Kanisurra

The character and functions of Kanisurra are unclear.[2] Her best attested characteristic is her association with Nanaya.[3] Both of them belons to a group of female deities invoked in love and potency incantations, which also includes Ishtar, Ishara and Gazbaba [4] Some of these texts use formulas such as "at the command of Kanisurra and Ishara, patron goddess of love"[5] or "at the command of Kanisurra and Ishara, patroness of sex."[6]

A lexical text from Old Babylonian Nippur attests that kanisurra could be a reading of the logogram IGI.KUR.ZA, which corresponded to the Sumerian word ganzer, a name of the underworld or specifically of its entrance.[3] Paul-Alain Bealieu proposes that Kanisurra's name might therefore simply be an Akkadian or otherwise non-standard pronunciation of ganzer.[3] He notes that alternate names of this goddess, Gansura and Ganisrura, could be explained as intermediate stages between ganzer and Kanisurra.[7] He proposes that in origin she was a deified part of the underworld.[1] An account of offerings she received under the name Gansura during funerary rites of king Shu-Sin might be an additional indication of an underworld connection.[1] It has also been proposed that she was a hypostasis of Inanna in origin, and represented the time when Venus is not visible on the sky.[8]

She was known as bēlet kaššāpāti, "lady of the sorceresses."[2] This title appears in one Maqlû incantation, and in another similar text from outside this corpus.[9]

An illness called the "hand of Kanisurra" is attested in one medieval text alongside "hand of Nanaya," "hand of Iqbi-damiq" and "hand of Qibi-dumqi."{{sfn|Stol|1998|p=

Two late texts, a theological explanatory tablet and a cultic calendar, address Kanisurra alongside Gazbaba as "Daughters of Ezida," the temple of Nabu in Borsippa, and additionally identifies them as Nanaya's hairdressers.[10] Most pairs of deities referred to this way are known from northern Mesopotamia.[11] In addition to Daughters of Ezida, known pairs were associated with Esagil in Babylon (Katunna and Sillush-tab),[12] Emeslam in Kutha (Tadmushtum, labeled as a daughter of Nergal in the god list An = Anum,[13] and Belet-ili),[14] Edubba in Kish (Iqbi-damiq, whose name means "she said 'it is fine!'," and Hussinni, "Remember me!")[15]), Ebabbar in Sippar (Mami and Ninegina}), Eibbi-Anum in Dilbat (Ipte-bita and Belet-eanni), and with an unnamed temple of Ningubalaga (Mannu-shanishu and Larsam-iti).[11][12] Further examples are however also known from Uruk, Nippur, Eridu and even Arbela in Assyria.[16] Additionally, some researchers, like Julia M. Asher-Greve and Joan Goodnick Westenholz, place the Ningublaga temple in the south, in Larsa.[12] Based on the fact that daughters of Esagil and of Ezida are identified as members of courts of Sarpanit and of Nanaya respectively, specifically as their hairdressers, it has been proposed by Andrew R. George that these pairs of goddesses were imagined as maidservants in the household of the major deity or deities of a given temple.[11]

It is commonly assumed Kanisurra was a daughter of Nanaya.[17] As remarked by Gioele Zisa in a recent publication, there is however no direct evidence in favor of this view.[18] In known copies of the so-called the Weidner god list, the line explaining whose daughter Kanisurra was regarded as is not preserved.[10]

Andrew R. George notes that seemingly a close relationship existed between Usuramassu and Kanisurra, and relates it to their shared association with Nanaya and Ishtar.[19] They occur side by side in a ritual describing the cultic journey of Nanaya to Kish.[19]

Oldest attestations of Kanisurra come from Uruk in the Ur III period.[1] Anam built a temple of Kanisurra, most likely in Uruk, during the reign of Sîn-gāmil.[20] While it is known that Anam reigned as a king of Uruk, this description comes from before his ascent to the throne.[1] Kanisurra is addressed as Nin-Iturungal, "lady of the Iturungal canal," in it.[21] In the first millennium BCE she is attested on a kudurru of Ibni-Ishtar, a man who held various positions among the clergy of Ishtar, Nanaya and Usuramassu, from the reign of Marduk-zakir-shumi I, as well as in the Eanna archives.[3] A gate, a street and a city quarted named after her also existed in Uruk.[22] She continued to be associated with this city as late as in the Seleucid period.[1] The late sources indicate that she was among the deities worshiped during the akitu festival of Ishtar.[23]

Kanisurra might be one of the deities collectively referred to as "the ladies" (^dGAŠAN) who often appear alongside Ishtar, Nanaya and other of the city's lead deities in late inscriptions from Uruk, though this is impossible to prove conclusively.[24]

In the late Old Babylonian period, many of the functionaries of the cults of Inanna of Uruk, Nanaya and Kanisurra moved to Kish.[25] In the same period, Kanisurra was also worshiped in the territories controlled by the First Sealand dynasty.[8] However, only a single offering list from the latter area mentions her.[26] Based on its context it is likely that it was connected to Uruk, perhaps because it was also the result of displacement of the cults native to that city.[26]

Kanisurra and Nanaya were also worshiped in Eturkalamma,[27] a temple of Ishtar in Babylon.[28]