#less than 3000 words

[sagevalleymusings]

You already know what people missed in Barbie, but I'm going to deep dive it anyway because these negative reviews are hilarious

Reading one-star reviews to the 2023 movie Barbie are genuinely hilarious. 

First and foremost, the male characters lacked any significant development. They were one-dimensional, bland, and existed primarily to either praise Barbie or act as obstacles for her to overcome. This reduction of male characters to supporting roles, devoid of any substance or complexity, was a disservice not only to the male characters themselves but also to the narrative as a whole.

Like, yes. That’s… that’s literally the point. You have correctly assessed the central criticism the movie is making about patriarchy. But you think it’s a bad thing because you haven’t realized it’s on purpose.

Mattel's CEO and corporate people started as a mockery of men having all the top positions in a company; as the movie goes, they're just there at the back of your mind, and it's an unpleasant experience because they did nothing after.

Like… yes! Mattel had to sign off on this movie. Their real-world attempts to control and influence the plot of Barbie would have been sitting as an unpleasant reminder in the back of the minds of the creators, even if they ultimately did nothing. The writers clearly responded to this pressure by just making it a part of the movie.

Overall, a movie that comes off strongly like the 2016 reboot of Ghostbusters; during which year, it was reviewed as being "stunning and brave" with the same misandry-esque storytelling (that time, replacing an all-male cast mind you).

This one is just funny. The rest of the review didn’t even seem that negative, and then there’s this, “I hated Ghostbusters specifically because it had women in it” dig that’s just… so telling on yourself.

More analysis after the cut. Stick around if you want to learn something ;-) 

I want to take a break from laughing at people with no understanding of subtlety and nuance to actually look at the film. I watched Barbie last night, and I thought it was great. There were a lot of relatable moments, as someone who grew up playing with dolls. The basic setting is that there is a world parallel to ours called Barbieland, which is essentially a kind of alternate dream universe, where beings in the universe are tied to and influenced by objects in the Real World. In theory, Barbieland cannot change without influence from the Real World, but if it does, it can have echoing ramifications in the Real World. That’s a setting you could do some interesting things with, and it does necessarily require some degree of surrealism. 

Surrealism was a post World War I art movement in Europe which sought to combine dreams and reality into something Andre Breton called a super reality. The irrational juxtaposition can be nonsensical, but is often used to attempt to heighten the real by contrasting it with the unreal. It is extremely relevant that it came out of Europe post “The Great War” because it is by nature a way to grapple with feelings which feel too great to express through realism. Much like Goya, when painting the Penninsular War, painted a Colossus trampling the countryside with no real acknowledgement of the harm being caused, surrealism taps into one’s feelings, to evoke the sense that the real causes, instead of simply portraying the real with accuracy. 

And I pause to explain this because Barbieland is a land of dreams. It is literally the surreal. By opening our movie with an unambiguously surreal portrayal of Victorian girls playing with baby dolls in an empty wasteland, then transitioning to the imagined Barbieland, our writers are sending a pointed message: nothing that happens in this movie should be taken literally.

That aside, the film’s scenario is disjointed, didactic, and literal. The duration of the movie is a series of speeches with every woke cliché.

Barbieland cannot be divorced from its origins. Rather than having been created organically, it was made - by men. While looking into the character/real person of Ruth Handler, I discovered that the name “Mattel” was created by combining the names of businessman Harold Mattson and Ruth’s husband Elliot. Ruth’s contributions are written out of history every time someone says “Mattel.”

Barbieland is ostensibly a matriarchy. Barbies are dolls made for girls, so the dolls are mostly girls. With the wave of second wave feminism, there was a desire to market to a more empowered type of girl. What does that look like to the men trying to come up with it? You give the dolls jobs. President Barbie, Nobel Prize Barbie, Construction Worker Barbie. Barbieland has all the trappings of a patriarchy, just with women in the gender of power instead of men. That may sound like it is therefore a matriarchy in that case, but in fact that’s not how that works. There have been real matriarchies in the world, and they don’t function the way that Barbieland functions. That Barbieland is a playhouse run by men with Barbies acting out their roles and Kens acting out the roles of women in an idyllic fantasy for the men creating them with the intent of producing a profit under patriarchal capitalism matters when analyzing this movie.

It's a long ramble about how matriarchy is perfect and patriarchy is stupid. I agree with the latter, but the execution is just awful. 

Having said that, Barbieland isn’t exactly a one-to-one to our world - it’s more like a “good old days” subversion of our world, with a specific focus on tradwife nostalgia. It’s reminiscent of 1950s “return to the home” propaganda post World War 2 - shows like Leave it to Beaver or I Love Lucy which re-emphasized to a generation of women that had been forced to enter the workforce that what they should be striving for was a husband and a home. 

In Barbieland, Kens can’t have jobs - they just stand around looking pretty, especially on the beach. Barbies have all the jobs. Also everyone owns their own homes. The aesthetic of friendly, white-washed suburbia is deeply ingrained in how everyone knows and likes their neighbors, even while 1990s multiculturalism bleeds in.  

now if we were sticking to an actual representation of Barbie Land we would also have a BEACH barbie just like we have Crystal Barbie and Ken or Great Shape Barbie and Ken or even Animal Lovin Barbie and Ken! This perception that Ken doesn’t have a REAL job is just untrue, in fact there is many Ken Careers including DOCTOR KEN!

There’s a point in the movie that I find is deeply profound actually. The Kens have taken over the Barbie dreamhouses, which prompts the question, “where do the Kens sleep?” Not only does Barbie not know, but the question is never answered. DO they sleep anywhere? 

I’m reminded of a real world parallel. Before women were allowed to work, where did they live? That might seem like a stupid question, because of course they lived somewhere, but the fact of the matter is that if you were not allowed to generate income, you could not afford a home. Girls lived with their fathers until they were married at which point they moved in with their husbands, because of course they had husbands by that point. Women didn’t have their own homes. Kens don’t have houses. In that context, the fact that Barbie continues to reject Ken to have a sleepover with other Barbies who all have their own homes takes on a much darker tone. Kens in Barbieland, much like women were in parts of the history of the Real World, are so subjugated in society that they literally don’t have access to food or shelter without relying on the other gender.

They even point out “oh where do the Kens sleep at? I have NO idea!” basically is saying they don’t have Kens contribute at all the Barbieland and all they are is dumb dressed up side pieces for the Barbies.

But I don’t think this metaphor of “patriarchy but the genders are swapped” is the only metaphor at play. After all, at some point, Barbie and Ken enter the Real World, and discover that the playacting they have been doing is literally a lie. In the Real World, patriarchy is the rule of law. Barbie is uncomfortable. Her playacting is called fascist. Meanwhile Ken is given access to any space he wants, even while having to realize that his experience - the way he was raised - means that he’s still missing critical components necessary to enter Real World patriarchy. He decides to bring patriarchy to the play world.

In our metaphor, it seems to me that this component of the movie is a direct criticism of radical feminism. The whole movie essentially speed runs the last sixty years of feminism. This also means that the metaphor becomes strained, as we maintain the plot through lines while changing the meaning, but I think it still functions well throughout. 

As the movie progresses, we reach the Kens want power in society movement, and they go way too far with it, choosing to place themselves in power with women being subjugated instead. There were separatists in second wave feminism that called for this move specifically, who argued that men were too violent to assume any position of power, and genuinely argued that a matriarchy should be instituted instead. 

I can see why someone experiencing power for the first time might believe this was the solution. Ken isn’t concerned about equality, not really. But he is concerned about the way his gender has been treated in this world, and he wants to bring other Kens out of their status as second class citizens. 

But Kendom isn’t better. Wanting to subjugate and oppress the people who were subjugating and oppressing you is an understandable reaction, and it’s the wrong one. The goal is equality, not retribution. 

Was Barbie's Director aiming at an anti men revenge film?  The film subjugated men; demeaning and objectifying them and labelling them as dumb and superfluous. They are so worth more than that and young men today struggle to find their place in a society trying to demonise them.

But by the end of the movie, the Kens haven’t gained equality. And in an extremely barbed line directed straight at the audience, our narrator says, “maybe one day they will be as represented on the Supreme Court as women are in the Real World.”

I do think it bears noting, though, that right now, in 2023, four out of the nine justices on the Supreme Court are women, which is just about fifty percent. We are achieving equality, we really are. The point isn’t that women have not achieved equality. The point is that that happened extremely slowly. There are four women on the Supreme Court today. Those four represent nearly 70% of the TOTAL number of women who have ever served on the Supreme Court. The first woman served on the Supreme Court 192 years into its existence.

I think there’s some relevant context here, then, that Barbieland, the imagined space created when playing with Barbies, has existed since 1959. Barbieland isn’t starting from nothing, since it is importing Real World values, but it has only existed for 64 years. If Barbieland operated on the same time scale that the United States did (which we know it doesn’t but let’s pretend) then men would see someone represented on the Barbieland Supreme Court in the Real World year of 2151.

In conclusion, "Barbie" is an unforgettable journey into a realm where men are vilified, female empowerment lacks subtlety, and any semblance of realism takes a backseat. 

There’s a lot more that I could say. There’s a lot more feelings I had about this movie. But I want to keep this to responding to the unintentionally hilarious critiques of this movie. It’s endlessly amusing to me that the primary critique of this movie seems over and over again to be “the movie accurately portrayed what it was trying to portray.”

The disconnect is one that I’ve seen in an increasing amount. Barbieland’s idyllic, “matriarchy is perfect” version is extremely bad. In the end, even the Barbies don’t want to return to that version of their world. Confronted with the degree to which they’d been subjugating their Kens up to this point, they now see at least in part how harmful that version was not only to the Kens, but to the Barbies too. 

But viewers can’t seem to understand that just because something is being portrayed on screen does not mean it is being condoned. 

Such an incredible steaming pile of liberal garbage that it almost seemed satirical. The supposed intention of the film was to empower women, but instead did nothing but tear down men. 

There’s one last thing I want to say before I sign off on this fun romp through Barbie’s one-star reviews, and it’s something I didn’t see very much critique of. 

Barbie is transgender. 

Barbie wanting to be human: A theme that starts with Barbie‘s interaction with an old lady and her observing other people. That motive disappears completely until the end, Barbie has no motivation to become human throughout the movie.

I think this is a metaphor that people just completely missed on. The only real critiques I saw on this part of the movie was that Barbie wanting to be human seemed like it came out of nowhere. And in some ways I’d agree that it was not as obvious as the rest of the movie was. But if you read that plot point through the lens of metaphor, it’s much more obvious.

Margot Robbie has gone on record saying that Barbie and Ken are sexless, and that therefore, they don’t really have sex drives. In a very literal way, Barbie’s existence highlights the difference between being socialized as a woman and being born as a female. But in Barbieland, there are no ‘women’ in any sense of the term. Barbie is not a human. She hasn’t been socialized the way human women have. Her gender literally isn’t ‘woman.’ It’s Barbie. And Barbies don’t have genitals. Midge was an embarrassment for Mattel in the Real World, and she’s also taboo in Barbieland, because she’s non-gender conforming to what that means for Barbies specifically. 

With that in mind, is it really true that this comes out of nowhere? I would argue no. In fact, I would argue it is the central conflict of the movie, because there is a specific gendered aspect of Stereotypical Barbie that she is not conforming to outside of Gloria’s influence. 

She doesn’t want to date Ken. They are dating, nominally, because that’s what Barbies and Kens do. But she won’t kiss him, and she won’t let him sleep over. And it’s made clear in the beginning scenes that this strain on their interactions existed before Gloria started imagining “Irrepressible Thoughts of Death Barbie.”

