Ancient Goddesses of the Middle East - Research Paper Example

Ancient Goddesses of the Middle East Perhaps the earliest civilization in history emerged in the region we now refer to as the Middle East. Within this region, there is evidence of human habitation stretching back as far as 3500 BC. These included the Mesopotamians, the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Babylonians and the Assyrians as well as several neighboring kingdoms who all had an impact on the development of humanity. Neighbors to the north, such as the Hittites, were particularly influential as they both initiated struggle and diverted it as the Egyptians moved in. As a result of their early beginnings and their developed societies, this is also the area where most of the world’s religions are thought to have started. In most cases, these civilizations have left behind a great deal of artifacts that suggest the types of religions they practiced, most being of a polytheistic or multi-god format, as well as evidence of what these gods and goddesses represented. Today, the region is more often associated with the advent of Christianity and the concept of a one-god religion, so it is interesting to note the polytheistic tendencies and perhaps examine some of the more specific details of these tendencies to determine how or why the transition was made to a male-dominated religious tradition that would span more than 2000 years. Was it a reaction to an overly powerful, highly restrictive goddess cult? As a means of trying to isolate this grander question, it would be helpful to have some understanding of the greater goddesses of the Mesopotamian region, their powers and their development over time to determine whether the legends provide any support for the Great Goddess legend. Many people assume that the earliest civilizations worshipped a Great Goddess. She was a solitary figure that gave birth to all life on Earth and was responsible for everything on it – much like the God or Allah of the modern day. Evidence for her existence is found in a number of things such as the statuary that has been discovered and some of the myths that have been passed down. Decorative art in societies such as the ancient Minoans indicate women holding high places in society (Goodison & Morris, 1998). It is assumed that a society worshipping a Great Goddess such as this would be organized according to matrilineal lines with the female gender holding much of the power. “That at least some of the peoples … new-comers encountered were matriarchal and Goddess-worshipping was accepted by even such hard-headed (and influential) archaeologists as V. Gordon Childe” (Shalizi, 1999: 72). More evidence for this early Great Goddess was found in later religions which broke her power into the concept of a triune power. These became the three fates of the Norse, the Graces or the Furies of the Greeks, etc. The fall of the Great Goddess and her replacement by first a hierarchy of gods and then a single, male-gendered God is explained by some as reason for the fall of mankind and by others as establishment of proper order. One explanation for the turn-over could also be a historic turn-over of ruling civilizations in this area around 1500 BC. However, as is discussed by Goodison and Morris (1998), there is little evidence that this progression actually took place. In fact, there is even evidence that societies with extravagant goddess cults often are societies in which women as a gender have very low positions. Goodison and Morris (1998) offer the examples of classical Athens and modern Mexico in which women had very low social status and yet there were strong goddess cults in the form of Pallas Athene or Our Lady of Guadalupe respectively. While goddesses are found in numerous religions, including the earliest religions of the Mesopotamians, there is no evidence that the Great Goddess religion ever actually existed in the first place. One of the most powerful goddesses of the Mesopotamians was called Ninhursag. Because the region saw a number of changes over a period of centuries, this goddess also gained a number of other names as well including Aruru, Ninmah and Mami, but her function was always the same. This goddess was considered to be the mother goddess and the midwife of the gods (Dalley, 1998). She was considered to be the Matriarch of the god lines and was the source of nourishment for the kings of Sumer. There is some speculation that she might be the original Great Goddess referred to as Ki, the primordial goddess of the earth who brought forth life on the planet after consorting with An, the sky. This speculation that the two goddesses may be the same entity is based on the fact that there is no evidence that suggests Ki had a cult following while Ninhursag had at least two temples dedicated to her honor (Dalley, 1998). Her association as the creation