Ninsun

Summary

Ninsun, whose name scholars now read Ninsumun, is a Sumerian goddess whose name means "Lady of the wild cows". She is the mother of Gilgamesh and the wife of Lugalbanda, a king of Uruk in the old traditions. The Akkadian epic calls her Rīmat-Ninsun, "Wild-Cow Ninsun", and calls her son "wild bull of Lugalbanda.. suckling of the exalted cow, Wild-Cow Ninsun".

The first thing she does in the epic is interpret dreams. Gilgamesh saw the stars of heaven appear in his sleep, and something like a lump of rock fell from them towards him; he picked it up and it was too heavy for him, he tried to roll it and could not, and the people of Uruk gathered round it kissing its feet like a baby's; he loved it like a wife, and set it down at his mother's feet, and his mother made it his equal. Then he saw an axe lying in the street of Uruk with people round it, and did the same with it. Ninsun, "clever, wise, knowing everything", told him: the rock and the axe are a man, a mighty companion who will come to you, the saviour of his friend; you will love him like a wife, and I shall make him your equal. It was Enkidu, and Shamhat told him these dreams before he entered the city.

Then, when Gilgamesh resolved to fight Humbaba in the Cedar Forest, he took Enkidu by the hand and they went in to her at her palace, Egalmah. She heard them in sorrow, went seven times into the bath-house, cleansed herself with water of tamarisk and soapwort, put on her robe and her crown, climbed to the roof, set up a censer before Shamash and lifted her arms: why did you give my son Gilgamesh a restless heart? She asked him to guard her son on the road, and on the day of the meeting to send against Humbaba the thirteen winds, South Wind, North Wind, East Wind, West Wind, gale, tempest and the rest, so that Humbaba's face would darken and her son's weapon would reach him. Then she called Enkidu and said: "O mighty Enkidu, you are not the offspring of my womb, but I hereby adopt you as a son", and placed on his neck something whose name is lost in a break in the tablet. In Tablet V Shamash sends the thirteen winds against Humbaba as she asked.

The idea her story turns on is that she is the mother who knows and does not forbid. She knows her son's friend before he comes, makes him her son's equal, and then her own son, so that the brotherhood of Gilgamesh and Enkidu passes through her house. She knows her son is going into danger and does not hold him back; she prays, and names the winds that will help him. The wild cow of her epithet is the image of a strong mother who protects her young, and the epic calls her son a wild bull who sucked at her breast.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. Nin-sun has two parts. Sumerian nin is "lady", and sun is the wild cow, which the Sumerian essay reads as Arabic sinn, whose likeliest sense for it is the bull. Tāj al-ʿArūs says: "al-sinn: the wild bull." So Ninsun is "Lady of the wild cows" in Sumerian and "Lady of the sinn" in Arabic, with one meaning. Her Akkadian epithet rīmat has the letters of Arabic riʾm, the white antelope, and of Hebrew reʾem, the wild ox. From the same root comes raʾimat al-nāqa waladahā, the she-camel loved her young and kept to it, and arʾamahā, he made her incline to a young one not her own: which is what Ninsun did when she told Enkidu, you are not of my womb, and I adopt you.

Linguistic Root

Sinn: the essay's reading

The Sumerian essay gives four readings of the second part: sinn, the bull or the sharp horn, which it ranks first; then sanā, light and height; then sanna and sawwana, to lay down laws; then ṣawn, protection. The Sumerian meaning decides among them: the sign SÚN is the one Akkadian scribes use to write rīmtu, "wild cow", so the first reading is the one that agrees with the word. Lane gives no sense of "bull" for sinn; Tāj al-ʿArūs does: "al-sinn: the wild bull", with a line of rajaz verse as witness. S and n are the same in both words.

The limit of the reading is that scholars now read the name Ninsumun, that the m of sumun has no counterpart in sinn, and that "bull" is a rare sense of sinn which Lane does not record.

