Mullissu is a goddess who is the consort of the

Assyria Assyria (Neo-Assyrian cuneiform: , ''māt Aššur'') was a major ancient Mesopotamian civilization that existed as a city-state from the 21st century BC to the 14th century BC and eventually expanded into an empire from the 14th century BC t ...

n god Asshur. Mullissu may be identical with the

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

ian goddess

Ninlil Ninlil ( D NIN.LÍL; meaning uncertain) was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the wife of Enlil. She shared many of his functions, especially the responsibility for declaring destinies, and like him was regarded as a senior deity and head of th ...

, wife of the god

Enlil Enlil, later known as Elil and Ellil, is an List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian god associated with wind, air, earth, and storms. He is first attested as the chief deity of the Sumerian pantheon, but he was later worshipped by t ...

, which would parallel the fact that Asshur himself was modeled on Enlil. Mullissu's name was written .Karlheinz Kessler, “Mylissa, Mylitta,” in ''Brill’s New Pauly'', Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry. Consulted online on 27 January 2021 Mullissu is identified with

Ishtar Inanna is the List of Mesopotamian deities, ancient Mesopotamian goddess of war, love, and fertility. She is also associated with political power, divine law, sensuality, and procreation. Originally worshipped in Sumer, she was known by the Akk ...

of Nineveh in the

Neo-Assyrian Empire The Neo-Assyrian Empire was the fourth and penultimate stage of ancient Assyrian history. Beginning with the accession of Adad-nirari II in 911 BC, the Neo-Assyrian Empire grew to dominate the ancient Near East and parts of South Caucasus, Nort ...

times. Also proposed to be Mullissu is a goddess whom

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

called Mylitta and identified with

Aphrodite Aphrodite (, ) is an Greek mythology, ancient Greek goddess associated with love, lust, beauty, pleasure, passion, procreation, and as her syncretism, syncretised Roman counterpart , desire, Sexual intercourse, sex, fertility, prosperity, and ...

. The name ''Mylitta'' may derive from Mulliltu or Mullitta, the Babylonian variant of ''Mullissu'', where one cult was connected with the in

Nippur Nippur (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logogram, logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"I. E. S. Edwards, C. J. Gadd, N. G. L. Hammond, ''The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory'': Vol. 1, Part 1, Ca ...

and the other with

Kish (Sumer) Kish (Sumerian language, Sumerian: Kiš; transliteration: :wikt:𒆧, KišKi (earth), ki; cuneiform: ; , near modern Tell al-Uhaymir) is an important archaeological site in Babil Governorate (Iraq), located south of Baghdad and east of the anc ...

. ''Mulliltum'' was an epithet of Ninlil which appears as ''Mullissu'' in Neo-Assyrian as the wife of god Ashur. She is spelled mlš, here also as the consort of Asshur (''’šr''), in the Sfire inscription (A8) from Syria inscribed in

Old Aramaic Old Aramaic refers to the earliest stage of the Aramaic language, known from the Aramaic inscriptions discovered since the 19th century. Emerging as the language of the city-states of the Arameans in the Fertile Crescent in the Early Iron Age, ...

(eighth century BCE). Her Late Babylonian cult is reflected in the spelling mwlyt (''Mulit'') as transmitted in the Mandaic magical corpus of

late antiquity Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown (historian), Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodiza ...

.Karlheinz Kessler and Christa Müller-Kessler, “Spätbabylonische Gottheiten in spätantiken mandäischen Texten,” ''Zeitschrift für Assyriologie'' 89, 1999, pp. 70–72.

References

External links

Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses: Ninlil (Mulliltu, Mullissu, Mylitta) (goddess)
Mesopotamian goddesses Mesopotamian mythology Inanna {{MEast-myth-stub