as that of the corresponding city.[2] Despite her status as one of the head deities of ancient Syria, much about her character and functions remains uncertain.[3] It is assumed that she owed her position in the pantheon to the political importance of her cult center.[4] While in the Old Babylonian period the political importance of Nagar declined, she remained a commonly worshiped deity.[5]

In the second millennium BCE in Shekhna she was the tutelary goddess of the local dynasty.[6] For example, in a letter from a certain Ea-Malik to Till-Abnu, ruler of a small kingdom in the Khabur Triangle centered around Shekhna, the former refers to Belet Nagar as the goddess to whose favor the latter owes his position as a king.[7] Her role as a protector of kingship is also known from Mari.[8] Another function fulfilled by Belet Nagar in Shekhna was that of a divine witness of commercial treaties.[9] Beate Pongratz-Leisten proposes that her introduction in the areas under control of Third Dynasty of Ur was tied to these two roles.[10] She points out that Nagar was not under the control of the Ur state itself, and it is therefore impossible to connect the introduction of its goddess to the pantheon of the southern cities to military conquests.[11]

It has been proposed she was a mother goddess, though the sole piece of evidence for this theory is the fact that an Ur III period priest of Ninhursag bore the theophoric name Nawar-šen, Nawar possibly being a variant spelling of Nagar.[2]

Worship

While the city of Nagar is already attested in pre-Sargonic sources from Ebla and Mari, and in administrative tablets of the Sargonic administration,[12] the oldest currently known attestation of Belet Nagar is an inscription of the Hurrian king Tish-Atal of Urkesh.[13] In a curse formula of this ruler, she appears alongside Hurrian deities Lubadag (Nupatik), Šimige and Teshub,[14][1] as well as the Mesopotamian Nergal, whose name might have served as a logographic representation of that belonging to a Hurrian deity, for example Kumarbi or Aštabi, though this possibility is disputed.[15]

In Mesopotamia she appears for the first time in documents from the Ur III period, though it is unclear how large her role in Mesopotamian religion was.[6] During the reign of Shulgi, Belet Nagar received offerings in Ur alongside Ishara.[2] They also had a joint temple in Uruk.[8] The queen Shulgi-simti, one of Shulgi's wives, seemed to be a devotee of a number of foreign or minor deities, including Belet Nagar, Ishara, Allatum, Annunitum, Nanaya, Belet-Šuḫnir and Belet-Terraban.[16]

Many second millennium BCE texts from Mari and Shekhna (later Shubat Enlil, modern Tell Leilan) refer to Belet Nagar.[6] King Zimri-Lim of Mari underwent a pilgrimage to her main sanctuary at one point in his reign.[8]

There is a well documented tradition of cultic travels of the statue of Belet Nagar.[17] A letter to king Till-Abnu alludes to a festival during which the goddess was believed to leave her main temple to visit a nearby town, seemingly so that new boundary markers could be set up.[18] A letter from Mari refers to this celebration too, identifying the destination as Shehkhna/Shubat Enlil.[19] Similar celebrations centered on deities such as Dagan and the pair Lagamal and Ikshudum are attested in the same region.[17]

Identification with other deities

 
Nabarbi (first from the right) next to Ishara and Allani on the Yazılıkaya reliefs[20]

It has been proposed that dNa-wa-ar, a theophoric element known from personal names, should be understood as an alternate name of Belet Nagar.[2]

Alfonso Archi assumes that Belet Nagar was identified with the Hurrian Nabarbi, though he thinks Nawar, the place name from which the latter name was derived, had to be a different place from Nagar.[21] Piotr Taracha assumes that these two goddesses were one and the same,[22] and as a result counts her among deities who were received by Hurrians from preexisting Syrian pantheons,[23] unlike other researchers, who ascribe Hurrian origin to her.[24] It has also been proposed that Nabarbi and Belet Nagar were both analogous to Ḫabūrītum, goddess of the river Khabur known from Mesopotamian sources from the Ur III period.[21] One document directly refers to this goddess as "Inanna Ḫabūrītum,"[25] though this might be an instance of syncretism.[26] Wilfred G. Lambert assumed that Ḫabūrītum and Ishara were one and the same and should be understood as the spouse of Dagan, but this theory finds no support in more recent scholarship.[27]

