Ninkasi

Ninkasi is beer. The Hymn to Ninkasi is a praise-poem that doubles as a recipe: it walks through soaking the malt, spreading it to dry, mixing the bappir-bread, filtering the mash into the collector vat, and it is sung to her throughout. Beer was a staple ration in Mesopotamia rather than a luxury — brewers were paid in it — so a goddess of brewing is a goddess of the daily food supply, not of festivity. The hymn also gives her parents: Enki her father and Ninti, queen of the abzu, her mother. Both are added in this pass and both carry parent links.

Parentage

• Enki
• Ninti

Domains

• brewing

Sources

• A hymn to Ninkasi (ETCSL 4.23.1): 'Your father is Enki, the lord Nudimmud, your mother is Ninti, the queen of the abzu' — and the brewing sequence that the hymn walks through.
• Reference treatment of Ninkasi and of her name and sphere.