Hey, I just got done reading your amazing write up about Nanaya. I honestly didn’t expect to find the best information yet on Tumblr! I did have one question though: given that Nanaya was heavily influenced by Inanna/Ishtar, do we have any information concerning whether her cult had similarly third gender/gender non-conforming parts of its clergy?
Gala (Akkadian kalû) are mentioned among Nanaya's clergy in Kish (during the reign of Ammi-ditana; Drenowska-Rymarz, The Mesopotamian Goddess Nanaya, p. 67), in Larsa (during the reign of Rim-Sin I; p. 69), and in Uruk (historical note in an inscription of Simbar-Shipak from Nippur; p. 70). Pretty sure only Borsippa is missing out of her major cult centers. Given that the evidence pertaining to clergy of Nanaya is relatively sparse overall, especially before the first millennium BCE, it seems safe to say it was a fairly common phenomenon.
However, as gala were by no means "priests of Inanna" as commonly incorrectly claimed online, and their much debated gender identity had nothing to do with Inanna (as they also occur in the cults of deities who were essentially paragons of gender conformity; plus even when ambiguity occurs in the case of Inanna, it's not really making her identity gala-like... in fact, other than Lumha no deity is really described as a gala - and Lumha was essentially a personification of the profession), I feel the question is a bit misguided.
Gala were professional lamenters, and not really any less common than ritual purificators or temple scribes. Any deity major enough to have multiple types of specialists attached to their temples had gala. They were a core part of the religious landscape of Mesopotamia basically to the same degree as the āšipu, and by the first millennium BCE these two specialized priestly professions are in fact often mentioned side by side (Uri Gabbay, The kalû Priest and kalûtu Literature in Assyria, p. 116).
With that in mind, it's safe to assume the presence of gala in the cult of Nanaya has nothing to do with association with Inanna, all it shows is that she was worshiped commonly enough to warrant the existence of multiple types of clergy in multiple cities.
To further demonstrate that gala were a class of clergy like any other as opposed to "priests of Inanna": Ninurta's cult involved gala (Wolfgang Heimpel, Balang Gods, p. 583; "chief gala" mentioned among the staff of Eshumesha in Nippur alongside a "chief singer"), as did Ninazu's (Paul-Alain Beauieu, Remarks on Theophoric Names in the Late Babylonian Archives from Ur, p. 170; influential enough for the name to be spelled in emesal as standard in late sources), or Nanshe's (Gebhard J. Selz, Untersuchungen zur Götterwelt des altsumerischen Staates von Lagaš, p. 205-206 discusses members of Nanshe's clergy in ED Lagash); even the late invention of an "antiquarian" cult of Anu involved gala (Julia Krul, The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk, p. 31), the examples keep piling up. It's also worth noting even the arts of the gala were believed to be an invention of Ea (Uri Gabbay, The kalû Priest and kalûtu Literature in Assyria, p. 116), same as most other professions.
I think connecting Inanna's gender nonconformity (which occurs primarily in association with her military role) or occasional ambiguity (which is best attested in astronomical context) with the presence of gala in her cult is an issue in itself (even without going into the mess that is the common trend of connecting gala with the sexual aspect of Inanna specifically, for no particularly strong reason) but I will cover these matters (and more) in a separate long post soon.
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