Daniel Schwemer argues that Belet Nagar (and other goddesses whose name was formed out of the word Belet and a place name) was an Ishtar-like figure ("Ishtar-gestalt"),[28] possibly analogous to Shaushka.[29] This view has been evaluated critically by Joan Goodnick Westenholz, who remarks that with the exception of their gender these deities do not appear to be similar to each other.[30]

Piotr Steinkeller assumes that Belet Nagar was identical with Ninhursag, and assumes she was merely a name used to refer to the latter in Mari.[3] However, Old Babylonian evidence from this city indicates that the logographic writing dNIN.HUR.SAG.GA was used to refer to Shalash, the wife of Dagan,[31] associated with the cities of Tuttul[32] and Bitin (located near Alalakh).[33]

It has also been proposed that the deity worshiped in the so-called "eye temple," associated with figures known as "eye idols," which existed in Tell Brak in the Uruk period could be a forerunner of later Belet Nagar.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b c Steinkeller 2019, p. 1004.
  2. ^ a b c d Cavigneaux & Krebernik 1998, p. 475.
  3. ^ a b Steinkeller 2019, p. 981.
  4. ^ Pongratz-Leisten 2012, p. 89.
  5. ^ Sasson 1997, p. 476.
  6. ^ a b c Eidem 1998, p. 76.
  7. ^ Sasson 1997, pp. 475–476.
  8. ^ a b c Sharlach 2002, p. 101.
  9. ^ Pongratz-Leisten 2012, p. 97.
  10. ^ Pongratz-Leisten 2012, p. 87.
  11. ^ Pongratz-Leisten 2012, pp. 86–87.
  12. ^ Eidem 1998, p. 75.
  13. ^ Matthews & Eidem 1993, p. 203.
  14. ^ Pongratz-Leisten 2013, p. 114.
  15. ^ Archi 2013, p. 8.
  16. ^ Sharlach 2007, p. 365.
  17. ^ a b Feliu 2003, p. 123.
  18. ^ Sasson 1997, p. 488.
  19. ^ Matthews & Eidem 1993, p. 204.
  20. ^ Taracha 2009, p. 95.
  21. ^ a b Archi 2013, p. 7.
  22. ^ Taracha 2009, p. 121.
  23. ^ Taracha 2009, p. 119.
  24. ^ Haas 1998, p. 1.
  25. ^ Sharlach 2021, p. 433.
  26. ^ Sharlach 2002, pp. 104–105.
  27. ^ Feliu 2003, pp. 54–55.
  28. ^ Schwemer 2001, pp. 273–274.
  29. ^ Schwemer 2001, p. 445.
  30. ^ Asher-Greve & Westenholz 2013, p. 71.
  31. ^ Schwemer 2001, pp. 404–405.
  32. ^ Archi 2015, p. 634.
  33. ^ Archi 2015, p. 636.

