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Hecate, Melinoe, "Ereschigal": when a name becomes the ship of Theseus?

(Triple Hecate on a magical apparatus from Sardis, via William Bruce and Kassandra Jackson Miller, Towards a Typology of Triangular Bronze Hekate Bases: Contextualizing a New Find from Sardis, p. 512; reproduced here for educational purposes only)

This article wasn’t planned in advance. It’s largely a side effect of trying to help a friend with tracking down a \specific source, the elusive reference to Melinoe from outside the Orphic Hymns, in order to determine whether it really treats her as interchangeable with Hecate. Investigating this topic revealed that it’s connected fairly closely with something I wanted to cover for a while already, namely the Greek (or rather Greco-Egyptian) magical papyri, a unique text corpus to a large degree focused on Hecate and in particular on supposed equations with a number of other figures, ranging from Selene, though Isis, to Mesopotamian Ereshkigal. The last of these cases is what I will focus on, as similarly as the supposed interchangeability of Hecate and Melinoe it is often presented online without context. While the two core goals of this article are establishing whether Melinoe really is just Hecate, a distinct but very Hecate-like figure, or something in between, and explaining whether references to “Hecate-Ereschigal” necessarily indicate some greater degree of familiarity with Mesopotamian theology, that’s not all I will cover. You will also be able to learn why Hecate gained an extra body in early centuries CE; whether it’s true that sources referring to her as genderfluid exist; which unexpected figure plays the role of messenger of Zeus in magical papyri; what the possible last known pre-modern reference to Ereshkigal has to do with Jewish angelology; and more!

Note that technically this is not my first Hecate article; I wrote one long ago - in the early days of this blog, probably around half a decade ago at the height of the initial covid lockdowns, if not in the even more distant past. However, it was subpar; for all intents and purposes, this is the first one which meets my modern standards.

The case of Melinoe

Melinoe appears in a very small number of sources, all of which are fairly well studied. In theory this makes her fairly easy to write about. However, she is also fairly unique in that I can’t think of many other mythological figures who arguably received an enormous boost in prominence specifically thanks to their online reception. This is a double edged sword. On one hand, unique sources reach more people than they would otherwise, at least indirectly.. On the other, misconceptions and misreadings are abundant. For this reason, a brief introduction to her will be necessary before evaluating what, if any, connection existed between her and Hecate.

There’s no strong reason to suspect Melinoe was ever particularly popular in antiquity - more on that soon - and she had negligible presence in art before quite recently. A notable exception is apparently an offhand reference to her in one of Hugo Grotius’ poems (Edwin Rabbie, Editing Neo-Latin Texts, p. 42). I was sadly unable to track it down - if you want to check for yourself, it is reportedly to be found on p. 359 in the 1992 anthology Original Poetry 1604–1608 (De Dichtwerken van Hugo Grotius, I 2 A/B 4).

Melinoe in the Orphic Hymns

Grotius relied on what was the only source about Melinoe available to him and his contemporaries - the Orphic Hymns. They remain a pretty important point of reference for researchers today, though not exactly due to the presence of Melinoe. Even though they’re relatively late and fairly esoteric (as expected from an orphic text corpus), they’re one of the best preserved collections of Greek hymns which were undeniably performed in a religious setting. We don’t know the full history of their transmission, though. They were hardly discussed in other literature before the fifteenth century, barring a single reference in a commentary on Hesiod’s Theogony which might date to the thirteenth (Daniel Malamis, The Orphic Hymns. Poetry and Genre, with a Critical Text and Translation, p. 1).

The full collection consists of eighty eight hymns, each dedicated to a different deity, ranging from major figures recognized virtually all over the at least partially Hellenized world, through personified abstract concepts, to local deities from the west of Asia Minor with few, if any, other attestations. Melinoe belongs to the last of these categories, alongside the likes of Mise, Hipta and Erikepaios (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 171-172). The seventy first hymn is dedicated to her. Multiple translations are available, the most recent one is Daniel Malamis’ (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 103):

The exact translation of some phrases remains a subject of heated debate, but the gist of it is fairly well understood: Persephone gives birth to a minor underworld goddess after Zeus impersonated Hades to seduce her. A minority position is that Melinoe somehow has two biological fathers (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 130). I’m not aware of any translator making it even remotely possible that Hades alone was her biological father - this is entirely an online misconception. There is no alternate account of her origin, the hymn is the only version - claims on the contrary are doubtlessly the result of online games of telephone. The friend whose Melinoe inquiry was a catalyst for this article informed me that there are online claims that the myth describes Hermes witnessing this event. It’s important to stress that nothing of that sort is evident here, as you can see for yourself - the only deities mentioned are Melinoe herself, Persephone, Zeus and Hades. I’d assume this misconception is the result of the river Cocytus also being mentioned in the hymn to Hermes Cthtonios (and nowhere else in the Orphic Hymns), which however doesn’t deal with Melinoe, let alone specifically with her birth (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 89):

To go back to the main topic, dedicating a lot of space to explaining the origin of Melinoe sets the hymn apart from the other eighty seven. It is possible that the compiler considered her obscure to the point it warranted explaining to their audience who she was by narrating her origin myth (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 266). As a result of this unusual focus, she receives very few epithets compared to most other deities praised in the Orphic Hymns. She shares this status with Nomos - in whose case the small number of epithets instead reflects the fact he was more a personified concept than a deity proper, though (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 270).

Thanks to the contents of the hymn, despite Melinoe’s obscurity we have a pretty solid idea about her character, too. At the very least for the compiler of the hymn, she was an appropriate deity to invoke to guarantee safe passage of the dead into the afterlife (Kassandra Jackson, ‘She who changes’ (Amibousa): a Re-examination of the Triangular Table from Pergamon, p. 465). Further insights might possibly be gained from her name, which has been variously interpreted as “gentle-minded” (from meilinói; this interpretation was seemingly proposed as early as in the sixteenth century, as evidenced by an anonymous translation into Latin explaining her name as placidae mentis) or “russet” (from mílinos), in this context a poetic way to describe the color of the moon (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 288).

