Nana was an ancient Eastern Iranian goddess worshiped by Bactrians, Sogdians and Chorasmians, as well as by Yuezhi, including Kushans, as the head of their respective pantheons. She was derived from the earlier Mesopotamian goddess Nanaya. Attempts to connect her with Inanna (Ishtar) instead depend on the erroneous notion that the latter was identical with Nanaya, which is considered outdated. She was regarded as an astral deity, and in Sogdian art was depicted with representations of the sun and moon. Kushan emperors additionally associated her with royal power. In Sogdia she might have also developed an otherwise unattested warlike aspect, as evidenced by murals showing her in battles against demons. She was seemingly associated with the Sogdian counterpart of Tishtrya, Tish, who might have been regarded as her spouse.
There is no consensus regarding the date of Nana's introduction to Central Asia, though most researchers assume it occurred in the late first millennium BCE. Her cult was adopted by the rulers of the Kushan Empire, and she is mentioned in the Rabatak inscription of Kanishka as the deity who granted him his position. She later spread to Sogdia, where she became a popular deity, as evidenced by her prevalence in theophoric names and her numerous representations in art. Panjakent was most likely her cult center, and a temple dedicated to her was located there. Attestations are also available from other Sogdian sites and from text corpora mentioning Sogdians living in China. Some evidence also exists for the worship of Nana in Chorasmia and Khotan.
Name and origin
On the coins of Kanishka, Nana's name is spelled as Nanaia (Ναναια) in Greek and Nana (Νανα) in Bactrian. An additional attested variant is Nanašao (Ναναϸαο), "royal Nana". In Sogdian it was rendered as Nana or Nanai (𐼻𐼻𐼷, nny). A Chinese phonetic transcription is also attested, 那那. Additional variants occur in Chinese writings of Sogdian theophoric names, for example 娜寧 (nà-níng). Examples have been identified texts from Turfan as an element in names such as Nanaivandak (那寧畔陀, Naningpantuo; "servant of Nana") and Nanaifarn (那你潘, Nanifan; "glory of Nana"). In a bilingual Chinese-Sogdian inscription which also mentions an individual named Nanaivandak ("Ninipantuo", 埿埿槃陁) Nana's name is instead transcribed as 埿埿, Nini.
Nana is presumed to be a derivative of the Mesopotamian goddess Nanaya. The original form of the latter name, dna-na-a (), appears for the first time in cuneiform texts from the Shulgi-simti archive from Puzrish-Dagan (Drehem), dated to the Ur III period ( 2100 BCE). The only possible earlier attestations are Old Akkadian personal names from Gasur with the element na-na (, written without the determinative designating theonyms), but they might be unrelated, as the evidence for later worship of Nanaya in the Diyala River basin and elsewhere in the east of Mesopotamia is scarce. The etymology of Nanaya's name is unknown, though according to Joan Goodnick Westenholz it can be assumed that it originates in Akkadian, as it ends with a suffix common in hypocoristics and nisba formations in Semitic languages. An alternate view is that it was a loanword from Elamite. Proponents of this theory suggest it was derived from the term nan(n)-, "day" or "morning", though Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz stresses that support for this view among researchers is limited. She states that Nanaya's complete absence from Old Elamite sources makes it implausible.
Following François Lenormant's proposal from 1876, Nana is sometimes incorrectly described by historians of Central Asia as a derivative of Inanna (Ishtar), in this context treated as identical with Nanaya, but Daniel T. Potts notes that the modern consensus view in Assyriology is that they were distinct goddesses. Joan Goodnick Westenholz stressed that the two were never confused with each other in primary sources, and accordingly cannot be treated as interchangeable in scholarship. Westenholz's and Potts's conclusions have been subsequently adopted by the Iranologists Michael Shenkar and Matteo Compareti in their studies of Nana. While it has been suggested that Nana's cult in Central Asia flourished because she initially developed through syncretism between her Mesopotamian forerunner and an Iranian goddess, neither textual nor archeological sources support this conclusion. Shenkar states that modern attempts to identify her as a form of Anahita or Spenta Armaiti should be considered "artificial", and depend on the incorrect assumption that the religion of Eastern Iranian peoples matched Western Iranian Zoroastrian tradition more closely than it did in reality.
Character and iconography
Available sources indicate that Nana was the head of the Kushan and Sogdian pantheons, and she likely played an analogous role in Chorasmia as well. Her character was regarded as benevolent. Rulers from the Kushan dynasty associated her with royal legitimacy. In this capacity she was depicted drawing a sword, or in a single exceptional case blessing the ruler. Kushans sometimes depicted Nana with four arms, which is also attested for her in later Sogdian art. In the latter context the additional pair of arms reflected conventions of Mahayana Buddhist art of the region, in which multi-armed deities were widespread. She is also depicted with four arms in Chorasmian art, for example on a silver bowl dated to 658.
