Bulluṭsa-rabi
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Bulluṭsa-rabi | |
|---|---|
| Occupation | āšipu |
| Language | Akkadian |
| Period | Kassite period |
| Notable works | Hymn to Gula |
Bulluṭsa-rabi (also romanized as Bullussa-rabi[1]) was a Babylonian author and āšipu who most likely lived in the Kassite period. While sources from the first millennium BCE indicate at the time it was assumed that Bulluṭsa-rabi was a man, and this assumption was also initially followed by Assyriologists, further research showed that all individuals bearing this name recorded in earlier sources were women. A composition known from Nineveh, the Catalogue of Texts and Authors, attributes the authorship of a well known hymn to Gula and a number of unidentified texts to her.
Bulluṭsa-rabi's name can be translated from Akkadian as "her curing is great".[2] It implicitly refers to Gula,[3] a Mesopotamian goddess associated with healing.[4] The so-called Catalogue of Texts and Authors states that she was an āšipu.[5] This term is often translated as "incantation priest" or "exorcist".[6] Furthermore, it describes her as a "scholar of Babylon".[7]
Sources from the first millennium BCE consistently preface Bulluṭsa-rabi's name with a masculine determinative.[8] When it was first identified in a cuneiform text in 1967, Wilfred G. Lambert also concluded that it belonged to a man.[9] The same assumption was followed by Benjamin R. Foster in his 2005 translation of the same text.[10] However, as summarized by Zsombor Földi, while initially the name was otherwise unknown, further research revealed the existence of multiple women bearing it who lived in Nippur between the reigns of the Kassite kings Nazi-Maruttash (1307-1282 BCE) and Shagarakti-Shuriash (1245-1233 BCE).[11] He concludes that their namesake might have similarly been a woman, and presumably also was active in the thirteenth century BCE.[3] Enrique Jiménez, who took part in the research leading to this discovery alongside Földi, Tonio Mitto and Adrian Heinrich, states that most likely in later periods copyists presumed all authors were men, regardless of their original identity.[8] He compares the evolution of opinions regarding Bulluṭsa-rabi in Assyriology to the earlier research focused on another ancient Mesopotamian author, Enheduanna.[8] Following their publications, the case of Bulluṭsa-rabi received press coverage in October 2020 in Süddeutsche Zeitung[12] and Die Welt.[13] In the former of these newspapers, Harald Eggebrecht noted that it might lead to further inquiries into the gender of Mesopotamian authors previously also by default presumed to be men.[12]
