Cella
A cella or naos is the inner chamber of a temple in classical architecture, or a shop facing the street in domestic Roman architecture, such as a domus. Its enclosure within walls has given rise to extended meanings, of a hermit's or monk's cell, since the 17th century, of a biological cell in plants or animals. In Ancient Greek and Roman temples the cella is a room at the centre of the building containing a cult image or statue representing the particular deity venerated in the temple. In addition the cella may contain a table or plinth to receive votive offerings such as votive statues and semi-precious stones, helmets and arrow heads and war trophies; the accumulated offerings made Greek and Roman temples virtual treasuries, many of them were indeed used as treasuries during antiquity. The cella is a simple, rectangular room with a door or open entrance at the front behind a colonnaded portico facade. In larger temples, the cella was divided by two colonnades into a central nave flanked by two aisles.
A cella may contain an adyton, an inner area restricted to access by the priests—in religions that had a consecrated priesthood—or by the temple guard. With few exceptions Greek buildings were of a peripteral design that placed the cella in the center of the plan, such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Apollo at Paestum; the Romans favoured pseudoperipteral buildings with a portico offsetting the cella to the rear. The pseudoperipteral plan uses engaged columns embedded along rear walls of the cella; the Temple of Venus and Roma built by Hadrian in Rome had two cellae arranged back-to-back enclosed by a single outer peristyle. According to Vitruvius, the Etruscan type of temples had three cellae, side by side, conjoined by a double row of columns on the facade; this is an new setup with respect to the other types of constructions found in Etruria and the Tyrrhenian side of Italy, which have one cell with or without columns, as seen in Greece and the Orient. In the Hellenistic culture of Ptolemaic Egypt the cella referred to that, hidden and unknown inside the inner sanctum of a temple, existing in complete darkness, meant to symbolize the state of the universe before the act of creation.
The cella called the naos, holds many box-like shrines. The Greek word naos has been extended by archaeologists to describe the central room of the pyramids. Towards the end of the Old Kingdom, naos construction went from being subterranean to being built directly into the pyramid, above ground; the naos was surrounded by many different paths and rooms, many used to confuse and divert thieves and grave robbers. In early Christian and Byzantine architecture, the cella or naos is an area at the centre of the church reserved for performing the liturgy. In periods a small chapel or monk's cell was called a cella; this is the source of the Irish language cell in many Irish place names. List of Greco-Roman roofs This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed.. "Cella". Encyclopædia Britannica. Cambridge University Press. Trachtenberg and Hyman, Architecture:From Prehistory to Post Modernity Vitruvius, De architectura, Book IV. ch 7: translation and reconstructions of Tuscan cellae
Marduk
Marduk was a late-generation god from ancient Mesopotamia and patron deity of the city of Babylon. When Babylon became the political center of the Euphrates valley in the time of Hammurabi, he started to rise to the position of the head of the Babylonian pantheon, a position he acquired by the second half of the second millennium BC. In the city of Babylon, Marduk was worshiped in the temple Esagila. Marduk is associated with the divine weapon Imhullu. "Marduk" is the Babylonian form of his name. The name Marduk was pronounced Marutuk; the etymology of the name Marduk is conjectured as derived from amar-Utu or. The origin of Marduk's name may reflect an earlier genealogy, or have had cultural ties to the ancient city of Sippar, dating back to the third millennium BC. By the Hammurabi period, Marduk had become astrologically associated with the planet Jupiter. Marduk's original character is obscure but he was associated with water, vegetation and magic, his consort was the goddess Sarpanit. He was regarded as the son of Ea and Damkina and the heir of Anu, but whatever special traits Marduk may have had were overshadowed by the political development through which the Euphrates valley passed and which led to people of the time imbuing him with traits belonging to gods who in an earlier period were recognized as the heads of the pantheon.
