#goodnick

[yamayuandadu]

do you have any sources on the worship of the goddess inanna/Ishtar during the Seleucid/Hellenistic period to the Parthian period? i dont recall stumbling upon anything talking about her.

even though from what I've been reading mesopotamian deities were still popular (like bel-marduk in Palmyra and nabu in Edessa or shamash in hatra and mardin or sin in harran etc etc.. ) i dont recall reading anything about her or anything mention her worship (other than theories of the alabaster reclining figurines being depictions of her)

A good start when it comes to late developments in Mesopotamian religion is Religious Continuity and Change in Parthian Mesopotamia. A Note on the survival of Babylonian Traditions by Lucinda Dirven.

Hellenistic Uruk, and by extension the cult of Ishtar, is incredibly well documented and the most extensive monograph on this topic, Julia Krul’s The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk, is pretty much open access (and I link it regularly here, and it's one of my to-go wiki editing points of reference as well); it has an extensive bibliography and the author discusses the history of research of the development of specific cults in Uruk in detail. The gist of it is fairly straightforward: her status declined because with the fall of Babylon to the Persians the priestly elites of Uruk decided it’s time for a reform and for the first time in history Anu’s primacy moved past the nominal level, into the cultic sphere, at the expense of Ishtar and Nanaya. Even the Eanna declined, though a new temple, the Irigal, was built essentially as a replacement; we know relatively a lot about its day to day operations. An akitu festival of Ishtar is also well documented, and Krul goes into its details. All around, I don’t think the linked book will disappoint you.

An important earlier work about the changes in Uruk in Paul-Alain Beaulieu’s Antiquarian Theology in Seleucid Uruk. There’s also Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture by Céline Debourse which covers Uruk and Babylon, but there is less material relevant to this ask there. Evidence from Upper Mesopotamia and beyond is more fragmented so I’ll discuss it in more detail under the cut. My criticism of this take on the reclining figures is there as well.

The matter is briefly discussed in Personal Names in the Aramaic Inscriptions of Hatra by Enrico Marcato (p. 168; search for “Iššar” within the file for theophoric name attestations). References to a deity named ʻIššarbēl might indicate Ishtar of Arbela fared relatively well (for her earlier history see here and here) in the first centuries CE. The evidence is not unambiguous, though. This issue is discussed in detail in Lutz Greisiger’s Šarbēl: Göttin, Priester, Märtyrer – einige Probleme der spätantiken Religionsgeschichte Nordmesopotamiens. Theophoric names and the dubious case of ʻIššarbēl aside, there are basically no meaningful attestations of Ishtar from Hatra, but curiously “Ishtar of Hatra” does appear in a Mandaic scroll known as the “Great Mandaic Demon Roll”. According to Marcato this evidence should not be taken out of context, and additionally it cannot be ruled that we’re dealing with a case of ishtar as a generic noun for a goddess (An Aramaic Incantation Bowl and the Fall of Hatra, pages 139-140; accessible via De Gruyter). If this is correct, most likely Marten (the enigmatic main female deity of the local pantheon), Nanaya or Allat (brought to Upper Mesopotamia by Arabs settling there in the first centuries CE) are actually meant as opposed to Ishtar. 

Joan Goodnick Westenholz suggested that Mandaic sources might also contain references to Ishtar of Babylon: the theonym Bablīta (“the Babylonian”) attested in them according to her might reflect the emergence of a new deity derived from Bēlet-Bābili (ie. Ishtar of Babylon) in late antiquity (Goddesses in Context, p. 133)

In addition to Marcato’s article listed above, another good starting point for looking into Mesopotamian religious “fossils” in Mandaic sources is Spätbabylonische Gottheiten in spätantiken mandäischen Texten by Christa Müller-Kessler and Karlheinz Kessler; Ishtar is covered on pages 72-73 and 83-84 though i’d recommend reading the full article for context. The topic is further explored here.