goddess is made in the legend of Enki and Ninhursag (Dalley, 1998). According to this legend, Ninhursag and Enki had a daughter they called Ninsar. Then Ninsar and Enki had a daughter they called Ninkurra. Then Ninkurra and Enki had a daughter they called Uttu. Uttu and Enki did not mate and Uttu instead buried Enki’s seed in the ground. This sprouted into the first eight plants on earth. Enki ate the plants and became ill, making it necessary for Ninhursag to cure him by taking the plants into herself. From this, she then gave birth to eight more deities. Another text suggests that this goddess completed the birth of mankind by helping to pull them from the earth after Enki had uncovered their heads with his hoe (Dalley, 1998). In art, she is seen as a tall woman wearing a horned head-dress and a many-tiered skirt. She carries a short staff with her symbol, the omega, at its top and she is sometimes pictured with a lion cub on a leash at her side. Although she has as strong case for being the original mother goddess, there is yet another legend that places her as the midwife to Nammu, another mother goddess who creates different types of humans from clay during a party held by Enki. Nammu or Namma is simply known as the creation goddess and is most associated with the element of water. According to Jordan (2002), Nammu was the first goddess of the primeval sea and it was from her waters that the god An of the sky and the goddess Ki of the earth were born as the first gods. It was from these two that all the rest of the gods came forth. “She was probably the first personification of the constellation which the Babylonians later called Tiamat and the Greeks called Cetus and represented the Apsu” (Jordan, 2002). The Apsu is the fresh water ocean that the Sumerians believed flowed under the earth and that brought forth all life. “She is a goddess without a spouse, the self-procreating womb of the universe, the primal matter, standing for the female Sex as the one apparently able to create spontaneously” (Lishtar, 2010). According to the legends, it was Nammu who gave birth to Enki and, with him, created human beings to be the helpers of the gods. Following this creation, Nammu apparently handed over all or most of her functions to her son and subsided back into her tranquil waters. Within this deity, we see the closest resemblance to the concepts of the Great Goddess as they have been revealed. Nammu also had a number of statues and temples dedicated to her, but she is not mentioned in many texts. Some assume that this is because the goddess, as the elemental, foundational element of all things, is presupposed in all other worship, yet no definitive answer is forthcoming. At the most, there is the suggestion that the Great Goddess, if Nammu indeed is she, opted to recede into the haze placing her children in control – Enki may have been the father of many of the other goddesses, but he required the presence of Ninhursag, a female deity that also must have pre-dated Enki if she was present at his birth, to accomplish this. Whether separate females or two aspects of the same female, Nammu and Ninhursag functioned almost exclusively within the role of the mother and creator of life, yet there are other important elements of life that exist outside of these concerns. Mammetum or Mamitu is a Mesopotamian goddess most associated with the concepts of fate and destiny. Depicted as a goddess with a goat head, Mamitu functioned as a judge in the underworld. Because of her living environment in the underworld, Mammetum perhaps couldn’t avoid her associations with death, but her duties expanded beyond the simple end of life question. A derivative of her name was used to refer to property owned by a female during an earlier matriarchal period (Grimal, 1965: 110). In this way, she was also associated with the ideas of allotment or portioning. This concept was literal as well as figurative as Mammetum was considered to have been the goddess responsible for determining how much life one received as well as how much one received in life. When babies were born, it was believed that Mammetum would appear before the child and determine the child’s fate in life. She is even mentioned in the epic Gilgamesh in this capacity of being the decider of life and death, but again, her capacities are limited. Her capacities had a great deal to do with the term of life and the gifts of life but had nothing to do with the actual content of life or the giving of life. Her name also referred to ideas of destruction, doom and death and is closely associated with the goddess Kali-ma, the goddess of death from ancient Indo-European legend. It is reported that her cult was wide-spread and very old. “She was particularly worshipped as a black stone at Quidaid, near Mecca. She is connected with the great pilgrimage, as her sanctuary was the starting point