Nanshe, Goddess of Audits
Nanshe, Goddess of Audits
The goddess Nanshe was a patron deity of the Sumerian temple's internal auditing system, but we don't hear about that side of her all too often. This aspect speaks to her role as a boundary protector, ensuring that there was institutional autonomy unaffected by state overreach.
For fun, some snippets of Thorkild Jacobsen's translation (1987) of the Hymn to Nanshe:
At the new year, the day of assignments,
did the lady shower
the holy body,
on the day to review
(performance for) food and fief,
did Nanshe hold
review of the servants.
Her chief scribe, Nidaba,
put out of her own accord
all valid tablets
as they had been figured up,
took the golden stylus in hand
and was lining up the servants
for Nanshe in single file.
One (sheep)skin-clad one
she would be letting
enter to her from his skins
one linen-clad one
she would be letting
pass on to her from his linen.
An(other) (sheep)skin-clad one
she would not be letting
enter to her from his skins,
an(other) linen-clad one
she would not be letting
pass on to her from his linen.
With the men on the attendance lists
ranged (side) by side,
she would be calling for
eyewitnesses
among them
to a runaway of hers,
the witnesses to (one) of hers
who had absconded from the temple,
and shaking the head
she would be discontinuing
his position and box (of records).
It (the temple) is not proliferating
its spells unduly,
does not keep adding to its rites.
For its sacred offices
-any sacred office-
no man can set bounds,
and thus, in order that
bounds be not set
for anything belonging to it,
no one setting bounds
can enter Nanshe's temple;
the man must be passing by it
by the white quay.
In Nanshe's temple the river ordeal
will clear a man.
Out of the holy chants,
which divination will have elicited
from the mouth of Apsu,
the selector of chants
will recognize
the (appropriate) chant,
and will invoke Enkum and Ninkum
with it at handwashing.
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