In his old-ish monograph The Pantheon of Palmyra, Javier Teixidor proposed that the sparsely attested local Palmyrene goddess Herta (I’ve also seen her name romanized as Ḥirta; it’s agreed that it’s derived from Akkadian ḫīrtu, “wife”) was a form of Ishtar, based on the fact she appears in multiple inscriptions alongside Nanaya (p. 111). She is best known from a dedication formula where she forms a triad with Nanaya and Resheph (Greek version replaces them with Hera and Artemis, but curiously keeps Resheph as himself). However, ultimately little can be said about her cult beyond the fact it existed, since a priest in her service is mentioned at least once.

I need to stress here that I didn’t find any other authors arguing in favor of the existence of a supposed Palmyrene Ishtar. Joan Goodnick Westenholz mentioned Herta in her seminal Nanaya: Lady of Mystery, but she only concluded that the name was an Akkadian loanword and that she, Resheph and Nanaya indeed formed a triad (p. 79; published in Sumerian Gods and their Representations, which as far as I know can only be accessed through certain totally legit means). Maciej M. Münnich in his monograph The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East doesn’t seem to be convinced by Teixidor’s arguments, and notes that it’s most sensible to assume Herta seems to be Nanaya’s mother in local tradition. He similarly criticizes Teixidor for asserting Resheph has to be identical with Nergal in Palmyrene context (pages 259-260); I’m inclined to agree with his reasoning, interchangeability of deities cannot be presumed without strong evidence and that is lacking here.

I’m not aware of any attestations from Dura Europos. Nanaya had that market cornered on her own. Last but not least: I'm pretty sure the number of authors identifying the statuettes you’ve mentioned this way is in the low single digits. The similar standing one from the Louvre is conventionally identified as Nanaya (see ex. Westenholz's Trading the Symbols of the Goddess Nanaya), who has a much stronger claim to crescent as an attribute (compare later Kushan and Sogdian depictions, plus note the official Seleucid interpretatio as Artemis for dynastic politics purposes), so I see little reason to doubt reclining figures so similar they even tend to have the same sort of gem navel decoration are also her, personally.

A great example of the Nanaya-ish statuette from the Louvre (wikimedia commons). To sum everything up: while evidence is available from both the south and the north, the last centuries BCE and first centuries CE were generally a time of decline for Ishtar(s); for the first time Nanaya was a clear winner instead, but that's another story...

[shatar-aethelwynn]

Ok, you know what? I'm going to post these separately so I can add it to my academics tag for those who don't want to be inflicted (or inflict others) with that wall of an ask.

"The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity" by Stephanie Budin, chapter 4: Herodotos (via Sci-Hub)

"The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity" by Stephanie Budin, chapter 5: Lucian and "Jeremiah" (via Sci-Hub)

“Prostitute, Nun or ‘Man-Woman’: Revisiting the Position of the Old Babylonian Nadiātu-Priestesses” by Susandra van Wyk

"Tamar, Qĕdēšā, Qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia", by Joan Goodnick Westenholz (via Sci-Hub)

"The kar.kid/harimtu, Prostitute or Single Woman? A Reconsideration of the Evidence" by Julia A. Assante

Happy reading

[ruinedsoulsrp]

— FIVE SONGS TO DESCRIBE CHESTER

FAT LIP by Sum 41 — Well I'm a no goodnick lower middle class brat. Back packed, and I don't give a shit about nothin'. You be standing on the corner talking all that kufuffin, but you don't make sense from all the gas you be huffin'. 'Cause if the egg don't stain, you'll be ringing off the hook. You're on the hit list, wanted in the telephone book. I like songs with distortion, to drink in proportion. The doctor said my mom should've had an abortion. I don't wanna waste my time, become another casualty of society. I'll never fall in line; become another victim of your conformity and back down.

DRUNK FACE by Machine Gun Kelly —Pedal to the floor, yeah, I can't brake. The floor of the hotel's my ashtray. She opened the door and walked past me. I'm a Hollywood whore, I don't ask names. Yeah, let's get high as fuck.

PARTY BY MYSEL by Hollywood Undead — Fuck everyone else, I'mma party by myself. Do this shit all night, I don't need nobody else. Fuck everyone else, I'mma party by myself. Higher than a kite, with nobody but myself.