for several tribes. She is known from Nabatean inscriptions, and tombs were placed under her protection, asking her to curse violators” (Bar, 2007). Her appearance in poetry is as an old woman offering cups full of death and her image in art is typically accompanied by the image of a waning moon over her head as a symbol of the crone. Again, though, there seems to be a second goddess, similarly powered yet different within the region. Ereshkigal was also named the goddess of the underworld with the power of judging who gained which type of underworld existence. Unlike Mammetum who had power over men from the time of their births and was more associated with fate and allotment than she was explicitly related to death, Ereshkigal’s power was confined to the underworld and not much is known about it other than what is revealed in the few legends that speak of her. In one legend, she is described as the sister of Ishtar, the goddess of love, and was a sky goddess. Perhaps it is because of these origins that, rather than being associated specifically with death, Ereshkigal is more closely associated with the spirit of rest and with the unproductive seasons of the year (Maspero, 1894). According to the legends, one day she was kidnapped by a dragon named Kur who took her to the underworld and enthroned her there as queen. There was rivalry there between Ereshkigal and Nergal who was the god of pestilence and death and thus had an interest and an effect on what happened in the underworld. While some legends indicate Nergal eventually won the affection of Ereshkigal who offered to share the duties of the underworld with him, other legends indicate their shared role was a bit more contentious. Another story indicates that Ereshkigal was invited to a party being thrown by the greater gods An and Ki, but she refused to attend because she had grown afraid of the sun. Her messenger managed to anger the upper gods who sent Nergal down to punish her, but when her pulled her off her throne to kill her, her piteous cries reached his heart and he made her his wife instead of his victim, taking over the role of the ruler of the underworld (Maspero, 1894). Again, there is evidence of a powerful female figure surrendering her power, sometimes willingly, sometimes unwillingly, into the hands of a male figure and allowing herself to fade into the background. A third goddess figure who seemed to be an important figure in the ancient Mesopotamian region was known as Ishtar or Inanna. This goddess was the goddess of love and fertility. Although she also presided over war, Ishtar’s primary association was with sexuality. The cult that honored her centered upon the concepts of sacred prostitutes, the city dedicated to her was referred to as the town of the sacred courtesans and Ishtar herself was known for her promiscuity among gods and men (Guirand, 1968). Unlike some of the later love goddesses, though, Ishtar did not necessarily leave her cast-off lovers better off than they had been before they met her or would have been had they stayed out of her way. “Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured! The fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favors heaped on them. Animals, enslaved by love, lost their native vigor: they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them. ‘Thou has loved the lion, mighty in strength,’ says the hero Gilgamesh to Ishtar, ‘and thou hast dug for him seven and seven pits! Thou hast loved the steed, proud in battle, and destined him for the halter, the goad and the whip” (Guirand, 1968: 58). Gods also suffered, but perhaps not always unjustifiably. One of the more famous legends about Ishtar is the time that she went into the underworld to try to steal some of her sister’s power of life and death. As she descended, she was forced to give up one article of clothing for each of the seven levels. Because each article of clothing she wore was a symbol of her goddess abilities, each level saw her strength diminish. By the time she reached Ereshkigal’s throne, she was naked and weak. In order to return to life, she struck a deal with her sister that someone must replace her in the underworld and Ishtar went with Ereshkigal’s demons to determine who that someone would be. Ishtar decided that no one who cried for her when they thought she was dead could be taken, but when she returned home, she discovered her husband had not donned mourning clothes but was instead dressed in a fine robe, so she sent him back with the demons (Guirand, 1968). A very popular goddess, there is yet evidence of another shadow goddess in the wings as there has been for the others. The pre-Arabic religions of the region refer to Al-Uzza as one of three chief goddesses (another of whom can be discerned as Mammetum). Unlike her close sister, though, Al-Uzza seems to almost entirely match the descriptions of Ishtar