The fact the hymn refers to Melinoe as a nymph warrants some further discussion as well. I haven’t seen this point raised in literature, but this would fit neatly with her presumed status as a minor goddess of strictly local importance. It was not uncommon for such figures to be labeled as nymphs when they were incorporated into the broader “Olympian” pantheon in one way or another, as attested for example for Callisto or Britomartis (Jennifer Larson, Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore, p. 7).

A potential issue for this interpretation is that Melinoe doesn’t seem to correspond to any specific natural feature, though - the localized character of nymph cults reflected the fact that they typically corresponded to a specific river, mountain, island, et cetera (Greek Nymphs…, p. 9). Alcman mentions underworld nymphs (lampads) from the entourage of Hecate, but this reference is entirely isolated (Greek Nymphs…, p. 284; note the wikipedia article asserting they are referenced in Hesiod’s Theogony is essentially a hoax, though admittedly a fun, creative one). For what it’s worth, the term “nymph” might very well just be used metaphorically to indicate Melinoe was imagined as a young woman, though (Anne-France Morand, Études sur les Hymnes Orphiques, p. 182).

Nymph-centric deliberations aside, the fact that the hymn associates Melinoe with ghosts and more broadly with the underworld, and that she might even have an indirect lunar connection depending on which etymology of her name is correct, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that it’s pretty much the academic consensus that overall her character was Hecate-like (though pretty obviously less multifaceted). The similarities even extend to terms used to refer to them (“saffron-robed” is a fairly common epithet of Hecate) and requests aimed at Melinoe in the hymn and at Hecate elsewhere (‘She who changes’ …, p. 465). However, as far as the Orphic Hymns are concerned, they are ultimately two separate goddesses (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 361). In the hymn dedicated to her, Hecate is actually portrayed as a veritable head of the pantheon (The Orphic Hymns…, p.165-166), directly addressed as the “queen of all cosmos” (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 27):

Ultimately it’s important to bear in mind that even if the compilers clearly cared about Melinoe enough to dedicate a separate hymn to her, they neither equated her with Hecate nor even attributed a comparable degree of importance to them. The investigation cannot end here, though. Melinoe has exactly one more further attestation.

Hecate-Melinoe, Hecate-Persephone, Hecate-Zagourê? The Pergamon tablet and its historical context

An illustration of the triangular magical tablet from Pergamon (wikimedia commons)

In addition to her considerably more famous role in the Orphic Hymns, Melinoe also makes a cameo on a peculiar object from Pergamon (The Orphic Hymns…, p.172). It dates to the third century CE. In contrast with the hymns, it doesn’t provide much mythological or theological information about her. It’s not even really a proper text. Rather, it’s a triangular tablet inscribed with a long series of epithets of Hecate, arranged into three columns under three depictions of her placed in the corners (‘She who changes’ …, p. 457).

In this context, Melinoe is explicitly one of Hecate’s (many) names (‘She who changes’ …, p. 464-465). This is presumed to reflect a level of familiarity with both figures sufficient to establish they were similar enough to warrant an equation (Richard Gordon, Another View of the Pergamon Divination Kit, p. 198). It’s also worth noting that Melinoe’s presence in the inscription was one of the arguments which lead to the formation of the generally accepted view that the Orphic Hymns must have been originally composed somewhere in the proximity of Pergamon, at least more broadly in western Anatolia (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 171-174).

This doesn’t mean we should conclude the Orphic Hymns were also written with the same arrangement in mind, though. Equation in a specific context doesn’t mean two figures can be considered interchangeable. It’s hard to think of better proof than the fact not only Melinoe, but also Persephone is reinterpreted as a title of Hecate on the Pergamon tablet (‘She who changes’ …, p. 466). It’s hardly the only magical text to do so (Eleni Pachoumi, The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri, p. 130-131). It is probably relevant that a tradition in which Hecate was a daughter of Demeter is also attested - sparsely, but still. It might even be alluded to in Eurypides’ Ion, where Enodia is addressed as such (Ljuba Merlina Bortolani, Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt. A Study of Greek and Egyptian Traditions of Divinity, p. 232).

Hecate actually gets a fair share of other names which usually would refer to independent figures on the discussed tablet; the two cases discussed above aren’t unique in that regard. Some of the other notable examples include Leukophryne (“of the gleaming brow”), a designation used exclusively for the local form of Artemis worshiped in Magnesia on the Meander; Dione (sic); and even the angel Zagourê (“he whose fire glows), best known from the Eighth Book of Moses and other magical papyri, a genre of text I will soon go back to (‘She who changes’ …, p. 463-466).

While as far as I am aware the last equation is unique, as a curiosity it might be worth noting that the words angele and angelos were actually sometimes used to describe Hecate elsewhere (for example by Hesychius), usually in the literal sense, to reflect moving between the underworld, the earth and Olympus (Rangar Cline, Ancient Angels. Conceptualizing Angeloi in the Roman Empire, p. 49). It’s tempting to speculate that perhaps this is why the author of the Perhamon tablet opted to equate her with a specific angelos they were vaguely familiar with - it’s not like the text preserved any distinct information about Zagourê’s character.

The Pergamon tablet isn’t unique - similar objects also inscribed with long series of Hecate names are known from Sardis and Apamea (Towards a Typology…, p. 509) - but as they don’t mention Melinoe I won’t discuss them here in detail. All three of these extensive collections of Hecate names reflect the same phenomenon, though. In late antiquity Hecate’s defining feature was arguably being “many-named” and “many-formed” (The Concept…, p. 137). It’s tempting to assume that the standard three bodied Hecate depictions, which the average person would be well familiar with, made her particularly suitable for equations with goddesses who shared some of her characteristics - which, as I outlined above, is definitely the case for Melinoe.