There are two gods—Ea and Enlil—whose powers and attributes pass over to Marduk. In the case of Ea, the transfer proceeded pacifically and without effacing the older god. Marduk took over the identity of Asarluhi, the son of Ea and god of magic, so that Marduk was integrated in the pantheon of Eridu where both Ea and Asarluhi came from. Ea, Marduk's father, voluntarily recognized the superiority of the son and hands over to him the control of humanity; this association of Marduk and Ea, while indicating the passing of the supremacy once enjoyed by Eridu to Babylon as a religious and political centre, may reflect an early dependence of Babylon upon Eridu, not of a political character but, in view of the spread of culture in the Euphrates valley from the south to the north, the recognition of Eridu as the older centre on the part of the younger one. While the relationship between Ea and Marduk is marked by harmony and an amicable abdication on the part of the father in favour of his son, Marduk's absorption of the power and prerogatives of Enlil of Nippur was at the expense of the latter's prestige.
Babylon became independent in the early 19th century BC, was a small city state, overshadowed by older and more powerful Mesopotamian states such as Isin and Assyria. However, after Hammurabi forged an empire in the 18th century BC, turning Babylon into the dominant state in the south, the cult of Marduk eclipsed that of Enlil; the only serious rival to Marduk after c. 1750 BC was the god Aššur, the dominant power in the region between the 20th and 18th centuries BC, between the 14th to the late 7th century BC. In the south, Marduk reigned supreme, he is referred to as Bel "Lord" bel rabim "great lord", bêl bêlim "lord of lords", ab-kal ilâni bêl terêti "leader of the gods", aklu bêl terieti "the wise, lord of oracles", muballit mîte "reviver of the dead", etc. When Babylon became the principal city of southern Mesopotamia during the reign of Hammurabi in the 18th century BC, the patron deity of Babylon was elevated to the level of supreme god. In order to explain how Marduk seized power, Enûma Elish was written, which tells the story of Marduk's birth, heroic deeds and becoming the ruler of the gods.
This can be viewed as a form of Mesopotamian apologetics. Included in this document are the fifty names of Marduk. In Enûma Elish, a civil war between the gods was growing to a climactic battle; the Anunnaki gods gathered together to find one god. Marduk, a young god, answered the call and was promised the position of head god. To prepare for battle, he makes a bow, fletches arrows, grabs a mace, throws lightning before him, fills his body with flame, makes a net to encircle Tiamat within it, gathers the four winds so that no part of her could escape, creates seven nasty new winds such as the whirlwind and tornado, raises up his mightiest weapon, the rain-flood, he sets out for battle, mounting his storm-chariot drawn by four horses with poison in their mouths. In his lips he holds a spell and in one hand he grasps a herb to counter poison. First, he challenges the leader of the Anunnaki gods, the dragon of the primordial sea Tiamat, to single combat and defeats her by trapping her with his net, blowing her up with his winds, piercing her belly with an arrow.
He proceeds to defeat Kingu, who Tiamat put in charge of the army and wore the Tablets of Destiny on his breast, "wrested from him the Tablets of Destiny, wrongfully his" and assumed his new position. Under his reign humans were created to bear the burdens of life. Marduk was depicted as a human with his symbol the snake-dragon which he had taken over from the god Tishpak. Another symbol that stood for Marduk was the spade. Ba
Antiochus I Soter
Antiochus I Soter, was a king of the Hellenic Seleucid Empire. He succeeded his father Seleucus I Nicator in 281 BC and reigned until his death on 2 June 261 BC. Antiochus I was half Sogdian, his mother Apama, daughter of Spitamenes, being one of the eastern princesses whom Alexander the Great had given as wives to his generals in 324 BC; the Seleucids fictitiously claimed that Apama was the alleged daughter of Darius III, in order to legitimise themselves as the inheritors of both the Achaemenids and Alexander, therefore the rightful lords of western and central Asia. In 294 BC, prior to the death of his father Seleucus I, Antiochus married his stepmother, daughter of Demetrius Poliorcetes, his elderly father instigated the marriage after discovering that his son was in danger of dying of lovesickness. Stratonice bore five children to Antiochus: Seleucus, Apama II, Stratonice of Macedon and Antiochus II Theos, who succeeded his father as king. On the assassination of his father in 281 BC, the task of holding together the empire was a formidable one.