Nana and lions
The lion was regarded as both an attribute and mount of Nana. In Kushan art, was typically depicted seated on the back of this animal. Henri-Paul Francfort stresses that she should be considered distinct from the goddess Ardoksho, as - despite similarities in iconography - only the latter is consistently portrayed holding a cornucopia. A possible forerunner to the depictions of Nana riding on a lion is the Assyrian convention of showing Ishtar standing on the back of a lion, which in cities such as Hatra prevailed through Hellenistic and Roman periods. The common sideways position might however be influenced by portraying figures such as Dionysus, Ariadne and Cybele seated sideways on wild cats in Hellenistic art, as it is known such images reached Bactria, as evidenced for example by objects recovered from tombs in Tillya Tepe. The image of Nana riding on a lion is also known from Sogdia, though in contrast with Kushan depictions she is portrayed riding the animal astride, with a stirrup visible, rather than sideways. The addition of the stirrup to her iconography is not attested earlier on and according to Katsumi Tanabe can be considered one of two best attested purely Sogdian artistic innovations, next to images of winged camels. Most likely it was influenced by a style of horse-riding popular among Sogdian women. In Sogdian art no other deities were associated with lions.
Nana was also depicted holding scepters with lion-shaped zoomorphic finials, for example on a panel from Kafir-kala dated to the fifth or sixth century. A further possible example has been identified on a terracotta plaque from Afrasiab. She was also seemingly associated with birds, as evidenced by Sogdian works of art portraying her holding banners topped with figures of these animals.
Nana as an astral goddess Nana was regarded as an astral deity. In Kushan art, she was typically depicted with a crescent on her head. In two cases, the crescent appears to be rising from her shoulders instead. The astral aspect of character was also emphasized in Sogdian art. Sogdians portrayed her holding representations of the sun and the moon in two of her hands. Joan Goodnick Westenholz suggested that these attributes might indicate that she was believed to maintain the balance between day and night. It is also possible that the sun and the moon represented Mithra and Mah, though in some cases a feminine face appears inside the latter. In some cases Nana was also depicted in a diadem decorated with a crescent. Harry Falk argues that it is implausible that Nana's crescent represents the moon, and that the halo present around her head in Kushan art is a reflection of the sun as argued by other researchers, as both of these celestial bodies are represented as independent deities in Kushan art, either as Helios and Selene or Mihir (Mithra) and Mah. He suggests that the crescent should instead be interpreted as a symbol of the planet Venus. While Galileo Galilei is generally considered the first person who observed crescent-shaped Venus, Falk argues that this phenomenon might already be alluded to in an omen text from the reign of Ashurbanipal referring to "horns of Venus", seemingly referencing a common designation of the lunar crescent in Mesopotamian texts. Falk's conclusion that Nana was associated with Venus by Kushans has also been accepted by Michael Shenkar. However, Westenholz stated that she was at no point in time associated with Venus, and her Sogdian depictions with the sun and the moon find a parallel in textual sources pertaining to her Mesopotamian forerunner, which according to her indicates a continuity of astral functions from the second millennium BCE to the first millennium CE.
A further possible astral symbol associated with Nana were the so-called "three pellets", which occur as a decoration of her earrings in Kushan and Sogdian art (for example on a mural from Shahristan) and her scepter on a Chorasmian bowl.
Nana as a warlike goddess Due to her frequent portrayals in the company of armed attendants, as well as a tradition of depicting her battling demons, it has been suggested that Nana had a military aspect in Sogdia, though analogous evidence is not available from Bactria. A painting from Panjakent showing Nana fighting demons alongside a hero riding in a chariot is presumed to represent a scene from a hitherto unknown Sogdian myth. In the Khirmantepa ossuary, as well as in the so-called "Hell and Heaven painting" from Panjakent, she might be accompanied by Tish (Tishtrya), a Zoroastrian figure associated with rain. Matteo Compareti suggests they were regarded as a couple, and that images of the pair were an adaptation of the Mesopotamian convention of pairing Nanaya and Nabu documented in sources from the first millennium BCE. Michael Shenkar stresses that the evidence regarding a possible connection between Nana and Tish, which would be exclusive to Sogdian tradition, is not conclusive, though he does accept that he is the deity who most plausibly can be assigned the role of Nana's spouse. He notes that he apparently plays the role of her "guardian" in art. However, in another painting from Panjakent she is instead accompanied by two warlike female figures. It is also possible that she was depicted in the company of armored and armed Vrēšman, the Sogdian form of Vaiśravaṇa.
Other possible roles A bronze plaque which supposedly originates in the Laghman valley in Afghanistan might indicate that in post-Kushan Bactria Nana came to be viewed as a goddess linked to nature and vegetation, as a figure depicted on it similar to her in addition to riding on her symbolic lion she is accompanied by flowerpots, her crown is decorated with tulips and she holds a plant stem, but due to the unique character of this work of art and lack of similar evidence from Sogdia this proposal remains speculative.
Worship