Nisaba

The Goddess of Writing

Domain: Writing, Grain & Wisdom
Alignment: Lawful Good
Element: Light
Relics of Power: Stylus of Lapis Lazuli

Speak with Nisaba

The full Codex

5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Sumerians, Akkadians & Babylonians

Region

Mesopotamia (modern Iraq)

Period

c. 3500 – 500 BC

The Mesopotamian gods were worshipped by the Sumerians, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians in the land between the Tigris and Euphrates, the cradle of writing and cities. Each city raised a ziggurat to its patron god, served by a powerful priestly caste. Their myths, such as the Enuma Elish and the Epic of Gilgamesh, are among the oldest in the world.

The Akitu festival opened the new year with processions along Babylon's Sacred Way, and the sacred marriage rite symbolically united Inanna and Dumuzi to ensure fertility. Lamentations, hymns, and divination by animal livers marked daily religious life.

At a glance

Nisaba is a Sumerian goddess who, in the texts opened for this study, appears tied to writing, accounting, land measurement and grain. Hymns call her lady of the lapis-lazuli tablet, chief scribe of An and record-keeper of Enlil. In another poem, Inana cites the measuring rod and tape that fall to her as scribe of the Land. Other texts show her as the mother of Enlil's bride, as inspector of the hoe in a debate between farm tools, and as the deity praised at the end of the Instructions of Shuruppag. A lament recounts how her house is destroyed and she weeps alone in the moonlight. All readings come from ETCSL English translations, without the Sumerian originals.

8 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The stylus, the clay tablet, the ear of grain and the star

Family

Parents

Urac (named as her birth-giver in hymn A)

Siblings

Nanshe

Nisaba

Children

Ninlil

Genealogy according to ETCSL 4.16.1, linhas 1-6; ETCSL 2.1.7, linhas 134-140; ETCSL 1.2.2, versão A, segmento A e linhas 156-170. O ETCSL cita Haya em passagem lacunar de Enlil e Sud; por isso nenhum consorte é afirmado. Que Sud seja Ninlil vem do próprio poema, que chama a esposa de Enlil de nascida de Nisaba.

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Anonymous (Sumerian), A hymn to Nisaba (Nisaba A), ETCSL 4.16.1. translation: ETCSL translation into English. read
Anonymous (Sumerian), A shir-namshub to Nisaba (Nisaba B), ETCSL 4.16.2. translation: ETCSL translation into English. read
Anonymous (Sumerian), Enki and the world order, ETCSL 1.1.3. translation: ETCSL translation into English. read
Anonymous (Sumerian), Enlil and Sud, ETCSL 1.2.2. translation: ETCSL translation into English. read
Gudea of Lagash, The building of Ningirsu's temple (Gudea Cylinders), ETCSL 2.1.7. translation: Prose translation of the ETCSL into English. read
Anonymous (Sumerian), The debate between the Hoe and the Plough, ETCSL 5.3.1. translation: ETCSL translation into English. read
Shuruppag, son of Ubara-Tutu (attribution of the text), The instructions of Shuruppag, ETCSL 5.6.1. translation: ETCSL translation into English. read

Name and epithets

Nisaba Lady coloured like the stars of heaven: First image of hymn A: the goddess who holds (or, in other manuscripts, is perfectly endowed with) a lapis-lazuli tablet.

In the ancient sources

Hymn to Nisaba A (ETCSL 4.16.1), Old Babylonian for the main version; the Lagash tablet is dated by ETCSL as perhaps from the Ur III period. Praise of Nisaba and of Enki.

The myths

The lady of the tablet and the fifty powers. Hymn A begins with Nisaba, lady coloured like the stars of heaven, who holds a lapis-lazuli tablet.

Worship and archaeology

The texts read do not describe a calendar of festivals for Nisaba, but they give clues to what was expected of her.

How the god was depicted

The texts opened do not describe statues or reliefs of Nisaba. The images they give are verbal: the lapis-lazuli tablet, the tablet of propitious stars she consults, the stylus of refined silver in Gudea's dream, the ro…

What scholars debate

Wild cow: a name or an image?. The ETCSL translation calls Nisaba a great wild cow and a wild sheep. The parts read do not explain whether these words are a name or an image for the goddess's nature, and ETCSL marks sev…

After antiquity

The texts used here are English translations published by ETCSL, the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature of the University of Oxford.

Did you know?

In hymn A, Enki wishes Nisaba to be the butter in the cattle-pen, the cream in the sheepfold, keeper of the seal in the treasury and a good steward in the palace.

Codex relic

Stylus of Lapis Lazuli. The sacred stylus with which she records knowledge and measures the fields, source of writing and learning.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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