MORE THAN YOU KNOW by Blink 182 — I don't feel pain, but I feel more than you'd ever know. I don't feel shame, I don't have highs, but I got some lows. I feel I've been cursed, I've been numb and sinking down like a stone. I don't feel pain, but I feel more than you'd ever know. More than you'd know.

HAVE MERCY by The Gaslight Anthem — So don't ask me where I been cause you don't wanna know, and don't ask me who I'm seein'; no, you don't wanna know. Don't come around me here when I need you the most. Leave it alone, leave a little room for the holy ghost...

stolen from: @goxinsane

tagging: @heroexxs, @huntrcssqueen, @waveofstars, @sxmthingwicked, and anyone else!

[bunniibones]

Since you said that Ampere has some inspirations from Entrapta, does she treats the badniks as her friends too? Also, would Ampere have a “Emily” friend, like Entrapta had?

Yeah! She does :D! Every goodnik that she reprograms is treated by her like her friends or babies! She loves them all

I haven't given her a predilect goodnick yet, especially since I gave her a wisp (a hover wisp that accompanies her in her travels!) but a mutual of mine who writes ficlets of the Post Memories AU focusing on Ampere gave her a repaired caterkiller called Bartleby that poses as her pet and best friend c:

[dapurinthos]

Sumerian grammar distinguishes two nominal gender categories: (1) humans and deities and (2) animals and things. This categorization is in contradistinction to that of Semitic Akkadian and Indo-European English which distinguish the gender classes: masculine and feminine. It has been established that grammatical gender influences our ways of thinking and seeing the world around us. Consequently, it follows that the division masculine : feminine was not a fundamental aspect of Sumerian thought and that the male : female division of human : animal world was not necessarily projected onto the cosmic plane. This peculiarity has been given various interpretations. It has even been suggested that deities originally had no gender and were only engendered in the period when they were anthropomorphized. It has also been claimed that, since the unmarked gender in many languages is male, Sumerian religion was male-dominated and the female element was only added secondarily. On the other hand, it has been noted that there is a lack of maleness even in the word lu2 ‘man’, which is perhaps better understood as signifying ‘animate being’. There is even a ‘mother goddess’ with the name dLu2-gu-la meaning ‘great man’. In contrast, the Semitic Akkadian language of Mesopotamia does distinguish masculine and feminine forms for deity: ilu ‘god’ and iltu or more commonly, ištaru ‘goddess’. However, even in Akkadian in the Old Akkadian, Old Babylonian and Old Assyrian periods, the lexeme ilum was understood as ‘divinity’ and could refer to a goddess as well as a god.

– Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources Asher-Greve, Julia M; Westenholz, Joan Goodnick

[ancientyaoi]

At the outset, we should get it out of the way that I'm partial to social constructionist interpretations of ancient texts rather than essentialist ones. Everything on this blog will be informed heavily by social constructionist views.

What is Social Constructionism?

Social Constructionism is a "a theory of knowledge that holds that characteristics typically thought to be immutable and solely biological—such as gender, race, class, ability, and sexuality—are products of human definition and interpretation shaped by cultural and historical contexts." (Source)

In other words, from the social constructionist's view, the category "homosexual" did not exist in ancient times, although people may have committed homosexual acts. Thus, in interpreting ancient texts, we should remove modern categories of gender and sexuality from our minds and stop assuming they are timeless and universal, and attempt instead to analyze the text with the gender and sex conventions of the concerned period in history.

For instance, on the relationship of Gilgamesh and Enkidu it has been said:

"... at the end of the day, whether they have sex does not matter. The heroes are said to râmu each other, and the Akkadian term covers both erotic and platonic love: the difference between them is not central to the vocabulary of the epic. As Assyriologist Joan Goodnick Westenholz puts it, to a Babylonian audience emotional love and sexual attraction "were not perceived as two separate forces. The physical and emotional sides of love were different reflects of the same relationship."" (Helle, 172)

Even our modern understanding of love cannot be applied to Gilgamesh and Enkidu. When we read the epic, it must be with the understanding that the distinction between "friends" and "lovers" might not been significant to babylonian readers, and indeed to Gilgamesh and Enkidu's understanding of their own relationship.

