Manzat (goddess)
Ishtaran (in Der) Manzat (Manzât), also spelled Mazzi'at, Manzi'at and Mazzêt, sometimes known by the Sumerian name Tiranna (dTIR.AN.NA)[1] was a Mesopotamian and Elamite goddess representing the rainbow.
[8] However, Gary Beckman and Piotr Taracha argue that Pinikir, an Elamite astral goddess, was received by Hurrians from a Mesopotamian intermediary in the late third millennium BCE.
[15] According to Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, who unlike Lambert identify it simply as "Manzat", this star was represented as a horse head surrounded by a so-called "gate" on kudurru.
[16] However, Ursula Seid in her study of kudurru iconography concludes the horse head symbol should be connected to an unidentified possibly non-Mesopotamian local deity worshiped by highland communities in the proximity of modern Kirkuk.
[18] Maurits van Loon does propose that "gate" symbols in art represent the rainbow, but he explicitly states that his theory is not linked to Manzat, but rather to the rain goddess Shala.
[19] He considers it a possibility that figures of naked women cupping their breasts found at this site might represent a weather goddess (Shala or Manzat), and their jewelry - the rainbow.
[4] In offering lists from this area, she appears alongside Inanna of Larsa,[20] and it is possible that her presence in the Sealand pantheon was the result of continuation of traditions of this city.
[28] She also appears in a god list known from Mari, though presumed to originate in southern Mesopotamia, in which she is placed between the medicine goddess Nintinugga and Mamu, a dream deity.
[29] In Elam Manzat she appears for the first time in Naram-Sin's treaty with an unknown monarch,[1] though it is commonly assumed that she should be regarded as an Akkadian deity in this case.
[6] References to the worship of Manzat are known chiefly from the Elamite lowlands, especially Susa and its surroundings, similarly as in the case of deities such as Lagamal, Pinikir,[30] Adad and Shala.
[41] Inscriptions of Untash-Napirisha state that he built a temple of Manzat, referred to with the epithet "lady of the siyan kuk" ("sacred pretinct") in Chogha Zanbil.
[48] The name Nindara or Nindar originally belonged to a male Mesopotamian deity, the husband of the goddess Nanshe, who was worshiped in Lagash, Girsu and Ki'esa.
[48] In the Mesopotamian god list An = Anum Manzat appears without a husband, though an otherwise unknown son, Lugalgidda, as well as a sukkal (attendant deity), Sililitum, are assigned to her.
[51] Occasionally an association between Manzat and Ishtar is proposed in scholarship, usually based on the fact that (d)Tir-an-naki is a late writing of the name of Uruk, but according to Wilfred G. Lambert there is no strong evidence in favor of this theory.
[34] The use of ištar or ištarum as a common noun which could refer to any goddess, a synonym of iltum, the feminine form of ilu ("god"), goes back to the Old Babylonian period.
[56] In a single Maqlû incantation, Manzat is described as the sister of the Mesopotamian sun god Shamash, and by extension as daughter of his parents, Ningal and Sin.
