Nanna-Suen’s Journey to Nippur

The composition entitled Nanna-Suen’s Journey to Nippur (ur-sag-e, according to its incipit) is one of a number of Sumerian literary compositions which have been recognized as having a thematic similarity and have been classified accordingly as divine journeys. The composition have, as one of their central themes, a journey (usually by boat) taken by a deity to a cult center outside his or her own province. A sizeable body of non-literary evidence suggests that journeys such as these were a central and meaningful practice of the Sumerian cultus and ritual journeys of divine images or emblems are well-attested in offering lists of the Old-Sumerian and Neo-Sumerian periods.