Barbie doesn’t want things to change. Perhaps that’s because she can only imagine a world where things change for the worse. Where she does let Ken sleep over. And there’s something deeply troubling to Barbie about that scenario. It simply isn’t part of the version of herself this Barbie wants to be. 

Barbies playact the real world. And an extremely common and expected aspect of the playacting is the relationships they have to Kens. And regardless of the fact that all Barbies and Kens are asexual because they literally don’t have sex drives, it does seem to be the case that there’s still a gendered aspect to Barbies and Kens that they both be heteroromantic. Ken certainly has feelings for Barbie. All of the Kens are seen exhibiting jealousy. None of the other Barbies are seen as unhappy in their interactions with Kens the way that Stereotypical Barbie is. 

She’s different. She can’t playact a relationship the way everyone else can. She needs it to be… real. So she becomes real. Ken does not come along, this was never about Ken.

But that process of becoming real, of becoming human… it does mean that her gender changes. It means her sex changes. Barbieland being surreal means that this can happen instantaneously, but I do think it’s intentional on the part of the writers that the very last page of feminism - after second wave feminism, after radical activism, after reactionary conservatism pushes radical activism to the fringes, after speedrunning the last 60 years of feminism, the very last form Barbie takes is queering the narrative. Barbie has a vagina now. And she’s very proud of it. And that’s feminist too actually. 

So yeah Barbie is transgender and Greta Gerwig said trans rights, and it’s extra funny that no one noticed because they were too busy being mad that the rest of the movie was effective storytelling actually.

#lgbt discourse #disk horse #queer #barbie #barbie 2023 #media analysis #barbie spoilers #spoilers #gender theory #it's less than 3000 words #this is a normal and fine length

[casiavium]

okay so I have a few options for how to finish damage control (unbroken spirit has a different ending so it's irrelevant). stop where I am now and have a shorter chapter 11 and really long chapter 12, add more chapters and draw it out longer, or keep writing until I reach my planned end for chapter 11 and ??? chapter 12.

#it kind of makes sense to stop where I am now but also it's less than 3000 words #but alsoooo I don't have a lot planned for the end other than. the end #but like. there's still a lot of character that needs to happen in order for the end to make sense? #I actually hate how this fic is ending up I'm so sorry :( #I had a vision and I am NOT living up to it #the oneshots were so much better tbh #I write oneshots well I HATE writing long fics hmmmmm #when I write the cyberpunk au it's going to be one 17000 word oneshot again. btw #like salt water. that one I like #the modern au idk. maybe like 5 chapters instead of 12-20

[acheronidae]

(this meme is so fucking dumb lmao, I apologize/hj)

#this chapter ended up being over 3000 words as opposed to the usual less than 2000 #enjoy #hollow knight #the pale king #troupe master grimm #herrah the beast #mydoasc #pale nightmare

[boinin]

Just had a very dark, very spooky idea for a bllk Halloweek fic and I'm very excited to write it... when I get time 🫠

#it's gonna be supernatural and horror based with a bit of dark shipping at play #but also I'm not sure I'll be able to do the idea justice in say... less than 3000 words #cos i really need my oneshot ideas to be short from here on out #the flowershop au fic is at over 3K and only halfway done #i have cassis orange to finish #and lots of things to complete/revise #this weekend might give me a chance (here's hoping!) #blue lock fanfiction #bllk fanfiction #mine

[welcometogrouchland]

I have. So many owl house essays in drafts

#ramblings of a lunatic #THEY'RE ALL RAMBLY WITH NO PICTURES AND I DON'T THINK ANYONE WOULD READ THEM BUT I THINK ABOUT THEM SO MUCH #i could genuinely write full on academic 3000 word essays on those. that doesn't sound like a lot but that's less than my coursework rn

[greyias]

Prompt: "Can-can you hold me?" "Yeah, yeah, I can do that. Of course, come here." Hiya! Idk if you're still doing prompts but I saw this on Pinterest and thought of you and the F!JK x Theron ship. I thought it was such a good prompt for possibly newly married Theron x JK full of feels and fluff 🥺. Ty! 💕 -athunter99 (I really need to get a Tumblr and start writing fanfic myself 💀)

Hello there! Good to hear from you again! This prompt response is definitely more in the spirit of the prompt, rather than the exact wording. Hopefully that’s okay!

Takes place after the events of the “Secrets of the Enclave” Flashpoint, and is partially me grousing to myself about some of the odd writing choices foisted upon the player character.

As a Jedi, some things should have been simple to summon.

The ability to calm one’s own mind and find peace within the Force, or the power to focus one’s thoughts on a task to the point where there was no thinking of anything else—those should have been simple. However both calm and tranquility seemed out of reach after the events deep within Enclave’s ruins. Her nerves felt nearly on fire — not in the electric, literal manner she had felt when she was electrocuted on Iokath, but in a far more unsettling way. It was as though something had seeped into her bones during their voyage to the depths under the old Jedi Enclave. Something dark and angry and foreign that made her skin crawl and left her adrift.

In these moments, a Jedi should take a minute to breathe and connect to the Force in order to anchor themselves in the present. Unfortunately, the pervasive sense of wrongness accompanied her every time she tried to sit motionless, close her eyes, and reach out to the all-encompassing thrum of the universe surrounding her. If she tried to bring herself back to the moment as she faced off against the Imperial colonel down below — it was as if whatever darkness that clung to the walls of the Enclave invaded her mind, and the anger would bubble back up within her.

That anger pulsating within her veins, pounding within her head, driving out reason. It was at once foreign, and yet a part of her. Like some invisible puppeteer had been pulling at a string, and her baser instincts had responded immediately. Even now, with time and distance between the Enclave, it was hard to sort out if everything down there had been just her, or if some outside machination had been working her like a marionette.

She opened her eyes to take in her room on Odessen, letting out the breath she’d been holding as a long, tired sigh. She sat cross-legged in the middle of the room, her normally tamed hair mussed and askew from too much time spent in bed, on the floor, and every position in between to try and find some peace. Despite the late hour, the lights above gleamed brightly because right now darkness felt at once too metaphorical and yet also too physical and altogether too suffocating.

For not the first time tonight, she glanced at the empty bed with a sense of longing that had little to do with the yearnings of the flesh, at least, not in the most lascivious sense. In some circles, it might be sacrilegious, but in recent years she had come to find that connection to the Force came in many forms. It was more traditional to find solace in meditation, but sometimes when the mind could not be tamed, the physical embrace of another was as much a balm to the soul. For if the very nature of the Force was connection, then in some ways, it could be the basest form of meditation.

Grey ran fingers over her face as those thoughts ran through her mind, briefly distracting her from darker concerns plaguing her mind. Stars, if some of the stricter cudgels back from her Padawan days could hear her thoughts, she was fairly certain they would have been apoplectic at the notion. The barest hints of a smile quirked at the corners of her lips at that thought — even half a galaxy away, somehow Theron could still manage to distract her.

He was still back on Coruscant on one of the rare moments of his time off, visiting with Satele. An even rarer occurrence, as they had only reconnected in the past few months after years of silence and separation. Theron repairing the strained and troubled relationship with his mother had been one of her secret desires, perhaps in some way, a twisted wish fulfillment on her part. Living vicariously through him what she could never have. 

It was inevitable that visiting Dantooine and its Enclave would drag her thoughts in that direction. And perhaps that was the true reason for her unsettled state. In the most normal of circumstances, a visit to Dantooine had a tendency to stir the festering wound in her soul of what had happened to her parents. Everything there seemed almost designed to remind her of the happy memories and life that had been shattered when her parents had been taken from her and her brothers. 

This time, her short exhalation turned into a snort as she yanked her thoughts out of the vortex that threatened to drag her deeper into the dark mood that was threatening to overtake her. She needed movement, action, to cut this off at the pass.

Heaving herself off of the floor, she trudged to the large holoterminal in the corner of the room. Her fingers hovered several inches away from the keys to operate the device as she worried her lip between her teeth, debating on whether she should actually use it. Her hesitation stemmed less from the time difference between Odessen and Coruscant, and more from not wanting to shatter any peace Theron had achieved during his absence.

After everything that had happened with Theron on his undercover stint, and all of the fallout and healing they’d done together and separately, they had made a promise to each other to be more open with their struggles. It was inevitable that he would find out about the mission to Dantooine — the man was practically addicted to his datapad and intelligence reports. The relevant reports would arrive in his inbox probably before the morning. While as the leader of the Alliance, and a grown woman, she had no need to check in with her husband nor get permission to undertake her duty. Nor would he ask her to shirk it.

But he was a protective man by nature, of her perhaps more than anyone else. He more than anyone else understood the hold her past had on her, despite her best efforts. He had unfortunately been a witness to her breakdown during a relatively simple mission on their last visit there. If he were to find out from a report that she had gone back, and had said nothing to him… she could only imagine the look of hurt that would cross his face.

And that imagining had her finishing the call before the thought even finished.

The blue light in front of her flickered as the connection met on the far end, and the hologram shimmered to life in front of her. A familiar visage met her, although Theron’s features seemed to pass from inquisitive to concern in almost a millisecond.

“Hey,” she said casually, even though a million thoughts and worries had already churned through her mind. In some ways, the appearance of his face was a relief of its own.

“Hey yourself,” he said, although she could see his eyes narrowing, as if taking everything in. Even though the fuzziness of the image over the long distance left a lot to be desired in terms of clarity, it seemed that he could still make out enough to jump to a few conclusions. “Not that I’m not always happy to see you, but… isn’t it a bit late on your end of the galaxy?”

“I…” she hesitated, before deciding to plow ahead before she could talk herself out of the rest of the conversation. “I had a long day, and just wanted to see a friendly face.”

“Ah,” he said, and she could already see the concern still etched on his face, even though he tried to hide it. “What happened? Everything alright?”

“We found Malgus,” she said after a moment’s hesitation. “On Dantooine.”

A moment of silence passed, his expression clouding over as he seemed to process that. “I’ll be on the next flight back. Satele will understand—”

“No,” she said quickly, “you don’t need to—we already… I already went. And came back.”

“What?” The question seemed to have come out sharper than he intended, because he winced right after the word left his lips as if an apology of sorts.

“Everything happened so fast,” she explained, but the words sounded like a hollow excuse to her ears. “We couldn’t let the trail get cold.”

“No, no. You’re right. It’s just…” He let out a sigh and pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration. “I would have gone with you. You shouldn’t have had to go there alone.”

“Arn was with me.” It was said lightly, an attempt a humor and to forestall him trying to place any accountability on his shoulders for a situation that was out of his control. “And Aryn Leneer.”

“Who? Wait, never mind, I can pull that up myself in a second. How are you?”

That was the question of the moment, wasn’t it? As she tried to reach for the words, to try and find a way to explain everything that had happened in the Enclave, that inexplicable anger and darkness that had pervaded not just it, but seemingly into her, this call almost seemed to be an exercise in futility. Perhaps this was just a ploy of her subconscious to assuage the lingering guilt and doubts plaguing her. Or even worse, pass it on to him without intending to.

“I am,” she drew the statement out, still unable to articulate her issue at hand, “unsettled.”

That prompted a deeper frown. “In what way?”

Her resolve to continue the conversation was rapidly waning. In person, perhaps this would have gone the same way, except she could have found her cheek pressed into his chest. Could breathe in his scent as she tried to gather her thoughts, feel each beat of his heart like a steadying metronome. The intervals between her words would be filled with continual reassurances of his presence, rather than unpleasant silences.

“It’s difficult to put into words,” she said after a long pause. “Force stuff,” she added, a feeble attempt at humor in response to his grimace.

The deep set look of concern didn’t falter, if anything, his lips pressed together in a familiar brooding expression. Even when they were in the same room, she had a hard time trying to decipher whatever thoughts went behind that mask. Worlds apart, it was impossible.

