Others in Barton’s Wake

Barton’s survey of the name Ištar in cuneiform remains an admirable study, despite the limited resources available to him at the time and his readiness to equate goddesses. Modern attempts at understanding the Ištar goddesses in Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions should first focus on the goddesses and their specific locations. In this regard, I. Wegner’s GestaltundKultderIštar-ŠawuškainKleinasien and W. Meinhold’s IštarinAssur: UntersuchungeinesLokalkultesvonca. 2500bis614v. Chr. each analyses specific regions or cities and the local Ištar-associated goddesses.118

Studies about Ištar in the Babylonian world or any particular Babylonian city would also be welcome.119

The real significance of Barton’s study lies in the groundwork he laid with his method. While neither Wegner’s nor Meinhold’s study depends as strongly as does Barton’s on the link between a king, his capital city, and the local Ištar, both use Barton’s central premise that the local, but unspecified, Ištar may be the Ištar elsewhere explicitly linked to that particular cult through her geographic epithet.120 Meinhold’s analysis of the

118 _{Wegner 1981; Meinhold 2009.}

119 _{Treatments on the pantheons of cities is another necessary collection of resources needed for studying} all extant Ištar material, including: Beaulieu’s ThePantheonofUrukDuringtheNeo-BabylonianPeriod and J. Myers, “The Pantheon of Sippar: A Diachronic Study” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 2002). 120 _{G. Beckman applies a form of this methodology in his analysis of Ištars in the north from the early} second millennium when he suggests that the Assyrian traders at Kaneš worshipped the Assyrian Ištar. Even though Šaušga appears as a theophoric element among these Assyrian names, “we have no indication that Ištar of Aššur was ever called Šawuška,” so any texts invoking Ištar must “refer to the goddess of the political capital” and not Ištar-of-Nineveh/Šaušga (Beckman 1998, 2 n. 21). Wegner also briefly uses

Neo-Assyrian Ištars notes that different cities identified their Ištar-associated goddesses with the national Ištar. In the Old Assyrian period, several Ištar divine names appeared in personal letters and official documents, including an unspecified Ištar, Aššurītu (=

Assyrian Ištar = Ištar-of-Aššur), Ištar-ZA-AT, and Ištar-kakkabi, all of which had a cultic presence in the city of Assur at that time.121 Each of these divine first names was

associated with a specific cult in the city, and any form of an Ištar name could appear alongside Aššur. For this reason, Meinhold concludes that Aššur was not linked as a consort with any of these Ištars in the second millennium. Meinhold does follow Barton’s lead and suggest that any unspecified Ištar from early second-millennium Assyrian text should be identified with The Assyrian Ištar because she was from the capital city.

Meinhold also notes that during the seventh century, only those living in the city of Arbela would have identified Ištar-of-Arbela with Mullissu, who was recognized throughout the Neo-Assyrian Empire as the supreme god Aššur’s wife.122 Following Meinhold’s interpretation of the first-millennium data, because Ištar-of-Arbela was Mullissu in Arbela, Ištar-of-Arbela was the wife of Aššur inArbela; however, no texts explicitly refer to Ištar-of-Arbela as the beloved or wife of Aššur. Elsewhere, Meinhold notes that Ištar-of-Nineveh is increasingly recognized as Aššur’s wife Mullissu after

Barton’s methodology when she suggest that the Assyrian Ištar (“assyrischen Ištar) should be identified with the Hittite goddess Ištar/Šaušga-of-Šamuḫa (Wegner 1981, 160). Unless “assyrischen Ištar” is simply a reference to any Ištar cult in Assyria rather than the specific goddess d_{Ištar aš-šu(2)-ri-tu, Wegner’s choice,} like Beckman’s, is based upon the idea that the Assyrian merchants worshiped their local Ištar.

