#mythology

[fleshwizard]

Dragons & Folklore de France

Translation below

The Tarasque dwells in the waters of the Rhone river near the town of Tarascon, where it devours travelers and destroys dikes and dams to flood the Camargue. Saint Martha chained it, and the people of Tarascon killed it.

The ruins of the amphitheaters of Metz were infested by hundreds of snakes. The largest of them, the Graoully, had a venomous breath, a mouth bigger than its body and devoured men. Saint Clement chased it away into the Seille River.

King of serpents, the Basilisk takes many forms throughout history and appears in many tales. One of them takes place at the Gate of Saint-Eloi in Bordeaux, known today for its Big Bell, where a well was occupied by a Basilisk. It petrified with its gaze anyone who went there to fetch water. It was defeated by a man returning from the Egyptian crusade, who petrified the beast with its own gaze using a mirail (mirror).

The Cocatrix is born from a rooster's egg incubated by a toad. The egg has magical properties but must not be broken. People who cross its gaze die immediatly.

Made of wicker and covered in flowers, the Grand Bailla wanders the streets of Reims three days a year and feeds on gold and sweets. It was banished by Archbishop Charles Maurice le Tellier.

The Grand'Goule haunts the marshes of Poitou, the waters of the Clain and the flooded cellars of the abbey of Sainte Croix. It feeds on nuns and casse-museaux (snout-breakers, cakes). Saint Radegonde chased it away with holy water.

In the rivers of the Jura and the Alps there is a group of diverse dragons, the Vouivres. They are generally flying serpents covered in fire and guardians of treasures. Many have for a single eye a gigantic carbuncle with extraordinary powers, desired by those in search of wealth and power.

Hidden in the caves and cliffs of la Pointe du Roux near La Rochelle, the Rô Beast traps and devours travelers in the coastal marshes. It was impaled by seven heroic pagans from the seas.

Mythical dragon of the Basque Country, Herensuge gave birth to the Sun and the Moon, swallowed all of Creation in ten days then regurgitated it in flames. Now asleep in the mountains, it sucks up flocks and shepherds in his sleep. When it wakes up, it will destroy the world in flames and blood. (illustration)

Durandal is the mythical sword that Charlemagne gave to the knight Roland. Some claim that it was inherited from Hector, the warrior of the Trojan War. At war with the Saracens in the Pyrenées, Roland wanted to break the sword so that it would not fall into the hands of the enemy but Durandal split the mountain. So he threw the sword, which went to stick miles away, in the rock of the town of Rocamadour.

The belief in the Tooth Fairy is widespread in several countries in Europe, and is sometimes amalgamated with La Petite Souris (little mouse). It exchanges baby teeth for money. No one knows what it does with all these teeth.

The Camecruse is a bogeyman that haunts the moors and marshes of Gascony. It is agile, can jump and hide in the night to better devour lost children. No one knows exactly how it feeds.

The caves under the hill of the town of Hastingues are home to Lou Carcolh, a monstrous snail, long, slimy and hairy. Its shell is as big as a house. With the help of its tentacles, it grips people to devour them.

The Questing Beast is hunted by kings and heroes in Arthurian legends. It symbolizes evil, incest, violence and chaos, and takes it name from the loud noises that come out of its stomach, similar to the barking of dozens of dogs.

The fairy Mélusine, cursed princess of Albania, was condemned to change into a snake below the waist every Saturday. She married Raymondin de Lusignan with whom they had 10 prodigious children. But Raymondin broke his promise never to see Mélusine on Saturday : he surprised her in her monstrous form, and she left her family forever.

[rokonrrc2]

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siren

[illustratus]

Bathing Nymph by Carl Spitzweg

[random-brushstrokes]

Henri Lucien Doucet - Reunion of Odysseus and Telemachus (1880)

[zagreusian]

Dionysus, Ariadne and panther quadriga

Semperoper, Dresden

[these-violet-delights-fic]

It's literally where "tantalizing" comes from 😭

my mythology pet peeve is when someone describes a scenario in which they keep nearly getting something and then having it snatched away, and everyone's like "one must imagine sisyphus" no!!! one must imagine TANTALUS!!! sisyphus = being made to perform a pointless, aggravating task over and over without ever making any progress. tantalus = being offered a glorious reward only for it to vanish as soon as you reach for it. they are NOT the same

[hadrian6]

 Damoxenos, 1806. Antonio Canova Italian 1757-1822. plaster. http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

[constanzarte]

Henri Lehmann, Calypso

[the-catbeast-lawfirm]

*meets a lesbian throuple for the first time* ohh ok so uh,,, which of you spins, which one measures and which one cuts the threads of life ???