“I can get all the details of what happened from the report, which I will read on the flight back,” he said. “But that’s a secondary concern right now.”

She dropped her gaze as she fidgeted, her voice coming out smaller than she liked. “You do not need to return on my account. I do not wish to pull you away from your visit with Satele. Your time together is already short.”

“You’re avoiding the subject,” he admonished gently. “And considering Malgus is our top priority right now, I’d be on my way back regardless of whatever my stubborn bride says.”

She fixed him with a look, which he just returned with an arched brow.

“Besides,” he added, “I can always schedule another visit. I’m pretty sure my boss back on Odessen will give me the vacation time. I think she likes me.”

Despite herself, that elicited a snort of amusement. He always had a way of defusing tension with just a sprinkling of dry wit, and in a way, it helped loosen her tongue. “I am having a hard time sorting through some pieces of the mission. Everything down there just felt… wrong.”

“How?”

She shrugged helplessly at him. “I don’t know, the Force was… not right. Everything and everyone was just so aggressive and angry and—I do not know if Malgus did something to that place or if it was just me and…”

Theron reached out through the hologram, as if on instinct, and then dropped his hand when he seemed to realize his error. “You’ve got history there. It’s understandable for that to get mixed up into everything.”

“No, no, it’s not just that. There was this Colonel for the Imperial Reclamation Service there. We fought and disarmed him and—I was going to strike him down. It was like I didn’t even think there was another option.”

That frown returned, lips setting into a thin line as he regarded her from the other end of the holo. “I’m booking my flight now. I’ll be en route in less than an hour.”

She opened her mouth to argue one last time, but his stern expression silenced it before it even left her lips. “Okay.”

“It’s late,” the sternness in his voice gentled, “you should get some rest.”

“I tried,” she admitted quietly. “Didn’t work.”

“Go get a sleeping aid from the infirmary,” he said. “You need rest.”

Grey nodded before the hologram flickered out, and she was once again left in the darkness of her room. She stared at the spot where his image had been for a long moment before turning away. He was probably right about getting a sleeping aid to knock her out, but just the thought of something else taking away another shred of control was a bit too much. If she couldn’t meditate, and she couldn’t sleep, and wouldn’t take something to sleep, then just needed to keep moving.

With nothing else to do, she planted her feet in the center of the room, and began to work through a series of movements that she’d seen Theron do on many a late night when sleep evaded him. The Matukai form of moving meditation was all about creating balance and harmony between the spirituality of the Force and the physical body. Even if her husband could not wield the Force as she did, he still seemed to find some sort of comfort and solace in the movements, and so she moved through the complex positions and dizzying movements, over and over again until her body was moving on autopilot and her mind was finally, blessedly, empty.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been standing in the middle of her room, but the soft swish of the door opening behind her brought her back to reality. Her muscles protested as she turned to see Theron standing in the doorway, a weary look on his face.

“I thought I told you to get some rest,” he said as he stepped into the room, dropping his travel bag to the floor unceremoniously.

“Got a little distracted,” she protested weakly.

“I’m also hazarding a guess you didn’t visit the infirmary.” At the silent shake of her head he let out a wearied sigh. “You are so stubborn sometimes.”

She was a bit too tired at the moment to argue against that so she just shrugged.

“Come here,” he said, somewhere between exasperation and fondness, holding out his arms.

It was a long moment before she managed to make her feet move, but when she did she rushed into his arms, pressing her face into his chest. The simple act of having him nearby calmed her, and she wrapped her arms around him and held on tight. The warmth of his embrace was a balm of its own, and she practically felt herself melting into it. She took a deep breath and then another, letting everything else fall away around her. It was easy to become lost in him, in the scent of him, the sound of his heartbeat. When he spoke next, she could feel the rumble of his words against her cheek.

“C’mon, let’s at least get you off your feet.”

As if in a trance, or maybe just pure exhaustion, he led her to the bed. She felt the weight of the world fall away as she sank into the mattress, and the act of crawling under the covers was an almost insurmountable task. He slipped into the bed next to her and pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and pressing a kiss to the top of her head. The warmth, both of the blankets and his body was a cocoon, and she could feel her jumbled thoughts begin to loosen into actual words. 

His fingers trailed through her hair as she relayed her experience, until slowly the words and syllables began to run together, and didn’t even notice when she finally succumbed to sleep mid-sentence.

#swtor fanfiction #theron shan x jedi knight #Theron Shan #Female Jedi Knight/Hero of Tython #oc: greyias highwind #otp: adorkable #swtor #fanfic #greyfic #thank you for the prompt! #athunter99 #(i hope you don't mind but i translated this into an ask) #in which i write almost 3000 words in less than 24 hours #after stalling out on these last chapters of my longfic once again #(i think the lesson here is to let my brain take breaks and play between different pieces)

[ujuro]

The only award someone gave the chaeyoung apology post on kpop Reddit is a little animated one of the Reddit alien innocently picking up a letter, reading it, and its face then darkening in horror and confusion and yeah that’s how I feel when I see the contents of that post and then see it has over 1,400 comments

#I do not want to know what’s going on in there! #the only post with more dark energy was the jk World Cup one that got locked after a couple hours #and far less comments #words of mine #I don’t usually comment an idol controversies anymore cause there usually isn’t much to say other than ‘that’s bad’ #and that goes for this one as well but like. the post getting as many comments as a bp cb says enough #yeah I looked shut down got 1150 comments #ptd and jinni departure announcement have less comments too #(pink venom has over 3000 but eh)

[dordey]

nm wrote 300 words for this assignment & it's only part of the problem but feel approx 75% better

#i hate it here #but also like #really enjoying the limited wc for these 400 level assignments #not for obvious reasons of like the Physical act of typing less #but love not having to fluff up what i'm saying. still a drag but better than 3000 words for the same kind of assignment #+ trying to have a better attitude abt my education after doing more introspection about it than i have before? #not that i Haven't in the past but like. real eyesing a Lot of factors that influenced my decisions etc #getting there trying to do better etc 🥴🪴

[septimus-heap]

I need to read y’all’s time travel au so bad but I don’t have the time or energy right now to devote to a proper comment 😭😭 also I know it’s going to make me Insane

YEAH THAT'S FAIR. It's all in the discord tho if u want to read it <3 the fics I've posted have like 0.4 context so probably reading the messages is the best idea abdjdbdjdn

#sep talks #asks #lovelyisadora <3 #IT'S BEEN SO LONG I DONT REMEMBER UR TAG. :( #ALTHOUGH if u DO want to just read the fics. Its like 3000 words total I think. Less than that. So it's not much #AND u could comment 👀 and as we all know. I am desperate for comments. So

[sunjoys]

also i WILL shower just give me a bit okay [goes to bed at 5 am bc im procrastinating the shower]

#why is it easier to write a 3000 word essay at the last minute than showering #i hate it so much im sorry like ill do it but know that i dont like it #time consuming tiring too much effort no payoff except “less likely to be socially ostracised” . sucks #sorry its almost midnight im irritated

[whiskeysorrows]

the literary paradox of wanting my writing to immortalise my soul while never actually writing

#my novel is literally less than 3000 words rn #but then again #if hozier can procrastinate a 2021 album into a summer 2023 album so can I #rambles #writers on tumblr #writers

[xyzzymancy]

per last post. um

what the FUCK happened here

#took a look at the ao3 out of curiosity #yknow. wanted to see if any of my faves were still popular. maybe see who else has risen through the ranks #i literally do not have words to describe my disbelief at the ratio of fics to different characters #THE DROP OFF. ITS IMMEDIATE #4000 out of 7000 fics are focusing on TWO GUYS. TWO. AND OVER 3000 OF THOSE ARE SHIP FICS #next character in line? about 1000 lmao #most of the characters from 2 have less than 800. my god. what did tales do to the series....

[jiskblr]

Tumblr Rules for Redditors

Hello, fellow redditors! Many people are trying to tell you rules about how to Tumblr properly. Many of them are wrong, or assholes, or both. I am also an asshole but I’m going to not be one for a minute to give you some advice:

“Reblog this or you’re a bad person” and any variation on that is a violation of intergalactic law. Don’t do it. Also, refuse to comply if someone else does it.

Generally, people can see what you reblog, but cannot see what you ‘like’. A like may seem like an upvote, but it is much less significant than one, since it doesn’t affect visibility in the slightest. A like will be visible both to the OP of the thread, and to the person whose reblog you put the like on. Like promiscuously! It feels good to get likes and there’s no downside. (Unless you are a space alien AKA influencer.)

Tumblr nominally has the ability to browse global tags (e.g. seeing the entire site’s posts and reblogs tagged #superwholock or #reddit exodus) and to search the site for things. No one uses them and they don’t really work.

You are probably less surprised by this than denizens of literally any other website on the internet, but there’s no algorithm here. Chronological order only. (If you’re using the search or global tags, they might have an algorithm, but if they do, it doesn’t work. We don’t know because we don’t use them.)

Anyone can have absolutely any conversation in the notes of your post that they like. This is how the website works. You are allowed to complain about it, but don’t expect anyone to humor you.

Many people have ‘DNI’ lists in their blog descriptions. This means ‘do not interact’ and indicates that they don’t want you to message them, reblog from them, reblog any posts they are OP of, or even, sometimes, ‘like’ their posts. It is good manners to respect these, if you know they exist, but in normal use you probably won’t look at blog descriptions very often so it is entirely okay to violate them by accident. (When the lists get very long, it becomes impractical to check whether you violate them. Generally, just skip it. You probably don’t want to interact with those people anyway.)

Notes on posts you start will go to you no matter how many intervening hops there are on the reblog chain. If you get a post with an enormous amount of notes, this can get overwhelming. Whatever the current incarnation of Xkit (basically RES for Tumblr except we’ve switched names and maintainers seven times) is, will have a setting to deal with this. If that’s insufficient, the suggested course of action is to reblog your OP to your own blog so that you have a copy for posterity’s sake, and then delete the OP. This silences the notes.

If you and another user both follow each other, you are ‘mutuals’. This makes it much easier to have conversations with each other, which is ordinarily sort of hard since everything is purely chronological. Frequently your mutuals are your friends; if not yet true, they may become your friends.

When you reblog things, you can write words both in the word part and in the tags, Modern tumblr norms are to write long rambling tags in full sentences rather than put words in the main body. Do not that only the first four tags in the list can be searched on. Unlike some other norms, violating this one and putting your response in the body of the reblog is not particularly rude. The worst it does is make a reblog chain long. Probably don’t reblog things and just say “This.”, though.

If you want to search your blog, consider Siikr. Don’t overuse it, it’s one guy’s project.

Be verbose! This ain’t Twitter, no character limit. (Not even the really large character limit of a reddit comment.) Write a 3000-word story in a single reblog if you want, that sounds awesome. Use ‘read more’ if you do, though. Posts can be very long, one of our oldest memes is about this.

Infinite scroll is the default, but you can turn it off. Actually, check all the settings, many of them will improve your experience.

Everybody be excellent to each other!

#reddit #reddit exodus #how to tumblr #blue hellsite (affectionate)

[historicity-was-already-taken]

I am posting and responding to this ask anonymously as I don't want anyone harassing its sender. This has already been communicated with the person who sent the ask.

I just want to thank you for being a light in the darkness of anti-semitism, especially on this website. I have found I am on this site a lot less ever since it was made clear that other leftists here are more anti-semitic than we ever knew possible, using very specific wording of our own trauma against us (i.e. saying stuff like "colonialism", "genocide/ethnic cleansing", and calling JEWISH PEOPLE Nazis). It feels like, at best, they know Hamas ≠ All or even most Palestinians, but think that they think all JEWS = Bibi; and at worst, agree with Hamas and think of him as some sort of "freedom fighter". So, thank you from one leftist Jew to another, just trying to keep afloat here. ❤️

You are very welcome; it's certainly been overwhelming, and I'm glad this can be a safe space for you.

