Ninsun
Sumerian-Akkadian goddess; "Lady of the Wild Cows" (Nin-sumun(ak)); identified by extensive cow-related epithets and the Akkadian Rīmat-Ninsun ("Wild Cow Ninsun"). Wife of Lugalbanda; mother of Gilgamesh (the defining maternal relationship of Mesopotamian literature); also claimed as mother by the Ur III kings Ur-Nammu and Šulgi, by Sin-Kashid of Uruk, and by Gudea of Lagash. In the Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh she actively interprets Gilgamesh's dreams (Tablet I), petitions Shamash to protect him on his Humbaba-expedition (Tablet III), and accepts Enkidu as a member of her family. Her main cult center was at KI.KAL; Sin-Kashid built the É-KI.KAL temple for her and Lugalbanda together in Old Babylonian Uruk. Ur-Nammu built the Emah ("Magnificent Temple") for her in Ur. Some traditions equate her with the medicine-goddess Gula in syncretic hymns.
Children
Domains
- maternal protection and dream interpretation
- patron of Ur III kings Ur Nammu Shulgi
Powers
- Interpret prophetic dreams
- Petition the sun-god
Epithets
- Rīmat-Ninsun The Wild Cow Ninsun; the bovine mother-goddess, mother of GilgameshGilgamesh I-III (Rimat-Ninsun interprets the dreams) (primary)
- mūdât kalāma She who knows everything; the all-wise divine mother of the heroStandard Babylonian Gilgamesh I.252 (epithet of Ninsun) (primary)
Relations
- parent: AnuAnu (Sumerian An) as her father per the dominant tradition (Klein, Wilcke); some texts treat the parentage as opaque. Kept as a relation rather than a parentId so Ninsun's deity-tier is unaffected.Multiple Ninsun texts identifying Anu as her father (primary)
- parent: Uraš (earth-goddess, consort of Anu in the Sumerian tradition; mother of Ninsun) · MesopotamianUraš (Sumerian earth-goddess) entry pending. Mother per the dominant tradition.Multiple texts (primary)
- spouse: LugalbandaA fragmentary myth (sole copy, difficult to translate) describes their courtship — Ninsun offers beer-bread to Lugalbanda, they spend a night together at Iri'aza in Elam, then go to Uruk where Inanna instructs Lugalbanda how to approach Ninsun's father for permission to marry. The myth may have culminated in Gilgamesh's birth (Lisman) — proposed but unproven.Weidner god-list, An = Anum forerunner and An = Anum god lists, the Standard Emesal lexical list (the canonical Lugalbanda-Ninsun pairing); fragmentary myth of their marriage (primary)
- mother of: GilgameshThe defining maternal relationship of Mesopotamian literature.Earliest Sumerian Gilgamesh poems (Bilgames cycle); Standard Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh I, III (primary)
- mother of: ŠulgiPer Ur III royal hymns, Šulgi of Ur (and his father Ur-Nammu) called Ninsun and Lugalbanda their "holy parents," explicitly making Šulgi Gilgamesh's brother. The same divine-paternity claim, now applied to a 21st-c.-BCE historical king as ideological elevation.Šulgi royal hymns; Ur-Nammu hymns (primary)