Bibliography

  • Archi, Alfonso (2013). "The West Hurrian Pantheon and Its Background". In Collins, B. J.; Michalowski, P. (eds.). Beyond Hatti: a tribute to Gary Beckman. Atlanta: Lockwood Press. ISBN 978-1-937040-11-6. OCLC 882106763.
  • Archi, Alfonso (2015). Ebla and Its Archives. De Gruyter. doi:10.1515/9781614517887. ISBN 978-1-61451-716-0.
  • Asher-Greve, J M; Westenholz, J G (2013). "Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources".
  • Cavigneaux, Antoine; Krebernik, Manfred (1998), "NIN-Nagar", Reallexikon der Assyriologie (in German), retrieved 2022-03-18
  • Eidem, Jesper (1998), "Nagar", Reallexikon der Assyriologie, retrieved 2022-03-18
  • Feliu, Lluís (2003). The god Dagan in Bronze Age Syria. Leiden Boston, MA: Brill. ISBN 90-04-13158-2. OCLC 52107444.
  • Haas, Volkert (1998), "Nabarbi", Reallexikon der Assyriologie (in German), retrieved 2022-03-17
  • Matthews, Donald; Eidem, Jesper (1993). "Tell Brak and Nagar". Iraq. British Institute for the Study of Iraq. 55: 201–207. ISSN 0021-0889. JSTOR 4200376. Retrieved 2022-03-17.
  • Pongratz-Leisten, Beate (2012). "Comments on the Translatability of Divinity: Cultic and Theological Responses to the Presence of the Other in the Ancient near East". In Bonnet, Corinne (ed.). Les représentations des dieux des autres. Caltanissetta: Sciascia. ISBN 978-88-8241-388-0. OCLC 850438175.
  • Pongratz-Leisten, Beate (2013). "Assyrian royal discourse between local and imperial traditions at the Hābūr". Revue d'assyriologie et d'archéologie orientale. CAIRN. 105 (1): 109–128. doi:10.3917/assy.105.0109. ISSN 0373-6032.
  • Sasson, Jack M. (1997). "The Vow of Mutiya, King of Shekhna". Crossing boundaries and linking horizons: studies in honor of Michael C. Astour on his 80th birthday. Bethesda: CDL Press. ISBN 978-1-883053-32-1. OCLC 37688280.
  • Schwemer, Daniel (2001). Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen: Materialien und Studien nach den schriftlichen Quellen (in German). Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3-447-04456-1. OCLC 48145544.
  • Sharlach, Tonia (2002). "Foreign Influences on the Religion of the Ur III Court". General studies and excavations at Nuzi 10/3. Bethesda, Md: CDL Press. ISBN 1-883053-68-4. OCLC 48399212.
  • Sharlach, Tonia (2007). "Shulgi-simti and the Representation of Women in Historical Sources". Ancient Near Eastern art in context: studies in honor of Irene J. Winter. Leiden, Boston: Brill. ISBN 978-90-474-2085-9. OCLC 648616171.
  • Sharlach, Tonia M. (2021). "Local and Imported Religion at Ur Late in the Reign of Shulgi". Ur in the Twenty-First Century CE. Penn State University Press. doi:10.1515/9781646021512-031.
  • Steinkeller, Piotr (2019). "Texts, art and archeology: An archaic plaque from Mari and the Sumerian birth-goddess Ninhursag". De l’argile au numérique. Mélanges assyriologiques en l’honneur de Dominique Charpin.
  • Taracha, Piotr (2009). Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia. Harrassowitz. ISBN 978-3447058858.