It's also important to stress that there was a pretty universal religious anxiety over getting the names and titles of deities wrong or omitting an important one, though. Simultaneously, it was believed that it pleases a deity to hear many of them, say, in a hymn in their honor; and, furthermore, that they could be compelled to act by sufficient familiarity with their names (The Orphic Hymns…, p. 218-219). It’s easy to imagine how this would influence composition of texts focused on a goddess whose very nature required turning this focus on names and titles up to eleven. Given that Melinoe is not attested on any other similar artifact, perhaps she was included just in case due to such a concern? Ultimately this is pure speculation on my part, though, and it’s equally if not more plausible that she is included only in this one list simply because she was exclusively worshiped relatively close to where it was found.

The long strings of names and magical formulas on the Pergamon tablet and other similar objects are also significant for a further reason: they make it possible to establish a connection with a specific corpus of Greco-Egyptian esoterica, the late antique magical papyri. The owners of the tablets were not necessarily actually well versed in Egyptian religious texts of the sort passed down in temple scriptoriums, but it does seem they knew enough about them to attempt to use the same principles - which is reflected, among other things, in the long strings of names assigned to Hecate (Another View…, p. 197-198). Melinoe is not attested in any of these texts (‘She who changes’ …, p. 465), and her role in this article as a result ends here.

Before I can move on to the second case of a peculiar link between Hecate and another deity I'd like to discuss, a brief introduction to the magical papyri themselves will be necessary.

A brief introduction to magical papyri

“Greek magical papyri” and “Papyri graecae magicae” (PGM) are the modern conventional names designating a corpus of unusual texts from, as you can probably guess, Egypt.

The earliest example known dates to the fourth century BCE, but most are significantly younger (Jacco Dieleman, The Greco-Egyptian Magical Papyri in Guide to the Study of Ancient Magic, p. 316). While they were composed under Roman rule, between the second and fifth centuries CE, the only languages used in them are Greek, and less commonly Demotic, with no trace of Latin. This is pretty much in line with other texts from Roman Egypt. It was culturally Hellenized through the period of Ptolemaic rule, but it never really became Romanized to a comparable degree, and Latin was restricted to military administration (Magical Hymns…, p. 3-4).

Why are these papyri “magical”? Despite involving deities and frequently referencing specific myths, they generally describe rituals which took place in private houses, as opposed to temples. The stated aims often can be only described as petty (securing the love of another person, gaining material wealth, or even a specific outcome in a chariot race…), and require some rather unorthodox solutions, like quite literally blackmailing deities, ghosts or other supernatural beings. Many of the texts also stress that their contents should remain secret. Thus, referring to them as “magical” rather than broadly “religious” literature is seen as optimal by researchers, to stress that they don’t represent the official temple cults, but rather a distinct sphere of activity (Magical Hymns…, p. 14).

It needs to be pointed out that modern terminology reflects the Greek (and Roman) outlook more than Egyptian. The closest Egyptian term to “magic”, heka (ḥkȝ) originally referred to something that was ultimately a prerogative of temple priests, rather than an unofficial application of religious principles to private ends (Magical Hymns…, p. 16-18). Since at least some of the authors of the magical papyri were Egyptian priests, possibly ones who sought new sources of income in changing times (Magical Hymns…, p. 23-24), it is possible that they deliberately reinvented their practices for a new clientele to meet their expectations (Magical Hymns…, p. 19). It was pretty clearly important to make sure the clients were satisfied - at least some of the texts were composed ad hoc for specific unique cases (Magical Hymns…, p. 277). While the magical formulas were innovative and had no direct antecedents, they were deliberately presented as a secret ancient tradition to imbue them with more authority. Sometimes they were outright claimed to be passed down from famous historical authors or religious figures, ranging from Pythagoras, through Manetho, to Moses, or even deities, typically ones heavily associated with magic like Hermes or Isis (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 312-313).

The magical papyri feature a plenty of unusual technical terms known as voces magicae. They’re magical formulas with no actual meaning which in the context of the magical papyri might have been treated as secret names of deities. While it is possible some of them were garbled transcriptions of words originating in Egyptian or in Semitic languages, many are pure gibberish, like sequences of vowels (aeēiouō is a genuine example) or invented palindromes (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 285). The formulas sometimes label the voces magicae as Hebrew, Aramaic or Meriotic, but this is obviously not true - at best, it can be assumed that to the customers of the experts preparing the magical papyri they sounded sufficiently “alien” for these labels to be believable (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 309-311). Some authors of the papyri evidently went even further, and claimed that the abra cadabra formulas represent the language of animals, for example falcons or baboons (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 311-312):

The case of “Ereschigal”

It probably comes as no surprise that most of the deities frequently invoked in the magical papyri are Greek (Helios, Hermes, Hecate, Selene, etc.), Egyptian (Isis, Osiris, Seth, Bes, etc.) or, like Serapis, somewhere in between (The Concepts…, p. 10). What is less obvious is why a few of them contain references to Mesopotamian Ereshkigal - or rather “Ereschigal” (Ἐρεσχιγὰλ), to remain true to the Greek spelling. In a single case a Demotic form is attested, but it reflects the Greek one, and doesn’t represent an independent borrowing from any language spoken in Mesopotamia (Daniel Schwemer, Beyond Ereškigal? Mesopotamian Magic Traditions in the Papyri Graecae Magicae, p. 67). What is perhaps even more surprising is that her name is effectively treated as a byname of Hecate - one of the spells is directly labeled as directed towards “Hecate-Ereschigal” (The Concepts..., p. 21).

A crash course in Ereshkigal’s career, from Early Dynastic Lagash to Seleucid Uruk

Ereshkigal is a well attested deity, with a fair share of up to date publications dealing with her to booth. Sadly, as I’ve noticed while working on this article there’s a fairly significant issue with coverage of her in literature dealing with the magical papyri. In many cases even the authors of the most recent, rigorous publications in this field often seem to be far behind when it comes to Assyriology, and depend on and recommend questionable old scholarship. For instance, while I recommend Magical Hymns from Roman Egypt overall - it’s all over this article as a source, and I had a blast reading it - I really think it’s not ideal to use “Kramer 1960” (let alone “Wolkstein and Kramer 1981”) as the main points of reference. For this reason, I feel obliged to at least briefly discuss her history and character here. By the time Ereshkigal got to appear in the magical papyri, she was already a figure with a remarkably long history. She is attested in the textual record for the first time in an offering list from the reign of Urukagina, an Early Dynastic king of Lagash, from around 2370 BCE or so. The even earlier textual sources, like god lists from Fara and Abu Salabikh or the Zame Hymns, don’t mention her at all, though (Dina Katz, The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources, p. 386).