I do want to push back on some of this ask, though. Specifically in regard to terms such as "colonialism," "apartheid," "genocide," and "ethnic cleansing."

The use of these terms is not inherently anti-Semitic. For a lot of people, these terms are the best ones they have access to describe what they are seeing. I do think such terms as “colonialism” and “apartheid” are overly simple in regard to the last ~3000 years of Jewish history, and that they cast the situation into an alien historical context which dilutes and uncomplicates the all the historical realities at stake, but I truly do not think that all who use these terms do so to cause Jewish people pain.

Further complicating the picture is that terms like "colonialism" aren’t completely wrong. Modern Zionism arose in the context of mid-nineteenth century European large-scale movements towards nationalism (ie, the creation of nation-states) and away from the multi-national empire. Jews—a subject of anti-Semitism and fifth columnist suspicions within those emergent European nations—reacted to all this by joining the nationalism game.

What’s ironic, is that those European Jews who founded contemporary Zionism were reacting to the exclusion and racial hatred with which Gentile Europeans treated them, and then once they had some settlements in Palestine, they deployed similar variants of racial hatred at both the Palestinian Arab population, and Middle Eastern Jewry.

The existence of a distinct people and ethnic group in Palestine before the aliyot were not something the first generation of Zionists were concerned with. Because they were part of the same shitty, white supremacist, pro-imperialistic intellectual European tradition to which they were responding as victimized parties. As time went on and Zionist thought spread across Ashkenazic communities, we can see some variants. Some forms of far-left Zionism in twentieth century Poland, for example, actively built the presence and rights of Palestinian Arabs into their ideology, some of them actively stating that Zionism could not be a success if it necessitated transforming Palestinian Arabs into a group of secondhand citizens and a cheap source of labor in their own home.

Those leftist strands of Zionism tended to be Socialist/Communist in nature, and centered around the idea of life in Eretz Yisrael as one of a series of self-sufficient communes. Thus when the 1930s hit and things start to go bad, the Zionists we see fleeing to Palestine tended to be of the more centrist and far right variants. The left wing, socialist movements, already operating as a collective, had a membership uncomfortable with fleeing to safety while the rest remained behind.

And that same socialist/communal attitude, is why those variants of Zionist thought never made it into the Israeli political mainstream; most of their members and proponents were murdered in the Holocaust in part because they refused to leave their comrades behind. The General Zionists and Zionist Revisionists who rode out the years of the Holocaust in Palestine therefore already had access to the avenues of power which would become important in 1948, when the British Empire shrugged off its responsibilities towards the regions it colonized and destabilized.

Now, as for ethnic cleansing. I can’t sugar-coat this: that’s what the Naqba was. It was ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs from their homes to make way for the Jewish State. The manipulative shit (but still somehow extremely prestigious) youth group I was in taught us that Arabs call it Naqba because they hate Jews and therefore existence of Jews in the Southern Levant was a tragedy, as was the fact that Hitler didn't finish the job.

That’s garbage: it’s called the Naqba because it was ethnic cleansing. And that's not the fault of the Holocaust survivors who made their way to Mandatory Palestine/Israel in the late 1940s--they lacked political power, and were often looked down upon by those who did; the Holocaust as part of Israeli National Mythology wasn't an immediate Thing.

If you spent your formative years around older Jewish folks of A Certain Generation, whose trauma has pretty much placed a permanent block on their ability to see some of what went down in 1948 for what it was, I can’t blame you for having that gut/cognitive dissonance reaction to the use of “ethnic cleansing” in the context of Israel and Palestine. I know those older folks. I loved them. They’re mostly gone now, and I miss them terribly. But their trauma-induced view of everything lives on in the ability of some younger Jews to properly name and understand what it is that happened in 1948.

It was ethnic cleansing.

Further, not only were Palestinian Arabs ethnically cleansed, but the Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) Jews who were forced by their governments to flee their homes of thousands of years and seek refuge in Israel throughout the second half of the twentieth century…the Western and Central European Jews in control of Israel and its institutions treated them like shit too. Hadassah actively stole the babies of Yemeni Jews, told the parents that their children were dead, and rehomed them to Ashkenazic couples. There were death certificates. Members of the Ethiopian Jewish community were forcibly sterilized, and their ongoing treatment by the State is racist and generally atrocious. And this analysis of the relationship between the Israel State, MENA Jewish populations, and different Ashkenazic groups in Israel is horribly short and overly simple.

As for genocide. I honestly don’t know. I do know many people, who are very much not Anti-Semites, who are calling what’s happening in Gaza right now genocide; many of these people are also Jewish. I know many others who refer to the experiences of Palestinians between 1948 and now as a slow genocide. Many of these people are also actively not anti-Semites, and many of them are Jewish.

So these terms, as uncomfortable as they may feel for people within the very specific Jewish generational background I believe we share, are not deployed as anti-Semitic weapons. Nazi comparisons? Yes. Swastikas superimposed over the Star of David? Yes. Very specific hook-nosed Jewish caricatures in relation to Israelis? Yes. Blood libel shit? Yes. These are all anti-Semitic, and are deployed to hurt and retraumatize Jewish people. But the rest are not nearly that simple.

And I didn’t learn this from like, Bad Evil Post-Modern Academics at Columbia University Who Hate Jews; I learned this from doing graduate-level work in the field of Modern Jewish History, and working in Jewish archives; this did not come from outside the building.

Now, as for Hamas as freedom fighters…that’s ignorant at best. Hamas’ charter clearly calls for the global destruction of the Jewish people [ETA: they edited this part out in 2017 for PR purposes], and their actions as rulers are horrifically, violently, homophobic, and seem to be more abut provoking Israel than they are about governing and protecting their people. But as you said, Hamas isn’t all Palestinians, and it’s also not all Palestinians who consider themselves freedom fighters. (A second reader of mine had the following commentary on this paragraph: "Might need a bit more complication around Hamas? I know that's not your area of expertise but it's worth mentioning that they were basically set up to undermine the PLO and what would become the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank. You're right that they aren't representative of all Palestinian thought and resistance, and that they are on some fuck shit.")

So while I’m so glad that blog is a comfort to you, I encourage you to also take a step into some of your discomfort, and ask yourself where it comes from.

No one reading this post has my consent to use it to silence other Jewish people who are in different stages of their journey towards understanding how generational trauma has impacted their ability to grasp all of this. Further, if you choose to attack me for gently calling my people in, you're a piece of shit and I will be mean to you.

#jewish history #israeli history #palestinian history #history of zionism

[magnusforgaza]

What can I commission?

You can commission The Magnus Archives fanart or fanfiction.

NOT allowed is requesting NSFW or anything that is not directly TMA (that means for example no The Mechanisms or The Magnus Protocol)

There are two tiers: Tier 1: For a donation below 30$/€/£ you can request a small drawing or short fanfiction. Tier 2: For a donation above 30$/€/£, you can request two Tier 1 works OR one work that is a more detailed drawing or longer fanfiction.

What does “small/regular” or “detailed” commission mean?

Keep in mind that over 400 different artists participating means 400 different styles and 400 different workflows. A “small drawing” from one artist may include more or less detail than a “small drawing” from another. Same goes for writers. With this in mind, here are our rough guidelines: Tier 1 drawing:

simple one-color or no background

either 1 full body character or two character busts

simple or no shading, flat colors

Here's a wondeful example by @cryptidcharlie of what detail level you may expect from a Tier 1 commission:

Tier 2 drawing:

more complex background that shows a specific scenery

2-3 full body characters

full shading

Tier 1 fanfiction:

500 to 3000 words

Tier 2 fanfiction:

3000 words to 7000

These will vary from artist to artist.

We hope that at least every Tier 1 commission will be finished and delivered within 1 month.

In the end, these are just little thank you’s for having donated. We will not be tolerating people who put up a stink about not liking the style of the art they have received. Please keep in mind that the main focus is the donation with which you have helped to save lives, the art is just a bonus.

Thank you so much for participating! Every little bit helps!

#the magnus archives #tma #info

[yamayuandadu]

The most important deity you've never heard of: the 3000 years long history of Nanaya

Being a major deity is not necessarily a guarantee of being remembered. Nanaya survived for longer than any other Mesopotamian deity, spread further away from her original home than any of her peers, and even briefly competed with both Buddha and Jesus for relevance. At the same time, even in scholarship she is often treated as unworthy of study. She has no popculture presence save for an atrocious, ill-informed SCP story which can’t get the most basic details right. Her claims to fame include starring in fairly explicit love poetry and appearing where nobody would expect her. Therefore, she is the ideal topic to discuss on this blog. This is actually the longest article I published here, the culmination of over two years of research. By now, the overwhelming majority of Nanaya-related articles on wikipedia are my work, and what you can find under the cut is essentially a synthesis of what I have learned while getting there. I hope you will enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed working on it. Under the cut, you will learn everything there is to know about Nanaya: her origin, character, connections with other Mesopotamian deities, her role in literature, her cult centers… Since her history does not end with cuneiform, naturally the later text corpora - Aramaic, Bactrian, Sogdian and even Chinese - are discussed too. The article concludes with a short explanation why I see the study of Nanaya as crucial.

Dubious origins and scribal wordplays: from na-na to Nanaya Long ago Samuel Noah Kramer said that “history begins in Sumer”. While the core sentiment was not wrong in many regards, in this case it might actually begin in Akkad, specifically in Gasur, close to modern Kirkuk. The oldest possible attestation of Nanaya are personal names from this city with the element na-na, dated roughly to the reign of Naram-Sin of Akkad, so to around 2250 BCE. It’s not marked in the way names of deities in personal names would usually be, but this would not be an isolated case.

The evidence is ultimately mixed. On one hand, reduplicated names like Nana are not unusual in early Akkadian sources, and -ya can plausibly be explained as a hypocoristic suffix. On the other hand, there is not much evidence for Nanaya being worshiped specifically in the far northeast of Mesopotamia in other periods. Yet another issue is that there is seemingly no root nan- in Akkadian, at least in any attested words.

The main competing proposal is that Nanaya originally arose as a hypostasis of Inanna but eventually split off through metaphorical mitosis, like a few other goddesses did, for example Annunitum. This is not entirely implausible either, but ultimately direct evidence is lacking, and when Nanaya pops up for the first time in history she is clearly a distinct goddess.

There are a few other proposals regarding Nanaya’s origin, but they are considerably weaker. Elamite has the promising term nan, “day” or “morning”, but Nanaya is entirely absent from the Old Elamite sources you’d expect to find her in if Mesopotamians imported her from the east. Therefore, very few authors adhere to this view. The hypothesis that she was an Aramaic goddess in origin does not really work chronologically, since Aramaic is not attested in the third millennium BCE at all. The less said about attempts to connect her to anything “Proto-Indo-European”, the better.

Like many other names of deities, Nanaya’s was already a subject of etymological speculation in antiquity. A late annotated version of the Weidner god list, tablet BM 62741, preserves a scribe’s speculative attempt at deriving it from the basic meaning of the sign NA, “to call”, furnished with a feminine suffix, A. Needless to say, like other such examples of scribal speculation, some of which are closer to playful word play than linguistics, it is unlikely to reflect the actual origin of the name.

