Nungal (Sumerian: 𒀭𒎏𒃲 dNun-gal, "great princess"), also known as Manungal and possibly Bēlet-balāṭi, was the Mesopotamian goddess of prisons, sometimes also associated with the underworld.

"[1] It is first attested in documents from the Ur III period, while in later times it commonly appears in place of the base form in texts written in Akkadian or in the Emesal dialect of Sumerian.

[7] Her character is described in the hymn Nungal in the Ekur, known from a large number of Old Babylonian copies[8] thanks to its role in the scribal school curriculum.

[10] According to this composition, the prison maintained by this goddess separates the guilty from the innocent, but also gives the former a chance to be redeemed, which is metaphorically compared to refining silver and to being born.

[14] Imprisonment was presumably viewed as compassionate compared to the death penalty,[14] and it is likely that the goddess was regarded as capable of reducing the most severe punishments.

[7] Wilfred G. Lambert proposed that originally Manungal and her spouse Birtum were worshiped in a presently unknown city which declined in the third millennium BCE, leading to the transfer of its tutelary deities to Nippur.

[16] An analogous process likely occurred also when it comes to other deities, such as Nisaba, whose cult was transferred from Eresh, which disappears from records after the Ur III period, to Nippur.

[15] In Nippur she was worshiped as one of the deities belonging to the court and family of Enlil,[18] while in Ur she received offerings as one of the members of the circle of Gula instead.

[19] A single attestation of Nungal receiving offerings in an Inanna temple, alongside Anu, Ninshubur, Nanaya, Geshtinanna and Dumuzi is known too.

[21] According to Miguel Civil, it is unlikely that the Ekur mentioned in the Hymn to Nungal was one and the same as the temple of Enlil in Nippur, contrary to early assumptions in scholarship.

[25] According to an economic document from the late first millennium BCE, in the last of those cities she was worshiped in the temple Egalmah (Sumerian: "exalted palace"), which instead appears in association with Ninisina in an inscription of king Sîn-kāšid from the Old Babylonian period.

[28] In the god list An = Anum the deity Dullum, whose name has been translated as "serfdom" ("Frondienst") by Antoine Cavigneaux and Manfred Krebernik, appears as Nungal's son.

[6] It has been proposed that the possible connection between beer and underworld deities was meant to serve as a reflection of negative effects of alcohol consumption.