Goddess Ishtar on an Akkadian Empire seal, 2350–2150 BCE. She is equipped with weapons on her back, has a horned helmet, is trampling a lion held on a leash and is accompanied by the star of Shamash.
She was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, her early main cult center. In archaic Uruk she was worshiped in three forms: morning Inanna (Inana-UD/hud), evening Inanna (Inanna sig) and princely Inanna (Inanna NUN), the former two reflecting the phases of her associated planet Venus.[5][6] Her most prominent symbols included the lion and the eight-pointed star. Her husband was the god Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz), and her sukkal (attendant) was the goddess Ninshubur, later conflated with the male deities Ilabrat and Papsukkal.
Inanna was worshiped in Sumer at least as early as the Uruk period (c. 4000 BCE – 3100 BCE), and her cultic activity was relatively localized before the conquest of Sargon of Akkad. During the post-Sargonic era, she became one of the most widely venerated deities in the Sumerian pantheon,[7][8] with temples across Mesopotamia. The cult of Inanna / Ishtar, which may have been associated with a variety of sexual rites, was continued by the East Semitic-speaking peoples (Akkadians, Assyrians and Babylonians) who succeeded and absorbed the Sumerians in the region.
She was especially beloved by the Assyrians, who elevated her to become the highest deity in their pantheon, ranking above their own national godAshur. Inanna / Ishtar is alluded to in the Hebrew Bible, and she greatly influenced the Ugaritic goddess Ashtart and later the Phoenician goddess Astarte, who in turn possibly influenced the development of the Greek goddess Aphrodite. Her cult continued to flourish until its gradual decline between the first and sixth centuries CE in the wake of Christianity.
Inanna appears in more myths than any other Sumerian deity.[9][10][11] She also had a uniquely high number of epithets and alternate names, comparable only to Nergal.[12]
Many of her myths involve her taking over the domains of other deities. She was believed to have been given the mes, which represented all positive and negative aspects of civilization, by Enki, the god of wisdom. She was also believed to have taken over the Eanna temple from An, the god of the sky. Alongside her twin brother Utu (later known as Shamash), Inanna was the enforcer of divine justice; she destroyed Mount Ebih for having challenged her authority, unleashed her fury upon the gardener Shukaletuda after he raped her in her sleep, and tracked down the bandit woman Bilulu and killed her in divine retribution for having murdered Dumuzid. In the standard Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh, Ishtar asks Gilgamesh to become her consort. When he disdainfully refuses, she unleashes the Bull of Heaven, resulting in the death of Enkidu and Gilgamesh's subsequent grapple with his own mortality.
Inanna's most famous myth is the story of her descent into and return from the ancient Mesopotamian underworld, ruled by her older sister Ereshkigal. After she reaches Ereshkigal's throne room, the seven judges of the underworld deem her guilty and strike her dead. Three days later, Ninshubur pleads with all the gods to bring Inanna back. All of them refuse her, except Enki, who sends two sexless beings to rescue Inanna. They escort Inanna out of the underworld, but the galla, the guardians of the underworld, drag her husband Dumuzid down to the underworld as her replacement. Dumuzid is eventually permitted to return to heaven for half the year, while his sister Geshtinanna remains in the underworld for the other half, resulting in the cycle of the seasons.
Inanna receiving offerings on the Uruk Vase, circa 3200–3000 BCE
Scholars believe that Inanna and Ishtar were originally separate, unrelated deities,[13] but were conflated with one another during the reign of Sargon of Akkad and came to be regarded as effectively the same goddess under two different names.[14][c] Inanna's name may derive from the Sumerian phrase nin-an-ak, meaning "Lady of Heaven",[16][17] but the cuneiform sign for Inanna (𒈹) is not a ligature of the signs lady (Sumerian: nin; cuneiform: 𒊩𒌆 SAL.TUG2) and sky (Sumerian: an; cuneiform: 𒀭 AN).[17][16][18] These difficulties led some early Assyriologists to suggest that Inanna may have originally been a Proto-Euphratean goddess, who was only later accepted into the Sumerian pantheon. This idea was supported by Inanna's youthfulness, as well as the fact that, unlike the other Sumerian divinities, she seems to have initially lacked a distinct sphere of responsibilities.[17] The view that there was a Proto-Euphratean substrate language in Southern Iraq before Sumerian is not widely accepted by modern Assyriologists.[19]
The name Ishtar occurs as an element in personal names from both the pre-Sargonic and post-Sargonic eras in Akkad, Assyria, and Babylonia.[20] It is of Semitic derivation[21][20] and is probably etymologically related to the name of the West Semitic god Attar, who is mentioned in later inscriptions from Ugarit and southern Arabia.[21][20] The morning star may have been conceived as a male deity who presided over the arts of war and the evening star may have been conceived as a female deity who presided over the arts of love.[20] Among the Akkadians, Assyrians, and Babylonians, the name of the male god eventually supplanted the name of his female counterpart,[22] but, due to extensive syncretism with Inanna, the deity remained as female, although her name was in the masculine form.[22]
Origins and developmentedit
The Uruk Vase (Warka Vase), depicting votive offerings to Inanna (3200–3000 BCE).[23]
Inanna has posed a problem for many scholars of ancient Sumer due to the fact that her sphere of power contained more distinct and contradictory aspects than that of any other deity.[24] Two major theories regarding her origins have been proposed.[25] The first explanation holds that Inanna is the result of a syncretism between several previously unrelated Sumerian deities with totally different domains.[25][26] The second explanation holds that Inanna was originally a Semitic deity who entered the Sumerian pantheon after it was already fully structured, and who took on all the roles that had not yet been assigned to other deities.[27]
As early as the Uruk period (c. 4000–3100 BCE), Inanna was already associated with the city of Uruk.[28] During this period, the symbol of a ring-headed doorpost was closely associated with Inanna.[28] The famous Uruk Vase (found in a deposit of cult objects of the Uruk III period) depicts a row of naked men carrying various objects, including bowls, vessels, and baskets of farm products,[29] and bringing sheep and goats to a female figure facing the ruler.[30] The female stands in front of Inanna's symbol of the two twisted reeds of the doorpost,[30] while the male figure holds a box and stack of bowls, the later cuneiform sign signifying the En, or high priest of the temple.[31]
Seal impressions from the Jemdet Nasr period (c. 3100–2900 BCE) show a fixed sequence of symbols representing various cities, including those of Ur, Larsa, Zabalam, Urum, Arina, and probably Kesh.[32] This list probably reflects the report of contributions to Inanna at Uruk from cities supporting her cult.[32] A large number of similar seals have been discovered from phase I of the Early Dynastic period (c. 2900–2350 BCE) at Ur, in a slightly different order, combined with the rosette symbol of Inanna.[32] These seals were used to lock storerooms to preserve materials set aside for her cult.[32]
Various inscriptions in the name of Inanna are known, such as a bead in the name of King Aga of Kish c. 2600 BCE, or a tablet by King Lugal-kisalsi c. 2400 BCE:
Tablet of Lugal-kisalsi
For An, king of all the lands, and for Inanna, his mistress, Lugal-kisalsi, king of Kish, built the wall of the courtyard.
During the Akkadian period (c. 2334–2154 BCE), following the conquests of Sargon of Akkad, Inanna and originally independent Ishtar became so extensively syncretized that they became regarded as effectively the same.[34][22] The Akkadian poet Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon, wrote numerous hymns to Inanna, identifying her with Ishtar.[34][35] As a result of this,[34] the popularity of Inanna/Ishtar's cult skyrocketed.[34][28][36] Alfonso Archi, who was involved in early excavations of Ebla, assumes Ishtar was originally a goddess venerated in the Euphrates valley, pointing out that an association between her and the desert poplar is attested in the most ancient texts from both Ebla and Mari. He considers her, a moon god (e.g., Sin) and a sun deity of varying gender (Shamash/Shapash) to be the only deities shared between various early Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia and ancient Syria, who otherwise had different not necessarily overlapping pantheons.[37]
Inanna's symbol is a ring post made of reed, an ubiquitous building material in Sumer. It was often beribboned and positionned at the entrance of temples, and marked the limit between the profane and the sacred realms.[38] The design of the emblem was simplified between 3000 and 2000 BCE to become the cuneiform logogram for Inanna: 𒈹, generally preceded by the symbol for "deity" 𒀭.[16]
Ancient Sumerian statuette of two gala priests, dating to c. 2450 BCE, found in the temple of Inanna at Mari
Gwendolyn Leick assumes that during the Pre-Sargonic era, the cult of Inanna was rather limited,[34] though other experts argue that she was already the most prominent deity in Uruk and a number of other political centers in the Uruk period.[40] She had temples in Nippur, Lagash, Shuruppak, Zabalam, and Ur,[34] but her main cult center was the Eanna temple in Uruk,[34][41][17][d] whose name means "House of Heaven" (Sumerian: e2-anna; cuneiform: 𒂍𒀭 E2.AN).[e] Some researches assume that the original patron deity of this fourth-millennium BCE city was An.[17] After its dedication to Inanna, the temple seems to have housed priestesses of the goddess.[17] Next to Uruk, Zabalam was the most important early site of Inanna worship, as the name of the city was commonly written with the signs MUŠ3 and UNUG, meaning respectively "Inanna" and "sanctuary".[43] It is possible that the city goddess of Zabalam was originally a distinct deity, though one whose cult was absorbed by that of the Urukean goddess very early on.[43]Joan Goodnick Westenholz proposed that a goddess identified by the name Nin-UM (reading and meaning uncertain), associated with Ishtaran in a zame hymn, was the original identity of Inanna of Zabalam.[44]
In the Old Akkadian period, Inanna merged with the Akkadian goddess Ishtar, associated with the city of Agade.[45] A hymn from that period addresses the Akkadian Ishtar as "Inanna of the Ulmaš" alongside Inanna of Uruk and of Zabalam.[45] The worship of Ishtar and syncretism between her and Inanna was encouraged by Sargon and his successors,[45] and as a result she quickly became one of the most widely venerated deities in the Mesopotamian pantheon.[34] In inscriptions of Sargon, Naram-Sin and Shar-Kali-Sharri Ishtar is the most frequently invoked deity.[46]
In the Old Babylonian period, her main cult centers were, in addition to aforementioned Uruk, Zabalam and Agade, also Ilip.[47] Her cult was also introduced from Uruk to Kish.[48]
During later times, while her cult in Uruk continued to flourish,[49] Ishtar also became particularly worshipped in the Upper Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria (modern northern Iraq, northeast Syria and southeast Turkey), especially in the cities of Nineveh, Aššur and Arbela (modern Erbil).[50] During the reign of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal, Ishtar rose to become the most important and widely venerated deity in the Assyrian pantheon, surpassing even the Assyrian national god Ashur.[49] Votive objects found in her primary Assyrian temple indicate that she was a popular deity among women.[51]
Individuals who went against the traditional gender binary were heavily involved in the cult of Inanna.[52] During Sumerian times, a set of priests known as gala worked in Inanna's temples, where they performed elegies and lamentations.[53] Men who became gala sometimes adopted female names and their songs were composed in the Sumerian eme-sal dialect, which, in literary texts, is normally reserved for the speech of female characters. Some Sumerian proverbs seem to suggest that gala had a reputation for engaging in anal sex with men.[54] During the Akkadian Period, kurgarrū and assinnu were servants of Ishtar who dressed in female clothing and performed war dances in Ishtar's temples.[55] Several Akkadian proverbs seem to suggest that they may have also had homosexual proclivities.[55] Gwendolyn Leick, an anthropologist known for her writings on Mesopotamia, has compared these individuals to the contemporary Indian hijra.[56] In one Akkadian hymn, Ishtar is described as transforming men into women.[57][58]
Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century, it was widely believed that the cult of Inanna involved a "sacred marriage" ritual, in which a king would establish his legitimacy by taking on the role of Dumuzid and engaging in ritual sexual intercourse with the high priestess of Inanna, who took on the role of the goddess.[59][60][61][62] This view, however, has been challenged and scholars continue to debate whether the sacred marriage described in literary texts involved any kind of physical ritual enactment at all and, if so, whether this ritual enactment involved actual intercourse or merely the symbolic representation of intercourse.[63][62] The scholar of the ancient Near East Louise M. Pryke states that most scholars now maintain, if the sacred marriage was a ritual that was actually acted out, then it involved only symbolic intercourse.[64]
The cult of Ishtar was long thought to have involved sacred prostitution,[65] but this is now rejected among many scholars.[66]Hierodules known as ishtaritum are reported to have worked in Ishtar's temples,[67] but it is unclear if such priestesses actually performed any sex acts[68] and several modern scholars have argued that they did not.[69][70] Women across the ancient Near East worshipped Ishtar by dedicating to her cakes baked in ashes (known as kamān tumri).[71] A dedication of this type is described in an Akkadian hymn.[72] Several clay cake molds discovered at Mari are shaped like naked women with large hips clutching their breasts.[72] Some scholars have suggested that the cakes made from these molds were intended as representations of Ishtar herself.[73]
Iconographyedit
Symbolsedit
The eight-pointed star was Inanna/Ishtar's most common symbol.[74][75] Here it is shown alongside the solar disk of her brother Shamash (Sumerian Utu) and the crescent moon of her father Sin (Sumerian Nanna) on a boundary stone of Meli-Shipak II, dating to the twelfth century BCE.