Early history: Shulgi-simti, Nanaya’s earliest recorded #1 fan

A typical Ur III administrative tablet listing offerings to various deities (wikimedia commons)

The first absolutely certain attestations of Nanaya, now firmly under her full name, have been identified in texts from the famous archive from Puzrish-Dagan, modern Drehem, dated to around 2100 BCE. Much can be written about this site, but here it will suffice to say that it was a center of the royal administration of the Third Dynasty of Ur ("Ur III") responsible for the distribution of sacrificial animals. Nanaya appears there in a rather unique context - she was one of the deities whose cults were patronized by queen Shulgi-simti, one of the wives of Shulgi, the successor of the dynasty’s founder Ur-Namma. We do not know much about Shulgi-simti as a person - she did not write any official inscriptions announcing her preferred foreign policy or letters to relatives or poetry or anything else that typically can be used to gain a glimpse into the personal lives of Mesopotamian royalty. We’re not really sure where she came from, though Eshnunna is often suggested as her hometown. We actually do not even know what her original name was, as it is assumed she only came to be known as Shulgi-simti after becoming a member of the royal family. Tonia Sharlach suggested that the absence of information about her personal life might indicate that she was a commoner, and that her marriage to Shulgi was not politically motivated The one sphere of Shulgi-simti’s life which we are incredibly familiar with are her religious ventures. She evidently had an eye for minor, foreign or otherwise unusual goddesses, such as Belet-Terraban or Nanaya. She apparently ran what Sharlach in her “biography” of her has characterized as a foundation. It was tasked with sponsoring various religious celebrations. Since Shulgi-simti seemingly had no estate to speak of, most of the relevant documents indicate she procured offerings from a variety of unexpected sources, including courtiers and other members of the royal family. The scale of her operations was tiny: while the more official religious organizations dealt with hundreds or thousands of sacrificial animals, up to fifty or even seventy thousand sheep and goats in the case of royal administration, the highest recorded number at her disposal seems to be eight oxen and fifty nine sheep. A further peculiarity of the “foundation” is that apparently there was a huge turnover rate among the officials tasked with maintaining it. It seems nobody really lasted there for much more than four years. There are two possible explanations: either Shulgi-simti was unusually difficult to work with, or the position was not considered particularly prestigious and was, at the absolute best, viewed as a stepping stone. While the Shulgi-simti texts are the earliest evidence for worship of Nanaya in the Ur III court, they are actually not isolated. When all the evidence from the reigns of Shulgi and his successors is summarized, it turns out that she quickly attained a prominent role, as she is among the twelve deities who received the most offerings. However, her worship was seemingly limited to Uruk (in her own sanctuary), Nippur (in the temple of Enlil, Ekur) and Ur. Granted, these were coincidentally three of the most important cities in the entire empire, so that’s a pretty solid early section of a divine resume. She chiefly appears in two types of ceremonies: these tied to the royal court, or these mostly performed by or for women. Notably, a festival involving lamentations (girrānum) was held in her honor in Uruk. To understand Nanaya’s presence in the two aforementioned contexts, and by extension her persistence in Mesopotamian religion in later periods, we need to first look into her character.

The character of Nanaya: eroticism, kingship, and disputed astral ventures

Corona Borealis (wikimedia commons)

Nanaya’s character is reasonably well defined in primary sources, but surprisingly she was almost entirely ignored in scholarship quite recently. The first study of her which holds up to scrutiny is probably Joan Goodnick Westenholz’s article Nanaya, Lady of Mystery from 1997. The core issue is the alleged interchangeability of goddesses. From the early days of Assyriology basically up to the 1980s, Nanaya was held to be basically fully interchangeable with Inanna. This obviously put her in a tough spot. Still, over the course of the past three decades the overwhelming majority of studies came to recognize Nanaya as a distinct goddess worthy of study in her own right. You will still stumble upon the occasional “Nanaya is basically Inanna”, but now this is a minority position. Tragically it’s not extinct yet, most recently I’ve seen it in a monograph published earlier this year. With these methodological and ideological issues out of the way, let’s actually look into Nanaya’s character, as promised by the title of this section. Her original role was that of a goddess of love. It is already attested for her at the dawn of her history, in the Ur III period. Her primary quality was described with a term rendered as ḫili in Sumerian and kuzbu in Akkadian. It can be variously translated as “charm”, “luxuriance”, “voluptuousness”, “sensuality” or “sexual attractiveness”. This characteristic was highlighted by her epithet bēlet kuzbi (“lady of kuzbu”) and by the name of her cella in the Eanna, Eḫilianna. The connection was so strong that this term appears basically in every single royal inscription praising her. She was also called bēlet râmi, “lady of love”. Nanaya’s role as a love goddess is often paired with describing her as a “joyful” or “charming” deity. It needs to be stressed that Nanaya was by no metric the goddess of some abstract, cosmic love or anything like that. Love incantations and prayers related to love are quite common, and give us a solid glimpse into this matter. Nanaya’s range of activity in them is defined pretty directly: she deals with relationships (and by extension also with matters like one-sided crushes or arguments between spouses), romance and with strictly sexual matters. For an example of a hymn highlighting her qualifications when it comes to the last category, see here. The text is explicit, obviously. We can go deeper, though. There is also an incantation whose incipit at first glance leaves little to imagination:

However, the translator, Giole Zisa, notes there is some debate over whether it’s actually about having sex with Nanaya or merely about invoking her (and other deities) while having sex with someone else. A distinct third possibility is that she’s not even properly invoked but that “oh, Nanaya” is simply an exclamation of excitement meant to fit the atmosphere, like a specialized version of the mainstay of modern erotica dialogue, “oh god”.

While this romantic and sexual aspect of Nanaya’s character is obviously impossible to overlook, this is not all there was to her. She was also associated with kingship, as already documented in the Ur III period. She was invoked during coronations and mourning of deceased kings. In the Old Babylonian period she was linked to investiture by rulers of newly independent Uruk. A topic which has stirred some controversy in scholarship is Nanaya’s supposed astral role. Modern authors who try to present Nanaya as a Venus deity fall back on rather faulty reasoning, namely asserting that if Nanaya was associated with Inanna and Inanna personified Venus, clearly Nanaya did too. Of course, being associated with Inanna does not guarantee the same traits. Shaushka was associated with her so closely her name was written with the logogram representing her counterpart quite often, and lacked astral aspects altogether. No primary sources which discuss Nanaya as a distinct, actively worshiped deity actually link her with Venus. If you stretch it you will find some tidbits like an entry in a dictionary prepared by the 10th century bishop Hasan bar Bahlul, who inexplicably asserted Nanaya was the Arabic name of the planet Venus. As you will see soon, there isn’t even a possibility that this reflected a relic of interpretatio graeca. The early Mandaean sources, many of which were written when at least remnants of ancient Mesopotamian religion were still extant, also do not link Nanaya with Venus. Despite at best ambivalent attitude towards Mesopotamian deities, they show remarkable attention to detail when it comes to listing their cult centers, and on top of that Mesopotamian astronomy had a considerable impact on Mandaeism, so there is no reason not to prioritize them, as far as I am concerned. As far as the ancient Mesopotamian sources themselves go, the only astral object with a direct connection to Nanaya was Corona Borealis (BAL.TÉŠ.A, “Dignity”), as attested in the astronomical compendium MUL.APIN. Note that this is a work which assigns astral counterparts to virtually any deity possible, though, and there is no indication this was a major part of Nanaya’s character. Save for this single instance, she is entirely absent from astronomical texts. A further astral possibility is that Nanaya was associated with the moon. The earliest evidence is highly ambiguous: in the Ur III period festivals held in her honor might have been tied to phases of the moon, while in the Old Babylonian period a sanctuary dedicated to her located in Larsa was known under the ceremonial name Eitida, “house of the month”. A poem in which looking at her is compared to looking at the moon is also known. That’s not all, though. Starting with the Old Babylonian period, she could also be compared with the sun. Possibly such comparisons were meant to present her as an astral deity, without necessarily identifying her with a specific astral body. Michael P. Streck and Nathan Wasserman suggest that it might be optimal to simply refer to her as a “luminous” deity in this context. However, as you will see later it nonetheless does seem she eventually came to be firmly associated both with the sun and the moon. Last but not least, Nanaya occasionally displayed warlike traits. It’s hardly major in her case, and if you tried hard enough you could turn any deity into a war deity depending on your political goals, though. I’d also place the incantation which casts her as one of the deities responsible for keeping the demon Lamashtu at bay here.

Nanaya in art

The oldest known depiction of Nanaya (wikimedia commons)

While Nanaya’s roles are pretty well defined, there surprisingly isn’t much to say about her iconography in Mesopotamian art.The oldest certain surviving depiction of her is rather indistinct: she’s wearing a tall headdress and a flounced robe. It dates to the late Kassite period (so roughly to 1200 BCE), and shows her alongside king Meli-Shipak (or maybe Meli-Shihu, reading remains uncertain) and his daughter Hunnubat-Nanaya. Nanaya is apparently invoked to guarantee that the prebend granted to the princess will be under divine protection. This is not really some unique prerogative of hers, perhaps she was just the most appropriate choice because Hunnubat-Nanaya’s name obviously reflects devotion to her. The relief discussed above is actually the only depiction of Nanaya identified with certainty from before the Hellenistic period, surprisingly. We know that statues representing her existed, and it is hard to imagine that a popular, commonly worshiped deity was not depicted on objects like terracotta decorations and cylinder seals, but even if some of these were discovered, there’s no way to identify them with certainty. This is not unusual though, and ultimately there aren’t many Mesopotamian deities who can be identified in art without any ambiguity. 

Nanaya in literature

As I highlighted in the section dealing with Nanaya’s character, she is reasonably well attested in love poetry. However, this is not the only genre in which she played a role. A true testament to Nanaya’s prominence is a bilingual (Sumero-Akkadian) hymn composed in her honor in the first millennium BCE. It is written in the first person, and presents various other goddesses as her alternate identities. It is hardly unique, and similar compositions dedicated to Ishtar (Inanna), Gula, Ninurta and Marduk are also known. Each strophe describes a different deity and location, but ends with Nanaya reasserting her actual identity with the words “still I am Nanaya”. Among the claimed identities included are both major goddesses in their own right (Inanna plus closely associated Annunitum and Ishara, Gula, Bau, Ninlil), goddesses relevant due to their spousal roles first and foremost (Damkina, Shala, Mammitum etc) and some truly unexpected, picks, the notoriously elusive personified rainbow Manzat being the prime example. Most of them had very little in common with Nanaya, so this might be less an attempt at syncretism, and more an elevation of her position through comparisons to those of other goddesses. An additional possible literary curiosity is a poorly preserved myth which Wilfred G. Lambert referred to as “The murder of Anshar”. He argues that Nanaya is one of the two deities responsible for the eponymous act. I don't quite follow the logic, though: the goddess is actually named Ninamakalamma (“Lady mother of the land”), and her sole connection with Nanaya is that they occur in sequence in the unique god list from Sultantepe. Lambert saw this as a possible indication they are identical. There are no other attestations of this name, but ama kalamma does occur as an epithet of various goddesses, most notably Ninshubur. Given her juxtaposition with Nanaya in the Weidner god list - more on that later - wouldn’t it make more sense to assume it’s her? Due to obscurity of the text as far as I am aware nobody has questioned Lambert’s tentative proposal yet, though.

There isn’t much to say about the plot: Anshar, literally “whole heaven”, the father of Anu, presumably gets overthrown and might be subsequently killed. Something that needs to be stressed here to avoid misinterpretation: primordial deities such as Anshar were borderline irrelevant, and weren't really worshiped. They exist to fade away in myths and to be speculated about in elaborate lexical texts. There was no deposed cult of Anshar. Same goes for all the Tiamats and Enmesharras and so on.