as she is described as the goddess of both love and war. Her stronghold was at Petra and she was considered the protectress of the city, indicating her strength and her powerful position. According to Bar (2007), she was “the most venerated of the Arab deities, the Goddess of the Morning Star and parallel to Venus, Goddess of the morning and evening star.” Associated with concepts of the maiden and the young one, Al-Uzza’s sexual habits are not as well-documented as those of Ishtar nor are her adventures, but there is ample evidence of her worship. Pre-Islamic Arabs considered her to be one of the three daughters of Allah. She was worshipped by the Nabataeans and the Quraysh including having her own sacred stone cube near Mecca. Her widespread appeal and her following were so strong that it is said that the prophet Mohammed considered accepting her and her sisters into his religion as the only way to deal with the strong resistance even from within his own clan about abandoning the goddesses. Qurayshi going into battle would often invoke this goddess as a form of protectionover them. Eventually, however, the goddesses were banned from Islam as they became mentioned in the Quran as evidence of idol worship and became featured in the Satanic Verses as enemies of the true faith. Unlike the other goddesses, neither Ishtar or Al-Uzza relinquished her power to the male forces but the male forces can be seen to actively work against them. Mohammad effectively demonized worship of the love goddess with the introduction of Islam and, with her sister goddesses relinquishing their power to male forces, Al-Uzza/Ishtar began to lose momentum. What can be seen in this progression of goddesses is a consistent pattern that seems to suggest the theory of the Great Goddess may have some reasonable basis in truth. None of these legends offers hard evidence or definitive answers, but they do suggest a very powerful female presence in the areas of raw emotion, life and death and creation and sustenance. Put these elements together and you have a deity responsible for just about everything that exists in a human’s experience. The legend of the mother goddess Nammu even provides some indication of the exact type of Great Goddess that some literature has suggested started humankind on a search for its creator. The power of this early progenitor is seen to be gradually broken up into smaller and smaller pieces, though, as the goddesses advance. First, it is divided among several deities before being sharply limited. Mother goddesses gain power only over creating and nurturing, death goddesses have power only over the underworld and love goddesses are seen to hold sway only over the passions. It is interesting to note that even here, the goddesses are split into a triune of the maiden, the mother and the crone. Having divided the powers, each of these goddesses are then dealt with in turn to get the powers out of the hands of the feminine and into the hands of the masculine. Nammu hands her power over to Enki and all of the other goddesses who follow after her defer to her son, placing him in supreme control. Mammetu is severely limited in her abilities and legends such as Gilgamesh demonstrate that, while it may be extremely difficult, there are ways of overthrowing her decisions. Her counterpart, Ereshkigal, is also strongly limited in her abilities and is made even weaker. Her story demonstrates that she had little choice about becoming queen of the underworld and little choice about handing her authority over to Nergal when it was demanded. The Ishtar/Al-Uzza goddess was perhaps the most popular of the goddesses as the maiden goddess of strong emotion, yet she, too, was defeated by male ideology. Although this does not prove that a progression from the Great Goddess to the Holy God occurred during the misty centuries of antiquity, the available clues do not rule out the possibility altogether. Works Cited Bar, Tala. “Fate and Fortune.” Eclectica. (January/February 2007). May 3, 2010 Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998. Goodison, Lucy & Christine Morris. Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence. London: British Museum Press, 1998. Grimal, Pierre. Larousse World Mythology. Secaucus, New Jersey: Chartwell Books, 1965. Guirand, F. “Assyro-Babylonian Mythology.” New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology. (Trans. Aldington and Ames). London: Hamlyn, 1968. Jordan, Michael. Encyclopedia of Gods: Over 2500 Deities of the World. Kyle Cathie Limited, 2002. Lishtar. “Lady of the Beginning: The Sumerian Great Creatrix.” Ladies of Passion, Magic, Courage, Wit and Power. (2010). May 3, 2010 Maspero, Gaston. The Dawn of Civilization. Appleton, 1894. Shalizi, Cosma. “Book Review: Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence.” The Bactra Review. (March 8, 1999). May 2, 2010 Read More