[ursulakats]

In German, the moon is masculine and the sun feminine, but I don't know if there's a cultural/mythological reason or if it's just the language.

I think I'm gonna start using he/him for the moon on purpose now.

[godslavecomic]

A look at what’s to come after the holidays!!

[neomathemothermoon]

Telemachus redesign bc he looked like my Poseidon design's son.

[yamayuandadu]

Ninshubur(s), Ilabrat, Papsukkal and the gala: another inquiry into ambiguity and fluidity of gender of Mesopotamian deities

Yesterday I’ve mentioned in passing that despite recommending Dahlia Shehata’s Musiker und ihr vokales Repertoire: Untersuchungen zu Inhalt und Organisation von Musikerberufen und Liedgattungen in altbabylonischer Zeit overall, I have a minor issue with the coverage of Ninshubur in this monograph - specifically with the arguments about the gender of this deity. I figured my problem warrants a more in depth explanation, not just because I’m the self-proclaimed “biggest Ninshubur fan not counting Rim-Sin I of Larsa”. 

Note that while this is functionally a followup to my recent Inanna’s article, it is not the followup I’ve promised previously; that one will be released at a later date.

To begin with, in a cursory  survey of figures who speak in emesal in literary texts, Shehata introduces Ninshubur as a deity equally firmly masculine as Dumuzi (Musiker…, p. 83). This is in itself a problem - when Ninshubur’s gender is specified in sources from the third millennium BCE, the name clearly designates a goddess, not a god (can’t get more feminine than being called ama); and even later on she remains a goddess in a variety of sources - including many emesal texts, which is the context most relevant here (Frans Wiggermann, Nin-šubur, p. 491).

Occasionally arguments are made that a male Ninshubur - explicitly a separate deity from “Inanna’s Ninshubur” as Manfred Krebernik and Jan Lisman recently called her - already existed in the third millennium BCE (The Sumerian Zame Hymns from Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ, p. 151), though this is ultimately conjectural.

It is true that the Abu Salabikh god list includes at least two Ninshuburs, but in contrast with later, more informative lists it provides no theological glosses, so we can’t be sure that gender is what differentiates them. For all we know it might be a geographic distinction instead - “Inanna’s Ninshubur” from Akkil and the Lagashite Ninshubur associated with Mesmaltaea, perhaps. The one case where we have a text involving two Ninshuburs which we can differentiate has the “great” (gula) Ninshubur from Uruk - “Inanna’s Ninshubur” - and the “small” (banda) Ninshubur from Enegi (Nin-šubur, p. 500; Ur III period) . The fact that there might be a third Ninshubur entry between the two certain ones in the Abu Salabikh list (The Sumerian…, p. 151) doesn’t help, either.

This is not to deny the existence of a male Ninshubur altogether. However, this is actually a fairly straightforward phenomenon, with no real ambiguity involved  - possibly as early as in the Old Akkadian period, Ninshubur came to be associated with a male messenger deity, Ilabrat, and later on with equally, if not more firmly masculine Papsukkal; at first her name was used as a logogram to write Ilabrat’s, and later Papsukkal’s, but eventually it became possible to essentially speak of full replacement (or absorption) of both Ninshubur and Ilabrat by Papsukkal (Nin-šubur, p. 491-493; Julia M. Asher-Greve, Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources, p. 93). Papsukkal even replaces Ninshubur up in the Neo-Assyrian derivative of Inanna’s Descent, written in Akkadian; but he is addressed as a servant of the divine assembly, not the eponymous protagonist of the myth, and the entire mourning and mediation sequence is cut (Wilfred G. Lambert, Introductory Considerations, p. 13). I feel it’s important to stress that in most cases where Ninshubur’s gender cannot be determined this is not due to intentional ambiguity, but rather due to lack of grammatical forms which would make it possible for us - in antiquity all the context needed was presumably available to the reader. Furthermore, in many such cases the ambiguity isn’t quite “what is Ninshubur’s gender?” but rather “does this theophoric name use Ninshubur as a logogram for Ilabrat or Papsukkal?” Thus, Ninshubur’s gender was not ambiguous innately and did not become ambiguous, but rather she was replaced by an originally distinct male deity - her case is thus more comparable to absorption of both male and female deities of specific professions by Enki in god lists form the first millennium BCE, if anything. Even if a separate male Ninshubur existed alongside feminine Ninshubur (or Ninshuburs) even before the entire Ilabrat/Papsukkal situation, we’d still be dealing with a similar phenomenon.

