Pinikir

Pinikir, also known as Pinigir, Pirengir, Pirinkir, and Parakaras, was an Ancient Near Eastern astral goddess who originates in Elamite religious beliefs. While she is only infrequently attested in Elamite documents, she achieved a degree of prominence in Hurrian religion. Due to her presence in pantheons of many parts of the Ancient Near East, from Anatolia to Iran, modern researchers refer to her as a "cosmopolitan deity."

Early scholarship incorrectly identified her as one and the same as Kiririsha, an unrelated goddess from a different part of Elam.

Name

Wilfred G. Lambert considered Pinikir's origin to be Elamite.

Hittitologist Gary Beckman proposes that Pinikir’s name has Sumerian origin and has been derived from pirig.gal, "great feline." However, according to Piotr Taracha, this proposal cannot be proven conclusively. While it was assumed in the past that a deity named Pirig-gal appears in the inscriptions of the Hurrian king Tish-atal of Urkesh, subsequent research has shown that this was a misreading and the name inscribed is actually that of Nergal. John MacGinnis argues that a deity named Pirig-gal, attested in an inscription of Esarhaddon, can be identified as Pinikir nonetheless.

Multiple spellings are attested both in Elamite (Pi-ni-gir, Bi-ni-gir, Bi-ne-en-gi-ir, Pi-in-gi-ir-ra) and Hurro-Hittite (Pi-ri-in-kir, Pi-re-en-kir, Pi-ri-kir, Pi-ri-ki-ir, Pi-ri-in-ki-ir) sources. It is possible that some of the latter were read as “Piriggir.” In the Yazılıkaya sanctuary, Pinikir’s name is spelled in hieroglyphs as PURUS+ra/i.

Character and iconography

Pinikir was an astral deity, possibly a divine representation of the planet Venus.