The use of Ninsianna's name to refer to the planet Venus declined later, though the feminine form of this deity continued to be worshiped, for example in Nippur.
In the Hellenistic period, she appears in ritual texts from Uruk, Ninsianna, the "Red Queen of Heaven," was a divine representation of the planet Venus.
[11] An inscription of Rim-Sîn I presents Ninsianna both as a deity of justice, "judge, supreme advisor, who distinguishes between truth and falsehood," and as a divine warrior.
[12] A scholarly tablet from the archive of Ur-Utu, who served the chief lamentation priest (kalamāḫu) of Annunitum in Sippar-Amnanum, indicates that it is possible that as a personification of Venus, the deity was viewed as female at sunset and male at sunrise.
"[4] It has been proposed that Ninsianna was originally considered to be female, but her gender became variable due to contact between Sumerians and speakers of Semitic languages who represented the same celestial body as a male deity.
[1] Douglas Frayne nonetheless translates the inscription as if a feminine deity was meant, "for the goddess Ninsianna, my lord,"[15] though Manfred Krebernik in a review notes this is incorrect.
[18] However, some evidence in favor of interpreting specific references to Ninsianna as designating this deity as a god rather than a goddess, for example an inscription of Iddin-Sin of Simurrum, is uncertain, as it is possible that the Akkadian word ilu in such cases might be employed as a gender neutral term, similar to Sumerian dingir.
[3] According to Jeremiah Peterson, in the god list An = Anum and in the lexical text Proto-Diri, Ninsianna, Kabta and Maḫdianna are all explained as Ištar kakkabi, and thus as goddesses.
[26] A variant spelling of her name, Simua, might indicate that it was derived from si-mu2, "horn growing,"[27] though Manfred Krebernik remarks this even if this assumption is correct, it might only be the reflection of a folk etymology.
[28] An = Anum also lists dALAM as a byname of Timua, though according to Wilfred G. Lambert this is most likely a reference of the concept of deified statues, and does not indicate any relation to other deities whose names could be written with the same logogram, such as Alala and Belili.
[9] According to Julia Krul, the goal was to establish Antu as "Ištar’s superior in the domain of the heavens" as a part of a broader phenomenon of extending the scope of her cult in Uruk in the Hellenistic period.
[30] Ninsianna was worshiped in various locations in Mesopotamia[4] and is attested for the first time in texts from the Ur III period, such as an inscription of Shulgi pertaining to the construction of a temple for this deity.
[20] A temple dedicated to Ninisianna, É-ešbarzida ("House of True Decisions"), was rebuilt by Rim-Sîn I of Larsa, and might have been located in Ur,[31] where a clay cone with an inscription commemorating this event has been found.
[33] Ninsianna, according to Julia M. Asher-Greve treated as a goddess in this context, is one of the female deities most commonly mentioned in personal letters from the Old Babylonian period, in which she appears less often than Ishtar, but with comparable frequency to Aya or Gula.
[18] Occasionally Ninsianna appears as a theophoric element in personal names, with known examples including Ur-Ninsianna, Lu-Ninsianna, and Mariote Yar’ip-Ninsianna.
[1] In Old Babylonian sources from the city of Babylon itself Ninsianna is one of best attested goddesses in various documents, next to Ishtar, Inanna of Zabalam, Annunitum and Zarpanit.