Meme

Meme or Memešaga was a Mesopotamian goddess possibly regarded as a divine caretaker. While originally fully separate, she eventually came to be treated as one and the same as Gula, and as such came to be associated with medicine. The god list An = Anum additionally indicates she served as the sukkal (attendant deity) of Ningal. Name and character The theonym written in cuneiform as dME.ME likely can be read phonetically, though according to Manfred Krebernik a degree of caution is necessary. The meaning of this name is uncertain, though it is commonly suggested that it might be an example of a so-called "baby word" (Lallwort) which referred to a mother or more generically to a female caretaker. A lexical text from Ebla explains it as u3-me-tum, possibly to be understood as a Loanword originating in Sumerian, "nursemaid". Based on these lexical factors it has been proposed that Meme was regarded as a divine caregiver. The original full name of the goddess was likely Memešaga, though in the god list An = Anum Meme and Memešaga have separate entries, with the latter occurring right after the former in the Ninkarrak section. Irene Sibbing-Plantholt points out that the addition of the element šaga ("good") to a theonym would find a direct parallel in the name of the goddess Lammašaga. It is assumed that even though Meme eventually came to exist only as an alternate name of other goddesses, she was initially a fully independent deity.