Nisaba

About

She appears with flowing hair, crowned with horned tiara bearing supporting ears of corn and a crescent moon.

According to Professor Tikva Fryman-Kensky in her outstanding work “In the Wake of the Goddesses” (Fawcet Columbine, New York, 1992), wisdom and writing were the province of the Goddess Nisaba, as well as the measuring lines to measure the heavens. Thus, Nisaba is the paradigmatic wise woman, “the great knowledgeable perceptive one” who knows everything. She is also the great teacher who gives advice to all lands and endows kings with wisdom. Nisaba epitomizes both godly wisdom and the gift of learning to humans.

The god of wisdom, Enki, organized the world after creation and gave each deity a role in the world order. Nisaba was named the scribe of the gods, and Enki then built her a school of learning as she was considered the teacher of both mortal scribes and other divine deities. As the Goddess of knowledge, she is related to many other facets of intellectual study and other gods may turn to her for advice or aid.

She was often praised by Sumerian scribes. Many clay-tablets end with the phrase “Nisaba be praised” to honor the Goddess.

In the Babylonian period, she was replaced by the god Nabu, who took over her functions.

Babylon

This Goddess brought literacy and astrology to a Sumerian king on a tablet inscribed with the names of the beneficent stars. An architect as well, she drew up temple plans for her people,

After the fall of the gods, the mortal astronomers of Babylon gathered together to form groups of priest-like worshippers of Nisaba, and called themselves the Chandra.

Interestingly, NASA’s flagship X-Ray observatory is also called Chandra

Associated Objects

He has opened up Nisaba’s house of learning, and has placed the lapis-lazuli tablet on her knees, for her to consult the holy tablet of the heavenly stars.

Hymn to Nisaba

Lapis Lazuli tablet
The golden stylus

The Fifth Age

The leader of the Sumerian pantheon appointed Nisaba to be the royal scholar of the heavens. She measured the lines of the stars in myth, but was actually a student of the nature of the pattern itself as it wove the universe together.

As the goddess of writing and cuneiform, she was the pantheon’s (and probably the world’s) leading expert on portal stones. In the Ages to follow after the gods had turned to myth, her work would become the foundation of the study of the cosmos, as astronomy was first studied by the Babylonians even before the Greeks. The truth of the lines of the stars that she measured faded to myth as well, and the language and locations of the portal stones disappeared completely.

Enki also gave her schools of learning, and she oversaw the academic pursuits of the channelers. Together, their research delved deep into the cosmos; studying the multiverse, portal stones, traveling, Tel’aran’rhiod, and constructing new dimensions with the one power.

Reincarnations

1st Age – Danika Zayed, theoretical astrophysicist

2nd Age – Selyna Mythea Atmosfera, researcher in portalistics and dimensionology

3rd Age – Zenitha Saldun, Aes Sedai of the White Ajah

5th Age – Nisaba, Sumerian goddess of knowledge, wisdom, writing and the heavens

6th Age – Urania, Muse of Astronomy