Riʾm: her Akkadian epithet

Akkadian rīmu is the wild bull and rīmtu the wild cow, used as an epithet of goddesses. BDB says Hebrew reʾem is the wild ox, compares Akkadian and Aramaic, and notes that Arabic makes it the white antelope. The glottal stop kept in Hebrew and Arabic dropped in Akkadian, as it usually does there, and the vowel grew long: riʾm became rīm. Lane: riʾm is the pure white antelope; raʾimat al-nāqa waladahā, the she-camel loved her young and kept to it; arʾama al-nāqa, he made the she-camel incline to a young one not her own; taraʾʾamahu, he had pity on him. The epithet joins the strong animal and tender motherhood.

Historical Context

Ninsun appears in god lists and literary texts from the Early Dynastic period and lasts into the Seleucid period. Her main cult places were in the state of Lagash, and she was also worshipped at Nippur, Ur and Umma. Ur-Namma, founder of the Third Dynasty of Ur, built her a temple at Ur called the "Magnificent House", and the epic calls her palace at Uruk Egalmah. A fragmentary relief in the Louvre from the end of the third millennium BCE probably shows her seated on a throne, with her name inscribed.

The kings of the Third Dynasty of Ur made her their mother and Lugalbanda their father, so that Gilgamesh became their brother. Shulgi says in his hymn, "I am a child born of Ninsun", and in one copy swears "by the life of my father holy Lugalbanda". The couple received offerings at Nippur at the lunar festivals and went on receiving them at Uruk into the Old Babylonian period.

Key Mythic Narratives

Lugalbanda

Lugalbanda is Ninsun's husband. His Sumerian name is lugal-banda: lugal, king, and banda, junior or young, which the Sumerian dictionary also glosses as child and as fierce. The Sumerian essay reads lugal as Arabic jalīl, so Lugalbanda is "the young king". The Sumerian King List calls him "the shepherd" who ruled Uruk for 1,200 years, and says of Gilgamesh that "his father was a phantom". The epic, though, calls Gilgamesh "wild bull of Lugalbanda", and Gilgamesh dedicates the horns of the Bull of Heaven, full of oil, "for the anointing of his god, Lugalbanda", hanging them in his bedchamber.

He has two Sumerian poems. In the first he marches in the army of Enmerkar, king of Uruk, against Aratta, the eighth of his brothers; he falls ill halfway, and his brothers make him a shelter like a bird's nest in a mountain cave, leave him dates, cheese, beer, incense, his axe and his dagger, and march on. He calls on Utu, Inana and Nanna, who heal him, and he eats the plants of life and drinks the water of life. Then, alone, he strikes two stones together until they spark and kindles a fire that shines over the waste like the sun; "not knowing how to bake bread, not knowing an oven", he bakes his dough on seven coals. Then he catches a wild bull and two goats, falls asleep, and the god of dreams tells him to sacrifice them.

In the second he finds the nest of the Anzud bird in the "eagle-tree" of Enki on top of Inana's mountain, feeds and adorns the chick, and the bird grants him the power to run, so that he catches up with his brothers and carries King Enmerkar's message from Aratta to Inana at Kulaba, arriving by midnight.

The oath by the parents

In the Sumerian poem Gilgamesh and Huwawa Gilgamesh swears to Huwawa again and again, "By the life of my mother Ninsun and of my father, holy Lugalbanda!", until he has taken his auras. Mother and father are what one swears by in this poem, and the trick passes through them.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Thetis too is a divine mother of a hero who will die. She goes up to Olympus and clasps the knees of Zeus to ask honour for her son, and she tells Achilles of two fates awaiting him, as Ninsun goes up to the roof to pray to Shamash knowing her son is going into a battle he does not know. See Thetis. Iliad 1.493–510, 9.410–416.

The Sumerian essay sets Ninsun beside Egyptian Hathor, the cow who is the king's mother, and beside Hera for her link with cattle. In both cases the king is the cow's son: Shulgi was "born of Ninsun", and the king of Egypt is Hathor's son.

An Early Dynastic literary text from Tell Abu Salabikh tells of the marriage of Lugalbanda and Ninsun, though it is hard to understand: a goddess and a king from whose line kings come, the theme of sacred marriage. ORACC, Ninsumun. Lugalbanda kindles fire and bakes bread alone in the mountains, as culture heroes do, and finds Anzud's nest in Enki's tree, as on the world tree page.