Lions were one of Inanna/Ishtar's primary symbols.[76][77] The lion above comes from the Ishtar Gate, the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon, which was constructed in around 575 BCE under the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II.[78]
Inanna/Ishtar's most common symbol was the eight-pointed star,[74] though the exact number of points sometimes varies.[75] Six-pointed stars also occur frequently, but their symbolic meaning is unknown.[79] The eight-pointed star seems to have originally borne a general association with the heavens,[80] but, by the Old Babylonian Period (c. 1830 – c. 1531 BCE), it had come to be specifically associated with the planet Venus, with which Ishtar was identified.[80] Starting during this same period, the star of Ishtar was normally enclosed within a circular disc.[79] During later Babylonian times, slaves who worked in Ishtar's temples were sometimes branded with the seal of the eight-pointed star.[79][81] On boundary stones and cylinder seals, the eight-pointed star is sometimes shown alongside the crescent moon, which was the symbol of Sin (Sumerian Nanna) and the rayed solar disk, which was a symbol of Shamash (Sumerian Utu).[75]
Inanna's cuneiformideogram was a hook-shaped twisted knot of reeds, representing the doorpost of the storehouse, a common symbol of fertility and plenty.[82] The rosette was another important symbol of Inanna, which continued to be used as a symbol of Ishtar after their syncretism.[83] During the Neo-Assyrian Period (911 – 609 BCE), the rosette may have actually eclipsed the eight-pointed star and become Ishtar's primary symbol.[84] The temple of Ishtar in the city of Aššur was adorned with numerous rosettes.[83]
Inanna/Ishtar was associated with lions,[76][77] which the ancient Mesopotamians regarded as a symbol of power.[76] Her associations with lions began during Sumerian times;[77] a chlorite bowl from the temple of Inanna at Nippur depicts a large feline battling a giant snake and a cuneiform inscription on the bowl reads "Inanna and the Serpent", indicating that the cat is supposed to represent the goddess.[77] During the Akkadian Period, Ishtar was frequently depicted as a heavily armed warrior goddess with a lion as one of her attributes.[85]
Doves were also prominent animal symbols associated with Inanna/Ishtar.[86][87] Doves are shown on cultic objects associated with Inanna as early as the beginning of the third millennium BCE.[87] Lead dove figurines were discovered in the temple of Ishtar at Aššur, dating to the thirteenth century BCE[87] and a painted fresco from Mari, Syria shows a giant dove emerging from a palm tree in the temple of Ishtar,[86] indicating that the goddess herself was sometimes believed to take the form of a dove.[86]
As the planet Venusedit
Inanna was associated with the planet Venus, which is named after her Roman equivalent Venus.[41][88][41] Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess or personification of the planet Venus.[89] Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that, in many myths, Inanna's movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky.[89] In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, unlike any other deity, Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent, setting in the West and then rising again in the East.[89] An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for Kur, what could be presumed to be the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West.[89] In Inanna and Shukaletuda, Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the Eastern and Western horizons.[90] In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky.[89]
Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the Sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as a single entity;[89] instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star.[89] Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period indicates that the ancient Sumerians knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.[89] The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna's dual nature.[89]
Modern astrologers recognize the story of Inanna's descent into the underworld as a reference to an astronomical phenomenon associated with retrograde Venus. Seven days before retrograde Venus makes its inferior conjunction with the sun, it disappears from the evening sky. The seven day period between this disappearance and the conjunction itself is seen as the astronomical phenomenon on which the myth of descent was based. After the conjunction, seven more days elapse before Venus appears as the morning star, corresponding to the ascent from the underworld.[91][92]
Inanna in her aspect as Anunītu was associated with the eastern fish of the last of the zodiacal constellations, Pisces.[93][94] Her consort Dumuzi was associated with the contiguous first constellation, Aries.[93]
Babylonian terracotta relief of Ishtar from Eshnunna (early second millennium BCE)
Life-sized statue of a goddess, probably Ishtar, holding a vase from Mari, Syria (eighteenth century BC)
Terracotta relief of Ishtar with wings from Larsa (second millennium BCE)
Hellenized bas-relief sculpture of Ishtar standing with her servant from Palmyra (third century CE)
Characteredit
Ancient Akkadiancylinder seal depicting Inanna resting her foot on the back of a lion while Ninshubur stands in front of her paying obeisance, c. 2334–2154 BCE[95]
The Sumerians worshipped Inanna as the goddess of both warfare and love.[28] Unlike other gods, whose roles were static and whose domains were limited, the stories of Inanna describe her as moving from conquest to conquest.[24][96] She was portrayed as young and impetuous, constantly striving for more power than she had been allotted.[24][96]
Although she was worshipped as the goddess of love, Inanna was not the goddess of marriage, nor was she ever viewed as a mother goddess.[97][98]Andrew R. George goes as far as stating that "According to all mythology, Ištar was not[...] temperamentally disposed" towards such functions.[99] Julia M. Asher-Greve has even proposed (by Asher-Greve) that Inanna was significant specifically because she was not a mother goddess.[100] As a love goddess, she was commonly[quantify] invoked by Mesopotamians in incantations.[101][f]
In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, Inanna treats her lover Dumuzid in a very capricious manner.[97] This aspect of Inanna's personality is emphasized in the later standard Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Gilgamesh points out Ishtar's infamous ill-treatment of her lovers.[102][103] However, according to assyriologist Dina Katz, the portrayal of Inanna's relationship with Dumuzi in the Descent myth is unusual.[104][105]
Inanna was also worshipped as one of the Sumerian war deities.[41][106] One of the hymns dedicated to her declares: "She stirs confusion and chaos against those who are disobedient to her, speeding carnage and inciting the devastating flood, clothed in terrifying radiance. It is her game to speed conflict and battle, untiring, strapping on her sandals."[107] Battle itself was occasionally referred to as the "Dance of Inanna".[108] Epithets related to lions in particular were meant to highlight this aspect of her character.[109] As a war goddess she was sometimes referred to with the name Irnina ("victory"),[110] though this epithet could be applied to other deities as well,[111][112][113] in addition to functioning as a distinct goddess linked to Ningishzida[114] rather than to Ishtar. Another epithet highlighting this aspect of Ishtar's nature was Anunitu ("the martial one").[115] Like Irnina, Anunitu could also be a separate deity,[116] and as such she is first attested in documents from the Ur III period.[117]
Assyrian royal curse-formulas invoked both of Ishtar's primary functions at once, invoking her to remove potency and martial valor alike.[118] Mesopotamian texts indicate that traits perceived as heroic (such as a king's ability to lead his troops and to triumph over enemies) and sexual prowess were regarded as interconnected.[119]
While Inanna/Ishtar was a goddess, her gender could be ambiguous at times.[120]Gary Beckman states that "ambiguous gender identification" was a characteristic not just of Ishtar herself but of a category of deities he refers to as "Ishtar type" goddesses (such as Shaushka, Pinikir or Ninsianna).[121] A late hymn contains the phrase "she [Ishtar] is Enlil, she is Ninil" which might be a reference to occasionally "dimorphic" character of Ishtar, in addition to serving as an exaltation.[122] A hymn to Nanaya alludes to a male aspect of Ishtar from Babylon alongside a variety of more standard descriptions.[123] However, Ilona Zsolnay only describes Ishtar as a "feminine figure who performed a masculine role" in certain contexts, for example as a war deity.[124]
Familyedit
An ancient Sumerian depiction of the marriage of Inanna and Dumuzid[125]
Inanna's twin brother was Utu (known as Shamash in Akkadian), the god of the sun and justice.[126][127][128] In Sumerian texts, Inanna and Utu are shown as extremely close;[129] some modern authors perceive their relationship as bordering on incestuous.[129][130] In the myth of her descent into the underworld, Inanna addresses Ereshkigal, the queen of the underworld, as her "older sister",[131][132] but the two goddesses almost never appear together in Sumerian literature[132] and were not placed in the same category in god lists.[133] Due to Hurrian influence, in some neo-Assyrian sources (for example penalty clauses) Ishtar was also associated with Adad, with the relationship mirroring that between Shaushka and her brother Teshub in Hurrian mythology.[134]
The most common tradition regarded Nanna and his wife Ningal as her parents.[1][135] Examples of it are present in sources as diverse as a god list from the Early Dynastic period,[136] a hymn of Ishme-Dagan relaying how Enlil and Ninlil bestowed Inanna's powers upon her,[137] a late syncretic hymn to Nanaya,[138] and an Akkadian ritual from Hattusa.[139] While some authors assert that in Uruk Inanna was usually regarded as the daughter of the sky god An,[28][140][141] it is possible that references to him as her father are only referring to his status as an ancestor of Nanna and thus his daughter.[135] In literary texts, Enlil or Enki may be addressed as her fathers[28][140][142] but references to major gods being "fathers" can also be examples of the use of this word as an epithet indicating seniority.[143]
Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz), the god of shepherds, is usually described as Inanna's husband,[127] but according to some interpretations Inanna's loyalty to him is questionable;[28] in the myth of her descent into the Underworld, she abandons Dumuzid and permits the galla demons to drag him down into the underworld as her replacement.[144][145] In a different myth, The Return of Dumuzid Inanna instead mourns over Dumuzid's death and ultimately decrees that he will be allowed to return to Heaven to be with her for one half of the year.[146][145] Dina Katz notes that the portrayal of their relationship in Inanna's Descent is unusual;[105] it does not resemble the portrayal of their relationship in other myths about Dumuzi's death, which almost never pin the blame for it on Inanna, but rather on demons or even human bandits.[104] A large corpus of love poetry describing encounters between Inanna and Dumuzi has been assembled by researchers.[147] However, local manifestations of Inanna/Ishtar were not necessarily associated with Dumuzi.[148] In Kish, the tutelary deity of the city, Zababa (a war god), was viewed as the consort of a local hypostasis of Ishtar,[149] though after the Old Babylonian periodBau, introduced from Lagash, became his spouse (an example of a couple consisting out of a warrior god and a medicine goddess, common in Mesopotamian mythology[150]) and Ishtar of Kish started to instead be worshiped on her own.[149]
Inanna is not usually described as having any offspring,[28] but, in the myth of Lugalbanda and in a single building inscription from the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 – c. 2004 BCE), the warrior god Shara is described as her son.[151] She was also sometimes considered the mother of Lulal,[152] who is described in other texts as the son of Ninsun.[152]Wilfred G. Lambert described the relation between Inanna and Lulal as "close but unspecified" in the context of Inanna's Descent.[153] There is also similarly scarce evidence for the love goddess Nanaya being regarded as her daughter (a song, a votive formula and an oath), but it is possible all of these instances merely refer to an epithet indicating closeness between the deities and were not a statement about actual parentage.[154]
Inanna's sukkal was the goddess Ninshubur,[155] whose relationship with Inanna is one of mutual devotion.[155] In some texts, Ninshubur was listed right after Dumuzi as a member of Inanna's circle, even before some of her relatives;[156] in one text the phrase "Ninshubur, beloved vizier" appears.[156] In another text Ninshubur is listed even before Nanaya, originally possibly a hypostasis of Inanna herself,[157] in a list of deities from her entourage.[158] In an Akkadian ritual text known from Hittite archives Ishtar's sukkal is invoked alongside her family members (Sin, Ningal and Shamash).[159]
Other members of Inanna's entourage frequently listed in god lists were the goddesses Nanaya (usually placed right behind Dumuzi and Ninshubur), Kanisurra, Gazbaba and Bizila, all of them also associated with each other in various configurations independently from this context.[158][160]
Syncretism and influence on other deitiesedit
In addition to the full conflation of Inanna and Ishtar during the reign of Sargon and his successors,[45] she was syncretised with a large number of deities[161] to a varying degree. The oldest known syncretic hymn is dedicated to Inanna,[162] and has been dated to the Early Dynastic period.[163] Many god lists compiled by ancient scribes contained entire "Inanna group" sections enumerating similar goddesses,[164] and tablet IV of the monumental god list An-Anum (7 tablets total) is known as the "Ishtar tablet" due to most of its contents being the names of Ishtar's equivalents, her titles and various attendants.[165] Some modern researchers use the term Ishtar-type to define specific figures of this variety.[166][139] Some texts contained references to "all the Ishtars" of a given area.[167]
In later periods Ishtar's name was sometimes used as a generic term ("goddess") in Babylonia, while a logographic writing of Inanna was used to spell the title Bēltu, leading to further conflations.[168] A possible example of such use of the name is also known from Elam, as a single Elamite inscription written in Akkadian refers to "Manzat-Ishtar", which might in this context mean "the goddess Manzat".[169]
In cities like Mari and Ebla, the Eastern and Western Semitic forms of the name (Ishtar and Ashtart) were regarded as basically interchangeable.[170] However, the western goddess evidently lacked the astral character of Mesopotamian Ishtar.[171]Ugaritic god lists and ritual texts equate the local Ashtart with both Ishtar and Hurrian Ishara.[172]
Due to association with Ishtar,[173] the Syrian goddess Ishara started to be regarded as a "lady of love" like her (and Nanaya) in Mesopotamia.[174][157] However, in Hurro-Hittite context Ishara was associated with the underworld goddess Allani instead and additionally functioned as a goddess of oaths.[174][175]
A goddess uniquely closely linked to Inanna, as according to assyriologist Frans Wiggermann her name was originally an epithet of Inanna (possibly serving as an appellative, "My Inanna!").[157] Nanaya was associated with erotic love, but she eventually developed a warlike aspect of her own too ("Nanaya Euršaba").[176] In Larsa Inanna's functions were effectively split between three separate figures and she was worshiped as part of a trinity consisting out of herself, Nanaya (as a love goddess) and Ninsianna (as an astral goddess).[177] Inanna/Ishtar and Nanaya were often accidentally or intentionally conflated in poetry.[178]
While she was initially an independent figure, starting with Old Babylonian period in some texts "Ninegal" is used as a title of Inanna, and in god lists she was a part of the "Inanna group" usually alongside Ninsianna.[179] An example of the usage of "Ninegal" as an epithet can be found in the text designated as Hymn to Inana as Ninegala (Inana D) in the ETCSL.