Back to Shehata’s monograph, later on she acknowledges that Ninshubur possessed “a male and female aspect” (“einen männlichen wie auch weiblichen Aspekt”) and on this basis suggests a parallel between Ninshubur and the gala (p. 85). The process of conflation of messenger deities is not discussed, instead this interpretation relies on Uri Gabbay’s The Akkadian Word for “Third Gender”: The kalû (gala) Once Again, which at the time was the most recent treatment of the matter. I won’t go into the details of that article here, since it’s for the most part not relevant (it focuses on the possible etymology of the term gala). What matters here is Gabbay’s novel proposal that Ninshubur was perceived as having the same gender identity as the gala, largely just based on her portrayal as a mourner in Inanna’s Descent and her ability to appease other deities, which was also the purpose of the performances of the gala (The Akkadian Word…, p. 53). The supporting evidence is that some of Ninshubur’s titles use the term lagar, and a single lexical list explains lagar as gala (The Akkadian Word…, p. 54) This is rather vague, and it needs to be pointed out that it has been since established with certainty that in Ninshubur’s case lagar/SAL.ḪUB2 seems to be a rare, old title with similar meaning to sukkal, and it also could be applied to other deities - ones whose gender never showed any ambiguity -  in a similar way (see full discussion in Antoine Cavigneaux, Frans Wiggermann, "Vizir, concubine, entonnoir... Comment lire et comprendre le signe SAL.ḪUB2? and a brief commentary in The Sumerian…, p. 130). Furthermore, earlier in the article Gabbay recognizes the supposed connection between the terms as an error himself (The Akkadian Word…, p. 49). 

I haven’t really seen any authors other than Shehata agreeing with Gabbay’s arguments about Ninshubur; in fact, while I try to keep up with relevant publications, I’ve only seen his points regarding this deity addressed at all otherwise, and quite critically at that. Joan Goodnick Westenholz disagreed with him and pointed out that in addition to Gabbay contradicting himself regarding the term lagar, a fundamental weakness of his proposal is that Ninshubur is never described as a gala (Goddesses in Context…, p. 93). As a matter of fact no deity is, though you can make a sound case for Lumha, who was a (sparsely attested) divine representation of this profession. 

A further problem with Gabbay’s argument is that while it’s true gala were first and foremost professional lamenters (and I think any paper which acknowledges this deserves some credit), lamenting was hardly an activity exclusive to them. Paul Delnero considers Ninshubur’s actions in Inanna’s Descent to be a standard over the top portrayal of grief common in Mesopotamian literary texts. In other myths, as well as in laments mourning the destruction of cities or death of deities Geshtinanna, Inanna, Ninisina and other goddesses engage in similar behaviors. He assumes the detailed descriptions of deities wailing, tearing out hair, lacerating and so on were meant to inspire a sense of discomfort and grief in the audience (How to Do Things with Tears, p. 210-214). If Delnero is right - and I see no reason to undermine his argument - Ninshubur’s mourning would have more to do with what sort of story Inanna’s Descent is, not with her character. I suppose Ninshubur’s mourning is unique in one regard, though. She acts about Inanna’s death in the way sisters, mothers or spouses do in the case of Damu, Dumuzi, Lulil etc., despite not actually being her relative. I think there are some interesting implications to explore here, but so far I’ve seen no publications pursuing this topic.

Gabbay is right that Ninshubur and the gala are described as capable of appeasing deities, and especially Inanna, though I also think Westenholz was right to argue that a single shared function is not enough to warrant identification  (Goddesses in Context…, p. 93-94). It’s also worth noting that similar abilities could be ascribed to multiple types of servant deities, and that Ninshubur was just the most popular member of this category - a veritable major minor deity, if you will - and as a result is much better represented in literary texts. But the likes of Ishum or Nuska appease their respective superiors too, and it’s hard to make a similar case for their gender.

