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The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East


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Nanaya in Syria and Mesopotamia (1)

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12 Assyrian Identity




12 Assyrian Identity




12 Assyrian Identity




01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery






12 Assyrian Identity




01 Religious and ideological doctrines and imagery



Keywords
identifications
Nanaya
Period
Roman Empire
Sasanid Empire
Channel
No channel specified


Text
In the Hellenistic period Nanaya or Nanâ was frequently assimilated with Artemis. A Roman temple for Artemis-Nanâ was built in the middle of the city of Dura Europos, and a dedicatory inscription identified Nanȃ as the chief goddess of that city. In this temple were erected the images of Aphrodite (winged victory), and Tyche or Fortuna which shows that Nanâ combined her characteristics with all those Graeco-Roman divinities. An inscription accompanying the image of Artemis in Greek dress on a tessera from Palmyra identifies her as Nanaya (NNY) (Azarpay 1976: 537). Her cult is also known from Aššur and Hatra. Nanai or Nanaya had the epithet “the great goddess of the entire earth” according to the Syriac Martyr Legend of Mār Muˁain of the 4th century (Hoffmann 1880: 29). Nanaya was worshipped in Beth Garme in the fourth and fifth centuries because of the king Shapur’s resettlement of ninety families from Maysan at a village near Kirkuk, who brought the cult of Nanai along with them (Morony 1984: 386). She was also important at the court of Shapur II, and venerated in Beth ˁArbhaye (Hoffmann 1880: 49, 131). In the fifth century, she was worshipped with libations and sacrifices as Bēdukht at the town of Dumma below Kalwadha and in nearby Radhan. The Iranian goddess Anāhīt, who was identified with Nanaya, may have been worshipped as Mammai in the Diyala region in the fifth century. The end of Nanaya’s cult can be approximately dated to the seventh century CE.


Bibliography

Azarpay 1976, 537Azarpay, G. “Nanâ, the Sumero-Akkadian Goddess of Transoxiana.” Journal of the American Oriental Society 96 (1976) 536-542. [JSTOR (requires subscription)]
Hoffmann 1880Hoffmann, Georg. Auszüge aus syrischen Akten persischer Märtyrer. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes 7. Leipzig: Brockhaus 1880 (reprint: Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint 1966).
Morony 1984, 386Morony, M. G. Iraq after the Muslim Conquest. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984.

Links (external links will open in a new browser window)
Cf. The Goddess as androgyne (1)
Cf. Tyche with beard (1)

Amar Annus


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000731.php


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