Wegner’s position that The Assyrian Ištar is Šaušga-of-Šamuḫa need not be in conflict with Beckman’s comment that The Assyrian Ištar is nowhere identified with Šaušga since Beckman is specifically referring to Ištar-of-Nineveh when he discusses Šaušga here. In addition to discussing a separate potential syncretism for The Assyrian Ištar, Wegner does not supply any references to link the two goddess; this theory is simply speculation.

121 _{Meinhold 2009, 183f.}

122 _{Meinhold 2009, 202. For an explanation how the name “Ninlil” came to be pronounced “Mullissu” in} the late third millennium, see Meinhold 2009, 192.

Sennacherib moves the Assyrian capital to Nineveh.123 This identification of Ištar-of- Nineveh with Mullissu was local so that it did not interfere with the Ištar-of-Arbela and Mullissu identification at Arbela.

Scurlock’s analysis based on texts in the DPS also follows Barton’s method since she examines the familial relationships of a given local Ištar in much the same manner as Barton had. Barton insisted that Ištar-of-Arbela was not Ištar-of-Nineveh because the former was the daughter of Aššur whereas the latter was Aššur’s spouse. Likewise, Ištar- of-Nineveh was The Assyrian Ištar because both goddesses were referred as the spouse of Aššur and both could take the epithet bēlet, “Lady.” In this same way, Scurlock

distinguishes Ištar-of-Ḫarrān, the daughter of Sȋn, from The Assyrian Ištar, the daughter of Aššur, from Ištar-of-Uruk, the daughter of Anu.124 It is the goddess’s familial

relationships that best define any one Ištar against another.

Instead of primarily defining each Ištar by her familial relationships, I. Zsolnay recently defined different Ištars according to their epithets and the geographic regions in which those epithets were found. Zsolnay identifies three Ištar goddesses by the epithets that most commonly accompany the first name in royal inscriptions: 1) bēletqabliu tāḫāzi (“Sovereign-of-Combat-and-Battle”), who leads the king’s army and provides him weapons and who associates with Aššur, Adad, and Ninurta; 2) bēletšamêuerṣeti

(“Sovereign-of-Heaven-and-Earth”), who commands the king in battle and associates with Aššur, Enlil, Šamaš, and Adad as they cooperatively lead the king’s army; and 3)

bēletninua (“Sovereign-of-Nineveh”), who resembles bēletšamêuerṣeti but acts alone

123 _{Meinhold 2009, 203f.}

124 _{Scurlock and Andersen 2005, 523.}

or only with Aššur. 125 Elsewhere, she recognizes that there were “no fewer than eight active manifestations for Ištar,” each with her own specific region, associated deities, and typical actions performed: (the unspecified) Ištar, Ištar bēletNinua, Ištar bēlettāḫāzi, Dinītu, Ištar bēletqabliutāḫāzi, Ištar bēletšamêuerṣeti, Ištar bēlettēšê, andŠarrat-

niphi.126 Despite delineating the geographic and chronological bounds for all of these different epithets, Zsolnay ultimately envisions them all as aspects of a single Ištar deity throughout her study, “each of these designations represents a different manifestation of the goddess.”127 For her, as for Barton, the different epithets and characteristics

associated with Ištar highlight the growing importance of the individual goddess’s role as the Middle and Neo-Assyrian empires themselves grew.

Another new voice making itself heard in discussions of manifestations of various deities in Assyria and the rest of the Near East belongs to B. Sommer. Like several other scholars, Sommer argues for the distinctiveness of divine manifestations – be they Adad- named deities, Baal-named deities, Ištar-associated goddesses, or deities associated with other first names – but like Zsolnay and many others, he concludes that there is really only one deity who is represented by the various divine names. He acknowledges and follows Porter’s treatment of Ištar-of-Nineveh and Ištar-of-Arbela as they cooperatively but independently act as Ashurbanipal’s mother and nurse,128 but these two Ištars are the same Ištar because “she appears fragmented – not self-contradictory, but manifesting herself as separate beings in separate places.”129 He stresses that the fragmentation that he

125 _{Zsolnay’s translations have been keep for these titles (I. Zsolnay, “The Function of Ištar in the Assyrian} Royal Inscirptions: A Contextual Analysis of the Actions Attributed to Ištar in the Inscirptions of Ititi through Šalmaneser III” [Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 2009], 85).