March 02, 2023
belet, nagar, lady, nagar, tutelary, goddess, ancient, syrian, city, nagar, tell, brak, also, worshiped, hurrians, mesopotamia, connected, with, kingship, much, about, role, religions, ancient, near, east, remains, uncertain, tutelary, goddess, nagara, called,. Belet Nagar Lady of Nagar was the tutelary goddess of the ancient Syrian city Nagar Tell Brak She was also worshiped by the Hurrians and in Mesopotamia She was connected with kingship but much about her role in the religions of the ancient Near East remains uncertain Belet NagarTutelary goddess of NagarA so called eye idol from Tell Brak ancient Nagar possibly connected to a deity who was the forerunner of Belet Nagar 1 Major cult centerNagar ShekhnaEquivalentsHurrian equivalentpossibly Nabarbi Contents 1 Character 2 Worship 3 Identification with other deities 4 References 4 1 BibliographyCharacter EditBelet Nagar means Lady of Nagar and much like in the case of Ashur and its god the name of the deity was the same as that of the corresponding city 2 Despite her status as one of the head deities of ancient Syria much about her character and functions remains uncertain 3 It is assumed that she owed her position in the pantheon to the political importance of her cult center 4 While in the Old Babylonian period the political importance of Nagar declined she remained a commonly worshiped deity 5 In the second millennium BCE in Shekhna she was the tutelary goddess of the local dynasty 6 For example in a letter from a certain Ea Malik to Till Abnu ruler of a small kingdom in the Khabur Triangle centered around Shekhna the former refers to Belet Nagar as the goddess to whose favor the latter owes his position as a king 7 Her role as a protector of kingship is also known from Mari 8 Another function fulfilled by Belet Nagar in Shekhna was that of a divine witness of commercial treaties 9 Beate Pongratz Leisten proposes that her introduction in the areas under control of Third Dynasty of Ur was tied to these two roles 10 She points out that Nagar was not under the control of the Ur state itself and it is therefore impossible to connect the introduction of its goddess to the pantheon of the southern cities to military conquests 11 It has been proposed she was a mother goddess though the sole piece of evidence for this theory is the fact that an Ur III period priest of Ninhursag bore the theophoric name Nawar sen Nawar possibly being a variant spelling of Nagar 2 Worship EditWhile the city of Nagar is already attested in pre Sargonic sources from Ebla and Mari and in administrative tablets of the Sargonic administration 12 the oldest currently known attestation of Belet Nagar is an inscription of the Hurrian king Tish Atal of Urkesh 13 In a curse formula of this ruler she appears alongside Hurrian deities Lubadag Nupatik Simige and Teshub 14 1 as well as the Mesopotamian Nergal whose name might have served as a logographic representation of that belonging to a Hurrian deity for example Kumarbi or Astabi though this possibility is disputed 15 In Mesopotamia she appears for the first time in documents from the Ur III period though it is unclear how large her role in Mesopotamian religion was 6 During the reign of Shulgi Belet Nagar received offerings in Ur alongside Ishara 2 They also had a joint temple in Uruk 8 The queen Shulgi simti one of Shulgi s wives seemed to be a devotee of a number of foreign or minor deities including Belet Nagar Ishara Allatum Annunitum Nanaya Belet Suḫnir and Belet Terraban 16 Many second millennium BCE texts from Mari and Shekhna later Shubat Enlil modern Tell Leilan refer to Belet Nagar 6 King Zimri Lim of Mari underwent a pilgrimage to her main sanctuary at one point in his reign 8 There is a well documented tradition of cultic travels of the statue of Belet Nagar 17 A letter to king Till Abnu alludes to a festival during which the goddess was believed to leave her main temple to visit a nearby town seemingly so that new boundary markers could be set up 18 A letter from Mari refers to this celebration too identifying the destination as Shehkhna Shubat Enlil 19 Similar celebrations centered on deities such as Dagan and the pair Lagamal and Ikshudum are attested in the same region 17 Identification with other deities Edit Nabarbi first from the right next to Ishara and Allani on the Yazilikaya reliefs 20 It has been proposed that dNa wa ar a theophoric element known from personal names should be understood as an alternate name of Belet Nagar 2 Alfonso Archi assumes that Belet Nagar was identified with the Hurrian Nabarbi though he thinks Nawar the place name from which the latter name was derived had to be a different place from Nagar 21 Piotr Taracha assumes that these two goddesses were one and the same 22 and as a result counts her among deities who were received by Hurrians from preexisting Syrian pantheons 23 unlike other researchers who ascribe Hurrian origin to her 24 It has also been proposed that Nabarbi and Belet Nagar were both analogous to Ḫaburitum goddess of the river Khabur known from Mesopotamian sources