THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
or Artemis was Nanaea is made exceedingly probable by the fact that Nansea's attributes and cults were appropriated by, assimilated to, 3. Elam, or identified with those of Aphrodite in Armenia, Asia Minor and Greece, as also in part and India, by those of Artemis. This evidence is not made more weighty by the testimony of the Pseudo-Melito, sometimes cited, who reports that Nanai was worshiped in Elam, her worship having been instituted by her royal father after she had been captured by the enemy (in Corpus apologetarum, ed. J. C. T. de Otto, ix. 426, 476^77, 505, Jena, 1872). Pseudo- Melito is simply a composite dependent upon the sources already noted. For Armenia it is reported by Agathangelos (supposed to have been a secretary of Tiridates II. of Armenia in the fourth Christian century, to whom is attributed a life of Gregory the Illuminator) in the Armenian text that his people destroyed a temple of " Nanea, daughter of Ormuzd " in Thil (ed. of Venice, 1835, pp. 108, 587); the Greek text declares that they destroyed the " altar of Athena, daughter of Zeus " (it is to be noted that Athena's attributes repeat some of Nana's). This follows a statement to the effect that the golden image of Anahita had been destroyed. The importance of these two statements does not rest alone in the mention of Nanea, but in the fact that the two deities are discriminated. This discrimination does not always occur, since it is quite clear that Anahita and Nanaea were amalgamated or identified in many places, just as were Nana and Ishtar in Assyria-Babylonia. Mihr and Nanea occur in Armenia as names of the deities of sun and moon. In Afghanistan many places still bear the name Bibi Nani, " the Lady Nana " (Venus). Indo-Scythian coins of the first and second centuries a.d. bear the name of Nana with the epithet queen, also the forms Nanaea and Nanaia, the figure of the goddess sometimes having a crescent on the head, which shows that the deity bore there the same general characteristics she had further west in her relations with Ishtar and Aphrodite (cf . P. Gardiner, Coins of the Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India, London, 1884). Apart from these cases, India does not know a deity Nana or Nanaea, which speaks strongly for the importation from the west. The connection was probably established through the Syrian Nanai, but may have come by way of Elam and Armenia. The fact that Nanaea in Indo-Scythic environment represents the moon, while the earlier affiliations of Nana of Erech and Syria were with Venus is offset by the later affiliations which in the West connect Ishtar with the moon. Parallel influences are at work. A possible way of transit for the goddess was through the Parthians and Scythians from the second century B.C. to the first Christian century. There is no difficulty in accounting for the spread of the cult eastward.
Isho bar-Bahlul, one of the most important of Syrian lexicographers, living in the tenth century, gives Nanai as the name of the planet Venus (which again agrees with the coalescence of Nana in Aphrodite in the West). Isho reports that the inhabitants of the region between Nisibis and the Tigris
worshiped this deity (P. de Lagarde, Gesammelte Abhandlungen, p. 16, Leipsic, 1866). Granius Licinianus {Annates, p. 9, Leipsic, 1858) 4. Syria, asserts that Antiochus Epiphanes went Phrygia, to Hierapolis (in Syria) to marry Diana and Greece. ( = Artemis) and received the temple treasure as dowry, just as I Mace. states that he intended to marry Nansea. While it is known that Nansea was worshiped in Syria, the possibility is not excluded that by Diana Licinianus means Anahita. The known deity of Hierapolis, however, was Atargatis (q.v.), whom Lucian describes {De dea Syria, xxxii.). Reports of the origin of Attis in Phrygia ascribes his birth to Nana, a virgin, who was impregnated by putting a pomegranate (or almond) in her bosom (Pausanius, VII., xvii. 11; Arnobius, Adv. nationes, v. 6, in ANF, vi. 491). A connection here with Ishtar and the East is found in the fact that the pomegranate was sacred to Ishtar, and was, from the complexity of its fruit, a symbol of fertility. It was in Phrygia, probably, that the transition was made by which Artemis and Nana, as also Aphrodite and Nana, were conjoined, a proof of the former conjunction being found in an inscription from the Pirasus, probably dating from the third century B.C., on a tablet which " Axios and Cleo " devoted to " Artemis Nana " {Corpus inscriptionum Atticarum, iii. 131). While the cult of Nana was at times distinguished (as by Arnobius, ut sup.) from that of Cybele, there was confusion between these two cults also, and it is noteworthy that a cult of " the mother of the gods " (Cybele) existed at the Piraeus. The association of Artemis with the moon is another connecting link which aids in the assurance that Nana traveled as far west as the Piraeus, the Syrian Nana being also connected with the moon. Jerome and Pliny call the goddess of Elam Diana.
Thus the worship of the Sumerian goddess Nana of Erech is traced with probability in Elam, with certainty in Syria, Bactrian-India, Asia Minor, and Greece. She had affiliations with Ishtar in Assyria- Babylonia, with Anahita in Persia, Armenia, and possibly in Bactria, with Ashtoreth (Astarte) in Phenicia, and went to the making of Artemis or Diana, of Aphrodite or Venus, and of Athena in the Greek world. Geo. W. Gilmohe.
Bibliography: Journal of the Asiatic Society of
iii (1834), 172 (by C. Massoii), 449-451 (by J. Prinsep), v (1836), 266-268 (by J. Avdall; all on Indo-Scythic coins bearing the name of Nanaea) ; H. H. Wilson, Ariana antiqua, pp. 362-363, London, 1841 (also on the coins); Bernstein, in ZDMG, x (1856), 549; Windischmann, in AM A, viii (1858), 87sqq.; J. B.Emim, inRevue del orient de VAlgerie, 1864, pp. 198 sqq.; Rawlinson's Herodotus, i. 624 sqq., 658 sqq., New York, 1875; F. Lenonnant, in Gazette archeologique, ii (1876), 10-18, 58-68; P. Scholz, Gotzendienst und Zauberwesen, pp. 355-364, Regensburg, 1877; E. Sehrader, Keilinschriften und Geschichtsforschung, pp. 107-109, Giessen, 1878; idem, KAT, passim; A. Stein, in Indian Antiquary, xvii (1SS8), 89 sqq.; J. Darmesteter, Le Zend-Avesta, ii. 363-366, Paris, 1892; L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, ii. 484 sqq., 590, 627 sqq., Oxford, 1896; H. Gelzer, in the Berichte of the Royal Saxon Academy of Sciences, xlviii (1896), 99 sqq.; R. P. Lagrange, Etudes sur les religions simitiques, pp. 138, 454, Paris, 1905; J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, pp. 163-164, 178-179, London, 1906; Vigouroux, Dictionnaire, fasc. xxviii. 1473-74; W. von Baudissin, in Hauck-Herzog, RE, xiii. 631-645; and the commentaries on II Maccabees.