A special case of syncretism was that between the medicine goddess Ninisina and Inanna, which occurred for political reasons.[180] Isin at one point lost control over Uruk and identification of its tutelary goddess with Inanna (complete with assigning a similar warlike character to her), who served as a source of royal power, was likely meant to serve as a theological solution of this problem.[180] As a result, in a number of sources Ninisina was regarded as analogous to similarly named Ninsianna, treated as a manifestation of Inanna.[180] It is also possible that a ceremony of "sacred marriage" between Ninisina and the king of Isin had been performed as a result.[181]
A Venus deity of varying gender.[182] Ninsianna was referred to as male by Rim-Sin of Larsa (who specifically used the phrase "my king") and in texts from Sippar, Ur, and Girsu, but as "Ishtar of the stars" in god lists and astronomical texts, which also applied Ishtar's epithets related to her role as a personification of Venus to this deity.[183] In some locations Ninsianna was also known as a female deity, in which case her name can be understood as "red queen of heaven".[180]
Originally an Elamite goddess, recognised in Mesopotamia, and as a result among Hurrians and Hittites, as an equivalent of Ishtar due to similar functions. She was identified specifically as her astral aspect (Ninsianna) in god lists.[184] In a Hittite ritual she was identified by the logogram dIŠTAR and Shamash, Suen and Ningal were referred to as her family; Enki and Ishtar's sukkal were invoked in it as well.[185] in Elam she was a goddess of love and sex[186] and a heavenly deity ("mistress of heaven").[187] Due to syncretism with Ishtar and Ninsianna Pinikir was referred to as both a female and male deity in Hurro-Hittite sources.[188]
Her name was frequently written with the logogram dIŠTAR in Hurrian and Hittite sources, while Mesopotamian texts recognised her under the name "Ishtar of Subartu".[189] Some elements peculiar to her were associated with the Assyrian hypostasis of Ishtar, Ishtar of Nineveh, in later times.[190] Her handmaidens Ninatta and Kulitta were incorporated into the circle of deities believed to serve Ishtar in her temple in Ashur.[191][192]
Sumerian textsedit
Origin mythsedit
The poem of Enki and the World Order (ETCSL 1.1.3) begins by describing the god Enki and his establishment of the cosmic organization of the universe.[193] Towards the end of the poem, Inanna comes to Enki and complains that he has assigned a domain and special powers to all of the other gods except for her.[194] She declares that she has been treated unfairly.[195] Enki responds by telling her that she already has a domain and that he does not need to assign her one.[196]
Original Sumerian tablet of the Courtship of Inanna and Dumuzid
The myth of "Inanna and the Huluppu Tree", found in the preamble to the epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld (ETCSL 1.8.1.4),[197] centers around a young Inanna, not yet stable in her power.[198][199] It begins with a huluppu tree, which Kramer identifies as possibly a willow,[200] growing on the banks of the river Euphrates.[200][201] Inanna moves the tree to her garden in Uruk with the intention to carve it into a throne once it is fully grown.[200][201] The tree grows and matures, but the serpent "who knows no charm", the Anzû-bird, and Lilitu (Ki-Sikil-Lil-La-Ke in Sumerian),[202] seen by some as the Sumerian forerunner to the Lilith of Jewish folklore, all take up residence within the tree, causing Inanna to cry with sorrow.[200][201] The hero Gilgamesh, who, in this story, is portrayed as her brother, comes along and slays the serpent, causing the Anzû-bird and Lilitu to flee.[203][201] Gilgamesh's companions chop down the tree and carve its wood into a bed and a throne, which they give to Inanna,[204][201] who fashions a pikku and a mikku (probably a drum and drumsticks respectively, although the exact identifications are uncertain),[205] which she gives to Gilgamesh as a reward for his heroism.[206][201]
The Sumerian hymn Inanna and Utu contains an etiological myth describing how Inanna became the goddess of sex.[207] At the beginning of the hymn, Inanna knows nothing of sex,[207] so she begs her brother Utu to take her to Kur (the Sumerian underworld),[207] so that she may taste the fruit of a tree that grows there,[207] which will reveal to her all the secrets of sex.[207] Utu complies and, in Kur, Inanna tastes the fruit and becomes knowledgeable.[207] The hymn employs the same motif found in the myth of Enki and Ninhursag and in the later Biblical story of Adam and Eve.[207]
The poem Inanna Prefers the Farmer (ETCSL 4.0.8.3.3) begins with a rather playful conversation between Inanna and Utu, who incrementally reveals to her that it is time for her to marry.[11][208] She is courted by a farmer named Enkimdu and a shepherd named Dumuzid.[11] At first, Inanna prefers the farmer,[11] but Utu and Dumuzid gradually persuade her that Dumuzid is the better choice for a husband, arguing that, for every gift the farmer can give to her, the shepherd can give her something even better.[209] In the end, Inanna marries Dumuzid.[209] The shepherd and the farmer reconcile their differences, offering each other gifts.[210] Samuel Noah Kramer compares the myth to the later Biblical story of Cain and Abel because both myths center around a farmer and a shepherd competing for divine favor and, in both stories, the deity in question ultimately chooses the shepherd.[11]
Inanna and Enki (ETCSL t.1.3.1) is a lengthy poem written in Sumerian, which may date to the Third Dynasty of Ur (c. 2112 BCE – c. 2004 BCE);[212] it tells the story of how Inanna stole the sacred mes from Enki, the god of water and human culture.[213] In ancient Sumerian mythology, the mes were sacred powers or properties belonging to the gods that allowed human civilization to exist.[214] Each me embodied one specific aspect of human culture.[214] These aspects were very diverse and the mes listed in the poem include abstract concepts such as Truth, Victory, and Counsel, technologies such as writing and weaving, and also social constructs such as law, priestly offices, kingship, and prostitution. The mes were believed to grant power over all the aspects of civilization, both positive and negative.[213]
In the myth, Inanna travels from her own city of Uruk to Enki's city of Eridu, where she visits his temple, the E-Abzu.[215] Inanna is greeted by Enki's sukkal, Isimud, who offers her food and drink.[216][217] Inanna starts up a drinking competition with Enki.[213][218] Then, once Enki is thoroughly intoxicated, Inanna persuades him to give her the mes.[213][219] Inanna flees from Eridu in the Boat of Heaven, taking the mes back with her to Uruk.[220][221] Enki wakes up to discover that the mes are gone and asks Isimud what has happened to them.[220][222] Isimud replies that Enki has given all of them to Inanna.[223][224] Enki becomes infuriated and sends multiple sets of fierce monsters after Inanna to take back the mes before she reaches the city of Uruk.[225][226] Inanna's sukkalNinshubur fends off all of the monsters that Enki sends after them.[227][226][155] Through Ninshubur's aid, Inanna successfully manages to take the mes back with her to the city of Uruk.[227][228] After Inanna escapes, Enki reconciles with her and bids her a positive farewell.[229] It is possible that this legend may represent a historic transfer of power from the city of Eridu to the city of Uruk.[17][230] It is also possible that this legend may be a symbolic representation of Inanna's maturity and her readiness to become the Queen of Heaven.[231]
The poem Inanna Takes Command of Heaven is an extremely fragmentary, but important, account of Inanna's conquest of the Eanna temple in Uruk.[17] It begins with a conversation between Inanna and her brother Utu in which Inanna laments that the Eanna temple is not within their domain and resolves to claim it as her own.[17] The text becomes increasingly fragmentary at this point in the narrative,[17] but appears to describe her difficult passage through a marshland to reach the temple while a fisherman instructs her on which route is best to take.[17] Ultimately, Inanna reaches her father An, who is shocked by her arrogance, but nevertheless concedes that she has succeeded and that the temple is now her domain.[17] The text ends with a hymn expounding Inanna's greatness.[17] This myth may represent an eclipse in the authority of the priests of An in Uruk and a transfer of power to the priests of Inanna.[17]
Inanna briefly appears at the beginning and end of the epic poem Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (ETCSL 1.8.2.3). The epic deals with a rivalry between the cities of Uruk and Aratta. Enmerkar, the king of Uruk, wishes to adorn his city with jewels and precious metals, but cannot do so because such minerals are only found in Aratta and, since trade does not yet exist, the resources are not available to him.[232] Inanna, who is the patron goddess of both cities,[233] appears to Enmerkar at the beginning of the poem[234] and tells him that she favors Uruk over Aratta.[235] She instructs Enmerkar to send a messenger to the lord of Aratta to ask for the resources Uruk needs.[233] The majority of the epic revolves around a great contest between the two kings over Inanna's favor.[236] Inanna reappears at the end of the poem to resolve the conflict by telling Enmerkar to establish trade between his city and Aratta.[237]
Inanna and her brother Utu were regarded as the dispensers of divine justice,[129] a role which Inanna exemplifies in several of her myths.[238]Inanna and Ebih (ETCSL 1.3.2), otherwise known as Goddess of the Fearsome Divine Powers, is a 184-line poem written by the Akkadian poet Enheduanna describing Inanna's confrontation with Mount Ebih, a mountain in the Zagros mountain range.[239] The poem begins with an introductory hymn praising Inanna.[240] The goddess journeys all over the entire world, until she comes across Mount Ebih and becomes infuriated by its glorious might and natural beauty,[241] considering its very existence as an outright affront to her own authority.[242][239] She rails at Mount Ebih, shouting:
Mountain, because of your elevation, because of your height, Because of your goodness, because of your beauty, Because you wore a holy garment, Because An organized(?) you, Because you did not bring (your) nose close to the ground, Because you did not press (your) lips in the dust.[243]
Inanna petitions to An, the Sumerian god of the heavens, to allow her to destroy Mount Ebih.[241] An warns Inanna not to attack the mountain,[241] but she ignores his warning and proceeds to attack and destroy Mount Ebih regardless.[241] In the conclusion of the myth, she explains to Mount Ebih why she attacked it.[243] In Sumerian poetry, the phrase "destroyer of Kur" is occasionally used as one of Inanna's epithets.[244]
The poem Inanna and Shukaletuda (ETCSL 1.3.3) begins with a hymn to Inanna, praising her as the planet Venus.[245] It then introduces Shukaletuda, a gardener who is terrible at his job. All of his plants die, except for one poplar tree.[245] Shukaletuda prays to the gods for guidance in his work. To his surprise, the goddess Inanna sees his one poplar tree and decides to rest under the shade of its branches.[245] Shukaletuda removes her clothes and rapes Inanna while she sleeps.[245] When the goddess wakes up and realizes she has been violated, she becomes furious and determines to bring her attacker to justice.[245] In a fit of rage, Inanna unleashes horrible plagues upon the Earth, turning water into blood.[245] Shukaletuda, terrified for his life, pleads his father for advice on how to escape Inanna's wrath.[245] His father tells him to hide in the city, amongst the hordes of people, where he will hopefully blend in.[245] Inanna searches the mountains of the East for her attacker,[245] but is not able to find him.[245] She then releases a series of storms and closes all roads to the city, but is still unable to find Shukaletuda,[245] so she asks Enki to help her find him, threatening to leave her temple in Uruk if he does not.[245] Enki consents and Inanna flies "across the sky like a rainbow".[245] Inanna finally locates Shukaletuda, who vainly attempts to invent excuses for his crime against her. Inanna rejects these excuses and kills him.[246] Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has cited the story of Shukaletuda as a Sumerian astral myth, arguing that the movements of Inanna in the story correspond with the movements of the planet Venus.[89] He has also stated that, while Shukaletuda was praying to the goddess, he may have been looking toward Venus on the horizon.[246]
The text of the poem Inanna and Bilulu (ETCSL 1.4.4), discovered at Nippur, is badly mutilated[247] and scholars have interpreted it in a number of different ways.[247] The beginning of the poem is mostly destroyed,[247] but seems to be a lament.[247] The intelligible part of the poem describes Inanna pining after her husband Dumuzid, who is in the steppe watching his flocks.[247][248] Inanna sets out to find him.[247] After this, a large portion of the text is missing.[247] When the story resumes, Inanna is being told that Dumuzid has been murdered.[247] Inanna discovers that the old bandit woman Bilulu and her son Girgire are responsible.[249][248] She travels along the road to Edenlila and stops at an inn, where she finds the two murderers.[247] Inanna stands on top of a stool[247] and transforms Bilulu into "the waterskin that men carry in the desert",[250] forcing her to pour the funerary libations for Dumuzid.[247][248]
Descent into the underworldedit
Copy of the Akkadian version of Ishtar's Descent into the Underworld from the Library of Assurbanipal, currently held in the British Museum in London, England
Depiction of Inanna/Ishtar from the Ishtar Vase, dating to the early second millennium BCE (Mesopotamian, Terracotta with cut, moulded, and painted decoration, from Larsa)
Two different versions of the story of Inanna/Ishtar's descent into the underworld have survived:[251][252] a Sumerian version dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur (circa 2112 BCE – 2004 BCE) (ETCSL 1.4.1)[251][252] and a clearly derivative Akkadian version from the early second millennium BCE.[251][252][g] The Sumerian version of the story is nearly three times the length of the later Akkadian version and contains much greater detail.[254]
Sumerian versionedit
