Further attestations are available from northern Mesopotamia, including the kingdom of Apum, Assyria, and the Diyala area, from various southern Mesopotamian cities such as Larsa, Nippur, and possibly Uruk, as well as from Ugarit and Emar.

It is possible that Ninkarrak only developed into a healing goddess due to already being associated with disease in curse formulas, in which she appears frequently as early as in the Akkadian Empire.

While the standard spelling of Ninkarrak's name is dnin-kar-ra-ak, it is not attested before the second millennium BCE, and the orthography shows a degree of variety in cuneiform texts.

"[4] The deity list An = Anum also gives Ninekisiga, possibly to be understood as "lady of the house of funerary offerings," as an alternate name of Ninkarrak.

[8] Irene Sibbing-Plantholt notes that past popularity of this proposal relied on the presumption that goddesses were connected to supposed practices of "temple prostitution.

[9] Douglas Frayne suggested that the name was a phonetic Akkadian rendering of Sumerian nin-gir-ak, "Lady of the scalpel" (with ak being a genitive ending), although this view is generally considered implausible.

[10] Westenholz, who also voiced support for this view, pointed out Ninkarrak's name is absent from glossaries of dialectical emesal forms, which would be expected for a Sumerian theonym,[9] although this argument is not accepted by Sibbing-Plantholt as convincing evidence.

[12] This view is also supported by Sibbing-Plantholt, who concludes that the Sumerian appearance of the name "could (...) have been carefully created by scholars who attempted to give the goddess a meaningful position within the religious framework".

[6] This theory is also accepted by Alfonso Archi, who notes that identification of the Eblaite Ninkar with a minor Sumerian goddess of daylight would make it difficult to explain why devotion to her is relatively common, for example among women of the royal house.

[21] It is possible that Ninkarrak, under the name Nikarawa (dni-ka+ra/i-wa/i-sa2[3]), appears in a hieroglyphic Luwian inscription from Carchemish, which asks the goddess' dogs to devour anyone who damages the inscribed monument.

[34] The Babylonian king Hammurabi invoked Ninkarrak in a curse formula [35] on one of his steles, calling her the "goddess who promotes my cause at the Ekur temple" and imploring her to punish anyone who damages the monuments with diseases "which a physician cannot diagnose".

[41] Anu was consistently regarded as Ninkarrak's father while her mother was Urash, which indicates that her parentage was understood to be identical to that of Ninisina, another healing goddess.

[42] The deity list An = Anum equates the goddess NIN-ĝaʾuga (reading of the first sign uncertain, with ereš and égi both being possibilities), the wife of the god Lugalabba, with Ninkarrak, although in the Emesal Vocabulary she corresponds to Gula instead, and a text where in different copies her name alternates with Ninmug's is known too.

[13] Joan Goodnick Westenholz presumed that the link between the deities was based on their shared origin in what is modern Syria,[13] while Irene Sibbing-Plantholt refers more broadly to both of them as being worshiped in the "Western and Eastern fringes of Mesopotamia" and identifies that as the cause.

[51] In addition to Ninkarrak, multiple other healing goddesses belonged to the Mesopotamian pantheon, among them Ninisina (from Isin), Nintinugga (from Nippur), Gula (possibly originally from Umma), and Bau.

[64] In a version of the literary text Great Revolt against Narām-Sîn from Mari, Ninkarrak is mentioned in association with the coronation of Ipḫur-Kiši, although in another copy Gula appears instead, and the temple present in the same passage, Esabad, belonged to Ninisina.

[1] According to Daniel T. Potts, she is one of the four deities from the Sumero-Akkadian pantheon mentioned in it, the other four being Ninurta, Ilaba, Išḫara, and Manzat, while the remaining twenty six are Elamite and include, among others, Inshushinak, Humban, Hutran, Pinikir, and Simut.

[1] Joan Goodnick Westenholz argued that the latter is known only from Girsu,[34] while Irene Sibbing-Plantholt maintains a more cautious approach, and concludes that it remains uncertain which goddess is meant in early sources such as the Abu Salabikh deity list.

[9] The worship of Ninkarrak is well attested in sources from Sippar,[72] although it is not certain whether she was present in the local pantheon before the Old Babylonian period or, whether she only was introduced there during the reign of Immerum, perhaps from the Diyala area.

[78] In sources from Middle Babylonian Sippar, her name occurs only on a single kudurru (boundary stone) inscription, which states that if anyone will transgress the listed regulations, Ninkarrak will "take away his seed".

[79] Attestations from the Kassite and Middle Babylonian periods are infrequent overall: her name is only mentioned on three kudurru, never in clear association with a specific figure depicted, and on a single seal.

The identification was based on finds that include a tablet with a list of offerings that starts with her name (most likely used as a point of reference by priests maintaining it), as well as seals mentioning her, and other epigraphic evidence.

[87] Among the items excavated were 6637 beads [88] made out of a variety of materials (agate, carnelian, gypsum, hematite, lapis lazuli, and rock crystal), including some shaped as animals (a frog, a cow, and a duck) as well as nine [89] Egyptian-style scarabs, all of which likely were intended as an offering to Ninkarrak or a were a temple deposit.

[88] The scarabs from the temple of Ninkarrak are considered a find of particular achaeoloigcal importance, as they represent the easternmost known location where such objects have been found in a sealed deposit dated to the Old Babylonian period.

[88] The excavation made it possible to date the artifacts with relative accuracy as certain features evident in them are not attested before 1650-1640 BCE (the reign of the Fifteenth Dynasty of Egypt).

[96] Later Assyrian sources mentioning her include the Tākultu text, listing deities greeted by the king during a long ritual and a number of hymns from Assur,[22] although she was not a major goddess in this area in the first millennium BCE.

[80] In the kingdom of Apum, also located in the north of Mesopotamia in the upper Khabur valley, she was one of the deities invoked in oath formulas in treaties, and a statue of her might have been present during related ceremonies.

[99] It is known that she was worshiped in Shaduppum, where a festival involving offerings of sesame oil was held in her honor, in Išḫali, where she is attested in incantations, and in Nuzi, where she appears in the theophoric names (Ninkarrak-ummī and Ninkarrak-ṣillī).

[102] While she is overall sparsely attested in sources from the Mesopotamian heartland before the end of the Old Babylonian period,[103] sporadic references to her are also known from the southernmost cities, notably Larsa and Uruk.

[105] Attestations of Ninkarrak are known from sources from both Emar and Ugarit in modern Syria and according to Joan Goodnick Westenholz, might support the theory that she originated in the northwest of Mesopotamia.