Nisaba

Summary

Nisaba is the goddess of grain and of writing in Sumer and the patron of the city of Ereš. Her hymn calls her "chief scribe of An, record-keeper of Enlil, wise sage of the gods", and her name is written with the sign NAGA, to which the sign for grain was later prefixed. Sumerian scribes closed many of their literary tablets with the words "Nisaba be praised".

Her hymn opens by describing her: "Lady coloured like the stars of heaven, holding a lapis-lazuli tablet", "great wild cow born by Uraš". She makes barley and flax grow in the furrows, so that the corn can be admired at the great harvest festival of Enlil. Then Enki comes to her, opens her "house of learning" and places the lapis-lazuli tablet on her knees so that she may consult "the holy tablet of the heavenly stars", and blesses her: "may you be the butter in the cattle-pen, the cream in the sheepfold, keeper of the seal in the treasury, a good steward in the palace, a heaper up of grain among the grain piles and in the grain stores".

In Enki and the World Order Enki shares out the world's work among the gods and says: "My illustrious sister, holy Nisaba, is to get the measuring-reed. The lapis-lazuli measuring tape is to hang over her arm. She is to proclaim all the great powers. She is to demarcate boundaries and mark borders. She is to be the scribe of the Land. The planning of the gods' meals is to be in her hands." In Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta Nisaba opens her "holy house of wisdom" to King Enmerkar, and in the same poem Enmerkar writes the first message on clay, because his messenger could not hold his words in memory.

Her husband is Haya, and their daughter is Sud, whom Enlil marries, that is Ninlil. In the poem of their marriage Enlil tells her: "May my beautiful wife, who was born by holy Nisaba, be Ezina, the growing grain, the life of Sumer. When you appear in the furrows like a beautiful young girl.." Her ORACC profile makes her a sister of Ninsun, mother of Gilgamesh.

The idea her stories turn on is that grain and tablet are in one hand. She who makes the barley grow is the one who measures the field, fixes its boundaries, counts the piles of grain and keeps the seal on the storehouse; whoever counted the grain wrote. Her ORACC profile says that her stories carry the road Mesopotamian civilisation took from agriculture to accounting and then to literature. The Akkadian epic says that the hair of Gilgamesh and of Enkidu grows "as thickly as Nissaba's", like standing barley in the field.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The lexical lists write its pronunciation ni-is-sa-ba and ni-da-ba. The Sumerian essay reads it from nasab first and from naṣab second. In Lane nasab is mentioning one's origin, lineage and relation to a thing; naṣb, though, holds what Nisaba does in the poems: setting up a stone as a mark; anṣāb al-ḥaram, the limits of the sacred territory, signs set up by which it is known; naṣīb, an allotted share; niṣāb, the origin from which a thing grows, and the amount of property on which alms fall due. Sumerian writing has no emphatic letters, so its s writes both s and ṣ. On this reading Nisaba is the one of marks and shares: she sets up boundary marks with the measuring reed, divides the grain into shares, and writes on the tablet what refers each thing to its source.

Linguistic Root

Nisaba and naṣb

The Sumerian essay gives four readings: nasab, ascribing, counting and reckoning, which it ranks first; then naṣab, setting up writing; then nass + abā, the weave of the fathers, as an interpretation; then naḍab, which it ranks weak. In Lane nasabahu is to mention a man's lineage or trace it to his remotest ancestor, nasabahu ilā is to refer its origin to something, and nāsabahu is to resemble or correspond to it; Lane gives no sense of counting in the root. Under n-ṣ-b: naṣaba is to set up a thing, and to set up a stone as a sign or mark; niṣāb is origin, source, the place whence a thing grows, and of property the amount on which alms are due; naṣīb is a share, a set portion; anṣāb al-ḥaram are the limits of the sacred territory, signs set up there by which it is known.

The two readings meet in the origin: nasab refers a thing to its source, and niṣāb is the source itself; naṣb then adds what Nisaba does with the measuring reed: the boundary set up, the share allotted, the amount counted. The n at the start is the root's n, the s is s or ṣ because Sumerian does not tell them apart, the b is b, and the final a is a vowel. The limit of this reading is that Civil reads the name Nidaba, with d, which neither nasab nor naṣab explains.

Historical Context

Nisaba's city Ereš has not yet been located; Tell Abu Salabikh and Jarin have been proposed. No temple of hers alone has been excavated, and her cult was most active in the temple of her daughter Ninlil at Nippur. Her role as patron of scribes is well attested from the Early Dynastic period to the early Old Babylonian; then Nabu took her place in writing, and she remained a grain goddess. A prayer to her was found in Nabu's temple at Nimrud from the Neo-Assyrian period, and her blessing is still mentioned in the Seleucid period. No image of her is certainly identified, though the poems describe her appearance and tools in detail.

Her husband Haya was a door-keeper and also a patron of writing; a god list calls him "the Nissaba of wealth" and his wife "the Nissaba of wisdom".

Family and connections

Key Mythic Narratives

"Nisaba be praised"

Scribes close with Nisaba's praise poems that are not about her. Inanna and Ebih, after Inanna has destroyed the mountain, ends "Nisaba be praised"; Enmerkar and En-suhgir-ana ends the same way after the contest of the sorcerers; and the Instructions of Shuruppak, which Ziusudra received from his father, close with praise of "the lady who completed the great tablets, the maiden Nisaba". The scribe hands every tablet he finishes back to her.

Nisaba's ruined house

In a short lament the house of Nisaba, "her of the tablets", is destroyed and grass sprouts by its walls; she lies down alone in the moonlight and weeps, and says that the walls hide the moonlight from her man.

Symbolic Reading

The essay rereading the Sumerian myths reads the history of writing as one road: marks on clay for numbers alone around 3400 BCE, then simplified pictures for names and numbers, then full sentences, then literature. Writing, it says, was invented for trade and accounting: how many sheep have I, then who owns them, then why. The Sumerian essay reads Nisaba as the goddess of writing and reckoning and joins lineage to writing, since writing is the keeping of lineages and counts.

The poems hold both ends together: Nisaba makes the barley grow in the furrows, keeps the seal in the treasury and the stewardship of the palace, fixes boundaries with the measuring reed, and then writes. One goddess holds the stages the essay describes, from field to storehouse to tablet.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Sumerian essay sets Nisaba beside Egyptian Thoth, scribe of the gods, beside Indian Sarasvatī, goddess of speech and learning, and beside the Greek Calliope. The Babylonian essay makes Nisaba the one who came before Nabu in writing and wisdom, which is what her ORACC profile says: Nabu took her place.

In China the invention of writing is credited to Cangjie, and the Huainanzi says that when he made writing heaven rained millet and the ghosts wailed at night. Writing and grain meet in the Chinese story as they meet in Nisaba; the difference is that in China the grain is a sign from heaven at the event of writing, while in Sumer it is the goddess's own work before she writes.

Enki's gift to her of the measuring reed and the title "scribe of the Land" in Enki and the World Order is part of his sharing out of the me, the offices and crafts a city stands on, and puts her among the teachers of crafts on the culture heroes page.