In Sumerian religion, the Kur was conceived of as a dark, dreary cavern located deep underground;[255] life there was envisioned as "a shadowy version of life on earth".[255] It was ruled by Inanna's sister, the goddess Ereshkigal.[131][255] Before leaving, Inanna instructs her minister and servant Ninshubur to plead with the deities Enlil, Nanna, An, and Enki to rescue her if she does not return after three days.[256][257] The laws of the underworld dictate that, with the exception of appointed messengers, those who enter it may never leave.[256] Inanna dresses elaborately for the visit; she wears a turban, wig, lapis lazuli necklace, beads upon her breast, the 'pala dress' (the ladyship garment), mascara, a pectoral, and golden ring, and holds a lapis lazuli measuring rod.[258][259] Each garment is a representation of a powerful me she possesses.[260]
Inanna pounds on the gates of the underworld, demanding to be let in.[261][262][257] The gatekeeper Neti asks her why she has come[261][263] and Inanna replies that she wishes to attend the funeral rites of Gugalanna, the "husband of my elder sister Ereshkigal".[131][261][263] Neti reports this to Ereshkigal,[264][265] who tells him: "Bolt the seven gates of the underworld. Then, one by one, open each gate a crack. Let Inanna enter. As she enters, remove her royal garments."[266] Perhaps Inanna's garments, unsuitable for a funeral, along with Inanna's haughty behavior, make Ereshkigal suspicious.[267] Following Ereshkigal's instructions, Neti tells Inanna she may enter the first gate of the underworld, but she must hand over her lapis lazuli measuring rod. She asks why, and is told, "It is just the ways of the underworld." She obliges and passes through. Inanna passes through a total of seven gates, at each one removing a piece of clothing or jewelry she had been wearing at the start of her journey,[268] thus stripping her of her power.[269][257] When she arrives in front of her sister, she is naked:[269][257]
After she had crouched down and had her clothes removed, they were carried away. Then she made her sister Erec-ki-gala rise from her throne, and instead she sat on her throne. The Anna, the seven judges, rendered their decision against her. They looked at her – it was the look of death. They spoke to her – it was the speech of anger. They shouted at her – it was the shout of heavy guilt. The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse. And the corpse was hung on a hook.[270]
Three days and three nights pass, and Ninshubur, following instructions, goes to the temples of Enlil, Nanna, An, and Enki, and pleads with each of them to rescue Inanna.[271][272][273] The first three deities refuse, saying Inanna's fate is her own fault,[271][274][275] but Enki is deeply troubled and agrees to help.[276][277][275] He creates two sexless figures named gala-tura and the kur-jara from the dirt under the fingernails of two of his fingers.[276][278][275] He instructs them to appease Ereshkigal[276][278] and, when she asks them what they want, ask for the corpse of Inanna, which they must sprinkle with the food and water of life.[276][278] When they come before Ereshkigal, she is in agony like a woman giving birth.[279] She offers them whatever they want, including life-giving rivers of water and fields of grain, if they can relieve her,[280] but they refuse all of her offers and ask only for Inanna's corpse.[279] The gala-tura and the kur-jara sprinkle Inanna's corpse with the food and water of life and revive her.[281][282][275]Galla demons sent by Ereshkigal follow Inanna out of the underworld, insisting that someone else must be taken to the underworld as Inanna's replacement.[283][284][275] They first come upon Ninshubur and attempt to take her,[283][284][275] but Inanna stops them, insisting that Ninshubur is her loyal servant and that she had rightfully mourned for her while she was in the underworld.[283][284][275] They next come upon Shara, Inanna's beautician, who is still in mourning.[285][286][275] The demons attempt to take him, but Inanna insists that they may not, because he had also mourned for her.[287][288][275] The third person they come upon is Lulal, who is also in mourning.[287][289][275] The demons try to take him, but Inanna stops them once again.[287][289][275]
Ancient Sumerian cylinder seal impression showing Dumuzid being tortured in the underworld by the galla demons
Finally, they come upon Dumuzid, Inanna's husband.[290][275] Despite Inanna's fate, and in contrast to the other individuals who were properly mourning her, Dumuzid is lavishly clothed and resting beneath a tree, or upon her throne, entertained by slave-girls. Inanna, displeased, decrees that the galla shall take him.[290][275][291] The galla then drag Dumuzid down to the underworld.[290][275] Another text known as Dumuzid's Dream (ETCSL 1.4.3) describes Dumuzid's repeated attempts to evade capture by the galla demons, an effort in which he is aided by the sun-god Utu.[292][293][h]
In the Sumerian poem The Return of Dumuzid, which begins where The Dream of Dumuzid ends, Dumuzid's sister Geshtinanna laments continually for days and nights over Dumuzid's death, joined by Inanna, who has apparently experienced a change of heart, and Sirtur, Dumuzid's mother.[294] The three goddesses mourn continually until a fly reveals to Inanna the location of her husband.[295] Together, Inanna and Geshtinanna go to the place where the fly has told them they will find Dumuzid.[296] They find him there and Inanna decrees that, from that point onwards, Dumuzid will spend half of the year with her sister Ereshkigal in the underworld and the other half of the year in Heaven with her, while his sister Geshtinanna takes his place in the underworld.[297][275][298]
Akkadian versionedit
This version had two manuscripts found in the Library of Ashurbanipal and a third was found in Asshur, all dating from the first half of the first millennium before the common era.[299] Of the Ninevite version, the first cuneiform version was published in 1873 by François Lenormant, and the transliterated version was published by Peter Jensen in 1901.[299] Its title in Akkadian is Ana Kurnugê, qaqqari la târi.[299]
The Akkadian version begins with Ishtar approaching the gates of the underworld and demanding the gatekeeper to let her in:
If you do not open the gate for me to come in, I shall smash the door and shatter the bolt, I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors, I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living: And the dead shall outnumber the living![300][301]
The gatekeeper (whose name is not given in the Akkadian version[300]) hurries to tell Ereshkigal of Ishtar's arrival. Ereshkigal orders him to let Ishtar enter, but tells him to "treat her according to the ancient rites".[302] The gatekeeper lets Ishtar into the underworld, opening one gate at a time.[302] At each gate, Ishtar is forced to shed one article of clothing. When she finally passes the seventh gate, she is naked.[303] In a rage, Ishtar throws herself at Ereshkigal, but Ereshkigal orders her servant Namtar to imprison Ishtar and unleash sixty diseases against her.[304]
After Ishtar descends to the underworld, all sexual activity ceases on earth.[305][306] The god Papsukkal, the Akkadian counterpart to Ninshubur,[307] reports the situation to Ea, the god of wisdom and culture.[305] Ea creates an androgynous being called Asu-shu-namir and sends them to Ereshkigal, telling them to invoke "the name of the great gods" against her and to ask for the bag containing the waters of life. Ereshkigal becomes enraged when she hears Asu-shu-namir's demand, but she is forced to give them the water of life. Asu-shu-namir sprinkles Ishtar with this water, reviving her. Then, Ishtar passes back through the seven gates, receiving one article of clothing back at each gate, and exiting the final gate fully clothed.[305]
Interpretations in modern assyriologyedit
The "Burney Relief", which is speculated to represent either Ishtar or her older sister Ereshkigal (c. 19th or 18th century BCE)
Dina Katz, an authority on Sumerian afterlife beliefs and funerary customs, considers the narrative of Inanna's descent to be a combination of two distinct preexisting traditions rooted in broader context of Mesopotamian religion.
In one tradition, Inanna was only able to leave the underworld with the help of Enki's trick, with no mention of the possibility of finding a substitute.[308] This part of the myth belongs to the genre of myths about deities struggling to obtain power, glory etc. (such as Lugal-e or Enuma Elish),[308] and possibly served as a representation of Inanna's character as a personification of a periodically vanishing astral body.[309] According to Katz, the fact that Inanna's instructions to Ninshubur contain a correct prediction of her eventual fate, including the exact means of her rescue, show that the purpose of this composition was simply highlighting Inanna's ability to traverse both the heavens and the underworld, much like how Venus was able to rise over and over again.[309] She also points out Inanna's return has parallels in some Udug-hul incantations.[309]
Another was simply one of the many myths about the death of Dumuzi (such as Dumuzi's Dream or Inana and Bilulu; in these myths Inanna is not to blame for his death),[310] tied to his role as an embodiment of vegetation. She considers it possible that the connection between the two parts of the narrative was meant to mirror some well attested healing rituals which required a symbolic substitute of the person being treated.[105]
Katz also notes that the Sumerian version of the myth is not concerned with matters of fertility, and points out any references to it (e.g. to nature being infertile while Ishtar is dead) were only added in later Akkadian translations;[311] so was the description of Tammuz's funeral.[311] The purpose of these changes was likely to make the myth closer to cultic traditions linked to Tammuz, namely the annual mourning of his death followed by celebration of a temporary return.[312] According to Katz it is notable that known many copies of the later versions of the myth come from Assyrian cities which were known for their veneration of Tammuz, such as Ashur and Nineveh.[311]
Monica Otterrmann performed a feminist interpretation of the myth, questioning its interpretation as related to the cycle of nature,[314] claiming that the narratives represent that Inanna's powers were being restricted by the Mesopotamian patriarchy, due to the fact that, according to her, the region was not conducive to fertility.[315] Brandão questions this idea in part, for although Inanna's power is at stake in the Sumerian text, in the Akkadian text the goddess' relationship to fertility and fertilization is at stake. Furthermore, in the Sumerian text Inanna's power is not limited by a man, but by another equally powerful goddess, Ereskigal.[315]
In the AkkadianEpic of Gilgamesh, Ishtar appears to Gilgamesh after he and his companion Enkidu have returned to Uruk from defeating the ogre Humbaba and demands Gilgamesh to become her consort.[317][i] Gilgamesh refuses her, pointing out that all of her previous lovers have suffered:[317]
Listen to me while I tell the tale of your lovers. There was Tammuz, the lover of your youth, for him you decreed wailing, year after year. You loved the many-coloured Lilac-breasted Roller, but still you struck and broke his wing [...] You have loved the lion tremendous in strength: seven pits you dug for him, and seven. You have loved the stallion magnificent in battle, and for him you decreed the whip and spur and a thong [...] You have loved the shepherd of the flock; he made meal-cake for you day after day, he killed kids for your sake. You struck and turned him into a wolf; now his own herd-boys chase him away, his own hounds worry his flanks.[102]
Infuriated by Gilgamesh's refusal,[317] Ishtar goes to heaven and tells her father Anu that Gilgamesh has insulted her.[317] Anu asks her why she is complaining to him instead of confronting Gilgamesh herself.[317] Ishtar demands that Anu give her the Bull of Heaven[317] and swears that if he does not give it to her, she will "break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts; there will be confusion [i.e., mixing] of people, those above with those from the lower depths. I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living; and the hosts of the dead will outnumber the living."[319]
Original Akkadian Tablet XI (the "Deluge Tablet") of the Epic of Gilgamesh
Anu gives Ishtar the Bull of Heaven, and Ishtar sends it to attack Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu.[316][320] Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull and offer its heart to the sun-god Shamash.[321][320] While Gilgamesh and Enkidu are resting, Ishtar stands up on the walls of Uruk and curses Gilgamesh.[321][322] Enkidu tears off the Bull's right thigh and throws it in Ishtar's face,[321][322] saying, "If I could lay my hands on you, it is this I should do to you, and lash your entrails to your side."[323] (Enkidu later dies for this impiety.)[322] Ishtar calls together "the crimped courtesans, prostitutes and harlots"[321] and orders them to mourn for the Bull of Heaven.[321][322] Meanwhile, Gilgamesh holds a celebration over the Bull of Heaven's defeat.[324][322]
Later in the epic, Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the story of the Great Flood,[325] which was sent by the god Enlil to annihilate all life on earth because the humans, who were vastly overpopulated, made too much noise and prevented him from sleeping.[326] Utnapishtim tells how, when the flood came, Ishtar wept and mourned over the destruction of humanity, alongside the Anunnaki.[327] Later, after the flood subsides, Utnapishtim makes an offering to the gods.[328] Ishtar appears to Utnapishtim wearing a lapis lazuli necklace with beads shaped like flies and tells him that Enlil never discussed the flood with any of the other gods.[329] She swears him that she will never allow Enlil to cause another flood[329] and declares her lapis lazuli necklace a sign of her oath.[329] Ishtar invites all the gods except for Enlil to gather around the offering and enjoy.[330]
The Song of Agushaya,[331] an Akkadian text presumably from the time of Hammurapi, tells a myth mixed with hymnic passages: the war goddess Ishtar is filled with constant wrath and plagues the earth with war and battle. With her roar, she finally even threatens the wise god Ea in Apsû. He appears before the assembly of gods and decides (similar to Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgameš) to create an equal opponent for Ishtar. From the dirt of his fingernails he forms the powerful goddess Ṣaltum ("fight, quarrel"), whom he instructs to confront Ishtar disrespectfully and plague her day and night with her roar. The text section with the confrontation of both goddesses is not preserved, but it is followed by a scene in which Ishtar demands from Ea to call Ṣaltum back, which he does. Subsequently, Ea establishes a festival in which henceforth a "whirl dance" (gūštû) is to be performed annually in commemoration of the events. The text ends with the statement that Ishtar's heart has calmed down.