Lu-Utu’s inscription on a dedicatory cone among other similar objects (British Museum; reproduced here for educational purposes only) While Ereshkigal’s very name - “queen of the great earth” - is probably intended to hint at her role as the queen of the underworld, the first text which explicitly characterizes her as such is an inscription of a certain Lu-Utu. He served as the governor of Umma in the Sargonic period (ca. 2300 BCE), probably between the reigns of Manishtushu and Naram-Sin (The Image…, p. 355).

There are actually no other known dedicatory inscriptions mentioning Ereshkigal, Lu-Utu’s is one of a kind (The Image…, p. 352). Overall her cult evidently had a small scope, and later attestations of offerings made to her, let alone sanctuaries dedicated to her, are uncommon (Frans Wiggermann, Nergal A in RlA vol. 9, p. 220). She is also absent from theophoric names, which makes her an outlier even as far as underworld deities go. However, it’s possible that the likes of Nergal or Ninazu would be primarily invoked in this context as the tutelary gods of their cities, not lords of the underworld (Wilfred G. Lambert, Lugal-edinna in RlA vol. 7, p. 137). The bulk of attestations of Ereshkigal are literary texts, chiefly from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000-1600 BCE) and the Neo-Assyrian period (911-612 BCE).

As far as I am aware, there is only one notable cuneiform text corpus dealing in any capacity with Ereshkigal which have some temporal overlap with the (early) magical papyri - the administrative texts from Seleucid Uruk. They mention the existence of a “temple of Ereshkigal” in the city, though this term might actually refer to a cemetery, not a temple - or at least to a sanctuary directly connected to a graveyard (Julia Krul, “Prayers from Him Who Is Unable to Make Offerings”: The Cult of Bēlet-ṣēri at Late Babylonian Uruk, p. 74). Interpreting the term as something more than just an elaborate synonym for a graveyard is the easiest way to explain references to sacrifices made to Ereshkigal, though. These are at the very least implied by a set of instructions pertaining to daily offerings, according to which she couldn’t receive beef or fowl; in contrast with the other regulations (it is self-explanatory why Ningublaga, a cattle god, would be displeased to receive beef) the underlying logic remains unclear (Prayers from…, p. 62). However, even then, it was not really Ereshkigal herself who was actively worshiped - rather, it was her scribe Belet-Seri who enjoyed newfound popularity in Seleucid Uruk (Prayers from…, p. 76-77). Ereshkigal most likely was seen as an unapproachable, distant figure, just like before, and as such was hardly worshiped directly (Prayers from…, p. 75).

Julia Krul argues that Ereshkigal’s presence in the pantheon of Seleucid Uruk reflected diffusion of earlier knowledge about her status as Inanna’s sister, courtesy of the loose Neo-Assyrian adaptation of Inanna’s Descent (Prayers from…, p. 75). I’m skeptical myself - as pointed out by Alhena Gadotti, the term might very well be used as an honorary title, not necessarily as an indication of actual kinship (‘Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld’ and the Sumerian Gilgamesh Cycle, p. 13). No independent evidence for the existence of such a tradition exists, and the very same myth has ample evidence for use of kinship terms as titles - Ninshubur refers to three separate gods as “father” despite none of them ever being actually viewed as her family. It’s also worth pointing out that in Nergal and Ereshkigal Ereshkigal is addressed as the sister of all of the gods when an invitation is sent to her, which obviously can’t be literal. This is ultimately a digression; I plan to go back to this point in a separate article eventually, though - consider this a teaser.

Putting abstract considerations aside, to sum up Ereshkigal didn’t offer a very good parallel to Hecate, not least simply because she was not exactly commonly worshiped - while Hecate is arguably attested primarily in the sphere of cult. Furthermore, while she does appear in Mesopotamian magical texts (āšipūtu), she doesn’t play a particularly major role in them (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67), and in contrast with deities such as Ea as Ningirima she was hardly a “deity of magic”. You probably could make an argument that if anything Ereshkigal offers a closer parallel to Hades - in the god list An = Anum a mini-section even lists names which did double duty both as her bynames and terms for the underworld (Wilfed G. Lambert, Ryan D. Winters, An = Anum and Related Lists, p. 24); the most notable example is easily Irkalla (An = Anum..., p. 196). However, as I’ll try to demonstrate in the next section, the matter of interpretatio graeca is not quite as simple as “the character of these two overlaps, so they ought to be analogous”.

Some notes on interpretatio graeca

Interpretatio graeca is a tricky subject in its own right. Equivalencies weren’t necessarily recognized universally. It goes without saying the perspective of Greeks and foreigners could vary considerably, too. For example, to Greeks the Lycian and Lydian goddess Maliya (Malis) was simply a nymph, as evident in her portrayal in Theocritus’ Idylls (Annic Payne, Native Religious Traditions from a Lydian Perspective, p. 242). However, both to Lycians and Lydians she was a counterpart of Athena - partially due to shared association with craftsmanship, partially because the Lycian kings wanted to emulate Athens politically in one way or another, and sought to portray their tutelary goddess as Athena-like (Eric A. Raimond, Hellenization and Lycian Cults During the Achaemenid Period, p. 153-154; Native Religious…, p. 241).

