Mullissu is a goddess who is the consort of the
Assyrian god
Asshur. Mullissu may be identical with the
Sumerian goddess
Ninlil, wife of the god
Enlil, which would parallel the fact that Asshur himself was modeled on Enlil. Mullissu's name was written dnin.líl.[1][2] Mullissu is identified with
Ishtar of Nineveh in the
Neo-Assyrian Empire times.
Also proposed to be Mullissu is a goddess whom
Herodotus called Mylitta and identified with
Aphrodite. The name Mylitta may derive from Mulliltu or Mullitta, the
Babylonian variant of Mullissu, where one cult was connected with the é-kur in
Nippur and the other with
Kish (Sumer).[3][2]Mulliltum was an epithet of Ninlil which appears as Mullissu in
Neo-Assyrian as the wife of god Ashur.[4] She is spelled mlš, here also as the consort of Asshur (’šr), in the
Sfire inscription (A8) from Syria inscribed in
Old Aramaic (eighth century BCE).[5][6] Her Late Babylonian cult is reflected in the spelling mwlyt (Mulit) as transmitted in the
Mandaic magical corpus of
late antiquity.[7][2]
References
^Simo Parpola, The Murderer of Sennacherib," in Death in Mesopotamia, CRRA 26 (= Mesopotamia 8; Copenhagen, 1984), pp. 171-182.
^
abcKarlheinz Kessler, “Mylissa, Mylitta,” in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and , Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry. Consulted online on 27 January 2021 <
http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1574-9347_bnp_e814100
^Karlheinz Kessler and Christa Müller-Kessler, “Spätbabylonische Gottheiten in spätantiken mandäischen Texten,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 89, 1999, pp. 70–72.
^Simo Parpola, The Murderer of Sennacherib," in Death in Mesopotamia, CRRA 26 (= Mesopotamia 8; Copenhagen, 1984), pp. 171-182; another Sumerian name for Enlil was Mullil > Akkadian and Mulliltu the reading of Ninlil, Mulliltu > Neo-Assyrian Mullissu.
^André Lemaire and Jean Marie Durand, Les inscriptions araméeens de Sfiré et l’Assyrie de Shamashi-ilu (Paris: Librairie Droz, 1984), pp. 113, 132.
^Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Aramaic Inscriptions of Sefire (Rome: Editrice Pontificio Biblico, 1995), p. 70.
^Karlheinz Kessler and Christa Müller-Kessler, “Spätbabylonische Gottheiten in spätantiken mandäischen Texten,” Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 89, 1999, pp. 70–72.