Other talesedit
A myth about the childhood of the god Ishum, viewed as a son of Shamash, describes Ishtar seemingly temporarily taking care of him, and possibly expressing annoyance at that situation.[332]
In a pseudepigraphical Neo-Assyrian text written in the seventh century BCE, but which claims to be the autobiography of Sargon of Akkad,[333] Ishtar is claimed to have appeared to Sargon "surrounded by a cloud of doves" while he was working as a gardener for Akki, the drawer of the water.[333] Ishtar then proclaimed Sargon her lover and allowed him to become the ruler of Sumer and Akkad.[333]
In Hurro-Hittite texts the logogram dISHTAR denotes the goddess Šauška, who was identified with Ishtar in god lists and similar documents as well and influenced the development of the late Assyrian cult of Ishtar of Nineveh according to hittitologist Gary Beckman.[189] She plays a prominent role in the Hurrian myths of the Kumarbi cycle.[334]
The cult of Inanna/Ishtar may have been introduced to the Kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Manasseh[335] and, although Inanna herself is not directly mentioned in the Bible by name,[336] the Old Testament contains numerous allusions to her cult.[337] Jeremiah 7:18 and Jeremiah 44:15–19 mention "the Queen of Heaven", who is probably a syncretism of Inanna/Ishtar and the West Semitic goddess Astarte.[335][338][339][71] Jeremiah states that the Queen of Heaven was worshipped by women who baked cakes for her.[73]
The Song of Songs bears strong similarities to the Sumerian love poems involving Inanna and Dumuzid,[340] particularly in its usage of natural symbolism to represent the lovers' physicality.[340] Song of Songs 6:10 Ezekiel 8:14 mentions Inanna's husband Dumuzid under his later East Semitic name Tammuz,[341][342][343] and describes a group of women mourning Tammuz's death while sitting near the north gate of the Temple in Jerusalem.[342][343]Marina Warner (a literary critic rather than Assyriologist) claims that early Christians in the Middle East assimilated elements of Ishtar into the cult of the Virgin Mary.[344] She argues that the Syrian writers Jacob of Serugh and Romanos the Melodist both wrote laments in which the Virgin Mary describes her compassion for her son at the foot of the cross in deeply personal terms closely resembling Ishtar's laments over the death of Tammuz.[345] However, broad comparisons between Tammuz and other dying gods are rooted in the work of James George Frazer and are regarded as a relic of less rigorous early 20th century Assyriology by more recent publications.[346]
The cult of Inanna/Ishtar also heavily influenced the cult of the Phoenician goddess Astarte.[347] The Phoenicians introduced Astarte to the Greek islands of Cyprus and Cythera,[338][348] where she either gave rise to or heavily influenced the Greek goddess Aphrodite.[349][348][350][347] Aphrodite took on Inanna/Ishtar's associations with sexuality and procreation.[351][352] Furthermore, she was known as Ourania (Οὐρανία), which means "heavenly",[353][352] a title corresponding to Inanna's role as the Queen of Heaven.[353][352]
Altar from the Greek city of Taras in Magna Graecia, dating to c. 400 – c. 375 BCE, depicting Aphrodite and Adonis, whose myth is derived from the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna and Dumuzid[354][355]
Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar to Inanna/Ishtar.[351][352] Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess;[351][348][356] the second-century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that, in Sparta, Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia, which means "warlike".[357][358] He also mentions that Aphrodite's most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms.[359] Modern scholars note that Aphrodite's warrior-goddess aspects appear in the oldest strata of her worship[360] and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins.[360][356] Aphrodite also absorbed Ishtar's association with doves,[86][356] which were sacrificed to her alone.[356] The Greek word for "dove" was peristerá,[86][87] which may be derived from the Semitic phrase peraḥ Ištar, meaning "bird of Ishtar".[87] The myth of Aphrodite and Adonis is derived from the story of Inanna and Dumuzid.[354][355]
Classical scholar Charles Penglase has written that Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, resembles Inanna's role as a "terrifying warrior goddess".[361] Others have noted that the birth of Athena from the head of her father Zeus could be derived from Inanna's descent into and return from the Underworld.[362] However, as noted by Gary Beckman, a rather direct parallel to Athena's birth is found in the HurrianKumarbi cycle, where Teshub is born from the surgically split skull of Kumarbi,[363] rather than in any Inanna myths.
In Mandaean cosmology, one of the names for Venus is ʿStira, which is derived from the name Ishtar.[364]
Anthropologist Kevin Tuite argues that the Georgian goddessDali was also influenced by Inanna,[365] noting that both Dali and Inanna were associated with the morning star,[366] both were characteristically depicted nude,[367] (but Assyriologists assume the "naked goddess" motif in Mesopotamian art in most cases cannot be Ishtar,[368] and the goddess most consistently depicted as naked was Shala, a weather goddess unrelated to Ishtar[369]) both were associated with gold jewelry,[367] both sexually preyed on mortal men,[370] both were associated with human and animal fertility,[371] (note however that Assyriologist Dina Katz pointed out the references to fertility are more likely to be connected to Dumuzi than Inanna/Ishtar in at least some cases[312]) and both had ambiguous natures as sexually attractive, but dangerous, women.[372]
Traditional Mesopotamian religion began to gradually decline between the third and fifth centuries AD as ethnic Assyrians converted to Christianity. Nonetheless, the cult of Ishtar and Tammuz managed to survive in parts of Upper Mesopotamia.[343] In the tenth century AD, an Arab traveler wrote that "All the Sabaeans of our time, those of Babylonia as well as those of Harran, lament and weep to this day over Tammuz at a festival which they, more particularly the women, hold in the month of the same name."[343]
Worship of Venus deities possibly connected to Inanna/Ishtar was known in Pre-Islamic Arabia right up until the Islamic period. Isaac of Antioch (d. 406 AD) says that the Arabs worshipped 'the Star' (kawkabta), also known as Al-Uzza, which many identify with Venus.[373] Isaac also mentions an Arabian deity named Baltis, which according to Jan Retsö most likely was another designation for Ishtar.[374] In pre-Islamic Arabian inscriptions themselves, it appears that the deity known as Allat was also a Venusian deity.[375]Attar, a male god whose name is a cognate of Ishtar's, is a plausible candidate for the role of Arabian Venus deity too on the account of both his name and his epithet "eastern and western".[376]
Modern relevanceedit
Illustration of Ishtar's Midnight Courtship from Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton's 1884 book-length poem Ishtar and Izdubar, loosely based on George Smith's recent translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh[377]
In his 1853 pamphlet The Two Babylons, as part of his argument that Roman Catholicism is actually Babylonian paganism in disguise, Alexander Hislop, a Protestant minister in the Free Church of Scotland, incorrectly argued that the modern English word Easter must be derived from Ishtar due to the phonetic similarity of the two words.[378] Modern scholars have unanimously rejected Hislop's arguments as erroneous and based on a flawed understanding of Babylonian religion.[379][380][381] Nonetheless, Hislop's book is still popular among some groups of evangelical Protestants[379] and the ideas promoted in it have become widely circulated, especially through the Internet, due to a number of popular Internet memes.[381]
Ishtar had a major appearance in Ishtar and Izdubar,[382] a book-length poem written in 1884 by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, an American lawyer and businessman, loosely based on the recently translated Epic of Gilgamesh.[382]Ishtar and Izdubar expanded the original roughly 3,000 lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh to roughly 6,000 lines of rhyming couplets grouped into forty-eight cantos.[377] Hamilton significantly altered most of the characters and introduced entirely new episodes not found in the original epic.[377] Significantly influenced by Edward FitzGerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Edwin Arnold's The Light of Asia,[377] Hamilton's characters dress more like nineteenth-century Turks than ancient Babylonians.[383] In the poem, Izdubar (the earlier misreading for the name "Gilgamesh") falls in love with Ishtar,[384] but, then, "with hot and balmy breath, and trembling form aglow", she attempts to seduce him, leading Izdubar to reject her advances.[384] Several "columns" of the book are devoted to an account of Ishtar's descent into the Underworld.[383] At the conclusion of the book, Izdubar, now a god, is reconciled with Ishtar in Heaven.[385] In 1887, the composer Vincent d'Indy wrote Symphony Ishtar, variations symphonique, Op. 42, a symphony inspired by the Assyrian monuments in the British Museum.[386]
Inanna has become an important figure in modern feminist theory because she appears in the male-dominatedSumerian pantheon,[387] but is equally as powerful, if not more powerful than, the male deities she appears alongside.[387]Simone de Beauvoir, in her book The Second Sex (1949), argues that Inanna, along with other powerful female deities from antiquity, have been marginalized by modern culture in favor of male deities.[386]Tikva Frymer-Kensky has argued that Inanna was a "marginal figure" in Sumerian religion who embodies the "socially unacceptable" archetype of the "undomesticated, unattached woman".[386] Feminist author Johanna Stuckey has argued against this idea, pointing out Inanna's centrality in Sumerian religion and her broad diversity of powers, neither of which seem to fit the idea that she was in any way regarded as "marginal".[386] Assyriologist Julia M. Asher-Greve, who specializes in the study of position of women in antiquity, criticizes Frymer-Kensky's studies of Mesopotamian religion as a whole, highlighting the problems with her focus on fertility, the small selection of sources her works relied on, her view that position of goddesses in the pantheon reflected that of ordinary women in society (so-called "mirror theory"), as well as the fact her works do not accurately reflect the complexity of changes of roles of goddesses in religions of ancient Mesopotamia.[388] Ilona Zsolnay regards Frymer-Kensky's methodology as faulty.[389]
Inanna is also an important figure in BDSM culture. The portrayal of Inanna in the Inanna and Ebih myth is cited as a precursor example of the dominatrix archetype, characterizing her as a powerful woman who forces gods and men to submit to her.[390] In mythology, Inanna's submissives danced in rituals while being whipped by her to satisfy her. When submissives asked for "mercy", Inanna ended the flagellation, making such an action the pioneer of the BDSM safeword concept.[390][391]
In Neopaganism and Sumerian reconstructionismedit
Inanna is the primary ancient source for Aleister Crowley'sBabalon, a principal goddess in the religion Thelema. Inanna's name is also used to refer to the Goddess in modern Neopaganism and Wicca.[392] Her name occurs in the refrain of the "Burning Times Chant",[393] one of the most widely used Wiccan liturgies.[393]Inanna's Descent into the Underworld was the inspiration for the "Descent of the Goddess",[394] one of the most popular texts of Gardnerian Wicca.[394]
Paul Thomas, a scholar of new religious movements, has criticized the modern portrayal of Inanna, accusing it of anachronistically imposing modern gender conventions on the ancient Sumerian story, portraying Inanna as a wife and mother,[395] two roles the ancient Sumerians never ascribed to her,[395][28] while ignoring the more masculine elements of Inanna's cult, particularly her associations with warfare and violence.[395]Gary Beckman, a researcher of religions of ancient Near East, calls neopagan authors "not revivalists, but inventors",[396] and notes that they often "incorrectly view all historically attested female divinities as full or partial manifestations of a single figure,"[397] and highlights that while Ishtar did overshadow many other deities, she was never a "single Goddess".[398]
In popular cultureedit
Ishtar is central to the plot of Blood Feast, a 1963 splatter film widely considered to be the first of its genre.
Features as Gilgamesh's archenemy and a huntress in SMITE (2014) under her Ishtar name.
Inanna appears as separate and playable Archer-class, Rider-class, and Avenger-class Servants in Fate/Grand Order (2015), under her Ishtar name. Her Avenger-class form is later revealed to be Astarte (stylized in-game as Ashtart), sharing a similar form as Ishtar.
Inanna or Ishtar, sometimes portrayed as entities distinct from each other, appear in various entries of the Megami Tensei franchise.
In the comic series The Wicked + The Divine, the deity Inanna is a prominent deity. Innana appears in the 453 Recurrence, marrying and murdering Attila the Hun with her power during their wedding night. She appears again in the 1830 Recurrence as Claire Clairmont, step sister of author Mary Shelley. She murders the babies of her step sister in order to become a God. In the 2010 recurrence, Innana resurrects in the body of Zahid, a queer South Asian man.
In the video game Catherine and its remake Catherine: Full Body, Ishtar is revealed to have been masquerading as the game's narrator Trisha, and offers the player a chance to become her consort in a secret ending of the game if they complete certain challenges.