Oxus depicted in the form of Marsyas (wikimedia commons) Equations could be made based on very superficial similarity. For example, in Bactria a river god regarded as the head of the local pantheon, Oxus, came to be associated with Marsias (sic), and was depicted under the guise of the latter. This was the result of a random twist of fate - Greeks settling in Bactria after the conquests of Alexander largely came from Magnesia (Mary Boyce, Frantz Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. III: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman rule, p. 180; Boris A. Litvinskii, Igor R. Pichikian, The Hellenistic Architecture and Art of the Temple of the Oxus, p. 57-58). Since Marsias was the namesake river god of the main river flowing through this area, he was effectively THE river god to them - and thus upon encounter with a different river god a transfer of iconography was possible. The fact the two shared few, if any, characteristics otherwise was of no importance. Needless to say, nobody ever recognized Marsias himself as king of the gods; but his river-related lore was sufficient for his iconography to be borrowed.

A possible Hellenistic depiction of Nanaya (wikimedia commons) This case is still not quite as outlandish as the official Seleucid policy of recognizing Nanaya as the counterpart of Artemis, which is yet another example of politically motivated interpretatio. There’s an obvious difference right off the bat - Nanaya was associated with eroticism first and foremost, Artemis demonstrably… wasn’t; the same goes for her association with hunting, a sphere of influence Nanaya had nothing to do with. The lack of similar traits was of no real concern, though - Seleucids simply needed local deities who could be presented as counterparts of their dynastic triad of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis. Marduk as a typical pantheon head made a decent fit for Zeus (despite lack of any real connection to the weather), Nabu as his son and, broadly speaking, a deity linked to the arts (primarily scribal, but hey, close enough) was proclaimed the counterpart of Apollo (Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Nabû and Apollo: The Two Faces of Seleucid Religious Policy, p. 20)… and Nanaya, as a Nabu-adjacent goddess, got to be Artemis (Nabû and Apollo…, p. 27). The fact Apollo and Artemis were siblings, while Nabu and Nanaya were not, was not an issue. It’s probably down to chance that it was Nanaya and not Tashmetum, who had a stronger and older claim to an association with Nabu who got this role, really - not that Tashmetum would be a much better match character-wise.

In particularly extreme cases it’s hard to attribute specific cases of interpretatio graeca to anything but confabulation about a deity one Greek author or another had only the vaguest idea of. Perhaps most notably, Herodotus (in)famously asserted that Persian Mitra was Aphrodite in a passage where he generally makes many claims about her foreign equivalents and moe broadly on foreign cults which make at best limited sense (Albert F. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature, p. 107-110). His mistake was repeated by Ambrosius, but to be entirely fair to Greeks and Romans, those two are outliers in this case, and other authors (notably Strabo and Nonnus, but not only them) were at the very least aware that Mithra was a male solar deity and/or that he presided over oaths, even if some of them were confused if he was Persian or Mesopotamian (Traditions of…, p. 286-288).

A unique problem with Hecate and interpretatio graeca is that in many cases we can’t really say much about the deities she was associated with in that capacity, which makes it difficult to determine what shared qualities or historical circumstances lead to the development of a close association. The likes of Roman Trivia or Thessalian Enodia are not exactly well represented in the historical record, to put it very lightly; they’re effectively epithets more than distinct deities which can be discussed in any meaningful capacity. There’s also the even more extreme case of Lydian Nenenene (sic). It’s not hard to find the assumption she was associated with Hecate in scholarship (ex. The Concepts…, p. 132), though the only evidence available is a partially preserved stela with a dedication to her found in Kula. The modern assumption rests entirely on the goddess preserved on it appearing distinctly Hecate-like thanks to the presence of a dog next to her, as no other attestations of Nenenene are available (Eda Nalan Akyürek Şahin, The Cult fo Hecate in Lydia: Evidence from the Manisa Museum, p. 38).

Ereschigal: deity, epithet, vox magica?

At first glance, even taking the difference in their respective characters, the case of Ereshkigal and Hecate might appear easier to parse just because the latter is pretty obviously nowhere near as ephemeral as Enodia or Nenenene. However, in reality the available information about her reception is at best troublesome to interpret.

Ereshkigal is not attested in Greek literature at all outside of the magical papyri and related objects, such as curse tablets and apotropaic gems (Magical Hymns…, p. 236). No cultic activity involving her is attested in areas where any of them were found (Korshi Dosoo, Magical Names: Tracing Religious Changes in Egyptian Magical Texts from Roman and Early Islamic Egypt, p. 123). To make it all even more complicated, not even once does the name appear in a context which would indicate any familiarity with Mesopotamian sources going beyond the awareness that Ereshkigal was an underworld deity. No epithets, no references to motifs from Mesopotamian literature, virtually nothing. When specific attributes are listed, they’re invariably those of Hecate or Persephone (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 66-67).

Of course, it is clear that at least the initial stage of transfer must have involved people who possessed some basic familiarity with the structure of the Mesopotamian pantheon, After all, even if none of the attributes are Ereshkigal’s, and no text where the name appears shows any familiarity with specific Mesopotamian myths or with Mesopotamian magical slash exorcisitic literature (the already mentioned āšipūtu), it is consistently clear it was understood the name designated a figure closely associated with the underworld. However, it’s hard to disagree with the view that the authors and compilers of the available texts mentioning “Ereschigal” pretty clearly had neither detailed knowledge about her character and position in Mesopotamian theology, nor much interest in it.

Daniel Schwemer actually suggests the lack of familiarity might be central to why “Hecate-Ereschigal” arose in the first place. He suggests that the sole purpose of incorporating Ereshkigal into magical formulas was to provide Hecate with a sufficiently unusual, inexplicable new name, without much concern for its original context (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67). He argues that the familiarity with her was so limited that it’s distinctly possible the transfer might have been indirect, though he doesn’t speculate about the identity of middlemen this scenario would require (Beyond Ereškigal…, 78).

If Schwemer is correct - and I see no reason to doubt him - we’re essentially dealing with a ship of Theseus. “Ereschigal” was understood by the magicians compiling and using magical papyri not as a distinct deity whose interpretatio graeca was Hecate, but merely as a title of Hecate, with associations derived from the latter’s character (more on that later). Rather than a strictly Mesopotamian contribution to the world of magical papyri, it is to be classified among ephemeral entities and formulas such as Abraxas or Sesengenbarpharanges (Magical Names…, p. 123). Or, to use a more modern example - somewhere near hocus pocus and abracadabra, if hocus pocus and abracadabra could be personified and assigned as names to one deity or another.

