Ningishzida

Also Known As: Sumerian Ninĝišzida, commonly rendered “lord of the good tree”; Akkadian Gizzida; also spelled Ningizzida, Ningiszida
Region/Culture: Mesopotamia and Ancient Near East
Mythos: Mesopotamian Mythology, Sumerian Mythology, Akkadian/Assyrian/Babylonian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He gathers snakes and dragons under his hand, carries the early flood into the fields, and holds the office of throne-bearer in the underworld.
Role in Mythos: He is the young lord who is taken down to the land of the dead by a demon and who afterwards stands at the gate of heaven as one of its two doorkeepers.
Relation to Humans: He was the personal god of Gudea of Lagash, who called himself Ningishzida’s son and had him carved leading a mortal forward by the wrist. Ordinary Sumerians met him through their own household gods, since the hymns say every youth who has a personal god is at his disposal.

The cup is green chlorite, a little under a foot high, thin-walled and cool to the hand. Cut into it are two snakes wound around a central staff, rising the whole height of the vessel, and flanking them stand two horned beasts with the forelegs of lions and the hind claws of birds, holding back what looks like a curtain. There is no god standing anywhere in the picture. The snakes are the god. Gudea, ruler of Lagash, had the thing made around 2120 BCE and gave it to Ningishzida, and when the French dug it out of the mound at Tello in the 1880s the dedication was still legible on the stone.

The name is usually read as lord of the good tree, and one of his other names, Gishbanda, means little tree. That was also the name of his town, a small place in the orchard country between Lagash and Ur, which never grew into anything and whose god never became one of the great ones. It is a strange combination on paper, a tree god drawn as a snake, until you remember what roots do underground. He belonged to the part of the world that is dark, patient, and holding on.

The Sumerian songs made for him are worth reading for what they do not say. One balbale opens by calling him hero, lord of field and meadow, lion of the distant mountains, the one who brings together giant snakes and dragons, a great wild bull who is a flood in the murderous battle. It says his mother Ningirida bore him from her luxurious body, that he drank the good milk at her holy breast, sucked in lion’s spittle and grew up in the abzu, the freshwater deep. It makes him a priest holding the ešda vessels and a checker of tablets who secures justice. It makes him a shepherd who understands how to wield the sceptre over the goats and the kids. It ends by naming him son of Ninazu and giving the praise to Father Enki. Another hymn says that through him the early flood comes and fine grains stand in the fields, and that he is the king’s right arm on the battlefield. Nowhere in any of it is there a word about medicine, which is worth knowing, because the modern retellings tend to hand him a physician’s job that the tablets never gave him.

What the tablets do give him, over and over, is the underworld’s paperwork. King, you who carry out commands in the great underworld, one hymn says, you who carry out the underworld’s business. His office there has a name: throne-bearer. He carries the seat somebody else sits on.

He got the job by being taken. There is a poem, known in several versions and full of the flat repetition of a funeral lament, that opens with a voice calling from a boat. Arise and get on board, arise, we are about to sail. The young man being steered away answers that he is a young man and does not want to be covered by a cabin as if with a blanket. Hands reach out from the bank toward him and toward the other young gods the poem names in the same breath, Damu, Ishtaran of the bright visage, Alla master of the battle-net, Lugal-shude, as though any of them would do. In the boat’s cabin his sister is crying. She asks to sail with him. He tells her not to: the demon sails with me, the thresher sails with me, the man who has bound my hands sails with me, why should you sail.

Then he says the thing the poem is really about. The river of the nether world produces no water and no water is drunk from it. The fields of the nether world produce no grain and no flour is eaten from it. The sheep of the nether world produce no wool and no cloth is woven from it. Even if his mother digs a channel for him he will not drink what is meant for him. The waters of springtime will not be poured out for him as they are for the tamarisks, and he will not sit in the shade intended for him. The dates he should bear like a date palm will not show their beauty. The lord of the good tree gets no shade.