A revolt in Syria broke out immediately. Antiochus was soon compelled to make peace with his father's murderer, Ptolemy Keraunos abandoning Macedonia and Thrace. In Anatolia he was unable to reduce the Persian dynasties that ruled in Cappadocia. In 278 BC the Gauls broke into Anatolia, a victory that Antiochus won over these Gauls by using Indian war elephants is said to have been the origin of his title of Soter. At the end of 275 BC the question of Coele-Syria, open between the houses of Seleucus and Ptolemy since the partition of 301 BC, led to hostilities, it had been continuously in Ptolemaic occupation. War did not materially change the outlines of the two kingdoms, though frontier cities like Damascus and the coast districts of Asia Minor might change hands. In 268 BC Antiochus I laid the foundation for the Ezida Temple in Borsippa, his eldest son Seleucus had ruled in the east as viceroy from c. 275 BC until 268/267 BC. Around 262 BC Antiochus tried to break the growing power of Pergamum by force of arms, but suffered defeat near Sardis and died soon afterwards.
He was succeeded in 261 BC by his second son Antiochus II Theos. Antiochus may be the Greek king mentioned in the Edicts of Ashoka, as one of the recipients of the Indian Emperor Ashoka's Buddhist proselytism: "And this conquest has been won by the Beloved of the Gods here and in all the borderlands, as far as six hundred yojanas away, where Antiochus, king of the Yavanas rules, beyond this Antiochus four kings named Ptolemy, Antigonos and Alexander rule."Ashoka claims that he encouraged the development of herbal medicine, for men and animals, in the territories of the Hellenic kings: "Everywhere within Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi's domain, among the people beyond the borders, the Cholas, the Pandyas, the Satiyaputras, the Keralaputras, as far as Tamraparni and where the Greek king Antiochus rules, among the kings who are neighbors of Antiochos, everywhere has Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, made provision for two types of medical treatment: medical treatment for humans and medical treatment for animals.
Wherever medical herbs suitable for humans or animals are not available, I have had them imported and grown. Wherever medical roots or fruits are not available I have had them grown. Along roads I have had wells dug and trees planted for the benefit of humans and animals."Alternatively, the Greek king mentioned in the Edict of Ashoka could be Antiochus's son and successor, Antiochus II Theos, although the proximity of Antiochus I with the East may makes him a better candidate. The love between Antiochus and his stepmother Stratonice was depicted in Neoclassical art, as in a painting by Jacques-Louis David. Mookerji, Radha Kumud, Chandragupta Maurya and his times, Motilal Banarsidass, ISBN 81-208-0433-3 Traver, Andrew G.. From Polis to Empire, the Ancient World, c. 800 B. C.-A. D. 500: A Biographical Dictionary. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313309427. Retrieved 7 September 2013. Media related to Antiochus I at Wikimedia Commons Appianus' Syriaka Antiochus I Soter: fact sheet at Livius.org Babylonian Chronicles of the Hellenic Period Antiochus I Soter entry in historical sourcebook by Mahlon H. Smith Hellenization of the Babylonian Culture?
Coins of Antiochus I
Zeus
Zeus is the sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion, who rules as king of the gods of Mount Olympus. His name is cognate with the first element of his Roman equivalent Jupiter, his mythologies and powers are similar, though not identical, to those of Indo-European deities such as Jupiter, Perkūnas, Perun and Thor. Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is said to have fathered Ares and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, by whom the Iliad states that he fathered Aphrodite. Zeus was infamous for his erotic escapades; these resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Athena, Artemis, Persephone, Perseus, Helen of Troy and the Muses. He was respected as an allfather, chief of the gods and assigned the others to their roles: "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, all the gods rise in his presence."
He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men". Zeus' symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter. Zeus is depicted by Greek artists in one of two poses: standing, striding forward with a thunderbolt leveled in his raised right hand, or seated in majesty; the god's name in the nominative is Ζεύς. It is inflected as follows: vocative: Ζεῦ. Diogenes Laërtius quotes Pherecydes of Syros as spelling the name, Ζάς. Zeus is the Greek continuation of *Di̯ēus, the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky called *Dyeus ph2tēr; the god is known under this name in the Rigveda, deriving from the root *dyeu-. Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology; the earliest attested forms of the name are the Mycenaean Greek, di-we and, di-wo, written in the Linear B syllabic script.