Of course, determining that still leaves many questions about the process of its transmission open - not least the problem of middlemen I mentioned already. Hopefully future research will shed more light on it. I’m fairly hopeful myself - it’s worth noting that a few years after publication of the article I relied on here, a team of researchers from the University of Würzburg lead by Schwemer received a pretty sizeable grant from the German Research Foundation specifically for a project meant to focus on comparative studies of magical papyri and other texts from similar genres.

A remarkable Syriac drawing of the archangel Gabriel (wikimedia commons) Speculation about future research aside, for additional context it’s worth noting that the adaptation of a name without much concern for its original context is not entirely without parallel in the magical papyri. For example, the names of archangels Gabriel and Michael frequently appear as “secret” names of invoked deities, in some cases respectively Anubis or Thoth, or alternatively with solar gods or astral bodies (Magical Hymns…, p. 68). Ereshkigal’s case ultimately remains unique in other regards, though - her name is actually the only Mesopotamian theonym to appear in the magical papyri (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 66). There technically are two other potential suspects, but both cases are at best dubious.

Shamash, Semea, Nebutosualeth: Mesopotamian or magical?

The lack of references to Mesopotamian deities in the magical papyri might seem surprising, especially in comparison to the numerous sources affirming that reception of other arts and sciences, especially astronomy, was widespread. However, it’s important to note that there is actually very little evidence for interactions between specialists involved in Mesopotamian magic and their Egyptian (let alone Greek) counterparts. We do know that scholars and ritual experts from Syria, Anatolia and Egypt were present in the Neo-Assyrian court a few centuries before the composition of the bulk of the magical papyri, which might be relevant here, but this ultimately remains pure speculation (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 64).

As far as the dubious cases of Mesopotamian influence go, a handful of attestations of Shamash (Σαμας) are available, and they at the very least indicate knowledge of this name belonging to a solar god. In one case this theonym is mashed together with a Greek spelling of Ra into the unique “Samas-Phrēth” (Σαμασφρηθ). However, nothing really indicates we’re necessarily dealing with the Mesopotamian Shamash. None of the passages preserve any material which would require adoption of a Mesopotamian figure. In fact, the god is typically labeled as “Canaanite”, “Phoenician” or “Syro-Palestinian” in scholarship in this case (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67-68). This might come as a surprise to some readers, since there’s a fairly common online trend of referring to distinctly feminine Shapash as “Caananite” or even “Phoenician”, but this theonym is exclusive to Ugarit, which was basically its own thing, and ceased to exist in the Bronze Age collapse. Meanwhile, Phoenicians spelled the name of their solar deity, who was male, with a m - so it is perfectly believable that we’re dealing with him in this case, not with the identically named Mesopotamian god, let alone the Ugaritic goddess. It’s worth noting that Phoenician conception of the solar god shows the influence of analogous Egyptian motifs (Manfred Krebernik, Sonnengott A. V. in RlA vol. 12, p. 616) - which I believe might be relevant here in the light of the pairing with Ra. The phonetically similar name Semea (Σημέα) which appears in formulas addressed to solar deities is most likely derived not from a theonym, but from the ordinary Hebrew word for sun, which was seemingly adopted as a “secret” term for the astral body (cf. σημεα inscribed on gems with compilations of such terms; Magical Hymns…, p. 124). -

The other alleged at least partially Mesopotamian theonym is the term Nebutosualeth (or Neboutosoualēth; νεβουτοσουαλήθ), sometimes held to be derived from the name of the god Nabu. For what it’s worth, Nabu was a popular deity through much of the first millennium BCE, and as I mentioned earlier at least some Greeks must have had some exposure to him thanks to official Seleucid policy. However, there’s no strong evidence for this etymology, and it doesn’t account for the origin of… well, the rest of it, really. Even if the first four letters are superficially similar to Nabu’s name, the rest bears no resemblance to any of his epithets (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67).

Similarly as in the case of “Ereschigal”, Nebutosualeth doesn’t appear in any contexts which would reflect Mesopotamian tradition (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67). However, this term typically also shows up in lists of voces magicae describing Hecate. It has been proposed that three of them, which at times appear in sequence - Ereschigal, Neboutosoualēth and Aktiōphi (ἀκτιῶφι; meaning unknown) - were designations of the three moon phases associated with triple Hecate (Magical Hymns…, p. 237). For what it’s worth, Neboutosoualēth is explicitly a lunar goddess acting on behalf of Helios (or rather “Barzan Boubarzan Narzazouzan Barzabouzath Helios”) at night in the London-Leiden papyrus (Jacco Dieleman, Priests, Tongues, and Rites. The London-Leiden Magical Manuscripts and Translation in Egyptian Ritual (100–300 CE), p. 124).

The moon god Sin on an Ur III cylinder seal (wikimedia commons) Needless to say, this would reflect ideas about the moon and deities associated with it typical for Greek culture. In Mesopotamia, the moon was invariably imagined as a male deity, and the same holds true for virtually all the other cultures across the “cuneiform world” (Manfred Krebernik, Mondgott A. I. In Mesopotamien in RlA vol. 8, p. 360).

A Ptolemaic depiction of Wadjet from Edfu (wikimedia commons) As a curiosity it’s worth noting that an alternate proposal is that Neboutosoualēth was derived from Egyptian nbt-wḏȝt, “lady Wadjet” (Uto in Greek), though it also has no strong evidence behind it (Magical Hymns…, p. 237). I think it warrants further inquiries, though, not least because both the magical papyri and a variety of earlier sources actually associate Hecate with snakes (Magical Hymns…, p. 233).