Inanna and beyond: Nanaya and friends in Mesopotamian sources

Inanna on a cylinder seal from the second half of the third millennium BCE (wikimedia commons)

Of course, Nanaya’s single most important connection was that to Inanna, no matter if we are to accept the view that she was effectively a hypostasis gone rogue or not. The relationship between them could be represented in many different ways. Quite commonly she was understood as a courtier or protegee of Inanna. A hymn from the reign of Ishbi-Erra calls her the “ornament of Eanna” (Inanna’s main temple in Uruk) and states she was appointed by Inanna to her position. References to Inanna as Nanaya’s mother are also known, though they are rare, and might be metaphorical. To my best knowledge nothing changed since Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz’s monograph, in which she notes she only found three examples of texts preserving this tradition. I would personally abstain from trying to read too deep into it, given this scarcity. Other traditions regarding Nanaya’s parentage are better attested. In multiple cases, she “borrows” Inanna’s conventional genealogy, and as a result is addressed as a daughter of Sin (Nanna), the moon god. However, she was never addressed as Inanna’s sister: it seems that in cases where Sin and Nanaya are connected, she effectively “usurps” Inanna’s own status as his daughter (and as the sister of Shamash, while at it). Alternatively, she could be viewed as a daughter of Anu. Finally, there is a peculiar tradition which was the default in laments: in this case, Nanaya was described as a daughter of Urash. The name in this context does not refer to the wife of Anu, though. The deity meant is instead a small time farmer god from Dilbat. To my best knowledge no sources place Nanaya in the proximity of other members of Urash’s family, though some do specify she was his firstborn daughter. To my best knowledge Urash had at least two other children, Lagamal (“no mercy”, an underworld deity whose gender is a matter of debate) and Ipte-bitam (“he opened the house”, as you can probably guess a divine doorkeeper). Nanaya’s mother by extension would presumably be Urash’s wife Ninegal, the tutelary goddess of royal palaces. There is actually a ritual text listing these three together. In the Weidner god list Nanaya appears after Ninshubur. Sadly, I found no evidence for a direct association between these two. For what it’s worth, they did share a highly specific role, that of a deity responsible for ordering around lamma. This term referred to a class of minor deities who can be understood as analogous to “guardian angels” in contemporary Christianity, except places and even deities had their own lamma too, not just people. Lamma can also be understood at once as a class of distinct minor deities, as the given name of individual members of it, and as a title of major deities. In an inscription of Gudea the main members of the official pantheon are addressed as “lamma of all nations”, by far one of my favorite collective terms of deities in Mesopotamian literature. A second important aspect of the Weidner god list is placing Nanaya right in front of Bizilla. The two also appear side by side in some offering lists and in the astronomical compendium MUL.APIN, where they are curiously listed as members of the court of Enlil. It seems that like Nanaya, she was a goddess of love, which is presumably reflected by her name. It has been variously translated as “pleasing”, “loving” or as a derivative of the verb “to strip”. An argument can be made that Bizilla was to Nanaya what Nanaya was to Inanna. However, she also had a few roles of her own. Most notably, she was regarded as the sukkal of Ninlil. She may or may not also have had some sort of connection to Nungal, the goddess of prisons, though it remains a matter of debate if it’s really her or yet another, accidentally similarly named, goddess.

An indistinct Hurro-Hittite depiction of Ishara from the Yazilikaya sanctuary (wikimedia commons)

In love incantations, Nanaya belonged to an informal group which also included Inanna, Ishara, Kanisurra and Gazbaba. I do not think Inanna’s presence needs to be explained. Ishara had an independent connection with Inanna and was a multi-purpose deity to put it very lightly; in the realm of love she was particularly strongly connected with weddings and wedding nights. Kanisurra and Gazbaba warrant a bit more discussion, because they are arguably Nanaya’s supporting cast first and foremost. Gazbaba is, at the core, seemingly simply the personification of kuzbu. Her name had pretty inconsistent orthography, and variants such as Kazba or Gazbaya can be found in primary sources too. The last of them pretty clearly reflects an attempt at making her name resemble Nanaya’s. Not much can be said about her individual character beyond the fact she was doubtlessly related to love and/or sex. She is described as the “grinning one” in an incantation which might be a sexual allusion too, seeing as such expressions are a mainstay of Akkadian erotic poetry. Kanisurra would probably win the award for the fakest sounding Mesopotamian goddess, if such a competition existed. Her name most likely originated as a designation of the gate of the underworld, ganzer. Her default epithet was “lady of the witches” (bēlet kaššāpāti). And on top of that, like Nanaya and Gazbaba she was associated with sex. She certainly sounds more like a contemporary edgy oc of the Enoby Dimentia Raven Way variety than a bronze age goddess - and yet, she is completely genuine. It is commonly argued Kanisurra and Gazbaba were regarded as Nanaya’s daughters, but there is actually no direct evidence for this. In the only text where their relation to Nanaya is clearly defined they are described as her hairdressers, rather than children. While in some cases the love goddesses appear in love incantations in company of each other almost as if they were some sort of disastrous polycule, occasionally Nanaya is accompanied in them by an anonymous spouse. Together they occur in parallel with Inanna and Dumuzi and Ishara and Almanu, apparently a (accidental?) deification of a term referring to someone without family obligations. There is only one Old Babylonian source which actually assigns a specific identity to Nanaya’s spouse, a hymn dedicated to king Abi-eshuh of Babylon. An otherwise largely unknown god Muati (I patched up his wiki article just for the sake of this blog post) plays this role here. The text presents a curious case of reversal of gender roles: Muati is asked to intercede with Nanaya on behalf of petitioners. Usually this was the role of the wife - the best known case is Aya, the wife of Shamash, who is implored to do just that by Ninsun in the standard edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It’s also attested for goddesses such as Laz, Shala, Ninegal or Ninmug… and in the case of Inanna, for Ninshubur.

A Neo-Assyrian statue of Nabu on display in the Iraq Museum (wikimedia commons)

Marten Stol seems to treat Muati and Nabu as virtually the same deity, and on this basis states that Nanaya was already associated with the latter in the Old Babylonian period, but this seems to be a minority position. Other authors pretty consistently assume that Muati was a distinct deity at some point “absorbed” by Nabu. The oldest example of pairing Nanaya with Nabu I am aware of is an inscription dated to the reign of Marduk-apla-iddina I, so roughly to the first half of the twelfth century BCE. The rise of this tradition in the first millennium BCE was less theological and more political. With Babylon once again emerging as a preeminent power, local theologies were supposed to be subordinated to the one followed in the dominant city. Which, at the time, was focused on Nabu, Marduk and Zarpanit. Worth noting that Nabu also had a spouse before, Tashmetum (“reconciliation”). In the long run she was more or less ousted by Nanaya from some locations, though she retained popularity in the north, in Assyria. She is not exactly the most thrilling deity to discuss. I will confess I do not find the developments tied to Nanaya and Nabu to be particularly interesting to cover, but in the long run they might have resulted in Nanaya acquiring probably the single most interesting “supporting cast member” she did not share with Inanna, so we’ll come back to this later. Save for Bizilla, Nanaya generally was not provided with “equivalents” in god lists. I am only aware of one exception, and it’s a very recent discovery. Last year the first ever Akkadian-Amorite bilingual lists were published. This is obviously a breakthrough discovery, as before Amorite was largely known just from personal names despite being a vernacular language over much of the region in the bronze age, but only one line is ultimately of note here. In a section of one of the lists dealing with deities, Nanaya’s Amorite counterpart is said to be Pidray. This goddess is otherwise almost exclusively known from Ugarit. This of course fits very well with the new evidence: recent research generally stresses that Ugarit was quintessentially an Amorite city (the ruling house even claimed descent from mythical Ditanu, who is best known from the grandiose fictional genealogies of Shamshi-Adad I and the First Dynasty of Babylon). Sadly, we do not know how the inhabitants of Ugarit viewed Nanaya. A trilingual version of the Weidner list, with the original version furnished with columns listing Ugaritic and Hurrian counterparts of each deity, was in circulation, but the available copies are too heavily damaged to restore it fully. And to make things worse, much of it seems to boil down to scribal wordplay and there is no guarantee all of the correspondences are motivated theologically. For instance, the minor Mesopotamian goddess Imzuanna is presented as the counterpart of Ugaritic weather god Baal because her name contains a sign used as a shortened logographic writing of the latter. An even funnier case is the awkward attempt at making it clear the Ugaritic sun deity Shapash, who was female, is not a lesbian… by making Aya male. Just astonishing, really.

The worship of Nanaya

A speculative reconstruction of Ur III Uruk with the Eanna temple visible in the center (Artefacts — Scientific Illustration & Archaeological Reconstruction; reproduced here for educational purposes only, as permitted)

Rather fittingly, as a deity associated with Inanna, Nanaya was worshiped chiefly in Uruk. She is also reasonably well attested in the inscriptions of the short-lived local dynasty which regained independence near the end of the period of domination of Larsa over Lower Mesopotamia. A priest named after her, a certain Iddin-Nanaya, for a time served as the administrator of her temple, the Enmeurur, “house which gathers all the me,” me being a difficult to translate term, something like “divine powers”. The acquisition of new me is a common topic in Mesopotamian literature, and in compositions focused on Inanna in particular, so it should not be surprising to anyone that her peculiar double seemingly had similar interests. In addition to Uruk, as well as Nippur and Ur, after the Ur III period Nanaya spread to multiple other cities, including Isin, Mari, Babylon and Kish. However, she is probably by far the best attested in Larsa, where she rose to the rank of one of the main deities, next to Utu, Inanna, Ishkur and Nergal. She had her own temple, the Eshahulla, “house of a happy heart”. In local tradition Inanna got to keep her role as an “universal” major goddess and her military prerogatives, but Nanaya overtook the role of a goddess of love almost fully. Inanna’s astral aspect was also locally downplayed, since Venus was instead represented in the local pantheon by closely associated, but firmly distinct, Ninsianna. This deity warrants some more discussion in the future just due to having a solid claim to being one of the first genderfluid literary figures in history, but due to space constraints this cannot be covered in detail here. A later inscription from the same city differentiates between Nanaya and Inanna by giving them different epithets: Nanaya is the “queen of Uruk and Eanna” (effectively usurping Nanaya’s role) while Inanna is the “queen of Nippur” (that’s actually a well documented hypostasis of her, not to be confused with the unrelated “lady of Nippur”). Uruk was temporarily abandoned in the late Old Babylonian period, but that did not end Nanaya’s career. Like Inanna, she came to be temporarily relocated to Kish. It has been suggested that a reference to her residence in “Kiššina” in a Hurro-Hittite literary text, the Tale of Appu, reflects her temporary stay there. The next centuries of Nanaya are difficult to reconstruct due to scarce evidence, but it is clear she continued to be worshiped in Uruk. By the Neo-Babylonian period she was recognized as a member of an informal pentad of the main deities of the city, next to Inanna, Urkayitu, Usur-amassu and Beltu-sa-Resh. Two of them warrant no further discussion: Urkayitu was most likely a personification of the city, and Beltu-sa-Resh despite her position is still a mystery to researchers. Usur-amassu, on the contrary, is herself a fascinating topic. First attestations of this deity, who was seemingly associated with law and justice (a pretty standard concern), come back to the Old Babylonian period. At this point, Usur-amassu was clearly male, which is reflected by the name. He appears in the god list An = Anum as a son of the weather deity couple par excellence, Adad (Ishkur) and Shala. However, by the early first millennium BCE Usur-amassu instead came to be regarded as female - without losing the connection to her parents. She did however gain a connection to Inanna, Nanaya and Kanisurra, which she lacked earlier. How come remains unknown. Most curiously her name was not modified to reflect her new gender, though she could be provided with a determinative indicating it. This recalls the case of Lagamal in the kingdom of Mari some 800 years earlier.