Nin-me-šara, "The Exaltation of Inanna" In-nin ša-gur-ra, "A Hymn to Inanna (Inana C)" In-nin me-huš-a, "Inanna and Ebih" The Temple Hymns Hymn to Nanna, "The Exaltation of Inanna"
^é-an-na means 'sanctuary' ('house' + 'Heaven' [An] + genitive)[42]
^ "According to Graham Cunningham (1997: p. 171) incantations are connected with 'forms of symbolic identification', and it seems obvious that symbolic identitification with some goddesses relates to their divine function or domain, e.g. ... sex and love related matters with Inana and Nanaya ... ." — J.M. Asher-Greve (2013, p. 242)[101]
^Brandão 2019 disagrees that the Akkadian poem only summarizes or distorts the Sumerian poem, although there is no doubt of the intertextual relations [253]
^Dumuzid's Dream is attested in seventy-five known sources, fifty-five of which come from Nippur, nine from Ur, three probably from the region around Sippar, one each from Uruk, Kish, Shaduppum, and Susa.[291]
^Abush proposes the thesis that Ishtar's proposal would be for Gilgamesh to become a worker in the world of the dead.[318]
^ Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature ETCSL "Inanna and Enki" – lines: 76–87. (Inanna addresses Enki as: "my father" and Enki himself is regarded in the third person as Inanna's father, as stated by Enki's minister Isimud who calls him: "your father" while talking to Inanna).
^Steinkeller, Piotr, "Archaic City Seals and the Question of Early Babylonian Unity" in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, edited by Tzvi Abusch, University Park, USA: Penn State University Press, pp. 249–258, 2002
^Szarzyńska, Krystyna, "Offerings for the Goddess Inana in Archaic Uruk", Revue d’Assyriologie et d’archéologie Orientale, vol. 87, no. 1, pp. 7–28, 1993
^A. Archi, The Gods of Ebla [in:] J. Eidem, C.H. van Zoest (eds.), Annual Report NINO and NIT 2010, 2011, p. 3
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^"Site officiel du musée du Louvre". cartelfr.louvre.fr.
^Asher-Greve & Westenholz (2013), p. 140" Asher-Greve 2003; cf. Groneberg (1986a: 45) argues that Inana is significant because she is not a mother goddess [...]"
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^ Asher-Greve, Julia M. (2013). "Facets of Change". In Asher-Greve, Julia M.; Westenholz, Joan Goodnick (eds.). Goddesses in Context: On divine powers, roles, relationships, and gender in Mesopotamian textual and visual sources(PDF). Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis. Vol. 259. Fribourg, DE: Academic Press. p. 140. ISBN9783525543825. Retrieved 26 August 2022.
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inanna, this, article, about, ancient, mesopotamian, goddess, other, uses, disambiguation, confused, with, inamma, ishtar, redirects, here, other, uses, ishtar, disambiguation, ancient, mesopotamian, goddess, love, fertility, also, associated, with, beauty, di. This article is about ancient Mesopotamian goddess For other uses see Inanna disambiguation Not to be confused with Inamma Ishtar redirects here For other uses see Ishtar disambiguation Inanna a is the ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love war and fertility She is also associated with beauty sex divine law and political power Originally worshiped in Sumer she was known by the Akkadian Empire Babylonians and Assyrians as Ishtar b and occasionally the logogram 𒌋𒁯 Her primary title was the Queen of Heaven Inanna Ishtar Queen of Heaven Goddess of love war and fertilityGoddess Ishtar on an Akkadian Empire seal 2350 2150 BCE She is equipped with weapons on her back has a horned helmet is trampling a lion held on a leash and is accompanied by the star of Shamash Major cult centerUruk Agade NinevehAbodeHeavenPlanetVenusSymbolhook shaped knot of reeds eight pointed star lion rosette doveMountLionPersonal informationParentsMost common tradition Nanna and Ningal 1 sometimes An or Enlil Enki more rarely 2 SiblingsUtu Shamash twin brother Ereshkigal older sister ConsortDumuzid Sargon of Akkad ZababaChildrenPossibly NanayaEquivalentsGreek equivalentAphroditeRoman equivalentVenusHinduism equivalentParvatiCanaanite equivalentAstarteElamite equivalentPinikirHurrian equivalentShaushkaMandaean equivalentLibatEgyptian equivalentHathorShe was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk her early main cult center In archaic Uruk she was worshiped in three forms morning Inanna Inana UD hud evening Inanna Inanna sig and princely Inanna Inanna NUN the former two reflecting the phases of her associated planet Venus 5 6 Her most prominent symbols included the lion and the eight pointed star Her husband was the god Dumuzid later known as Tammuz and her sukkal attendant was the goddess Ninshubur later conflated with the male deities Ilabrat and Papsukkal Inanna was worshiped in Sumer at least as early as the Uruk period c 4000 BCE 3100 BCE and her cultic activity was relatively localized before the conquest of Sargon of Akkad During the post Sargonic era she became one of the most widely venerated deities in the Sumerian pantheon 7 8 with temples across Mesopotamia The cult of Inanna Ishtar which may have been associated with a variety of sexual rites was continued by the East Semitic speaking peoples Akkadians Assyrians and Babylonians who succeeded and absorbed the Sumerians in the region She was especially beloved by the Assyrians who elevated her to become the highest deity in their pantheon ranking above their own national god Ashur Inanna Ishtar is alluded to in the Hebrew Bible and she greatly influenced the Ugaritic goddess Ashtart and later the Phoenician goddess Astarte who in turn possibly influenced the development of the Greek goddess Aphrodite Her cult continued to flourish until its gradual decline between the first and sixth centuries CE in the wake of Christianity Inanna appears in more myths than any other Sumerian deity 9 10 11 She also had a uniquely high number of epithets and alternate names comparable only to Nergal 12 Many of her myths involve her taking over the domains of other deities She was believed to have been given the mes which represented all positive and negative aspects of civilization by Enki the god of wisdom She was also believed to have taken over the Eanna temple from An the god of the sky Alongside her twin brother Utu later known as Shamash Inanna was the enforcer of divine justice she destroyed Mount Ebih for having challenged her authority unleashed her fury upon the gardener Shukaletuda after he raped her in her sleep and tracked down the bandit woman Bilulu and killed her in divine retribution for having murdered Dumuzid In the standard Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh Ishtar asks Gilgamesh to become her consort When he disdainfully refuses she unleashes the Bull of Heaven resulting in the death of Enkidu and Gilgamesh s subsequent grapple with his own mortality Inanna s most famous myth is the story of her descent into and return from the ancient Mesopotamian underworld ruled by her older sister Ereshkigal After she reaches Ereshkigal s throne room the seven judges of the underworld deem her guilty and strike her dead Three days later Ninshubur pleads with all the gods to bring Inanna back All of them refuse her except Enki who sends two sexless beings to rescue Inanna They escort Inanna out of the underworld but the galla the guardians of the underworld drag her husband Dumuzid down to the underworld as her replacement Dumuzid is eventually permitted to return to heaven for half the year while his sister Geshtinanna remains in the underworld for the other half resulting in the cycle of the seasons Contents 1 Etymology 2 Origins and development 3 Worship 4 Iconography 4 1 Symbols 4 2 As the planet Venus 5 Character 6 Family 6 1 Sukkal 7 Syncretism and influence on other deities 7 1 Specific examples 8 Sumerian texts 8 1 Origin myths 8 2 Conquests and patronage 8 3 Justice myths 9 Descent into the underworld 9 1 Sumerian version 9 2 Akkadian version 9 3 Interpretations in modern assyriology 9 4 Other interpretations 10 Later myths 10 1 Epic of Gilgamesh 10 2 Song of Agushaya 10 3 Other tales 11 Later influence 11 1 In antiquity 11 2 Modern relevance 11 2 1 In Neopaganism and Sumerian reconstructionism 12 In popular culture 13 Dates approximate 14 See also 15 Notes 16 References 16 1 Bibliography 17 Further reading 18 External linksEtymology edit nbsp Inanna receiving offerings on the Uruk Vase circa 3200 3000 BCEScholars believe that Inanna and Ishtar were originally separate unrelated deities 13 but were conflated with one another during the reign of Sargon of Akkad and came to be regarded as effectively the same goddess under two different names 14 c Inanna s name may derive from the Sumerian phrase nin an ak meaning Lady of Heaven 16 17 but the cuneiform sign for Inanna 𒈹 is not a ligature of the signs lady Sumerian nin cuneiform 𒊩𒌆 SAL TUG2 and sky Sumerian an cuneiform 𒀭 AN 17 16 18 These difficulties led some early Assyriologists to suggest that Inanna may have originally been a Proto Euphratean goddess who was only later accepted into the Sumerian pantheon This idea was supported by Inanna s youthfulness as well as the fact that unlike the other Sumerian divinities she seems to have initially lacked a distinct sphere of responsibilities 17 The view that there was a Proto Euphratean substrate language in Southern Iraq before Sumerian is not widely accepted by modern Assyriologists 19 The name Ishtar occurs as an element in personal names from both the pre Sargonic and post Sargonic eras in Akkad Assyria and Babylonia 20 It is of Semitic derivation 21 20 and is probably etymologically related to the name of the West Semitic god Attar who is mentioned in later inscriptions from Ugarit and southern Arabia 21 20 The morning star may have been conceived as a male deity who presided over the arts of war and the evening star may have been conceived as a female deity who presided over the arts of love 20 Among the Akkadians Assyrians and Babylonians the name of the male god eventually supplanted the name of his female counterpart 22 but due to extensive syncretism with Inanna the deity remained as female although her name was in the masculine form 22 Origins and development edit nbsp The Uruk Vase Warka Vase depicting votive offerings to Inanna 3200 3000 BCE 23 Inanna has posed a problem for many scholars of ancient Sumer due to the fact that her sphere of power contained more distinct and contradictory aspects than that of any other deity 24 Two major theories regarding her origins have been proposed 25 The first explanation holds that Inanna is the result of a syncretism between several previously unrelated Sumerian deities with totally different domains 25 26 The second explanation holds that Inanna was originally a Semitic deity who entered the Sumerian pantheon after it was already fully structured and who took on all the roles that had not yet been assigned to other deities 27 As early as the Uruk period c 4000 3100 BCE Inanna was already associated with the city of Uruk 28 During this period the symbol of a ring headed doorpost was closely associated with Inanna 28 The famous Uruk Vase found in a deposit of cult objects of the Uruk III period depicts a row of naked men carrying various objects including bowls vessels and baskets of farm products 29 and bringing sheep and goats to a female figure facing the ruler 30 The female stands in front of Inanna s symbol of the two twisted reeds of the doorpost 30 while the male figure holds a box and stack of bowls the later cuneiform sign signifying the En or high priest of the temple 31 Seal impressions from the Jemdet Nasr period c 3100 2900 BCE show a fixed sequence of symbols representing various cities including those of Ur Larsa Zabalam Urum Arina and probably Kesh 32 This list probably reflects the report of contributions to Inanna at Uruk from cities supporting her cult 32 A large number of similar seals have been discovered from phase I of the Early Dynastic period c 2900 2350 BCE at Ur in a slightly different order combined with the rosette symbol of Inanna 32 These seals were used to lock storerooms to preserve materials set aside for her cult 32 Various inscriptions in the name of Inanna are known such as a bead in the name of King Aga of Kish c 2600 BCE or a tablet by King Lugal kisalsi c 2400 BCE nbsp Tablet of Lugal kisalsiFor An king of all the lands and for Inanna his mistress Lugal kisalsi king of Kish built the wall of the courtyard Inscription of Lugal kisalsi 33 During the Akkadian period c 2334 2154 BCE following the conquests of Sargon of Akkad Inanna and originally independent Ishtar became so extensively syncretized that they became regarded as effectively the same 34 22 The Akkadian poet Enheduanna the daughter of Sargon wrote numerous hymns to Inanna identifying her with Ishtar 34 35 As a result of this 34 the popularity of Inanna Ishtar s cult skyrocketed 34 28 36 Alfonso Archi who was involved in early excavations of Ebla assumes Ishtar was originally a goddess venerated in the Euphrates valley pointing out that an association between her and the desert poplar is attested in the most ancient texts from both Ebla and Mari He considers her a moon god e g Sin and a sun deity of varying gender Shamash Shapash to be the only deities shared between various early Semitic peoples of Mesopotamia and ancient Syria who otherwise had different not necessarily overlapping pantheons 37 Worship editInanna s symbol the reed ring post nbsp Emblem of goddess Inanna circa 3000 BCE 39 nbsp Ring posts of Inanna on each side of a temple door with naked devotee offering libations 38 nbsp On the Warka Vase nbsp Cuneiform logogram Inanna Inanna s symbol is a ring post made of reed an ubiquitous building material in Sumer It was often beribboned and positionned at the entrance of temples and marked the limit between the profane and the sacred realms 38 The design of the emblem was simplified between 3000 and 2000 BCE to become the cuneiform logogram for Inanna 𒈹 generally preceded by the symbol for deity 𒀭 16 nbsp Ancient Sumerian statuette of two gala priests dating to c 2450 BCE found in the temple of Inanna at MariGwendolyn Leick assumes that during the Pre Sargonic era the cult of Inanna was rather limited 34 though other experts argue that she was already the most prominent deity in Uruk and a number of other political centers in the Uruk period 40 She had temples in Nippur Lagash Shuruppak Zabalam and Ur 34 but her main cult center was the Eanna temple in Uruk 34 41 17 d whose name means House of Heaven Sumerian e2 anna cuneiform 𒂍𒀭 E2 AN e Some researches assume that the original patron deity of this fourth millennium BCE city was An 17 After its dedication to Inanna the temple seems to have housed priestesses of the goddess 17 Next to Uruk Zabalam was the most important early site of Inanna worship as the name of the city was commonly written with the signs MUS3 and UNUG meaning respectively Inanna and sanctuary 43 It is possible that the city goddess of Zabalam was originally a distinct deity though one whose cult was absorbed by that of the Urukean goddess very early on 43 Joan Goodnick Westenholz proposed that a goddess identified by the