Born: Unknown (before 560 BCE), Iraq
Died: Unknown (after 500 BCE)
Country most active: Iraq
Also known as: Ennigaldi-Nanna, Ennigaldi
The following is excerpted from “400 Outstanding Women of the World and the Costumology of Their Time” by Minna Moscherosch Schmidt, published in 1933.
This Babylonian woman was the daughter of the last King of Babylon, Nabonidus. Nabonidus dedicated her as high-priestess of the Moon God at Ur. Taking the vows of a priestess seems to have run in the family. Nabonidus’ mother, the grandmother of Bel-Shalti-Nannar, was high priestess of the Moon God at Harran, the important city of the moon god worship in the north, the city to which Abraham went with Terah from Ur of the Chaldees in the dawn of Hebrew history. And farther back an Egyptian ancestress who had married into the royal family of the Neo-Babylonian Empire was a high priestess of Amon at Thebes in Egypt. And even farther back than that it was the custom in Ur of the Chaldees for a King, if he wished, to consecrate his daughter to the service of the Moon God. Therefore when Nabonidus consecrated his daughter to the service of the God in Ur, he was only treading in the steps of previous Kings of the alluvium, and he was also carrying out a family tradition.
IW note: She also founded a museum in Ur c. 530 BC, possibly the first museum in world history, in which she cataloged, labelled and displayed artifacts from the prior 1,500 years of Mesopotamian history.