Plato, in his Cratylus, gives a folk etymology of Zeus meaning "cause of life always to all things," because of puns between alternate titles of Zeus with the Greek words for life and "because of." This etymology, along with Plato's entire method of deriving etymologies, is not supported by modern scholarship. Cronus sired several children by Rhea: Hestia, Hera and Poseidon, but swallowed them all as soon as they were born, since he had learned from Gaia and Uranus that he was destined to be overthrown by his son as he had overthrown Uranus, his own father, an oracle that Rhea heard and wished to avert; when Zeus was about to be born, Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save him, so that Cronus would get his retribution for his acts against Uranus and his own children. Rhea gave birth to Zeus in Crete, handing Cronus a rock wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallowed. Varying versions of the story exist: According to Hyginus ) Zeus was raised by a nymph named Amalthea. Since Saturn ruled over the Earth, the heavens and the sea, she hid him by dangling him on a rope from a tree so he was suspended between earth and sky and thus, invisible to his father.
According to Pseudo-Apollodorus ) Zeus was raised by a goat named Amalthea in a cave called Dictaeon Antron. A a company of soldiers called Kouretes danced and clashed their spears against their shields so that Cronus would not hear the baby's cry. After reaching manhood, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge first the stone his siblings in reverse order of swallowing. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Cronus's stomach open. Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes, from their dungeon in Tartarus, killing their guard, Campe; as a token of their appreciation, the Cyclopes gave him thunder and the thunderbolt, or lightning, hidden by Gaia. Together, his brothers and sisters and Cyclopes overthrew Cronus and the other Titans, in the combat called the Titanomachy; the defeated Titans were cast into a shadowy underworld region known as Tartarus. Atlas, one of the titans who fought against Zeus, was punished by having to hold up the sky.
After the battle with the Titans, Zeus shared the world with his elder brothers and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus got the sky and air, Poseidon the waters, Hades the world of the dead. The ancient Earth, could not be claimed. Gaia resented. Soon after taking the throne as king of the gods, Zeus had to fight some of Gaia's other children, the monsters Typhon and Echidna, he left Echidna and her children alive. When Zeus was atop Mount Olympus he was appalled by human sac
Robert Koldewey
Robert Johann Koldewey was a German archaeologist, famous for his in-depth excavation of the ancient city of Babylon in modern-day Iraq. He was born in Blankenburg am Harz in Germany, the duchy of Brunswick, died in Berlin at the age of 70, his digs at Babylon revealed the foundations of the ziggurat Marduk, the Ishtar Gate. This technique was useful in his excavation of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon which were built ca. 580 BC using unfired mudbricks. A practicing archaeologist for most of his life, he participated in and led many excavations in Asia Minor and Italy. After he died, the Koldewey Society was established to mark his architectural service. After attending a gymnasium in Braunschweig, Koldewey moved with his family to Altona in 1869 where he attended the Christianeum, achieving his abitur in 1875. Koldewey was a self-trained archaeological historian of the classical area. Although he studied architecture and art history in Berlin and Vienna, he left both those universities without an advanced degree.
In 1882 he was signed on as a participant to the excavation of ancient Assus in Turkey, where Koldewey learned several excavation methods and how best to draw ancient remains. Francis H. Bacon introduced Koldewey to archaeology at the excavation of Assos in 1882–1883. Koldewey went on to conduct digs for the German Archaeological Institute, at Hellenic sites including Lesbos and Mesopotamian sites such as Lagash. In 1890–1891 and 1894, he worked with Felix von Luschan on the excavation of a Hellenic city in Sicily. With support from the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Koldewey directed the excavation of Babylon from 1899 through 1914, using comparatively modern archaeological techniques. More than 200 people worked year round, for fifteen years; when the team unearthed Babylon's central Processional street in 1899, the modern world had its first look at the site of this much-storied ancient city. The expedition found the outer walls, inner walls, foundation of Etemenanki, a temple sometimes identified as the "Tower of Babel".