name Nin UM reading and meaning uncertain associated with Ishtaran in a zame hymn was the original identity of Inanna of Zabalam 44 In the Old Akkadian period Inanna merged with the Akkadian goddess Ishtar associated with the city of Agade 45 A hymn from that period addresses the Akkadian Ishtar as Inanna of the Ulmas alongside Inanna of Uruk and of Zabalam 45 The worship of Ishtar and syncretism between her and Inanna was encouraged by Sargon and his successors 45 and as a result she quickly became one of the most widely venerated deities in the Mesopotamian pantheon 34 In inscriptions of Sargon Naram Sin and Shar Kali Sharri Ishtar is the most frequently invoked deity 46 In the Old Babylonian period her main cult centers were in addition to aforementioned Uruk Zabalam and Agade also Ilip 47 Her cult was also introduced from Uruk to Kish 48 During later times while her cult in Uruk continued to flourish 49 Ishtar also became particularly worshipped in the Upper Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria modern northern Iraq northeast Syria and southeast Turkey especially in the cities of Nineveh Assur and Arbela modern Erbil 50 During the reign of the Assyrian king Assurbanipal Ishtar rose to become the most important and widely venerated deity in the Assyrian pantheon surpassing even the Assyrian national god Ashur 49 Votive objects found in her primary Assyrian temple indicate that she was a popular deity among women 51 Individuals who went against the traditional gender binary were heavily involved in the cult of Inanna 52 During Sumerian times a set of priests known as gala worked in Inanna s temples where they performed elegies and lamentations 53 Men who became gala sometimes adopted female names and their songs were composed in the Sumerian eme sal dialect which in literary texts is normally reserved for the speech of female characters Some Sumerian proverbs seem to suggest that gala had a reputation for engaging in anal sex with men 54 During the Akkadian Period kurgarru and assinnu were servants of Ishtar who dressed in female clothing and performed war dances in Ishtar s temples 55 Several Akkadian proverbs seem to suggest that they may have also had homosexual proclivities 55 Gwendolyn Leick an anthropologist known for her writings on Mesopotamia has compared these individuals to the contemporary Indian hijra 56 In one Akkadian hymn Ishtar is described as transforming men into women 57 58 Throughout the latter half of the twentieth century it was widely believed that the cult of Inanna involved a sacred marriage ritual in which a king would establish his legitimacy by taking on the role of Dumuzid and engaging in ritual sexual intercourse with the high priestess of Inanna who took on the role of the goddess 59 60 61 62 This view however has been challenged and scholars continue to debate whether the sacred marriage described in literary texts involved any kind of physical ritual enactment at all and if so whether this ritual enactment involved actual intercourse or merely the symbolic representation of intercourse 63 62 The scholar of the ancient Near East Louise M Pryke states that most scholars now maintain if the sacred marriage was a ritual that was actually acted out then it involved only symbolic intercourse 64 The cult of Ishtar was long thought to have involved sacred prostitution 65 but this is now rejected among many scholars 66 Hierodules known as ishtaritum are reported to have worked in Ishtar s temples 67 but it is unclear if such priestesses actually performed any sex acts 68 and several modern scholars have argued that they did not 69 70 Women across the ancient Near East worshipped Ishtar by dedicating to her cakes baked in ashes known as kaman tumri 71 A dedication of this type is described in an Akkadian hymn 72 Several clay cake molds discovered at Mari are shaped like naked women with large hips clutching their breasts 72 Some scholars have suggested that the cakes made from these molds were intended as representations of Ishtar herself 73 Iconography editSymbols edit nbsp The eight pointed star was Inanna Ishtar s most common symbol 74 75 Here it is shown alongside the solar disk of her brother Shamash Sumerian Utu and the crescent moon of her father Sin Sumerian Nanna on a boundary stone of Meli Shipak II dating to the twelfth century BCE nbsp Lions were one of Inanna Ishtar s primary symbols 76 77 The lion above comes from the Ishtar Gate the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon which was constructed in around 575 BCE under the orders of Nebuchadnezzar II 78 Inanna Ishtar s most common symbol was the eight pointed star 74 though the exact number of points sometimes varies 75 Six pointed stars also occur frequently but their symbolic meaning is unknown 79 The eight pointed star seems to have originally borne a general association with the heavens 80 but by the Old Babylonian Period c 1830 c 1531 BCE it had come to be specifically associated with the planet Venus with which Ishtar was identified 80 Starting during this same period the star of Ishtar was normally enclosed within a circular disc 79 During later Babylonian times slaves who worked in Ishtar s temples were sometimes branded with the seal of the eight pointed star 79 81 On boundary stones and cylinder seals the eight pointed star is sometimes shown alongside the crescent moon which was the symbol of Sin Sumerian Nanna and the rayed solar disk which was a symbol of Shamash Sumerian Utu 75 Inanna s cuneiform ideogram was a hook shaped twisted knot of reeds representing the doorpost of the storehouse a common symbol of fertility and plenty 82 The rosette was another important symbol of Inanna which continued to be used as a symbol of Ishtar after their syncretism 83 During the Neo Assyrian Period 911 609 BCE the rosette may have actually eclipsed the eight pointed star and become Ishtar s primary symbol 84 The temple of Ishtar in the city of Assur was adorned with numerous rosettes 83 Inanna Ishtar was associated with lions 76 77 which the ancient Mesopotamians regarded as a symbol of power 76 Her associations with lions began during Sumerian times 77 a chlorite bowl from the temple of Inanna at Nippur depicts a large feline battling a giant snake and a cuneiform inscription on the bowl reads Inanna and the Serpent indicating that the cat is supposed to represent the goddess 77 During the Akkadian Period Ishtar was frequently depicted as a heavily armed warrior goddess with a lion as one of her attributes 85 Doves were also prominent animal symbols associated with Inanna Ishtar 86 87 Doves are shown on cultic objects associated with Inanna as early as the beginning of the third millennium BCE 87 Lead dove figurines were discovered in the temple of Ishtar at Assur dating to the thirteenth century BCE 87 and a painted fresco from Mari Syria shows a giant dove emerging from a palm tree in the temple of Ishtar 86 indicating that the goddess herself was sometimes believed to take the form of a dove 86 As the planet Venus edit Inanna was associated with the planet Venus which is named after her Roman equivalent Venus 41 88 41 Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess or personification of the planet Venus 89 Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that in many myths Inanna s movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky 89 In Inanna s Descent to the Underworld unlike any other deity Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent setting in the West and then rising again in the East 89 An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for Kur what could be presumed to be the mountains replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West 89 In Inanna and Shukaletuda Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna possibly searching the Eastern and Western horizons 90 In the same myth while searching for her attacker Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky 89 Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous it disappears due to its proximity to the Sun for many days at a time and then reappears on the other horizon some cultures did not recognize Venus as a single entity 89 instead they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon the morning and evening star 89 Nonetheless a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period indicates that the ancient Sumerians knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object 89 The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna s dual nature 89 Modern astrologers recognize the story of Inanna s descent into the underworld as a reference to an astronomical phenomenon associated with retrograde Venus Seven days before retrograde Venus makes its inferior conjunction with the sun it disappears from the evening sky The seven day period between this disappearance and the conjunction itself is seen as the astronomical phenomenon on which the myth of descent was based After the conjunction seven more days elapse before Venus appears as the morning star corresponding to the ascent from the underworld 91 92 Inanna in her aspect as Anunitu was associated with the eastern fish of the last of the zodiacal constellations Pisces 93 94 Her consort Dumuzi was associated with the contiguous first constellation Aries 93 nbsp Babylonian terracotta relief of Ishtar from Eshnunna early second millennium BCE nbsp Life sized statue of a goddess probably Ishtar holding a vase from Mari Syria eighteenth century BC nbsp Terracotta relief of Ishtar with wings from Larsa second millennium BCE nbsp Stele showing Ishtar holding a bow from Ennigaldi Nanna s museum eighth century BCE nbsp Hellenized bas relief sculpture of Ishtar standing with her servant from Palmyra third century CE Character edit nbsp Ancient Akkadian cylinder seal depicting Inanna resting her foot on the back of a lion while Ninshubur stands in front of her paying obeisance c 2334 2154 BCE 95 The Sumerians worshipped Inanna as the goddess of both warfare and love 28 Unlike other gods whose roles were static and whose domains were limited the stories of Inanna describe her as moving from conquest to conquest 24 96 She was portrayed as young and impetuous constantly striving for more power than she had been allotted 24 96 Although she was worshipped as the goddess of love Inanna was not the goddess of marriage nor was she ever viewed as a mother goddess 97 98 Andrew R George goes as far as stating that According to all mythology Istar was not temperamentally disposed towards such functions 99 Julia M Asher Greve has even proposed by Asher Greve that Inanna was significant specifically because she was not a mother goddess 100 As a love goddess she was commonly quantify invoked by Mesopotamians in incantations 101 f In Inanna s Descent to the Underworld Inanna treats her lover Dumuzid in a very capricious manner 97 This aspect of Inanna s personality is emphasized in the later standard Akkadian version of the Epic of Gilgamesh in which Gilgamesh points out Ishtar s infamous ill treatment of her lovers 102 103 However according to assyriologist Dina Katz the portrayal of Inanna s relationship with Dumuzi in the Descent myth is unusual 104 105 Inanna was also worshipped as one of the Sumerian war deities 41 106 One of the hymns dedicated to her declares She stirs confusion and chaos against those who are disobedient to her speeding carnage and inciting the devastating flood clothed in terrifying radiance It is her game to speed conflict and battle untiring strapping on her sandals 107 Battle itself was occasionally referred to as the Dance of Inanna 108 Epithets related to lions in particular were meant to highlight this aspect of her character 109 As a war goddess she was sometimes referred to with the name Irnina victory 110 though this epithet could be applied to other deities as well 111 112 113 in addition to functioning as a distinct goddess linked to Ningishzida 114 rather than to Ishtar Another epithet highlighting this aspect of Ishtar s nature was Anunitu the martial one 115 Like Irnina Anunitu could also be a separate deity 116 and as such she is first attested in documents from the Ur III period 117 Assyrian royal curse formulas invoked both of Ishtar s primary functions at once invoking her to remove potency and martial valor alike 118 Mesopotamian texts indicate that traits perceived as heroic such as a king s ability to lead his troops and to triumph over enemies and sexual prowess were regarded as interconnected 119 While Inanna Ishtar was a goddess her gender could be ambiguous at times 120 Gary Beckman states that ambiguous gender identification was a characteristic not just of Ishtar herself but of a category of deities he refers to as Ishtar type goddesses such as Shaushka Pinikir or Ninsianna 121 A late hymn contains the phrase she Ishtar is Enlil she is Ninil which might be a reference to occasionally dimorphic character of Ishtar in addition to serving as an exaltation 122 A hymn to Nanaya alludes to a male aspect of Ishtar from Babylon alongside a variety of more standard descriptions 123 However Ilona Zsolnay only describes Ishtar as a feminine figure who performed a masculine role in certain contexts for example as a war deity 124 Family edit nbsp An ancient Sumerian depiction of the marriage of Inanna and Dumuzid 125 Inanna s twin brother was Utu known as Shamash in Akkadian the god of the sun and justice 126 127 128 In Sumerian texts Inanna and Utu are shown as extremely close 129 some modern authors perceive their relationship as bordering on incestuous 129 130 In the myth of her descent into the underworld Inanna addresses Ereshkigal the queen of the underworld as her older sister 131 132 but the two goddesses almost never appear together in Sumerian literature 132 and were not placed in the same category in god lists 133 Due to Hurrian influence in some neo Assyrian sources for example penalty clauses Ishtar was also associated with Adad with the relationship mirroring that between Shaushka and her brother Teshub in Hurrian mythology 134 The most common tradition regarded Nanna and his wife Ningal as her parents 1 135 Examples of it are present in sources as diverse as a god list from the Early Dynastic period 136 a hymn of Ishme Dagan relaying how Enlil and Ninlil bestowed Inanna s powers upon her 137 a late syncretic hymn to Nanaya 138 and an Akkadian ritual from Hattusa 139 While some authors assert that in Uruk Inanna was usually regarded as the daughter of the sky god An 28 140 141 it is possible that references to him as her father are only referring to his status as an ancestor of Nanna and thus his daughter 135 In literary texts Enlil or Enki may be addressed as her fathers 28 140 142 but references to major gods being fathers can also be examples of the use of this word as an epithet indicating seniority 143 Dumuzid later known as Tammuz the god of shepherds is usually described as Inanna s husband 127 but according to some interpretations Inanna s loyalty to him is questionable 28 in the myth of her descent into the Underworld she abandons Dumuzid and permits the galla demons to drag him down into the underworld as her replacement 144 145 In a different myth