Ninsikila, queen of the pure land
Ninsikila ('pure lady' / 'lady of the pure place') is the Dilmunite goddess as she appears in Mesopotamian myth. In 'Enki and Ninhursaga', the great Sumerian poem that locates the primordial paradise in Dilmun, Enki lies down with Ninsikila his spouse in a land that is described as still virginal and pristine, and she addresses him to ask that the city of Dilmun be given fresh water from the earth, quays and harbours for ships, and agricultural abundance; the same figure reappears in 'Enki and the World Order', where Enki, having purified Dilmun, places Ninsikila in charge of it. Assyriological scholarship treats this Dilmun Ninsikila as closely bound up with the chief goddess Meskilak, whose name was written homonymously as Ninsikila in Mesopotamia; the two are frequently identified, though a separate, gender-shifting Mesopotamian deity Ninsikila (spouse of Lisin) is a distinct figure not to be confused with the lady of Dilmun. Because the surviving portrait of Ninsikila belongs wholly to the literary mythology of the pure land rather than to the Bahrain-Failaka cult, she stands somewhat apart from the historically attested couple Inzak and Meskilak.
Domains
- pure land of dilmun
- fresh water and abundance
Powers
- to petition the creator god to bring sweet water and plenty to Dilmun
- to preside over the virgin pure land of Dilmun
Epithets
- nin ki-sikil-la dilmun-naThorkild Jacobsen, The Harps That Once...: Sumerian Poetry in Translation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), pp. 181-204. (secondary)
Sources
- Ninsikila is the goddess of the pure land of Dilmun who, as the spouse of Enki in the Sumerian myth 'Enki and Ninhursaga', petitions the god to endow Dilmun with sweet water and plenty; in Mesopotamia her name overlaps with that of the Dilmunite goddess Meskilak.: Samuel Noah Kramer & W. F. Albright, 'Enki and Ninhursag: A Sumerian "Paradise" Myth', Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research, Supplementary Studies 1 (1945). (secondary); Pascal Attinger, 'Enki et Ninhursaga', Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archaologie 74 (1984), pp. 1-52. (secondary)