It unearthed Nebuchadnezzar's palaces. Walter Andrae, a participant in the expedition created models of Babylon for the Vorderasiatisches Museum Berlin; the excavations at the famous city of Babylon were considered prestigious for Germany, were well-sponsored and well-publicized. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were a unconfirmed legend about a beautiful man-made mountain full of green plants and trees that were built by King Nebuchadnezzar for his homesick wife, daughter of the king of the Medes. While excavating the Southern Citadel, Robert Koldewey discovered a basement with fourteen large rooms with stone arch ceilings. Ancient texts showed that only two locations in the city had used stone, the north wall of the Northern Citadel, the Hanging Gardens; the north wall of the Northern Citadel had been found. This made it seem that Koldewey had found the cellar of the gardens, he continued exploring the area and discovered many of the features reported by the ancient Greek historian Diodorus. While Koldewey was convinced that he had found the gardens, some modern archaeologists have called his discovery into question.
While the location of the site that Koldewey excavated was well known and recognised as where Babylon had been situated, they argue that the dig site was too far from the Euphrates River to have been irrigated with the amount of water required for a green garden, the ancient Greek historian Strabo stated that the Hanging Gardens were located right next to the river. The complex of arched rooms that Koldewey discovered was most a storeroom, as cuneiform tablets with lists of supplies and rations were found in the ruins. Biblical archaeology List of artifacts significant to the Bible Clayton, Peter A. and Martin J. Price, Ed. "The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World." Routledge: New York, 1988. P 54-55. Seymour, Michael John. "The Idea of Babylon: Archaeology and Representation in Mesopotamia". PhD dissertation accepted at University College London, 2006. Twardowski, Kristen E. Excavating Imperial Fantasies: The German Oriental Society, 1898–1914". Master's thesis accepted at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2015.
Robert Koldewey Society in Berlin on Koldewey Gesellschaft e. V. Full-text scan of The Excavations at Babylon by Robert Koldewey, translated by Agnes S. Johns.
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian, born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire. He is known for having written the book The Histories, a detailed record of his "inquiry" on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars, he is considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials and critically arranging them into an historiographic narrative. On account of this, he is referred to as "The Father of History", a title first conferred on him by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero. Despite Herodotus's historical significance, little is known about his personal life, his Histories deals with the lives of Croesus, Cambyses, Smerdis and Xerxes and the battles of Marathon, Artemisium, Salamis and Mycale. Herodotus has been criticized for the fact that his book includes a large number of obvious legends and fanciful accounts. Many authors, starting with the late fifth-century BC historian Thucydides, have accused him of making up stories for entertainment.
Herodotus, states that he is reporting what he has been told. A sizable portion of the information he provides has since been confirmed by historians and archaeologists. Herodotus announced the purpose and scope of his work at the beginning of his Histories as such: Here are presented the results of the enquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus; the purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks. His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been debated. Herodotus's place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked, his work is the earliest Greek prose. However, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a literary critic of Augustan Rome, listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their works as simple, unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naïve charming – all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself.
Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain, but according to the ancient account, these predecessors included Dionysius of Miletus, Charon of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of Lesbos, Xanthus of Lydia and, the best attested of them all, Hecataeus of Miletus. Of these, only fragments of Hecataeus's works survived, the authenticity of these is debatable, but they provide a glimpse into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories. In his introduction to Hecataeus's work, Genealogies: Hecataeus the Milesian speaks thus: I write these things as they seem true to me; this points forward to the "international" outlook typical of Herodotus. However, one modern scholar has described the work of Hecataeus as "a curious false start to history", since despite his critical spirit, he failed to liberate history from myth. Herodotus mentions Hecataeus in his Histories, on one occasion mocking him for his naive genealogy and, on another occasion, quoting Athenian complaints against his handling of their national history.
