Naamah

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Naamah (naʿămâ)is the sister of Tubal-Cain, daughter of Lamech and Zillah. We know nothing about her and supposedly she was meant to convey all we need to know about her through her name, that is highly meaningful for two reasons: first it is etymologically connected to the well-known Hebrew root naʿăm (TWAT5, 502-507) and secondly it is used in Ugaritic texts as epithet of Anath. The name of the sister of the first blacksmith literally means "charm" (HALOT 706) and sounds provoking because being used for Anath, the war goddess, it seems an ideal prosecution of her mother task, because in Zillah we can recognize the traits of the Hittite Anzili, that is the Anatolian equivalent of Ishtar (Wilhelm 2010), another war goddess. Besides, from Plutarch we get to know that Astarte was called Nemanous(De Iside, § 15; see Nardelli 2018: 253) and the theonym Astronome can be read as ʿAštart-naʿama (Grottanelli 2001: 23). Zillah-Anzili-Anath-Astarte-Naamah might be different names for what is known from the Nabonidus stele in Harran: Ishtar is the "lady of battle, without whom hostility and peace exist not in the land, and a weapon is not forged" (Gadd 1958: 59; Pettinato 1988: 232). Finally, from Hittite-Egyptian diplomacy we are aware of a syncretism between Inara, the tutelary goddess for the Hittites and Anath, adopted in Egypt from the Ugaritic pantheon (Singer 2011: 517ff.).