The end of the beginning: Nanaya under Achaemenids and Seleucids

Trilingual (Persian, Elamite and Akkadian) inscription of the first Achamenid ruler of Mesopotamia, Cyrus (wikimedia commons)

After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire Mesopotamia ended up under Achaemenid control, which in turn was replaced by the Seleucids. Nanaya flourished through both of these periods. In particular, she attained considerable popularity among Arameans. While they almost definitely first encountered her in Uruk, she quickly came to be venerated by them in many distant locations, like Palmyra, Hatra and Dura Europos in Syria. She even appears in a single Achaemenid Aramaic papyrus discovered in Elephantine in Egypt. It indicates that she was worshiped there by a community which originated in Rash, an area east to the Tigris. As a curiosity it’s worth mentioning the same source is one of the only attestations of Pidray from outside Ugarit. I do not think this has anything to do with the recently discovered connection between her and Nanaya… but you may never know. Under the Seleucids, Nanaya went through a particularly puzzling process of partial syncretism. Through interpretatio graeca she was identified with… Artemis. How did this work? The key to understanding this is the fact Seleucids actually had a somewhat limited interest in local deities. All that was necessary was to find relatively major members of the local pantheon who could roughly correspond to the tutelary deities of their dynasty: Zeus, Apollo and Artemis. Zeus found an obvious counterpart in Marduk (even though Marduk was hardly a weather god). Since Nabu was Marduk’s son, he got to be Apollo. And since Nanaya was the most major goddess connected to Nabu, she got to be Artemis. It really doesn’t go deeper than that. For what it’s worth, despite the clear difference in character this newfound association did impact Nanaya in at least one way: she started to be depicted with attributes borrowed from Artemis, namely a bow and a crescent. Or perhaps these attributes were already associated with her, but came to the forefront because of the new role. The Artemis-like image of Nanaya as an archer is attested on coins, especially in Susa, yet another city where she attained considerable popularity.

Leaving Mesopotamia: Nanaya and the death of cuneiform

A Parthian statue of Nanaya with a crescent diadem (Louvre; reproduced here for educational purposes only. Identification follows Andrea Sinclair's proposal)

The Seleucid dynasty was eventually replaced by the Parthians. This period is often considered a symbolic end of ancient Mesopotamian religion in the strict sense. Traditional religious institutions were already slowly collapsing in Achaemenid and Seleucid times as the new dynasties had limited interest in royal patronage. Additionally, cuneiform fell out of use, and by the end of the first half of the first millennium CE the art of reading and writing it was entirely lost. This process did not happen equally quickly everywhere, obviously, and some deities fared better than others in the transitional period before the rise of Christianity and Islam as the dominant religions across the region. Nanaya was definitely one of them, at least for a time. In Parthian art Nanaya might have developed a distinct iconography: it has been argued she was portrayed as a nude figure wearing only some jewelry (including what appears to be a navel piercing and a diadem with a crescent. The best known example is probably this standing figure, one of my all time favorite works of Mesopotamian art:

Parthian Nanaya (wikimedia commons; identification courtesy of the Louvre website and J. G. Westenholz)

For years Wikipedia had this statue mislabeled as “Astarte” which makes little sense considering it comes from a necropolis near Babylon. There was also a viral horny tweet which labeled it as “Asherah” a few months ago (I won’t link it but I will point out in addition to getting the name wrong op also severely underestimated the size). This is obviously even worse nonsense both on spatial and temporal grounds. Even if the biblical Asherah was ever an actual deity like Ugaritic Athirat and Mesopotamian Ashratum, it is highly dubious she would still be worshiped by the time this statue was made. It’s not even certain she ever was a deity, though. Cognate of a theonym is not automatically a theonym itself, and the Ugaritic texts and the Bible, even if they share some topoi, are separated by centuries and a considerable distance. This is not an Asherah post though, so if this is a topic which interests you I recommend downloading Steve A. Wiggins’ excellent monograph A Reassessment of Asherah: With Further Considerations of the Goddess.

The last evidence for the worship of Nanaya in Mesopotamia is a Mandaean spell from Nippur, dated to the fifth or sixth century CE. However, at this point Nanaya must have been a very faint memory around these parts, since the figure designated by this name is evidently male in this formula. That was not the end of her career, though. The system of beliefs she originated and thrived in was on its way out, but there were new frontiers to explore. A small disgression is in order here: be INCREDIBLY wary of claims about the survival of Mesopotamian tradition in Mesopotamia itself past the early middle ages. Most if not all of these come from the writing of Simo Parpola, who is a 19th century style hyperdiffusionist driven by personal religious beliefs based on gnostic christianity, which he believes was based on Neo-Assyrian state religion, which he misinterprets as monotheism, or rather proto-christianity specifically (I wish I was making this up). I personally do not think a person like that should be tolerated in serious academia, but for some incomprehensible reason that isn’t the case. 

New frontiers: Nanaya in Bactria

The key to Nanaya’s extraordinarily long survival wasn’t the dedication to her in Mesopotamia, surprisingly. It was instead her introduction to Bactria, a historical area in Central Asia roughly corresponding to parts of modern Afghanistan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The early history of this area is still poorly known, though it is known that it was one of the “cradles of civilization” not unlike Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley or Mesoamerica. The so-called “Oxus civilization” or “Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex” flourished around 2500-1950 BCE (so roughly contemporarily with the Akkadian and Ur III empires in Mesopotamia). It left behind no written records, but their art and architecture are highly distinctive and reflect great social complexity. I sadly can’t spent much time discussing them here though, as they are completely irrelevant to the history of Nanaya (there is a theory that she was already introduced to the east when BMAC was extant but it is incredibly implausible), so I will limit myself to showing you my favorite related work of art, the “Bactrian princess”:

Photo courtesy of Louvre Abu Dhabi, reproduced here for educational purposes only.

By late antiquity, which is the period we are concerned with here, BMAC was long gone, and most of the inhabitants of Bactria spoke Bactrian, an extinct Iranian language. How exactly they were related to their BMAC forerunners is uncertain. Their religious beliefs can be compared to Zoroastrianism, or rather with its less formalized forerunners followed by most speakers of Iranian languages before the rise of Zoroaster. However, there were many local peculiarities. For example, the main deity was the personified river Oxus, not Ahura Mazda. Whether this was a relic of BMAC religion is impossible to tell.We do not know exactly when the eastward transfer of Nanaya to Bactria happened. The first clear evidence for her presence in central Asia comes from the late first century BCE, from the coins of local rulers, Sapadbizes and Agesiles. It is possible that her depictions on coinage of Mesopotamian and Persian rulers facilitated her spread. Of course, it’s also important to remember that the Aramaic script and language spread far to the east in the Achaemenid period already, and that many of the now extinct Central Asian scripts were derived from it (Bactrian was written with the Greek script, though). Doubtlessly many now lost Aramaic texts were transferred to the east. There’s an emerging view that for unclear reasons, under the Achaemenids Mesopotamian culture as a whole had unparalleled impact on Bactria. The key piece of evidence are Bactrian temples, which often resemble Mesopotamian ones. Therefore, perhaps we should be wondering not why Nanaya spread from Mesopotamia to Central Asia, but rather why there were no other deities who did, for the most part. That is sadly a question I cannot answer. Something about Nanaya simply made her uniquely appealing to many groups at once. While much about the early history of Nanaya in Central Asia is a mystery, it is evident that with time she ceased to be viewed as a foreign deity. For the inhabitants of Bactria she wasn’t any less “authentically Iranian” than the personified Oxus or their versions of the conventional yazatas like Sraosha. Frequently arguments are made that Nanaya’s widespread adoption and popularity could only be the result of identification between her and another deity.Anahita in particular is commonly held to be a candidate. However, as stressed by recent studies there’s actually no evidence for this. What is true is that Anahita is notably missing from the eastern Iranian sources, despite being prominent in the west from the reign of the Achaemenid emperor Artaxerxes II onward. However, it is clear that not all yazatas were equally popular in each area - pantheons will inevitably be localized in each culture. Furthermore, Anahita’s character has very little in common with Nanaya save for gender. Whether we are discussing her early not quite Zoroastrian form the Achaemenid public was familiar with or the contemporary yazata still relevant in modern Zoroastrianism, the connection to water is the most important feature of her. Nanaya didn’t have such a role in any culture. Recently some authors suggested a much more obvious explanation for Anahita’s absence from the eastern Iranian pantheon(s). As I said, eastern Iranian communities venerated the river Oxus as a deity (or as a yazata, if you will). He was the water god par excellence, and in Bactria also the king of the gods. It is therefore quite possible that Anahita, despite royal backing from the west, simply couldn’t compete with him. Their roles overlapped more than the roles of Anahita and Nanaya. I am repeating myself but the notion of interchangeability of goddesses really needs to be distrusted almost automatically, no matter how entrenched it wouldn’t be. While we’re at it, the notion of alleged interchangeability between Anahita and Ishtar is also highly dubious, but that’s a topic for another time.

Nana (Nanaya) on a coin of Kanishka (wikimedia commons)

Nanaya experienced a period of almost unparalleled prosperity with the rise of the Kushan dynasty in Bactria. The Kushans were one of the groups which following Chinese sources are referred to as Yuezhi. They probably did not speak any Iranian language originally, and their origin is a matter of debate. However, they came to rule over a kingdom which consisted largely of areas inhabited by speakers of various Iranian languages, chiefly Bactrian. Their pantheon, documented in royal inscriptions and on coinage, was an eerie combination of mainstays of Iranian beliefs like Sraosha and Mithra and some unique figures, like Oesho, who was seemingly the reflection of Hindu Shiva. Obviously, Nanaya was there too, typically under the shortened name Nana. The most famous Kushan ruler, emperor Kanishka, in his inscription from Rabatak states that kingship was bestowed upon him by “Nana and all the gods”. However, we do not know if the rank assigned to her indicates she was the head of the dynastic pantheon, the local pantheon in the surrounding area, or if she was just the favorite deity of Kanishka. Same goes for the rank of numerous other deities mentioned in the rest of the inscription. Her apparent popularity during Kanishka’s reign and beyond indicates her role should not be downplayed, though. The coins of Kanishka and other Bactrian art indicate that a new image of Nanaya developed in Central Asia. The Artemis-like portrayals typical for Hellenistic times continue to appear, but she also started to be depicted on the back of a lion. There is only one possible example of such an image from the west, a fragmentary relief from Susa, and it’s roughly contemporary with the depictions from Bactria. While it is not impossible Nanaya originally adopted the lion association from one of her Mesopotamian peers, it is not certain how exactly this specific type of depictions originally developed, and there is a case to be made that it owed more to the Hellenistic diffusion of iconography of deities such as Cybele and Dionysus, who were often depicted riding on the back of large felines. The lunar symbols are well attested in the Kushan art of Nanaya too. Most commonly, she’s depicted wearing a diadem with a crescent. However, in a single case the symbol is placed behind her back. This is an iconographic type which was mostly associated with Selene at first, but in the east it was adopted for Mah, the Iranian personification of the moon. I’d hazard a guess that’s where Nanaya borrowed it from - more on that later. The worship of Nanaya survived the fall of the Kushan dynasty, and might have continued in Bactria as late as in the eighth century. However, the evidence is relatively scarce, especially compared with yet another area where she was introduced in the meanwhile.