It is possible that Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as stated by Porphyry in a quote recorded by Eusebius. In particular, it is possible that he copied descriptions of the crocodile and phoenix from Hecataeus's Circumnavigation of the Known World misrepresenting the source as "Heliopolitans", but Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, unlike Herodotus, nor did he include the oral traditions of Greek history within the larger framework of oriental history. There is no proof that Herodotus derived the ambitious scope of his own work, with its grand theme of civilizations in conflict, from any predecessor, despite much scholarly speculation about this in modern times. Herodotus claims to be better informed than his predecessors by relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive schematism. For example, he argues for continental asymmetry as opposed to the older theory of a circular earth with Europe and Asia/Africa equal in size. However, he retains idealizing tendencies, as in his symmetrical notions of the Nile.
His debt to previous authors of prose "histories" might be questionable, but there is no doubt that Herodotus owed much to the example and inspiration of poets and story-tellers. For example, Athenian tragic poets provided him with a world-view of a balance between conflicting forces, upset by the hubris of kings, they provided his narrative with a model of episodic structure, his familiarity with Athenian tragedy is demonstrated in a number of passages echoing Aeschylus's Persae, including the epigrammatic observation that the defeat of the Persian navy at Salamis caused the defeat of the land army. The debt may have been repaid by Sophocles because there appear to be echoes of The Histories in his plays a passage in Antigone that resembles Herodotus's account of the death of Intaphernes. However, this point is one of the most contentious
Ninhursag
Ninḫursaĝ known as Damgalnuna or Ninmah, was the ancient Sumerian mother goddess of the mountains, one of the seven great deities of Sumer. She is principally a fertility goddess. Temple hymn sources identify her as the "true and great lady of heaven" and kings of Sumer were "nourished by Ninhursag's milk". Sometimes her hair is depicted in an omega shape and at times she wears a horned head-dress and tiered skirt with bow cases at her shoulders, she carries a mace or baton surmounted by an omega motif or a derivation, sometimes accompanied by a lion cub on a leash. She is the tutelary deity to several Sumerian leaders. Nin-hursag means "lady of the sacred mountain" (from Sumerian NIN "lady" and ḪAR. SAG "sacred mountain, foothill" a reference to the site of her temple, the E-Kur at Eridu, she had many names including Ninmah. As Ninmenna, according to a Babylonian investiture ritual, she placed the golden crown on the king in the Eanna temple; some of the names above were once associated with independent goddesses, who became identified and merged with Ninhursag, myths exist in which the name Ninhursag is not mentioned.
Included among the original mother goddesses was Damgalnuna or Damkina, the consort of the god Enki. The mother goddess had many epithets including shassuru or'womb goddess', tabsut ili'midwife of the gods','mother of all children' and'mother of the gods'. In this role she is identified with Ki in the Enuma Elish, she had shrines in both Kish. In the legend of Enki and Ninhursag, Ninhursag bore. Through Enki, Ninsar bore a daughter Ninkurra. Ninkurra, in turn, bore Enki. Enki pursued Uttu, upset because he didn't care for her. Uttu, on her ancestress Ninhursag's advice buried Enki's seed in the earth, whereupon eight plants sprung up. Enki, seeing the plants, ate them, became ill in eight organs of his body. Ninhursag cured him, taking the plants into her body and giving birth to eight deities: Abu, Ninsutu, Nanshe, Azimua and Enshag. In the text'Creator of the Hoe', she completed the birth of mankind after the heads had been uncovered by Enki's hoe. In creation texts, Ninmah acts as a midwife whilst the mother goddess Nammu makes different kinds of human individuals from lumps of clay at a feast given by Enki to celebrate the creation of humankind.
Her symbol, resembling the Greek letter omega Ω, has been depicted in art from 3000 BC, although more from the early second millennium BC. It appears on some boundary stones -- on the upper tier; the omega symbol is associated with the Egyptian cow goddess Hathor, may represent a stylized womb. The symbol appears on early imagery from Ancient Egypt. Hathor is at times depicted on a mountain, so it may be that the two goddesses are connected, her temple, the Esagila was located on the KUR of Eridu, although she had a temple at Kish. Ereshkigal Eve Arura Michael Jordan, Encyclopedia of Gods, Kyle Cathie Limited, 2002 Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses: Mother Goddess Gateways of Babylon: Enki and Ninhursag Temple of Ninmakh in ancient Babylon
