Ninhursag

The Mother Goddess

Ninhursag was among the most important deities of early Sumer, often ranked with An, Enlil, and Enki among the great gods. Many names cluster around her (Ninmah 'exalted lady', Nintu 'lady of birth', Aruru, and the Akkadian Belet-ili 'lady of the gods'), and scholars debate how far these were once distinct goddesses. All share her central role as divine midwife and shaper of life.

Maker of Humankind

In the Sumerian Enki and Ninmah, the goddess forms humans from clay with Enki. In the Babylonian Atrahasis, the birth goddess Mami (Nintu) mixes clay with the flesh and blood of a slain god to create people to bear the gods' labor. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the gods ask Aruru, who made Gilgamesh, to make his equal: she washes her hands, pinches off clay, and casts it into the wilderness, and Enkidu is born.

Enki and Ninhursag

In the myth set in the paradise of Dilmun, Enki couples with Ninhursag and then with a line of daughters and granddaughters, and eats plants she has grown. Ninhursag curses him, and he sickens until she relents and bears eight healing deities, one for each ailing part of his body.

Cult

Her temples stood at Kesh and Adab, and at Tell al-Ubaid near Ur, where a temple to her dating to the Early Dynastic period was excavated in the 1920s.