It should also be noted that while Ninshubur ultimately is the main mourner in Inanna’s Descent, Lulal and Shara mourn too (whether equally intensely as Ninshubur is up for debate, but that’s beside the point); and Dumuzi is expected to, and dies precisely because he doesn’t. And the gender of none of these three is ever ambivalent. Furthermore, Gabbay’s argument about Ninshubur’s gender resembling the gala in part rests on treating a single unique source as perhaps more important than in reality - and it’s not necessarily a source relevant to the gala at all. There is only one source where Ninshubur's gender might be intentionally ambiguous. An Old Babylonian hymn describes Ninshubur as a figure dressed in masculine clothing on the right side and feminine on the left (Nin-šubur, p. 491). This does mirror the description of an unspecified type of cultic performer of unspecified gender mentioned in the famous Iddin-Dagan hymn (“Dressed with men's clothing on the right side (...) Adorned (?) with women's clothing on the left side”); however, there’s no indication that a gala is meant in this context. Gabbay doesn’t bring up this passage, and assumes that since Ninshubur’s clothing includes both masculine and feminine elements, it is automatically a situation analogous to the unclear gender identity of the gala (The Akkadian Word…, p. 54), though. It might be worth noting that the unique text still uses the feminine emesal form of Ninshubur’s name, Gashanshubur, with no masculine Umunshubur anywhere in sight (Åke W. Sjöberg, Miscellaneous Sumerian Texts, III, p. 72); as far as grammar is concerned, Ninshubur, even if dressed partially masculinely, remains feminine. Perhaps the context is just unclear for us, and the unusual outfit was tied to a specific performance as opposed to a specific gender identity, let alone specifically to ambiguity of gender? Perhaps it would make more sense to assume the text describes Ninshubur (partially) crossdressing (and we do have clear evidence for at least one festival which involved crossdressing from the Old Babylonian period), instead of dealing with gender identity? This is of course entirely speculative, though I think further inquiries are warranted.  It’s also important to stress that however we interpret the identity of the gala - gender nonconforming men, men with some specific uncommon physical feature, nonbinary people (all three have valid arguments behind them, and it’s also not impossible the exact meaning varied across time and space) - they pretty clearly did not alternate between a firmly feminine identity and a firmly masculine one. Even if we were to incorrectly treat Ninshubur as a single deity whose gender alternates between male and female, I don’t think there would be a strong reason to draw parallels - unless you want to lump together what might very well been a specific nonbinary identity, and an instance of genderfluidity involving two firmly binary genders. I don’t really think these are phenomena which can be lumped together; and neither necessarily has much to do with presentation. And all we ultimately have in Ninshubur’s case is an isolated case of unusual presentation - nothing more, nothing less.

Once again, this short article is not intended as a warning against using Shehata’s book - it’s very rigorous overall, and a treasure trove of interesting information. It’s also not supposed to discredit Gabbay’s studies of the gala - I don’t necessarily fully agree with his conclusions, but I’ve depended on his articles in the past myself, after all.

The article also isn’t intended as an argument against inquiries into the gender of deities, Ninshubur included, or the gala, or any other religious specialists whose gender is unclear. However, it is vital to approach the evidence rigorously and put it into a broader context.

This is particularly significant since the gender of deities is not necessarily fully identical with the gender of humans, and its changes could be brought by processes which hardly have real life parallels - this requires both additional caution, and a careful case by case approach. It would be difficult for a woman to be conflated into one being with two men in the same profession, which is essentially what happened to Ninshubur, just like it would be hard for someone’s gender to be defined by the fact they were viewed as the personification of a specific astral body, as in the case of Ninsianna and Pinikir, who I discussed previously. And, of course, these two cases have little in common with each other. In the final article in this mini-series, I will look into some yet more esoteric cases of shifts in gender of Mesopotamian deities, to hopefully strengthen my point.

[andresylupin]

You can read the full book and see the other beautiful illustrations on Gallica here:

Nausikaa / Homère ; traduction de Leconte de Lisle ; Compositions décoratives par Gaston de Latenay | Gallica

Gaston de Latenay, Nausikaa scans by Book Graphics blogspot/2014

[illustratus]

Landscape with Saint George and the Dragon by Claude Lorrain