Nanaya in Sogdia: new home and new friends

A Sogdian depiction of Nanaya from Bunjikat (wikimedia commons)

Presumably from Bactria, Nanaya was eventually introduced to Sogdia, its northern neighbor. I think it’s safe to say this area effectively became her new home for the rest of her history. Like Bactrians, the Sogdians also spoke an eastern Iranian language, Sogdian. It has a direct modern descendant, Yaghnobi, spoken by a small minority in Tajikistan. The religions Sogdians adhered to is often described as a form of Zoroastrianism, especially in older sources, but it would appear that Ahura Mazda was not exactly the most popular deity. Their pantheon was seemingly actually headed by Nanaya. Or, at the very least, the version of it typical for Samarkand and Panijkant, since there’s a solid case to be made for local variety in the individual city-states which made up Sogdia. It seems that much like Mesopotamians and Greeks centuries before them, Sogdians associated specific deities with specific cities, and not every settlement necessarily venerated each deity equally (or at all). Nanaya's remarkable popularity is reflected by the fact the name Nanaivandak, "servant of Nanaya", is one of the most common Sogdian names in general. It is agreed that among the Sogdians Panjikant was regarded as Nanaya’s cult center. She was referred to as “lady” of this city. At one point, her temple located there was responsible for minting the local currency. By the eighth century, coins minted there were adorned with dedications to her - something unparalleled in Sogdian culture, as the rest of coinage was firmly secular. This might have been an attempt at reasserting Sogdian religious identity in the wake of the arrival of Islam in Central Asia. Sogdians adopted the Kushan iconography of Nanaya, though only the lion-mounted version. The connection between her and this animal was incredibly strong in Sogdian art, with no other deity being portrayed on a similar mount. There were also innovations - Nanaya came to be frequently portrayed with four arms. This reflects the spread of Buddhism through central Asia, which brought new artistic conventions from India. While the crescent symbol can still be found on her headwear, she was also portrayed holding representations of the moon and the sun in two of her hands. Sometimes the solar disc and lunar orb are decorated with faces, which has been argued to be evidence that Nanaya effectively took over the domains of Mah and Mithra, who would be the expected divine identities of these two astral bodies. She might have been understood as controlling the passage of night and day. It has also been pointed out that this new iconographic type is the natural end point of the evolution of her astral role. Curiously, while no such a function is attested for Nanaya in Bactria, in Sogdia she could be sometimes regarded as a warlike deity. This is presumably reflected in a painting showing her and an unidentified charioteer fighting demons.

The "Sogdian Deities" painting from Dunhuang, a possible depiction of Nanaya and her presumed spouse Tish (wikimedia commons)

Probably the most fascinating development regarding Nanaya in Sogdia was the development of an apparent connection between her and Tish. This deity was the Sogdian counterpart of one of the best known Zoroastrian yazatas, Tishtrya, the personification of Sirius. As described in the Tištar Yašt, the latter is a rainmaking figure and a warlike protector who keeps various nefarious forces, such as Apaosha, Duzyariya and the malign “worm stars” (comets), at bay. Presumably his Sogdian counterpart had a similar role. While this is not absolutely certain, it is generally agreed that Nanaya and Tish were regarded as a couple in central Asia (there’s a minority position she was instead linked with Oesho, though). Most likely the fact that in Achaemenid Persia Tishtrya was linked with Nabu (and by extension with scribal arts) has something to do with this. There is a twist to this, though. While both Nabu and the Avestan Tishtrya are consistently male, in Bactria and Sogdia the corresponding deity’s gender actually shows a degree of ambiguity. On a unique coin of Kanishka, Tish is already portrayed as a feminine figure distinctly similar to Greek Artemis - an iconographic type which normally would be recycled for Nanaya. There’s also a possibility that a feminine, or at least crossdressing, version of Tish is portrayed alongside Nanaya on a painting from Dunhuang conventionally referred to as “Sogdian Daēnās” or “Sogdian Deities”, but this remains uncertain. If this identification is correct, it indicates outright interchange of attributes between them and Nanaya was possible.

The final frontier: Nanaya and the Sogdian diaspora in China Sogdians also brought Nanaya with them to China, where many of them settled in the Six Dynasties and Tang periods. An obviously Sinicized version of her, accompanied by two attendants of unknown identity, is portrayed on a Sogdian funerary couch presently displayed in the Miho Museum.

Nanaya (top) on a relief from the Miho funerary couch (Miho Museum; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

For the most part the evidence is limited to theophoric names, though. Due to unfamiliarity with Sogdian religious traditions and phonetic differences between the languages there was no consistent Chinese transcription of Nanaya’s name. I have no clue if Chinese contemporaries of the Sogdians were always aware of these elements in personal names referred to a deity. There is a fringe theory that Nanaya was referred to as Nantaihou (那那女主, “queen Nana”) in Chinese. However, the evidence is apparently not compelling, and as I understand the theory depends in no small part on the assertion that a hitherto unattested alternate reading of one of the signs was in use on the western frontiers of China in the early first millennium CE. The alleged Nantaihou is therefore most likely a misreading of a reference to a deceased unnamed empress dowager venerated through conventional ancestor worship, as opposed to Nanaya. Among members of the Sogdian diaspora, in terms of popularity Nanaya was going head to head with Jesus and Buddha. The presence of the latter two reflected the adoption of, respectively, Manichaeism and Buddhism. Manicheans seemingly were not fond of Nanaya, though, and fragments of a polemic against her cult have been identified. It seems ceremonies focused on lamentations were the main issue for the Manichaeans. Sadly there doesn’t seem to be any worthwhile study of possible Mesopotamian influence on that - the only one I found is old and confuses Nanaya with Inanna. We do not have much of an idea how Buddhists viewed Nanaya, though it is worth noting a number of other Sogdian deities were incorporated into the local form of Mahayana (unexpectedly, one of them was Zurvan). It has also been argued that a Buddhist figure, Vreshman (Vaisravana) was incorporated into Nanaya’s entourage. Nanaya might additionally be depicted in a painting showing Buddha’s triumph over Mara from Dunhuang. Presumably her inclusion would reflect the well attested motif of local deities converting to Buddhism. It was a part of the Buddhist repertoire from the early days of this religion and can be found in virtually every area where this religion ever spread. Nanaya is once again in elevated company here, since other figures near her have been tentatively interpreted as Shiva, Vishnu, Kartikeya and… Zoroaster.

Buddha conquering Mara (maravijaya) on a painting from Dunhuang (wikimedia commons)

zoom in on a possible depiction of Nanaya next to a demon suspiciously similar to Tove Jansson’s Fillyjonk

To my best knowledge, the last absolutely certain attestation of Nanaya as an actively worshiped deity also comes from the western frontier of China. A painting from Dandan Oilik belonging to the artistic tradition of the kingdom of Khotan shows three deities from the Sogdian pantheon: the enigmatic Āδβāγ (“highest god”; interpreted as either Indra, Ahura Mazda or a combination of them both) on the left, Weshparkar (a later version of Kushan Oesho) on the right and Nanaya in the center. It dates to the ninth or tenth century.

Nanaya (center) on the Dandan Oilik painting (wikimedia commons)

We will probably never know what Nanaya’s last days were like, though it is hard to imagine she retained much relevance with the gradual disappearance of Sogdian culture both in Sogdia and in China in the wake of, respectively, the rise of Islam in Central Asia and the An Lushan rebellion respectively. Her history ultimately most likely ended with a whimper rather than a bang. Conclusions and reflections Obviously, not everything about Nanaya could be covered in this article - there is enough material to warrant not one, but two wiki articles (and I don't even think they are extensive enough yet). I hope I did nonetheless manage to convey what matters: she was the single most enduring Mesopotamian deity who continued to be actually worshiped. She somehow outlived Enlil, Marduk, Nergal and even Inanna, and spread further than any of them ever did. It does not seem like her persistence was caused by some uniquely transcendent quality, and more to a mix of factors we will never really fully understand and pure luck. She is a far cry from the imaginary everlasting universal goddesses such longevity was attributed to by many highly questionable authors in the past, from Frazer to Gimbutas. Quite the opposite, once you look into the texts focused on her she comes across as sort of pathetic. After all, most of them are effectively ancient purple prose. And yet, this is precisely why I think Nanaya matters. To see how an author approaches her is basically a litmus test of trustworthiness - I wish I was kidding but this “Nanaya method” works every time. To even be able to study her history, let alone understand it properly, one has to cast away most of the dreadful trends which often hindered scholarship of ancient deities, and goddesses in particular, in the past. The interchangeability of goddesses; the Victorian mores and resulting notion that eroticism must be tied to fertility; the weird paradigms about languages neatly corresponding to religions; and many others. And if nothing else, this warrants keeping the memory of her 3000 years long history alive through scholarship (and, perhaps, some media appearances). Bibliography

Julia M. Asher-Greve & Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources (2013)

Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period (2003)

idem, Nabû and Apollo: The Two Faces of Seleucid Religious Policy in: Orient und Okzident in Hellenistischer Zeit (2014)

Matteo Compareti, Nana and Tish in Sogdiana (2017)

idem, The So-Called "Pelliot Chinois 4518.24". Illustrated Document from Dunhuang and Sino-Sogdian Iconographical Contacts (2021)

Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz, Mesopotamian Goddess Nanāja (2008)

Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: an Anthology of Akkadian Literature (2005)

Andrew R. George & Manfred Krebernik, Two Remarkable Vocabularies: Amorite-Akkadian Bilinguals! (2022)

Valerie Hansen, Kageyama Etsuko & Yutaka Yoshida, The Impact of the Silk Road Trade on a Local Community: The Turfan Oasis, 500-800 in: Les sogdiens en Chine (2005)

Wilfred G. Lambert, Babylonian Creation Myths (2013)

Enrico Marcato, An Aramaic Incantation Bowl and the Fall of Hatra (2020)

Christa Müller-Kessler & Karlheinz Kessler, Spätbabylonische Gottheiten in spätantiken mandäischen Texten (1999)

Lilla Russel-Smith, Uygur Patronage in Dunhuang. Regional Art Centres on the Northern Silk Road in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (2005)

idem, The 'Sogdian Deities' Twenty Years on: A Reconsideration of a Small Painting from Dunhuang in: Buddhism in Central Asia II. Practices and Rituals, Visual and Material Transfer (2022)

Tonia M. Sharlach, An Ox of One's Own. Royal Wives and Religion at the Court of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2017)

Michael Shenkar, Intangible Spirits and Graven Images: The Iconography of Deities in the Pre-Islamic Iranian World (2014)

idem, The Religion and the Pantheon of the Sogdians (5th-8th Centuries CE) in Light of their Sociopolitical Structures (2017)

idem, The So-Called "Fravašis" and the "Heaven and Hell" Paintings, and the Cult of Nana in Panjikent (2022)

Marten Stol, Nanaja in: Reallexikon der Assyriologie, vol. 9 (1998)

Michael P. Streck & Nathan Wasserman, More Light on Nanāya (2013)

Aaron Tugendhaft, Gods on Clay: Ancient Near Eastern Scholarly Practices and the History of Religions in: Canonical Texts and Scholarly Practices. A Global Comparative Approach (2016)

Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Nanaya, Lady of Mystery in: Sumerian Gods and Their Representations (1997)

idem, Trading the Symbols of the Goddess Nanaya in: Religions and Trade. Religious Formation, Transformation and Cross-Cultural Exchange between East and West (2014)

Xinjiang Rong, The Colophon of the Manuscript of the Golden Light Sutra Excavated in Turfan and the Transmission of Zoroastrianism to Gaochang in: The Silk Road and Cultural Exchanges between East and West (2022)

Gioele Zisa, The Loss of Male Sexual Desire in Ancient Mesopotamia. ›Nīš Libbi‹ Therapies (2021)

#mesopotamian mythology #sumerian mythology #mythology #bactrian mythology #sogdian mythology #sogdia #nanaya