Oil, Swallows, and Sumerian Wordplay: Another Look at Ninisina B.
This article is a reevaluation of the Old Babylonian Sumerian hymn Ninisina B, which praises the healing goddess Ninisina. Distinct from other literary portrayals of the goddess, Ninisina B features unusual imagery including anointing oils, beer, and swallows. I propose a new approach to this enigma...
| Publicado en: | Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia (JASPA) Vol. 146; no. 1; pp. 163 - 182 |
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| Formato: | Artículo |
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American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA)
Jan-Mar2026
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=191874096&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 191874096 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00030279 NZ6S jtl: Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia (JASPA) issn: 00030279 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jan-Mar2026 vid: 146 iid: 1 pid: 1463 pub: American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA) artinfo: ui: 191874096 10.7817/jaspa.146.1.2026.ar008 ppf: 163 ppct: 19 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 680KB tig: atl: Oil, Swallows, and Sumerian Wordplay: Another Look at Ninisina B. aug: au: CARR, CHRISTIE affil: BROWN UNIVERSITY su: Healing goddesses Hermeneutics Literary sources Creativity (Linguistics) Sumerian literature sug: subj: Healing goddesses Hermeneutics Literary sources Creativity (Linguistics) Sumerian literature ab: This article is a reevaluation of the Old Babylonian Sumerian hymn Ninisina B, which praises the healing goddess Ninisina. Distinct from other literary portrayals of the goddess, Ninisina B features unusual imagery including anointing oils, beer, and swallows. I propose a new approach to this enigmatic composition that interprets Ninisina B not as a straightforward hymn or praise poem of the goddess, but as an example of a literary text built upon scribal wordplays. Drawing on lexical, literary, and ritual sources, I argue that the peculiarities of Ninisina B reflect deliberate phonetic and semantic play involving Ninisina's name, attributes, and associations with other goddesses. This reading situates Ninisina B within broader scribal traditions of analogical hermeneutics, revealing it as an exercise in linguistic creativity. Ultimately, I demonstrate how even superficially opaque Sumerian literary compositions may encode complex meanings beneath their surfaces. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia (JASPA) is the property of American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Journal of the American Society for Premodern Asia (JASPA) holder: American Society for Premodern Asia (ASPA) dt: @attributes: year: 2026 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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