To give another probably more famous example, in Ancient Rome, homosexual intercourse was acceptable for the Roman Elite so long as one took the active and not passive role. Here we can use our modern categories a bit more readily: the Romans looked down on bottoming in gay sex, not gay sex per se. (Richlin, 16) (See Also)

TL;DR - In this blog, historical conception of gender and sexuality >>> modern categories for gender and sexuality or so-called universal categories.

References:

Helle, Sophus. Gilgamesh: A New Translation of the Ancient Epic. 2021 Ed. Yale University Press.

Richlin, Amy. Marcus Aurelius in Love: The Letters of Marcus and Fronto. 2006 Ed. The University of Chicago Press.

Burton, Neel. Love, Sex and Marriage in Ancient Rome. June 24, 2012. Accessed at:

An Introduction to Women, Gender, Sexuality Studies: Grounding Theoretical Frameworks and Concepts: Social Constructionism. Accessed at: https://openbooks.library.umass.edu/introwgss/chapter/social-constructionism/

[knoghnogh]

・・・ #noghnogh #jimmyneutron #jimmyneutronboygenius #cartoon #cartoons #nicktoon #nicktoons #nickelodeon #nostalgic #nostalgia #childhood #memories #oldschool #goodnick #lol #lmao #funny #classics #youcantbeattheclassics #carlwheezer #sheenestevez #debiderryberry #jeffreygarcia #robpaulsen https://www.instagram.com/p/Butz93unZlB/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=12l0ftjxhqem0

[yeahiwasintheshit]

[taoofshigeru]

Miniskirt Space Pirates is a Fun Novel Series!

I finished reading all 12 volumes of Miniskirt Space Pirates! Took me about a year, but it was very much worth it. I've been a fan of the Mouretsu Pirates anime for a while, and the novels really didn't disappoint.

Key takeaways: -Gruier Serenity, the space princess who shows up in the second major arc of the anime/second novel, is far and away the funniest and most fun part of the novels. Her introduction arc is a good dose of her wanting to dismantle a genetically engineered monarchy to which she belongs. But in later novels she will very blatantly use that position to get what she wants, which usually involves helping her friends, especially Marika. --She also has the ability from years of political training to identify with high accuracy when someone is lying, which comes in mighty handy at various points in the series. --In general, she's less interested in seizing power for herself and more in supporting Marika in her adventures. With the caveat that she sometimes gets to pick out what Marika wears.

-Text in the first novel, Marika’s first interaction with Chiaki pretty heavily hints that Marika is attracted to girls. (from v1, p109) JP: "女の子同士なのに、なんでどきどきしてるのよ" EN: "Why is my heart pounding? We're both girls."

-Space elves called "Metheuselah" exist and live for very, very long periods of time. Well in excess of 200 years.   --One such space elf is Jenny Dolittle's history professor Athena, whose teaching style irritates Jenny enough to make her travel back home and kicks off a series of events that culminates in a stable time loop where the Yacht Club travels 110 years back in time and ends up persuading the Galactic Empire to intervene in their civil war. Part of that time loop involves Jenny telling Athena when she was a graduate student that she would make a good teacher.

-The author Sasamoto writes in his afterwards about actually being involved in an amateur rocketry group, and that experience is really reflected in the work, which puts a lot of emphasis on realistic engineering and space facts. The third novel's cosplay pirates arc is essentially the Yacht Club girls going through a space engineering boot camp and features mundanely hilarious things like them being unable to land a shuttle because they packed so much luggage they had to mount some of it to the shuttle's landing gear. And the ninth volume features a bit where Marika orders the crew to be ready for takeoff on short notice, but they've been given authorization to use a state-of-the-art docking bay, so everybody starts getting into a full-scale overhaul of their system. --This is an article on one of the group's major rocket launches, one in 2019 that went over 100 kilometers into the atmosphere:

-One of the series' regular villains, Jackie Kelvin, is a no-goodnick with poor hygiene and no sense of organization who somehow keeps just out of reach of his pursuers and achieves his objectives in the sloppiest ways possible, notably stands out from the generally more grounded technical setting. He's kind of an anti-engineer and has a little bit of light novel protagonist in him. Every other major character in the series hates him. --He uses the pseudonyms Jackie Fahrenheit and Jackie Celsius at various points in the series.

