Ṣarpanitu

Zarpanitu (also romanized as Ṣarpānītu) was a Mesopotamian goddess regarded as the spouse of Marduk. Not much is known about her character, though late sources indicate that she was associated with pregnancy and that she could be assigned similar roles as her husband, including that of queen of the gods. She was originally worshiped in Zarpan, a village near Babylon, though the latter city itself also served as her cult center. The most common spelling of Zarpanitu's name in cuneiform was dzar-pa-ni-tum. It is romanized as Ṣarpānītu instead by Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, but this choice has been criticized by Wilfred G. Lambert, who points out that while cuneiform does not differentiate between the sounds z and ṣ, supplementary evidence for the former option is provided both by various scholarly etymologies of the name and by texts written in the Aramaic alphabet, which does differentiate between z and ṣ. The Aramaic spelling zrpnt is known from the Sefire inscriptions. Authors such as Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Andrew R. George, Joan Goodnick Westenholz and Takayoshi Oshima (who was responsible for the relevant entry in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie) also favor romanizing the name with a z. However, romanizations starting with ṣ also continue to be used in Assyriological literature. Zarpanitu's name has Akkadian origin. Two different possible etymologies are well documented in primary sources, "the lady of the city of Zarpan" and "creatress of seed" (from zēr-bānītu). Today it is assumed the name was most likely derived from the toponym Zarpan, a settlement located near Babylon, though seemingly according to a folk etymology it was named after the goddess instead, as attested in a myth known only from a fragmentary tablet from the library of Ashurbanipal. While attempts have been made to etymologize the name as "silvery" instead, this view is now regarded as unsubstantiated. Two names which originally designated the spouse of Asalluhi, Erua and Papnunanki, came to be used as names of Zarpanitu after her husband Marduk was equated with that god in the eighteenth century BCE.