While this is unrelated to the matter of Mesopotamian influence on the magical papyri (or lack thereof), as a curiosity it’s worth noting that least one more of Hecate’s epithets attested in them is at the very least an allusion to voces magicae. The unique Borborophorba (βορβοροφόρβα) from the “love spell of attraction in the presence of heroes or gladiators or those who died violently” (ἀγωγὴ ἐπὶ ἡρώων ἢ μονομάχων ἢ βιαίων) literally means “one who feeds on filth/mud”. However, it has been argued that instead of designating Hecate as some sort of Greco-Egyptian analog of Aztec Tlazeotl or something along these lines, it is effectively an attempt at smashing syllables commonly used in voces magicae both in the papyri and elsewhere into a semi-coherent name. The meaning was most likely of secondary importance, though, and the primary goal might have been to get something sounding vaguely like the barking of a dog (Magical Hymns…, p. 230).

deities in the magical papyri are limited to literature from the early twentieth century, and have been long since abandoned. Most of them were incredibly short lived, and depended entirely on superficial phonetic similarities between voces magicae and Mesopotamian theonyms (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 68). One such proposal warrants some further comments, though, despite being disproved - the assumption that the deity Iao (Ιαω) is Mesopotamian Ea (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 68). I would argue that this assumption was actually sound on some level - Ea (Enki, not to be confused with another unrelated Enki, though) was THE god of magic (not the only one, to be fair, but by far the most prominent). He’s all over āšipūtu literature (as a matter of fact, this art was traditionally represented as his invention), and continued to be worshiped well into Hellenistic times. When cuneiform was arguably at the peak of its prestige, in the second millennium BCE, he was known virtually everywhere from Hattusa all the way up to Susa - and in at least some areas he persisted outside Mesopotamia into the first millennium BCE. It would actually be much easier to explain how a Greek or Egyptian might have stumbled upon him despite limited familiarity with Mesopotamian sources than it is in the case of Ereshkigal.

And yet, Iao is actually not Ea. As it turned out, the reality is much stranger than the early interpretation of the name in scholarship was. Yao is actually a Greek adaptation of the tetragrammaton. The result is effectively a new deity, as opposed to simply YHVH placed in a new context, though (Magical Hymns…, p. 67-68). A short hymn to Apollo preserved in one of the magical papyri describes him as a messenger of Zeus (Magical Hymns…, p. 62). The name also pops up in some gnostic sources, reinterpreted as an archon, which is also attested for a number of other designations for the Abrahamic capital g God (Magical Hymns…, p. 68). That’s well beyond the scope of this article, though.

The references to Iao, as well as a variety of angels, reflect a broader phenomenon: ultimately, while outliers such as Ereshkigal, Shamash or Mitra can be identified, in addition to Greek and Egyptian only Jewish culture is represented to a bigger degree in this text corpus. This is not accidental: religious specialists from these three cultures were all present in Egypt in the relevant periods, and in at least some cases competed for clients. Combining elements from potentially competing traditions could give one an edge in this peculiar supernatural marketplace (The Greco-Egyptian…, p. 284-285).

“Ereschigal” beyond Hecate, Hecate beyond “Ereschigal”

While the other references to Mesopotamian deities in the magical papyri turned out to be dubious at the absolute best, it’s worth highlighting that there are a few cases in the magical papyri where the title Ereschigal is applied not to Hecate, but instead Isis or Aphrodite (Magical Hymns…, p. 236). Needless to say, this doesn’t match Mesopotamian evidence either, and I think it’s safe to say in both cases we are dealing with situations dependent on the associations between these goddesses and Hecate.

A Roman period depiction of Isis (wikimedia commons)

The identification between Hecate and Isis is an incredibly well documented phenomenon - I’m actually shocked how rarely it comes up outside of academic literature, honestly. It depended on two points of connection: like Hecate, Isis was associated with magic; and via a link to the star Sirius (Sothis), she was an astral (though obviously not lunar - deities associated with the moon were invariably male in Egypt) deity. It should be noted that Isis actually had no consistent interpretatio graeca, though, and based on which of her characteristics was emphasized could be variously linked not only with Hecate, but also with Demeter, Persephone, Cybele, Selene, Artemis, Aphrodite, Tyche or Nemesis (Magical Hymns…, p. 9-10; additionally p. 235 for the last two). It should be remembered that in many cases these one-off instances of syncretism had a political motive behind them, since Isis was regarded as a source of authority and legitimacy for rulers - this doesn’t necessarily mean the average person believed she was essentially a slurry of goddesses from all over the ancient Mediterranean (Magical Hymns…, p. 10). Sadly, questionable vintage scholarship lives on, in some cases leading to what Aren Wilson-Wright aptly describes as “Frazerian” attempts to present her as interchangeable even with deities she had nothing to do with, like Inanna (sic) or Tanit (Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age, p. 9).

As for Aphrodite, the matter is more complex. Her association with Hecate seemingly reflected the development of a new, quadruple form of the latter, which required the addition of a fourth deity to the common Hecate-Selene-Artemis set representing the phases of the moon (Magical Hymns…, p. 294). Hecate with “four faces, four names, (...) of the four roads” is attested in a hymnic passage from a text labeled simply as a “spell of attraction” - which also mentions Aphrodite in relation to her, in addition to the expected closely associated goddesses (Magical Hymns…, p. 283). The rise of quadruple Hecate appears to be the result of astronomical developments. As explained by the second century CE astronomer Cleomedes, while earlier on Greeks only recognized three phases of the moon - the crescent, the half moon and the full moon - in his times this number changed to four, with gibbous as a new addition. This also required the addition of a fourth face to the triple depictions of lunar deities (Magical Hymns…, p. 294). As a curiosity it’s worth nothing a late reference to four-faced lunar Hecate can be found in the writings of the sixth century Byzantine official John Lydus, who states that this was a visual representation of the moon’s control over the four elements - pretty clearly a secondary, philosophically motivated reinterpretation (Magical Hymns…, p. 293). The new moon seemingly had no direct impact on the notion of three-bodied lunar Hecate (or any other deity who came to share this characteristic). However, it does show up in the magical papyri in association with her in a slightly different context. According to one of them, the “inscription to the waning moon” (δέλτος ἀποκρουστικὴν πρὸς Σελήνην), it was easier for a magician to command Hecate to specific ends during the new moon. The spell bolsters the effects by having the performer make it clear they are aware of that, and pretend to be “Hermes-Thoth” and claim to know how to prolong the new moon forever just in case (Magical Hymns…, p. 251). This is seemingly a reflection of a motif already common in earlier Egyptian magical texts. It was believed that it was possible for a priest to influence, or even control, a deity by showing a high level of knowledge about their sphere of influence and using it to own advantage, or by threatening to cease to perform or to disturb regular temple services in their honor (Magical Hymns…, p. 253).

