Ninti (; "mistress of life") was a

Mesopotamian goddess Deities in ancient Mesopotamia were almost exclusively Anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic. They were thought to possess extraordinary powers and were often envisioned as being of tremendous physical size. The deities typically wore ''melam'', a ...

worshipped in

Lagash Lagash (; cuneiform: LAGAŠKI; Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''Lagaš'') was an ancient city-state located northwest of the junction of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers and east of Uruk, about east of the modern town of Al-Shatrah, Iraq. Lagash ( ...

. She was regarded as the mother of

Ninkasi Ninkasi was the Mesopotamian goddess of beer and brewing. It is possible that in the first millennium BC she was known under the variant name Kurunnītu, derived from a term referring to a type of high quality beer. She was associated with both ...

. She also appears in the myth '' Enki and Ninhursag'' as one of the deities meant to soothe the Enki's pain. In this text, her name is reinterpreted first as "lady rib" and then as "lady of the month" through scribal

word play Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, ph ...

Attestations

Ninti's name can be translated as "mistress who keeps alive" or "mistress (of) life". A variant form of her name might be Nintiḫal, "mistress who allocates life". However, Jeremiah Peterson notes that due to the existence of the divergent variant spelling Kurratiḫal it is not certain how the

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

sign NIN should be read in this case. Oldest attestations of Ninti have been identified in texts from Fara. She is also attested in Early Dynastic texts from

, and according to Gebhard Selz must have been worshipped in this city, as references to a

temple A temple (from the Latin ) is a place of worship, a building used for spiritual rituals and activities such as prayer and sacrifice. By convention, the specially built places of worship of some religions are commonly called "temples" in Engli ...

dedicated to her are known. This conclusion has been subsequently accepted by other authors. She also appears in the

theophoric name A theophoric name (from Greek: , ''theophoros'', literally "bearing or carrying a god") embeds the word equivalent of 'god' or a god's name in a person's name, reflecting something about the character of the person so named in relation to that d ...

s Ninti-badmu, "Ninti is my mother", and Ninti-men, "Ninti is the crown" or "Ninti has the crown". Further attestations, including theophoric names (for example Ur-Ninti), as well as entries in offering lists and god lists, are available from the

Ur III The Third Dynasty of Ur or Ur III was a Sumerian dynasty based in the city of Ur in the 22nd and 21st centuries BC (middle chronology). For a short period they were the preeminent power in Mesopotamia and their realm is sometimes referred to by ...

and

Old Babylonian Old Babylonian may refer to: *the period of the First Babylonian dynasty (20th to 16th centuries BC) *the historical stage of the Akkadian language Akkadian ( ; )John Huehnergard & Christopher Woods, "Akkadian and Eblaite", ''The Cambridge Enc ...

periods. In the Old Babylonian god list from Mari, Ninti appears in the proximity of Nindara and Ninmug.

Associations with other deities

A hymn to

states that while this goddess was raised by

Ninhursag Ninḫursaĝ ( ''Ninḫarsang''; ), sometimes transcribed Ninursag, Ninḫarsag, or Ninḫursaĝa, also known as Damgalnuna or Ninmah, was the ancient Sumerian mother goddess of the mountains, and one of the seven great deities of Sumer. She ...

, her parents were Ninti and

Enki Enki ( ) is the Sumerian god of water, knowledge ('' gestú''), crafts (''gašam''), and creation (''nudimmud''), and one of the Anunnaki. He was later known as Ea () or Ae p. 324, note 27. in Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) religion, and ...

. Ninti and Ninkasi occur near each other in a document from the Fara period. The relation between Ninti and Enki is also attested in the god-list ''

An = Anum ''An = Anum'', also known as the Great God List, is the longest preserved Mesopotamian god list, a type of lexical list cataloging the deities worshiped in the Ancient Near East, chiefly in modern Iraq. While god lists are already known from the ...

'', where she is equated with his spouse

Damkina Damgalnuna, also known as Damkina, was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the wife of the god Enki. Her character is poorly defined in known sources, though it is known that like her husband she was associated with ritual purification and that she ...

. The masculine equivalent of her name, Enti, is also given as an alternate name of Enki, though in other contexts ^d EN. TI was instead a

logographic In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chinese c ...

representation of the name of Ebiḫ, a mountain god presumed to represent

Hamrin Mountains The Hamrin Mountains (, ) are a small mountain ridge in northeast Iraq. The westernmost ripple of the Zagros Mountains, the Hamrin mountains extend from the Diyala Governorate bordering Iran, northwest to the Tigris river, crossing northern Sala ...

. Ninti also occurs next to Enki in a lexical list referred to as ''Silbenvokabular A''. Antoine Cavigneaux and Manfred Krebernik additionally suggest that the deity Nintiḫal might correspond to Ninti in the Nippur god list, and that under this name she was understood as the mother of Siris. The list records the sequence Nintiḫal, Siris, Ninkasi. Nintiḫal is also attested in relation to Nungal, the goddess of prisons. She was regarded as the '' udug'' (in this context: "protective spirit") of her house. Gebhard Selz stresses that Ninti should not be confused with Nintinugga, a healing-goddess from

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 ...

Mythology

In the myth ''Enki and Ninhursag'', Ninti appears as one of the eight deities created to relieve Enki of his pain, being specifically responsible for healing his ribs. The other deities created for the same purpose in this narrative include Abu, Ninsikila ( Meskilak), Ningiriutud ( Ningirida),

, Nanshe, Azimua and Ensag ( Inzak). In the end, when favorable destinies are proclaimed for all of them, Ninti is appointed to the position of the "lady of the month". Her name is reinterpreted first as a

pun A pun, also known as a paronomasia in the context of linguistics, is a form of word play that exploits multiple meanings of a term, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from t ...

on ''nin-ti'', "lady rib", and then ''nin-iti'', "lady of the month", which according to Dina Katz reflects the fact that the compilers of the text selected her entirely based on her name's potential for wordplay and were "not interested in her religious background". Jeremiah Peterson considers the reinterpretation of her name to be an example of a

folk etymology Folk etymology – also known as (generative) popular etymology, analogical reformation, (morphological) reanalysis and etymological reinterpretation – is a change in a word or phrase resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a mo ...

References

Bibliography

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External links

*
Hymn to Ninkasi (Ninkasi A)
' in the

Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) is an online digital library of texts and translations of Sumerian language, Sumerian literature that was created by a now-completed project based at the Oriental Institute, Oxford, Orient ...

*
Enki and Ninhursag
' in the ETCSL
Ninti
in the Electronic Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary Mesopotamian goddesses Lagash