Liturgy of the Cult of Kes (Nippur Fragments and Ashmolean Prism.)

Keš and Opis, two closely associated but unlocated southern cities of Sumer, lay apparently somewhere in the region between Erech and Šuruppak. So closely were they united that the same cult of the great mother goddess obtained in both.[413] According to II Raw. 60a 26, Innini of Hallab was the queen of Keš. The Sumerian liturgy, BL. p. 54, names Nintud as the goddess of this city, but the list of mother goddesses in PSBA. 1911 Pl. XII calls her by the name Ninharsag,[414] where she is associated with Ninmenna, epithet of the earth mother in Adab a city near Šuruppak. A fragment, No. 102 in BL., reads her title at Keš as Aruru. These various epithets all refer to the earth mother whose principal married type is Ninlil. In fact one liturgy actually names Ninlil as the goddess of Keš, SBP. 24, 74. On the other hand, a cult document of the Neo-Babylonian period names Kallat Ekur, the bride of Ekur, as the goddess of U-pi-ia or Opis, VS. VI. 213, 21.[415] The bride of Ekur is Ninlil. Thus the twin cities Keš and Opis of Sumer with their cult of the earth mother Ninharsag or Nintud were imitated in later times in Akkad and located on the Tigris where Opis survived into Greek times (ωπις) and Keš seems to have become confused in writing with Kiš a famous city near Babylon. At Opis in Akkad a male satellite Igi-du was associated with the mother goddess and we [pg 312] may be safe in assuming that he was borrowed from the original southern cult.[416] Of the names Ninharsag, Aruru, Nintud, Ninmah, Innini of Hallab, we are not certain which one applied especially to Keš and Opis. In any case the liturgy which we are about to discuss had some special name for the goddess here. In a refrain which recurs at the end of each melody the psalmists say that the god of Keš, that is probably Igidu,[417] was made like Ašširgi, or Ninurta, and that its goddess was made like Nintud, hence the special name of the mother goddess in this liturgy cannot have been Nintud.

So far as the text of this important liturgy in eight melodies can be established, it leads to the inference that, like all other Sumerian choral compositions, the subject is the rehearsal of sorrows which befell a city and its temple. Here the glories of Keš, its temple and its gods are recorded in choral song, and the woes of this city are referred to as symbolic of all human misfortunes. The name of the temple has not been preserved in the text. But we know from other liturgies that the temple in Keš bore the name Uršabba.[418] The queen of the temple Uršabba is called the mother of Negun, also a title of Ninurta in Elam.[419] The close connection between the goddess of Keš and Ninlil is again revealed, for Negun is the son of Ninlil in the theological lists, CT. 24, 26, 112. Therefore at Keš we have a reflection of the Innini-Tammuz cult or the worship of mother and son, mother goddess Ninlil or Ninharsag, and Igidu or Negun.[420]

Keš and Opis must have been closely associated with both Erech and Šuruppak, and of traditional veneration in Sumer. Keš is mentioned in a list with Ur, Kullab (part of Erech) and Šuruppak, Smith, Miscellaneous Texts 26, 5. Gudea speaks of a part of the temple in Lagash which was pure as Keš and Aratta (i. e. Šuruppak).[421] The various mother goddesses of Eridu, Kullab, Kêši, Lagaš and Šuruppak are invoked in an incantation, CT. 16, 36, 1-9. The first melody of the Ashmolean Prism contains a reference to the horse of Šuruppak.

The textual history of this liturgy is interesting. The major text is written upon a four-sided prism now in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford. The object is eight inches high, four inches wide on each surface and is pierced from top to bottom at the center by a small hole, so that the liturgy could be turned on a spindle. The writer published a copy of this prism or prayer wheel in his Babylonian Liturgies. The elucidation of this exceedingly difficult text was lightened somewhat by the discovery of a four column tablet in Constantinople, which originally contained the entire text. It was afterwards published as No. 23 of my Historical and Religious Texts. Since the edition of these two sources, the Nippur Collection in Philadelphia has been found to contain several fragments of the same liturgy. A portion of the redaction on several single column tablets had been already published by Radau in his Miscellaneous Sumerian Texts, No. 8 (=Ni. 11876), last tablet of the series containing melodies six, seven, and eight. I failed to detect the connection of Radau's tablet at the time of the first edition but referred to it with a rendering in my Epic of Paradise, p. 19. [pg 314] Another tablet, also from a single column tablet redaction at Nippur, has been recovered in Philadelphia, Ni. 8384.[422] This text utilized here in transcription contains a section marked number 4 on that tablet but all the other sources omit it. Hence this redaction probably contained nine melodies. The new melody has been inserted between melodies three and four of the standard text. If evidence did not point otherwise the editor would have supposed that Ni. 8384 and 11876 belonged to the same tablet. But Ni. 8384 has melodies four, five and six of its redaction with the catch-line of the next or its seventh melody which partly duplicates the Radau tablet. Moreover, these two tablets have not the same handwriting and differ in color and texture of the clay. Finally a small fragment, Ni. 14031, contains the end of the second melody and the beginning of the third on its obverse. The reverse contains the end of the sixth melody. This small tablet undoubtedly belongs to the four column tablet in Constantinople. The two fragments became separated by chance when the Nippur Collection was divided between Philadelphia and the Musée Imperial of Turkey. Ni. 14031 will be found in my Sumerian Liturgical Texts, No. 22.