Nanshe ( ) was a Mesopotamian goddess in various contexts associated with the sea, marshlands, the animals inhabiting these biomes, namely bird and fish, as well as divination, dream interpretation, justice, social welfare, and certain administrative tasks. She was regarded as a daughter of Enki and sister of Ningirsu, while her husband was Nindara, who is otherwise little known. Other deities who belonged to her circle included her daughter Nin-MAR.KI, as well as Hendursaga, Dumuzi-abzu and Shul-utula. In Ur she was incorporated into the circle of Ningal, while in incantations she appears alongside Ningirima or Nammu.
The oldest attestations of the worship of Nanshe come from the Uruk period. Her cult center was Tell Zurghul, known in antiquity as Nina. Another place associated with her, Sirara, was likely a sacred distrinct in this city. She was also worshiped elsewhere in the state of Lagash. Sanctuaries dedicated to her existed in its eponymous capital, as well as in Girsu, Gu'abba and other settlements. She is also attested in a number of other cities in other parts of Mesopotamia, including Adab, Nippur, Umma, Ur and Uruk, but her importance in their local pantheons was comparatively smaller. Her cult declined after the Ur III period. She was later adopted a dynastic tutelary deity by the kings of the Sealand, and also came to be worshiped in the Esagil temple complex in Babylon. She was still venerated in the sixth century BCE.
Multiple literary texts focused on Nanshe are known. Nanshe and the Birds focuses on her relation with her symbolic animal, the u5 bird. Its species is a matter of dispute, with proposed identifications including goose, swan, cormorant, gull and pelican. In the myth Enki and Ninhursag, she appears as one of the deities created by Ninhursag to cure Enki's illness. Other compositions deal with her relation to the sea, fish or dream interpretation.
Name
The meaning of Nanshe's name is unknown, and it is agreed it has no plausible Sumerian etymology. It was written in cuneiform with the signs dAB✕ḪA, with the dingir sign being a determinative designating names of the deities, while AB✕ḪA is a combination of the words "shrine" and "fish," with the latter written inside the former. Syllabic spellings are also known, for example dNa-áš, Na-an-še and Na-aš-še. The last of them occurs in an Old Babylonian lexical list, so-called "Diri Nippur." In texts from the Sealand, the name is typically written as dNa-zi. This spelling is also present in some earlier god lists, in An = Anum, and in the myth Enki and Ninhursag. It has been proposed that it reflects a speculative variant form of the name, Nassi. It has also been interpreted as a possible emesal spelling. In the Nippur god list, the traditional spelling and dNa-zi are juxtaposed as two orthographies of a single theonym.
It is possible that dŠar-ra-at-ni-na, "queen of Nina," was an alternate name of Nanshe. However, this name is only attested in a list of deities from the Sealand, and an alternative proposal is that Ishtar of Nineveh is meant, though this proposal is not universally accepted either.
Andrew R. George notes that in the Canonical Temple List Sirara, a toponym associated with Nanshe, might have been reinterpreted as an alternate name of her.