Namtar

Summary

Namtar is the vizier and messenger of Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld: he carries her word up to heaven and back and carries out her orders in her house. His name is the Sumerian word for fate, and Akkadian word lists explain it both as fate and as sickness, so he is the destiny that arrives as disease.

The fullest story of his work on earth is the Old Babylonian poem Atrahasis. Before six hundred years had passed since humankind was made, people had multiplied and the land bellowed like a bull; Enlil was troubled by their noise and could not sleep. He gathered his assembly and said: command that shivers rise, "let Namtar quickly cut off their noise", and let sickness, headache, shivers and stroke blow against them like a storm. Shivers rose, and Namtar cut off their noise. Atrahasis, the wise man, talked with his god Enki and said: people are groaning, the land blames the gods. Enki answered: gather the elders and have the heralds proclaim in the land: do not revere your gods, do not pray to your goddesses; seek the gate of Namtar, bring a baked loaf before it, let a flour offering reach him, and he will feel ashamed and pass his hand over the gift. The people did so; they built Namtar a temple in their city and brought bread and flour to his gate; he felt ashamed, passed his hand over the gift and left them. Their well-being returned, wombs opened and babies were born, and their noise came back as before.

In the underworld he is Ereshkigal's hand. In the Akkadian Descent of Ishtar, when Ishtar sits above her sister, Ereshkigal tells her vizier: "Go, Namtar, let loose sixty diseases against Ishtar: eye disease against her eyes, arm disease against her arms, foot disease against her feet, heart disease against her heart, head disease against her head." When Ea's envoy comes to ask for the waterskin, Ereshkigal orders: "Go, Namtar, knock at the true temple, decorate the thresholds with cowrie shells, bring out the Anunnaki and seat them on thrones of gold, sprinkle Ishtar with the water of life." He sprinkles her and leads her out through the seven gates one after another, returning at each what had been taken from her, from her loincloth to her great crown.

He is also the messenger in the story of Nergal and Ereshkigal. The queen of the dead cannot go up to the gods' banquet, so she sends Namtar to fetch her share of the food; all the gods rise before him except Nergal, and from that the story begins that ends with Nergal as king below.

The idea his stories turn on is that a fate once decided has a messenger to carry it. Namtar decides nothing himself: Enlil commands and he cuts; Ereshkigal commands and he strikes, then commands and he sprinkles the water of life. The hand that sends the sickness is the hand that leads the sick goddess out through the gates and gives her back her clothes. And because the messenger has a gate, people can stand at it: in Atrahasis they do not fight the plague; they carry bread and flour to Namtar's gate until he is ashamed, accepts the gift and leaves them.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Nam-tar is made of nam, which in Sumerian is fate itself, and tar, which the Sumerian dictionary gives as "to cut", then "to decide, decree". Tar is Arabic tarra: Lisān al-ʿArab says tarra al-shayʾ, the thing was severed and came apart under a blow, and atarra yadahu, he cut off his hand, and then adds atarrahu al-qaḍāʾ, fate sent him far away. Namtar is "the fate that has been cut", as Arabic says qaṭaʿa al-amr, he cut the matter, for deciding it. The Babylonian essay reads the name from namaṭ, a set way one is held to, the fate that runs on one unchanging course. The two readings meet: a matter that has been cut becomes a single road. That is what the story makes him: in Atrahasis Enlil orders Namtar to "cut off" the noise of humankind, and the text's editors think the verb was chosen because it points to tar, cutting, in his name.

Linguistic Root

Written forms

The Sumerian writing divides the name into two clear parts. Nam is the Sumerian word for fate, also used as a prefix that makes abstract nouns. Tar is a verb that in most of its witnesses means "to cut", and also "to untie, scatter, decide"; Akkadian word lists explain it with verbs of cutting and separating. In Sumerian, then, fate is "something cut", as Arabic qaḍāʾ, decree, comes from qaḍā al-amr, to settle and decide a matter.

Arabic tarra has the same two sounds, t and a doubled r, and in Lisān al-ʿArab it means cutting by a blow: a bone tarra when it was severed and came away, a hand tarrat when it fell, and its owner atarrahā when he cut it off. The same entry gives atarrahu al-qaḍāʾ, fate sent him far away, so the Arabic root holds what the Sumerian name holds: cutting and decree.

The Babylonian essay ranks namaṭ first: in Lane a way or manner one is held to, as in "keep to this namaṭ". This reading keeps n, m and t, but it divides the name where Sumerian does not, taking the t from tar and leaving the r, and it sets Arabic ṭ against t. So tarra fits the letters better, and namaṭ remains a reading of what fate becomes, a road no one leaves. The essay then proposes namira, to be spotted, since the disease takes sixty forms, which it calls interpretive, and namā + tarra, which it calls weak.

"Eye disease against her eyes"

In Ereshkigal's order to Namtar there is a line in which the Arabic shows word by word: muruṣ īni ana īnīša, "eye disease against her eyes". Muruṣ is Arabic maraḍ, disease: Arabic ḍ is ṣ in Akkadian, as in arḍ and erṣetu, earth. Īnu is ʿayn, eye, with the ʿayn dropped as gutturals drop in Akkadian. -ša is the pronoun "her", Arabic -hā. In the Arabic tongue the line is maraḍu ʿaynin li-ʿaynayhā, a reading proposed on the method.

Key Mythic Narratives

The Namtar who did not take Enkidu

In the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh, Enkidu and the Netherworld, Enkidu goes down to fetch Gilgamesh's ball and mallet, and the underworld seizes him. Gilgamesh goes to Enlil and then to Enki and complains: "Namtar did not seize him, the Asag did not seize him, but the netherworld has seized him; he did not fall in battle, but the netherworld has seized him." In this sentence Namtar is one of the known roads to death, like disease and war, and Enkidu died by another.

The messenger who does not know his guest

In the longer version of the story of Nergal and Ereshkigal, Nergal escapes from below after six days and Namtar goes up to heaven to look for him. Ea changes Nergal's appearance, so that Namtar looks at the faces of the gods without recognising him and goes back to his queen.

Symbolic Reading

The project's rereading of the Babylonian myths takes Atrahasis as an environmental and demographic history: people multiply and press on water and crops, then come three attempts to reduce them, first plague, which the essay takes as real epidemics striking crowded cities, then drought, then the flood. On this reading Namtar is the name of plague spreading through a crowded city.

The text itself keeps what people did in the face of the plague. They did not fight it or flee it: they gathered the elders, the heralds proclaimed in the land, they set aside the worship of all other gods, and they gathered at one gate to bring bread and flour, and built him a house in their city. The city met the sickness with a common decision and a common offering, until Namtar accepted the gift and left them.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

At the opening of the Iliad Apollo is angry because Agamemnon insulted his priest, shoots the army with his arrows for nine days, and lifts the plague once the wrong is put right, the sacrifice offered and the hymn sung. In Atrahasis Enlil commands and Namtar cuts off human noise with fever, then bread and flour are brought to his gate and he accepts them and leaves the people. In both a god in anger sends a plague that is lifted by offering and entreaty, but in the Iliad the cause is an insult to a priest, and in Atrahasis the noise of humankind that keeps Enlil from sleep.

Namtar's plague is the first of the three blows that come before the water in the Babylonian flood, and he is the messenger of the divine council when Enlil decides in his assembly. In the descent to the underworld he is the messenger who goes up from the house of the dead and back, who strikes the one who entered with disease, then sprinkles her with the water of life and leads her out.