Nanna and Ningal
Nanna, also known as Nanna-Suen, is the Sumerian god of the moon, playing a vital role in regulating the natural environment and agricultural cycles in ancient Mesopotamia. He is believed to traverse the night sky, bringing vital spring floods that nourish the land. Ningal, a young woman from the marshlands near Eridu, falls in love with Nanna and expresses her longing for him through a heartfelt love song. This song captures Nanna's attention, leading him to descend to earth to pursue a romantic relationship with her.
Despite their mutual attraction, Ningal insists on adhering to societal marriage rituals, demonstrating the importance of these customs in Sumerian culture. Their eventual union signifies not only a celebration of love but also the restoration of social order, as they wait until the appropriate time for their marriage. Their children are significant figures in Sumerian mythology, with their daughter Inana (Ištar) becoming a prominent goddess of love and war, and their son Utu becoming the sun god. The myth of Nanna and Ningal highlights themes of love, societal norms, and the interconnectedness of divine and human affairs within the agrarian context of ancient Sumer.
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Nanna and Ningal
Author: Traditional Sumerian
Time Period: 2499 BCE–1000 BCE
Country or Culture: Mesopotamia
Genre: Myth
PLOT SUMMARY
Nanna (Nanna-Suen), the Sumerian god of the moon, travels across the sky each night. This gives order to the natural environment, bringing the spring floods that irrigate and fertilize the fields. Down in the marshlands near the city of Eridu in southern Mesopotamia, a young woman named Ningal falls in love with Nanna. Ningal’s mother, Ningikuga, goddess of reeds, carefully watches over her daughter.
One night, Ningal sings a poetic love song to Nanna in the night sky. She tells Nanna how she longs to be in his arms. When Nanna hears Ningal’s love song, he falls in love with her. Nanna descends to earth to meet Ningal. As night is fading, Nanna implores Ningal not to wait until the completion of the proper wedding rituals, which will take too long. Instead, he asks her to meet her the next night in the marshes to consummate their love. When Ningal demurs, Nanna promises to bring milk and cheese to her mother’s house, but he expresses his desire to visit her without her mother present. Ningal responds that that is also her desire, saying, “O my Nanna, your plaint is sweet, it is the plaint of my heart” (Jacobsen 125), but she continues to insist they wait.
Ningal returns home, and Nanna later sends a traveler to carry a message to Ningal, in which he entices her with the abundance of dairy products and crops in his possession and urges her to join him without delay. Ningal sends the traveler back to Nanna, repeating her insistence that they wait. Only after “he has filled the rivers with the early flood” will she join him as his wife in Ur (126). Nanna sees the wisdom in her words and agrees to wait.
At the end of spring, when the first fruits of the new season are ripening following the floods brought by the moon’s cycle, Nanna and Ningal are married at Ur. Afterward, they proceed north up the Euphrates river to the town of Nippur, where Nanna’s parents, father Enlil and mother Ninlil, live. Ningal promises Nanna that she will bear two children. Their firstborn, Inana (Ištar or Ishtar), will become the goddess of love and war. Their son, Utu, will become the god of the sun.
SIGNIFICANCE
The story of Nanna and Ningal is a myth from ancient Sumer. Sumerian cities were located in modern-day southern Iraq. Sumerians developed one of the oldest known writing systems, the cuneiform script, by 3000 BCE. This invention allowed Sumerians to transcribe their myths. Sumerian texts were rediscovered and transcribed into English after the middle of the nineteenth century CE, although many of these texts were extremely fragmentary, including the myth of Nanna and Ningal.
As god of the moon, Nanna was one of the principal Sumerian deities. He was also the city god of Ur. Astronomical knowledge of the moon, its phases, and its course across the sky was well understood by the Sumerians. The moon was seen as regulating the cycles of the seasons, particularly the forces of the rain and the two rivers of Mesopotamia, the Euphrates and the Tigris, which were vital to the region’s agricultural prosperity. Both rivers run into the Persian Gulf at the southern coast of what was ancient Sumer. The myth opens with an invocation of the significant power and extent of Nanna’s rule over natural matters important to the agrarian, river-based Sumerian culture.
Another key significance of the marriage of Nanna and Ningal is its double emphasis on the power of love and its necessary submission under human rule and ritual. Nanna and Ningal love each other with a passion that brooks no delay. They are willing to transgress the marriage rules and rituals of Sumerian society. These rules are shown to apply even to a god and his consort. It is Ningal who comes to insist on following societal rules for the benefit of all involved. She successfully persuades Nanna to agree to wait until the appropriate preparations have been made for their marriage. As social order is restored, both the lovers and the land prosper.
Of special importance in Sumerian mythology are the two children of Nanna and Ningal. Their daughter, Inana, is better known by her Akkadian name, Ištar (Ishtar). Nanna and Ningal’s procession upriver to Nanna’s parents echoes the subject of another Sumerian myth, the story of Nanna’s journey to Nippur. Travel and trade between southern and northern cities such as Ur and Nippur was vitally important in shaping Sumerian society and culture.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Black, Jeremey, et al. “A Balbale to Nanna (Nanna B).” Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature. Faculty of Oriental Studies, U of Oxford, 19 Dec. 2006. Web. 20 Sept. 2013.
Bottéro, Jean. Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia. Trans. Teresa Lavender Fagan. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Print.
Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven: Yale UP, 1976. Print.
Leick, Gwendolyn. Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature. London: Routledge, 1994. Print.
Stone, Adam. “Nanna/Suen/Sin (god).” Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses. Oracc and the UK Higher Education Academy, 2013. Web. 20 Sept. 2013.