[retrorevelations]

The third and final chapter of Felix the Cat is here! Join us in our NES quest, as Harold attempts to kill more enemies than they kill him, and FINALLY rescue the dame from that no goodnick, The Professor!

[retro-vgm-revival-hour]

       Great Games Played Poorly: River City Girls (Part 2)

Get ready to put your hair up and knuckle up!

It's time to return to the seedy streets of River City. Mowing down no-goodnicks in an effort to save your boyfriends: It's River City Girls!

This part is filled with various tales of random things like mid 90's anime/Hentai, Dick kick city, TNA electrified Steel Cage, Boys Stables And Finally: The 80's cult movie "Streets of Fire" and how it's the inspiration for pretty much all the beat em' ups you've played growing up!

[yamayuandadu]

What is the exact relationship between Inanna and Nanaya? I'm not too well versed on the subject and I keep finding conflicting info everywhere. Were they originally the same goddess that became distinct? Were they distinct goddesses that were later syncretized? Is it both? Or is it something else entirely? lol

When it comes to Nanaya’s origin, there is actually no consensus. Some authors, like Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz (Mesopotamian goddess Nanāja, 2008), assume that Nanaya was originally a hypostasis of Inanna who became a fully distinct deity. The strength of this theory is that the oldest references to Nanaya, dated to the Ur III period (so roughly 2100 BCE), already point to a connection with Inanna, and that a similar process is well documented for other hypostases of Inanna, most notably Anunnitum. Others, like Joan Goodnick Westenholz (the chapter Nanaya: Lady of Mystery in Sumerian Gods and their Representations), argue that Nanaya was initially a fully separate goddess who only entered Inanna’s orbit at some point. An argument in favor of this view is that there are early possibly theophoric Akkadian names with elements which resemble Nanaya’s name. There is also a problem, though, as acknowledged by the aforementioned herself - Nanaya was not popular in the places where these names occur, like Gasur and various cities on the Diyala, but rather in Uruk. Since for now it is impossible to settle, the precise origin of Nanaya and the meaning of her name are uncertain. There were multiple ways in which the relationship between Inanna and Nanaya could be conceptualized in the Ur III period and beyond, though for the most part it is safe to say they were two fully distinct goddesses. In god lists, Nanaya is a mainstay of the entourage of Inanna, and some sources present her as her protegee as well. However, with time she acquired basically equal rank, especially in the local pantheon of Uruk. There is also some evidence for Inanna being regarded as Nanaya’s mother - in fact, there is more of that than evidence for Lulal being her son (once again, 1 reference total) - but it is still very limited. Drewnowska-Rymarz suggested it might not even refer to actual relation between them. The deity most commonly identified as Nanaya’s parent was Urash, the tutelary god of Dilbat. He didn’t really have much to do with Inanna - his wife was Ninegal, but in this case either the independent goddess or Nungal are meant, not her. A different tradition, present in Neo-Assyrian sources, basically put Nanaya in Inanna’s place genealogy-wise, with Sin as her father (and thus, implicitly, Ningal as her mother). Evidence for conflation is, generally speaking, late and typically limited to syncretic hymns (Nanaya had her own, see here) or theological speculation, not to active worship. The only recent paper to claim otherwise was not peer reviewed and ignores that multiple articles and even a monograph about Nanaya have been published over the course of the past 30 years (alas, I’ve seen it cited in a monograph published this year, tragically). Also, note that generally Inanna and Nanaya were not treated as counterparts in the way ex. medicine goddesses or Nergal and Erra were - when Nanaya appears in contexts where a different deity needs to be presented as her counterpart, for example in bilingual texts, this role is assigned to Bizilla, the sukkal of Ninlil, or to Ninzilzil, who might be the same or closely related deity. But then Bizilla obviously had her own role too - Nanaya doesn’t have much in the way of a connection to Ninlil and she was, to my best knowledge, never any other deity’s sukkal - and on top of that in at least one city, Bīt-Bēlti, the two were both worshiped as separate goddesses. So tl;dr the answer is it's complicated but generally they were two separate goddesses.