from the Ur III period 21 One document directly refers to this goddess as Inanna Ḫaburitum 25 though this might be an instance of syncretism 26 Wilfred G Lambert assumed that Ḫaburitum and Ishara were one and the same and should be understood as the spouse of Dagan but this theory finds no support in more recent scholarship 27 Daniel Schwemer argues that Belet Nagar and other goddesses whose name was formed out of the word Belet and a place name was an Ishtar like figure Ishtar gestalt 28 possibly analogous to Shaushka 29 This view has been evaluated critically by Joan Goodnick Westenholz who remarks that with the exception of their gender these deities do not appear to be similar to each other 30 Piotr Steinkeller assumes that Belet Nagar was identical with Ninhursag and assumes she was merely a name used to refer to the latter in Mari 3 However Old Babylonian evidence from this city indicates that the logographic writing dNIN HUR SAG GA was used to refer to Shalash the wife of Dagan 31 associated with the cities of Tuttul 32 and Bitin located near Alalakh 33 It has also been proposed that the deity worshiped in the so called eye temple associated with figures known as eye idols which existed in Tell Brak in the Uruk period could be a forerunner of later Belet Nagar 1 References Edit a b c Steinkeller 2019 p 1004 a b c d Cavigneaux amp Krebernik 1998 p 475 a b Steinkeller 2019 p 981 Pongratz Leisten 2012 p 89 Sasson 1997 p 476 a b c Eidem 1998 p 76 Sasson 1997 pp 475 476 a b c Sharlach 2002 p 101 Pongratz Leisten 2012 p 97 Pongratz Leisten 2012 p 87 Pongratz Leisten 2012 pp 86 87 Eidem 1998 p 75 Matthews amp Eidem 1993 p 203 Pongratz Leisten 2013 p 114 Archi 2013 p 8 Sharlach 2007 p 365 a b Feliu 2003 p 123 Sasson 1997 p 488 Matthews amp Eidem 1993 p 204 Taracha 2009 p 95 a b Archi 2013 p 7 Taracha 2009 p 121 Taracha 2009 p 119 Haas 1998 p 1 Sharlach 2021 p 433 Sharlach 2002 pp 104 105 Feliu 2003 pp 54 55 Schwemer 2001 pp 273 274 Schwemer 2001 p 445 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 71 Schwemer 2001 pp 404 405 Archi 2015 p 634 Archi 2015 p 636 Bibliography Edit Archi Alfonso 2013 The West Hurrian Pantheon and Its Background In Collins B J Michalowski P eds Beyond Hatti a tribute to Gary Beckman Atlanta Lockwood Press ISBN 978 1 937040 11 6 OCLC 882106763 Archi Alfonso 2015 Ebla and Its Archives De Gruyter doi 10 1515 9781614517887 ISBN 978 1 61451 716 0 Asher Greve J M Westenholz J G 2013 Goddesses in Context On Divine Powers Roles Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources Cavigneaux Antoine Krebernik Manfred 1998 NIN Nagar Reallexikon der Assyriologie in German retrieved 2022 03 18 Eidem Jesper 1998 Nagar Reallexikon der Assyriologie retrieved 2022 03 18 Feliu Lluis 2003 The god Dagan in Bronze Age Syria Leiden Boston MA Brill ISBN 90 04 13158 2 OCLC 52107444 Haas Volkert 1998 Nabarbi Reallexikon der Assyriologie in German retrieved 2022 03 17 Matthews Donald Eidem Jesper 1993 Tell Brak and Nagar Iraq British Institute for the Study of Iraq 55 201 207 ISSN 0021 0889 JSTOR 4200376 Retrieved 2022 03 17 Pongratz Leisten Beate 2012 Comments on the Translatability of Divinity Cultic and Theological Responses to the Presence of the Other in the Ancient near East In Bonnet Corinne ed Les representations des dieux des autres Caltanissetta Sciascia ISBN 978 88 8241 388 0 OCLC 850438175 Pongratz Leisten Beate 2013 Assyrian royal discourse between local and imperial traditions at the Habur Revue d assyriologie et d archeologie orientale CAIRN 105 1 109 128 doi 10 3917 assy 105 0109 ISSN 0373 6032 Sasson Jack M 1997 The Vow of Mutiya King of Shekhna Crossing boundaries and linking horizons studies in honor of Michael C Astour on his 80th birthday Bethesda CDL Press ISBN 978 1 883053 32 1 OCLC 37688280 Schwemer Daniel 2001 Die Wettergottgestalten Mesopotamiens und Nordsyriens im Zeitalter der Keilschriftkulturen Materialien und Studien nach den schriftlichen Quellen in German Wiesbaden Harrassowitz ISBN 978 3 447 04456 1 OCLC 48145544 Sharlach Tonia 2002 Foreign Influences on the Religion of the Ur III Court General studies and excavations at Nuzi 10 3 Bethesda Md CDL Press ISBN 1 883053 68 4 OCLC 48399212 Sharlach Tonia 2007 Shulgi simti and the Representation of Women in Historical Sources Ancient Near Eastern art in context studies in honor of Irene J Winter Leiden Boston Brill ISBN 978 90 474 2085 9 OCLC 648616171 Sharlach Tonia M 2021 Local and Imported Religion at Ur Late in the Reign of Shulgi Ur in the Twenty First Century CE Penn State University Press doi 10 1515 9781646021512 031 Steinkeller Piotr 2019 Texts art and archeology An archaic plaque from Mari and the Sumerian birth goddess Ninhursag De l argile au numerique Melanges assyriologiques en l honneur de Dominique Charpin Taracha Piotr 2009 Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia Harrassowitz ISBN 978 3447058858 Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Belet Nagar amp oldid 1127535695, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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