His sister Amashilama tries to buy him back. She offers to strip the fine lapis lazuli beads from her hips for the demon, saying over and over that there should be a limit to it, there should be a limit. The demon, who is called clever and great, calls up to the men at the bow and the stern and tells them not to pull the mooring stake, so that she can come aboard to her brother. When she steps onto the barge the cry goes up to heaven and down to earth, and the demon shouts at the city: Ur, at my cry to the heavens, lock your houses. Lock your houses against your lord who has left the temple precinct. He goes down, and nobody in the story stops it. At the far end he tells his sister she may not come as far as the house of Ereshkigal, he washes the dust out of his hair, puts sandals on his defiled feet, eats food and drinks choice wine, and takes up the throne-bearing. The poem’s last line praises Ereshkigal, not him.

The other half of his career runs the opposite way. In the Akkadian tale of Adapa, preserved best on a tablet found in the Egyptian capital at Amarna, the sage Adapa is summoned up to the sky god Anu to answer for breaking the south wind’s wing. His patron Ea coaches him first. At the gate of Anu, Ea says, Dumuzi and Gizzida will be posted. They will see you dressed for mourning and ask who you are grieving for, and you will say that two gods have gone missing from our land, and when they ask which two you will say: Dumuzi and Gizzida. Then they will glance at each other and laugh, and they will put in a good word for you. It works. The two dead young men, standing where nobody expects to find them, talk Anu round. A god the underworld has already collected is exactly the one holding heaven’s door.

His powers follow from that double station. He brings the early flood and the grain, and he brings the snakes and the dragons together; the hymns say plainly that when he spreads confusion nobody dares stop him. He carries a shining sceptre and speaks straight and hates wickedness, and one text says the troops are constantly at his service. On the seal cut for Gudea he takes the king by the hand and walks him forward to be presented, and the Cylinder A text describes the same thing happening as the king carried the brick mould to the building site, with Ningishzida his personal god holding him by the hand the whole way. Gudea called the god his father outright and said the temple was built on a pedestal by him.

His limits are just as plain, and they are all the limits of a small, local, second-rank divinity. He cannot refuse the boat. His release, such as it is, has to be bargained for by a woman with beads. His seat in the land of the dead is a servant’s post under a queen who outranks him. His town stayed small and his temple at Girsu, which Gudea built and Gudea’s son Ur-Ningirsu kept running out of the palace, went quiet with the dynasty that funded it. Even his marriage is uncertain: most of the later record gives him a wife named Ninazimua, while at Lagash the goddess beside him is Geshtinanna, and the god lists have never fully agreed which. He is a god you would want at your shoulder in a courtroom or a doorway, and no use at all against the thing that came for him.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Ningishzida?

Ningishzida is a Sumerian god whose name is usually translated as lord of the good tree. He was the city god of Gishbanda, a small settlement in the orchard country between Lagash and Ur, and he held the office of throne-bearer in the underworld. He is best known as the personal god of Gudea, the ruler of Lagash around 2120 BCE.

Why is Ningishzida shown as a snake?

His oldest images are serpentine. The libation cup Gudea dedicated to him, now in the Louvre, shows the god as two snakes twined around a staff and flanked by horned dragons, with no human figure present at all. On a cylinder seal cut for the same king he appears as a man with two horned serpent-dragon heads rising from his shoulders. The tree in his name and the snake in his image point at the same thing, which is what lives underground.

What happens in Ningishzida’s journey to the underworld?

A demon takes Ningishzida down to the land of the dead by boat while his sister Amashilama begs to go with him. He refuses her, describing an underworld whose river gives no water, whose fields give no grain and whose sheep give no wool. She offers her lapis lazuli beads as a ransom, the demon lets her board, and at the far end Ningishzida washes, eats, and takes up his post as throne-bearer under the queen Ereshkigal.

What is Ningishzida’s role in the myth of Adapa?

In the Akkadian tale of Adapa, Ningishzida appears under the name Gizzida as one of the two gods standing at the gate of Anu, alongside Dumuzi. The god Ea tells Adapa to arrive dressed in mourning and to say he grieves for two gods missing from the land, naming Dumuzi and Gizzida. The pair are flattered, they laugh, and they intercede with Anu on Adapa’s behalf.

Was Ningishzida a god of healing?

The Sumerian hymns to Ningishzida never mention medicine. They praise him as lord of field and meadow, as the bringer of the early flood and the grain, as a shepherd with a sceptre, as the king’s right arm in battle, and as the one who carries out the underworld’s business. The healing associations often attached to him in modern retellings belong more properly to his father Ninazu.