Goddess of the Night (Hurrian)
Goddess of the Night (Sumerian: ð’€ð’ˆª, DINGIR.GE6[1]) was a deity worshiped in the Hurrian kingdom of Kizzuwatna, and later also in Å amuḫa in the Hittite Empire.
[6] It led to a number of now discarded proposals regarding the nature of DINGIR.GE6, including an attempt at relating her to an epithet of Aphrodite Urania from Cyprus, melania, "the black," attested in Roman sources from the time of Sulla.
[7] It was subsequently confirmed by the discovery of alternate spellings clarifying that GE6 represents the word "night," rather than any other readings of the same cuneiform sign, leading to the modern consensus.
[10] Gary Beckman suggests that it is possible ritual texts related to her, as well as these dealing with Kumarbi and the so-called "Former Gods," have their origin in "Sumero-Hurrian" culture of northern Syria and the "transtigridian" area of the late third and early second millennium BCE.
[14] Since she appears in a Hurrian ritual, Alfonso Archi considers it possible her name was a mistaken writing of an unrelated theonym, Mušuni, "order.
"[15] According to Frans Wiggermann, in Mesopotamian texts night (Akkadian: mušītu) could be sporadically personified and was described as a "veiled bride," but the word even in this context was not accompanied by the dingir sign denoting divinity.
[28] However, the view that either of them was the same as the Goddess of the Night is doubted, chiefly because the position of the latter in the pantheon of Kizzuwatna was relatively high, while the former belonged to the category of minor deities.
"[4] Jared R. Miller agrees with this position as well, and points out that Beal's assumption would match what is known about other similar texts describing dream omens.
[21] According to ritual texts, the Goddess of the Night was believed to wear a white or red kureššar, a type of shawl commonly worn as head-wear by Hittite women.
[4] Together with the use of Akkadian signs representing a second person feminine form of the verb "to love" (tarâmī) in a passage referring to her sympathy for specific locations this fact is regarded as proof that she was a goddess rather than a god.
[4] However, while addressed as female, in the same text she receives both feminine and masculine sets of clothing, which according to Jared L. Miller might point to a partially ambiguous identity.
[37] In addition to the aforementioned articles of clothing, a text dealing with creation of a new temple for Goddess of the Night enumerates a variety of objects a new statue of her had to be equipped with: multiple brooches made out of silver and iron (at the time regarded as a precious metal), ivory combs, musical instruments, a bronze basin used to "bathe" her, stools, tables, and woolen tapestries in five colors meant to provide the statue with privacy when necessary.
[12] An invocation from a ritual text focused on the Goddess of the Night list cult centers of Ishtar (Agade, Babylon and Hursagkalama, an alternate name of Kish).
[40] It has been pointed out that the list of cities preserved in this ritual, as well as the information about the worship of Pinikir contained in it, most likely indicates that the scholarly tradition of Kizzuwatna involved the transfer of Mesopotamian knowledge.
[12] The worship of duos of deities with similar domains (for example Allani and Išḫara or Ninatta and Kulitta) as if they were one was a common feature of Hurrian religion.
[43] In a ritual preceding her transfer to a new temple, Goddess of the Night is summoned from cities associated with Ishtar, but also from locations where Pinikir was worshiped (Susa, Elam).
"[44] According to the same text, Pinikir received a keldi (so-called "goodwill offering") identical to that dedicated to the Goddess of the Night, though located on the roof rather than on the temple.
[51] The goddess herself was summoned from various locations and a string representing the path she had to take to reach her new dwelling had to be tied to the statue after the completion of this part of the preparations.