[soft-cookie-aka-aquadrop]

I had a horrible dream last night that @bogleech’s DeviantArt account got hacked, and whoever had hacked it was making false accusations towards me that I hated bees. Which isn’t true- I don’t hate bees in the slightest; I just don’t like being near bees, is all.

Then I ended up meeting the dingleberry who hacked his account. I was floored- a guy who was working in an office just a few towns over from where I lived had hacked the account of a well-known artist on the other side of the country! And boy, did I really let him have it. I chastised, berated, debated, and scolded, but this no-goodnick just kept making excuse after excuse as to why he hadn’t done anything wrong.

Sure, this all may seem really silly, but this dream was a lot more stressful than you’d think. Bogleech is a great guy- he’s been a big inspiration to me and he does not deserve to have something like that happen to him.

[shidoburrito]

Villages of dead people. Bloody threesomes. Deception. Death. I'm starting to think that no-goodnick boyfriend of yours is maybe not such a nice boy, Shido.

[aryielle-harrison]

Aryielle Harrison

The Basics ––– –

NAME: Aryielle Harrison AGE: 27 BIRTHDAY: August 18th RACE: Human GENDER: Female SEXUALITY: Heterosexual MARITAL STATUS: Single RELATIONSHIP STATUS: Single

Physical Appearance ––– –

HAIR: Finger EYE: Green HEIGHT: 5′6″ BUILD: Slender and toned DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Freckles dot her cheeks, nose and shoulders, a few scars here and there amongst the tattoos she’s had done over the years. COMMON ACCESSORIES: A small compass attached to a long, simple gold chain dangles from her neck. Her ears are pierced several times in each lobe. Whenever she is off ship, she regularly carries a worn leather satchel that contains her S.E.L.F.I.E. camera, a journal, writing impliments, a set of archeology tools and a pistol is almost always seen hanging on her hip.

Personal ––– –

PROFESSION: Freebooter/Treasure Hunter/Adventurer HOBBIES: Photography, drinking, exploring old ruins, gambling LANGUAGES: Common, Orcish RESIDENCE: Aboard her father’s ship, The Happy Deceit BIRTHPLACE: Boralus RELIGION:  Offers tithing to the Tidesages of Kul Tiras PATRON DEITY: None FEARS: Losing her “family” (which includes her crew), having accomplished nothing of worth in her life.

Relationships ––– –

SPOUSE: None CHILDREN: None PARENTS: Foster Harrison (MIA), Magdaline Harrison (Deceased) SIBLINGS: N/A OTHER RELATIVES: She counts her crew as her family. ACQUAINTANCES: Scoundrels, No-goodnicks, Ruffians, Thugs

Traits ––– –

extroverted / introverted / in between disorganized / organized / in between close minded / open-minded / in between calm / anxious / in between disagreeable / agreeable / in between cautious / reckless / in between patient / impatient / in between outspoken / reserved / in between leader / follower / in between empathic / unempathic / in between optimistic / pessimistic / in between traditional / modern / in between hard-working / lazy / in between cultured / uncultured / in between loyal / disloyal / unknown / in between faithful / unfaithful / unknown / in between

Additional Information ––– –

SMOKING HABIT: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess DRUGS: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess ALCOHOL: never / sometimes / frequently / to excess

Flaws

moody | short-tempered (when drunk) | emotionally unstable | whiny controlling | conceited | possessive | paranoid | liar impatient | cowardly | bitter | selfish | power-hungry greedy | lazy | judgmental | forgetful | impulsive spiteful | stubborn | sadistic | petty | unlucky

Strengths

honest | trustworthy | thoughtful | caring | brave patient | selfless | ambitious | tolerant | lucky intelligent | confident | focused | humble | generous merciful | observant | wise | clever | charming cheerful | optimistic | decisive | adaptive | calm | loyal

[thewondersomethingorother]

Slowly, but surely, I’m working out the designs for my girls of the Bubble Gum Squad Detective Agency. Here seen is the Fearless Leader, a Ms. Tobi Larone, seen on the left subduing and gloating over the local miscreant, Ruby Licorice. It’s not all bagging overly-pierced no-goodnicks for the girls of the Bubble Gum Squad, but it is a perk.