It has to be stressed that the connection between Aphrodite and (quadruple) Hecate is limited to only one of the magical papyri (Magical Hymns…, p. 293). There’s also a number of indirect connections between the two, though. Both of them were, in different contexts, linked with Isis, which might have facilitated the incorporation of Aphrodite into Hecate’s circle in the aforementioned magical papyrus (Magical Hymns…, p. 296). While this is less relevant, it’s also worth noting in Samothrace both could be linked with the local goddess Zerynthia (Magical Hymns…, p. 292). It’s worth noting that in addition to the singular case of apparent conflation, some of the magical papyri show what can be described as encroachment of Hecate upon spheres of influence normally associated with Aphrodite. In multiple cases she is invoked in erotic spells (Magical Hymns…, p. 289). As a matter of fact, they represent the single largest group of formulas invoking her (Another View…, p. 193) In one case this role might be underscored by turning the name of Peitho, the personification of persuasion frequently associated with Aphrodite and further with the nymph Iynx (a personified love charm, basically), into a further epithet for her (Magical Hymns…, p. 288). The only reference to Hecate in a vaguely erotic context outside of the magical papyri I am aware of can be found in Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica, though it’s hardly comparable. He states that dreams involving having sex with Hecate are an ill omen, “even if one delights in it” (Daniel E. Harris-McCoy, Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica. Text, Translation & Commentary, p. 149). Curiously, going by the same source, it’s the opposite in the case of Selene - it’s an auspicious omen as long as you are, to paraphrase, a shipowner, helmsman, merchant, or at least examine the heavens, enjoy traveling or wander frequently. Otherwise - it’s a sign you’ll suffer from edema (Artemidorus’ Oneirocitica…, p. 149, 151). Excursus: genderfluid Hecate?

Putting the auspicious and inauspicious implications of dreams aside, the lunar connections of Hecate might be responsible for perhaps the single most unexpected aspect of her character attested exclusively in the magical papyri. A few of them attribute a degree of androgyny to her (Magical Hymns…, p. 259). In the already mentioned “inscription to the waning moon”, she is referred to as possessing “the heart of a man” and as “manly” (Magical Hymns…, p. 247). While Athena or Artemis could be sometimes metaphorically described in other sources in similar terms due to associations with pursuits conventionally regarded in masculine by ancient Greeks, in Hecate’s case the matter is much more complicated.

There might also be a lunar angle to it as well, though - Mene is a title of Selene with strictly lunar connotations, so it’s possible that the underlying idea was that Hecate slash Selene had different forms tied to different moon phases, with gender as one of the characteristics which shifted as the lunar cycle progressed (Magical Hymns…, p. 259). The fact lunar deities were uniformly masculine in Egypt might have contributed to this phenomenon (Magical Hymns…, p. 260). This explanation is obviously speculative, but especially the last argument strikes me as plausible. It’s worth noting that Greeks also came into contact with male lunar deities in Anatolia, most notably with Phrygian Men. While none of them seem to come up in the magical papyri, as far as I am aware, it strikes me as plausible that it could have also contributed to the idea of a genderfluid lunar deity.

The only other figure described as both male and female in the magical papyri is Kronos, though the passage is unique and links this characteristic with the deity’s role as a creator. It’s essentially a parallel of the Orphic creator figure Phanes (The Concepts…, p. 96-97). This is obviously a phenomenon very different from Hecate’s apparent occasional genderfluidity.

There’s a further instance of a connection between Hecate and a male deity in the magical papyri, though it’s much less direct. Two of them refer to her with the feminine form of Hades’ poetic name Aidoneus, Aidonaia (Ἀϊδωναία). This doesn’t really have similar implications, though. This title was only supposed to designate her as an underworld deity - in other words, as “Hecate of Hades” in the sense of a supernatural realm (Magical Hymns…, p. 318).

Deity, epithet, spell, angel: the final attestations of Ereshkigal As far as I’m aware, no passages referring to “Ereschigal” overlap with these discussed above. It might be worth noting that in one case the standard “Ereschigal Neboutosoualēth Aktiōphi” sequence appears in a spell addressed to “Typhon-Seth”, who is obviously a male figure, but the context indicates it’s not supposed to be understood as a string of names applied to him, merely as a magical formula (Beyond Ereškigal…, p. 67)

There actually is a single possible reference to a potentially male Ereshkigal, or rather Ereschigal, though. The name might have continued to circulate as a magical term for at least two centuries after the composition of the last magical papyri. It has been proposed that the name of the angel Erechsiel (’RSKY’L), known only from the inscription on an amulet from the sixth century Maon Synagogue, was one of the results of Jewish reinterpretation of the voces magicae, now personified as angelic figures. They’re all invoked to aid a certain Natrun, daughter of Sarah, who was apparently suffering from headaches (Anna Jordanova, Untersuchungen zur Gestalt einer Unterweltsgöttin: Ereškigal nach den sumerischen und akkadischen Quellentexten, p. 499). Obviously, at this point we’re effectively dealing with a double case of the ship of Theseus: a deity turned into a magical formula turned into an angel. I don’t think the situation is really comparable to the late survival of Nanaya in Sogdia. Still, it makes for a pretty remarkable final chapter in Ereshkigal’s history prior to her rediscovery more than a thousand years later - and even if the connection between her and Hecate was hardly direct, it is safe to say Hecate can be metaphorically credited with making it possible.

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