126 _{Zsolnay 2009, 211.} 127 _{Zsolnay 2009, 209.} 128 _{Sommer 2009, 14.} 129 _{Sommer 2009, 15.}

observes in the multiple Ištar epithets is not the result of a diachronic study or the syncretization of local goddesses into one Ištar; rather, it is the nature of Assyrian and other Near Eastern deities to exert their “fluidity” into “discrete conscious” selves so that “a single deity could exists simultaneously in several bodies.”130 A deity’s multiple bodies demonstrate not the limits of the divine but the limits of the Mesopotamians’ ability to experience the divine.131

Whereas Bottéro argues that mankind can only focus on one deity at a time, Sommer argues that multiple manifestations of a given deity, as indicated by attestations of a common first name, reflect mankind’s need to compartmentalize the divine world according to several deities. However, because he attributes the multiple Ištars to ancient mankind’s conceptual limitations, he is also able to unify these same deities in a manner reminiscent of Annus’s readiness to identify deities with entirely different names like Ninurta and Nabû:

The potent authority that manifested itself in the form of the high god Anu also manifested itself in Marduk, and hence Marduk’s word was Anu. The uncanny intelligence personified as Ea was also evident in Marduk, and hence Marduk had the same name, or same identity as Ea. Yet Marduk was not entirely identical with Ea or Anu…132

Without a doubt, Marduk, Ea, and Anu were distinct in the minds of the ancient Mesopotamians, and Sommer acknowledges this, but rather than simply accept their view

of the divine, he attributes this distinctness to their inability to perceive a divine unity.

130 _{Sommer 2009, 12.} 131 _{Sommer 2009, 36.} 132 _{Sommer 2009, 36.}

H. Implications for the Present Study

Admittedly, Sommer’s brief discussion of Near Eastern deities only serves as an introduction to his main topic, the multiple bodies of the God of the Hebrew Bible and how later interpretative traditions dealt with the biblical data. In the process, however, his chapter on conceptions of Near Eastern deities replicates many of the same problems observed in previous scholarship. Like Bottéro and Lambert, his analysis reveals a small bias for monotheistic traditions over polytheistic ones. Bottéro argues that mankind can only focus on one deity at a time, and Lambert argues that a path towards some form of qualified monotheism is a natural aspect of polytheism, and Sommer argues that the Mesopotamians were overwhelmed by the divine and broke it into smaller fragments in order to cope better with it. Like Annus, he allows his biases to cause him to identify distinct deities with each other; however, he has been able to avoid the temptation to equate deities because of similarities that arise during diachronic investigations, a

temptation to which Annus, Barton, and numerous others have fallen victim. Finally, like most other scholars, he willingly and simultaneously recognizes distinct manifestations of a particular deity, typically Ištar, and uses those distinct manifestations to lead him into a discussion of one singular deity.

This modern focus on one singular Ištar (or any other divine first name) is not always the result of scholars’ identifying deities because of common attributes and epithets; nor is it simply the result of Western, Christian biases. Scholars also identify deities with each other because of their bias towards the lexical god-lists that equate those same deities. These god-lists are the products of a scholarly elite among the ancient scribes, and they make bold claims about the nature of the divine in Mesopotamia.

Moreover, these god-lists can be quite complicated, making them even more interesting for the modern scholar to study. In effect, the products of the ancient elite scholar-scribes are now being studied – and their theological contents privileged – by modern elite scholars.

Having surveyed many of the ways in which modern scholars identify deities and their reasoning behind such equations – most of which have been based upon lexical god- lists and the so-called syncretistic hymns that are the products of a resonating yet

miniscule minority within the Mesopotamian population – we may now turn to the lexical god-lists themselves.

CHAPTER 5: UNDERSTANDING THE LEXICAL GOD-LISTS