The Return of Dumuzid Inanna instead mourns over Dumuzid s death and ultimately decrees that he will be allowed to return to Heaven to be with her for one half of the year 146 145 Dina Katz notes that the portrayal of their relationship in Inanna s Descent is unusual 105 it does not resemble the portrayal of their relationship in other myths about Dumuzi s death which almost never pin the blame for it on Inanna but rather on demons or even human bandits 104 A large corpus of love poetry describing encounters between Inanna and Dumuzi has been assembled by researchers 147 However local manifestations of Inanna Ishtar were not necessarily associated with Dumuzi 148 In Kish the tutelary deity of the city Zababa a war god was viewed as the consort of a local hypostasis of Ishtar 149 though after the Old Babylonian period Bau introduced from Lagash became his spouse an example of a couple consisting out of a warrior god and a medicine goddess common in Mesopotamian mythology 150 and Ishtar of Kish started to instead be worshiped on her own 149 Inanna is not usually described as having any offspring 28 but in the myth of Lugalbanda and in a single building inscription from the Third Dynasty of Ur c 2112 c 2004 BCE the warrior god Shara is described as her son 151 She was also sometimes considered the mother of Lulal 152 who is described in other texts as the son of Ninsun 152 Wilfred G Lambert described the relation between Inanna and Lulal as close but unspecified in the context of Inanna s Descent 153 There is also similarly scarce evidence for the love goddess Nanaya being regarded as her daughter a song a votive formula and an oath but it is possible all of these instances merely refer to an epithet indicating closeness between the deities and were not a statement about actual parentage 154 Sukkal edit Main article Ninshubur Inanna s sukkal was the goddess Ninshubur 155 whose relationship with Inanna is one of mutual devotion 155 In some texts Ninshubur was listed right after Dumuzi as a member of Inanna s circle even before some of her relatives 156 in one text the phrase Ninshubur beloved vizier appears 156 In another text Ninshubur is listed even before Nanaya originally possibly a hypostasis of Inanna herself 157 in a list of deities from her entourage 158 In an Akkadian ritual text known from Hittite archives Ishtar s sukkal is invoked alongside her family members Sin Ningal and Shamash 159 Other members of Inanna s entourage frequently listed in god lists were the goddesses Nanaya usually placed right behind Dumuzi and Ninshubur Kanisurra Gazbaba and Bizila all of them also associated with each other in various configurations independently from this context 158 160 Syncretism and influence on other deities editIn addition to the full conflation of Inanna and Ishtar during the reign of Sargon and his successors 45 she was syncretised with a large number of deities 161 to a varying degree The oldest known syncretic hymn is dedicated to Inanna 162 and has been dated to the Early Dynastic period 163 Many god lists compiled by ancient scribes contained entire Inanna group sections enumerating similar goddesses 164 and tablet IV of the monumental god list An Anum 7 tablets total is known as the Ishtar tablet due to most of its contents being the names of Ishtar s equivalents her titles and various attendants 165 Some modern researchers use the term Ishtar type to define specific figures of this variety 166 139 Some texts contained references to all the Ishtars of a given area 167 In later periods Ishtar s name was sometimes used as a generic term goddess in Babylonia while a logographic writing of Inanna was used to spell the title Beltu leading to further conflations 168 A possible example of such use of the name is also known from Elam as a single Elamite inscription written in Akkadian refers to Manzat Ishtar which might in this context mean the goddess Manzat 169 Specific examples edit Ashtart In cities like Mari and Ebla the Eastern and Western Semitic forms of the name Ishtar and Ashtart were regarded as basically interchangeable 170 However the western goddess evidently lacked the astral character of Mesopotamian Ishtar 171 Ugaritic god lists and ritual texts equate the local Ashtart with both Ishtar and Hurrian Ishara 172 Ishara Due to association with Ishtar 173 the Syrian goddess Ishara started to be regarded as a lady of love like her and Nanaya in Mesopotamia 174 157 However in Hurro Hittite context Ishara was associated with the underworld goddess Allani instead and additionally functioned as a goddess of oaths 174 175 Nanaya A goddess uniquely closely linked to Inanna as according to assyriologist Frans Wiggermann her name was originally an epithet of Inanna possibly serving as an appellative My Inanna 157 Nanaya was associated with erotic love but she eventually developed a warlike aspect of her own too Nanaya Eursaba 176 In Larsa Inanna s functions were effectively split between three separate figures and she was worshiped as part of a trinity consisting out of herself Nanaya as a love goddess and Ninsianna as an astral goddess 177 Inanna Ishtar and Nanaya were often accidentally or intentionally conflated in poetry 178 Ninegal While she was initially an independent figure starting with Old Babylonian period in some texts Ninegal is used as a title of Inanna and in god lists she was a part of the Inanna group usually alongside Ninsianna 179 An example of the usage of Ninegal as an epithet can be found in the text designated as Hymn to Inana as Ninegala Inana D in the ETCSL Ninisina A special case of syncretism was that between the medicine goddess Ninisina and Inanna which occurred for political reasons 180 Isin at one point lost control over Uruk and identification of its tutelary goddess with Inanna complete with assigning a similar warlike character to her who served as a source of royal power was likely meant to serve as a theological solution of this problem 180 As a result in a number of sources Ninisina was regarded as analogous to similarly named Ninsianna treated as a manifestation of Inanna 180 It is also possible that a ceremony of sacred marriage between Ninisina and the king of Isin had been performed as a result 181 Ninsianna A Venus deity of varying gender 182 Ninsianna was referred to as male by Rim Sin of Larsa who specifically used the phrase my king and in texts from Sippar Ur and Girsu but as Ishtar of the stars in god lists and astronomical texts which also applied Ishtar s epithets related to her role as a personification of Venus to this deity 183 In some locations Ninsianna was also known as a female deity in which case her name can be understood as red queen of heaven 180 Pinikir Originally an Elamite goddess recognised in Mesopotamia and as a result among Hurrians and Hittites as an equivalent of Ishtar due to similar functions She was identified specifically as her astral aspect Ninsianna in god lists 184 In a Hittite ritual she was identified by the logogram dISTAR and Shamash Suen and Ningal were referred to as her family Enki and Ishtar s sukkal were invoked in it as well 185 in Elam she was a goddess of love and sex 186 and a heavenly deity mistress of heaven 187 Due to syncretism with Ishtar and Ninsianna Pinikir was referred to as both a female and male deity in Hurro Hittite sources 188 Sauska Her name was frequently written with the logogram dISTAR in Hurrian and Hittite sources while Mesopotamian texts recognised her under the name Ishtar of Subartu 189 Some elements peculiar to her were associated with the Assyrian hypostasis of Ishtar Ishtar of Nineveh in later times 190 Her handmaidens Ninatta and Kulitta were incorporated into the circle of deities believed to serve Ishtar in her temple in Ashur 191 192 Sumerian texts editOrigin myths edit The poem of Enki and the World Order ETCSL 1 1 3 begins by describing the god Enki and his establishment of the cosmic organization of the universe 193 Towards the end of the poem Inanna comes to Enki and complains that he has assigned a domain and special powers to all of the other gods except for her 194 She declares that she has been treated unfairly 195 Enki responds by telling her that she already has a domain and that he does not need to assign her one 196 nbsp Original Sumerian tablet of the Courtship of Inanna and DumuzidThe myth of Inanna and the Huluppu Tree found in the preamble to the epic of Gilgamesh Enkidu and the Netherworld ETCSL 1 8 1 4 197 centers around a young Inanna not yet stable in her power 198 199 It begins with a huluppu tree which Kramer identifies as possibly a willow 200 growing on the banks of the river Euphrates 200 201 Inanna moves the tree to her garden in Uruk with the intention to carve it into a throne once it is fully grown 200 201 The tree grows and matures but the serpent who knows no charm the Anzu bird and Lilitu Ki Sikil Lil La Ke in Sumerian 202 seen by some as the Sumerian forerunner to the Lilith of Jewish folklore all take up residence within the tree causing Inanna to cry with sorrow 200 201 The hero Gilgamesh who in this story is portrayed as her brother comes along and slays the serpent causing the Anzu bird and Lilitu to flee 203 201 Gilgamesh s companions chop down the tree and carve its wood into a bed and a throne which they give to Inanna 204 201 who fashions a pikku and a mikku probably a drum and drumsticks respectively although the exact identifications are uncertain 205 which she gives to Gilgamesh as a reward for his heroism 206 201 The Sumerian hymn Inanna and Utu contains an etiological myth describing how Inanna became the goddess of sex 207 At the beginning of the hymn Inanna knows nothing of sex 207 so she begs her brother Utu to take her to Kur the Sumerian underworld 207 so that she may taste the fruit of a tree that grows there 207 which will reveal to her all the secrets of sex 207 Utu complies and in Kur Inanna tastes the fruit and becomes knowledgeable 207 The hymn employs the same motif found in the myth of Enki and Ninhursag and in the later Biblical story of Adam and Eve 207 The poem Inanna Prefers the Farmer ETCSL 4 0 8 3 3 begins with a rather playful conversation between Inanna and Utu who incrementally reveals to her that it is time for her to marry 11 208 She is courted by a farmer named Enkimdu and a shepherd named Dumuzid 11 At first Inanna prefers the farmer 11 but Utu and Dumuzid gradually persuade her that Dumuzid is the better choice for a husband arguing that for every gift the farmer can give to her the shepherd can give her something even better 209 In the end Inanna marries Dumuzid 209 The shepherd and the farmer reconcile their differences offering each other gifts 210 Samuel Noah Kramer compares the myth to the later Biblical story of Cain and Abel because both myths center around a farmer and a shepherd competing for divine favor and in both stories the deity in question ultimately chooses the shepherd 11 Conquests and patronage edit nbsp Akkadian cylinder seal from c 2300 BCE or thereabouts depicting the deities Inanna Utu Enki and Isimud 211 Inanna and Enki ETCSL t 1 3 1 is a lengthy poem written in Sumerian which may date to the Third Dynasty of Ur c 2112 BCE c 2004 BCE 212 it tells the story of how Inanna stole the sacred mes from Enki the god of water and human culture 213 In ancient Sumerian mythology the mes were sacred powers or properties belonging to the gods that allowed human civilization to exist 214 Each me embodied one specific aspect of human culture 214 These aspects were very diverse and the mes listed in the poem include abstract concepts such as Truth Victory and Counsel technologies such as writing and weaving and also social constructs such as law priestly offices kingship and prostitution The mes were believed to grant power over all the aspects of civilization both positive and negative 213 In the myth Inanna travels from her own city of Uruk to Enki s city of Eridu where she visits his temple the E Abzu 215 Inanna is greeted by Enki s sukkal Isimud who offers her food and drink 216 217 Inanna starts up a drinking competition with Enki 213 218 Then once Enki is thoroughly intoxicated Inanna persuades him to give her the mes 213 219 Inanna flees from Eridu in the Boat of Heaven taking the mes back with her to Uruk 220 221 Enki wakes up to discover that the mes are gone and asks Isimud what has happened to them 220 222 Isimud replies that Enki has given all of them to Inanna 223 224 Enki becomes infuriated and sends multiple sets of fierce monsters after Inanna to take back the mes before she reaches the city of Uruk 225 226 Inanna s sukkal Ninshubur fends off all of the monsters that Enki sends after them 227 226 155 Through Ninshubur s aid Inanna successfully manages to take the mes back with her to the city of Uruk 227 228 After Inanna escapes Enki reconciles with her and bids her a positive farewell 229 It is possible that this legend may represent a historic transfer of power from the city of Eridu to the city of Uruk 17 230 It is also possible that this legend may be a symbolic representation of Inanna s maturity and her readiness to become the Queen of Heaven 231 The poem Inanna Takes Command of Heaven is an extremely fragmentary but important account of Inanna s conquest of the Eanna temple in Uruk 17 It begins with a conversation between Inanna and her brother Utu in which Inanna laments that the Eanna temple is not within their domain and resolves to claim it as her own 17 The text becomes increasingly fragmentary at this point in the narrative 17 but appears to describe her difficult passage through a marshland to reach the temple while a fisherman instructs her on which route is best to take 17 Ultimately Inanna reaches her father An who is shocked by her arrogance but nevertheless concedes that she has succeeded and that the temple is now her domain 17 The text ends with a hymn expounding Inanna s greatness 17 This myth may represent an eclipse in the authority of the priests of An in Uruk and a transfer of power to the priests of Inanna 17 Inanna briefly appears at the beginning and end of the epic poem Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta ETCSL 1 8 2 3 The epic deals with a rivalry between the cities of Uruk and Aratta Enmerkar the king of Uruk wishes to adorn his city with jewels and precious metals but cannot do so because such minerals are only found in Aratta and since trade does not yet exist the resources are not available to him 232 Inanna who is the patron goddess of both cities 233 appears to Enmerkar at the beginning of the poem 234 and tells him that she favors Uruk over Aratta 235 She instructs Enmerkar to send a messenger to the lord of Aratta to ask for the resources Uruk needs 233 The majority of the epic revolves around a great contest between the two kings over Inanna s favor 236 Inanna reappears at the end of the poem to resolve the conflict by telling Enmerkar to establish trade between his city and Aratta 237 Justice myths edit nbsp The original Sumerian clay tablet of Inanna and Ebih which is currently housed in the Oriental Institute at the University of ChicagoInanna and her brother Utu were regarded as the dispensers of divine justice 129 a role which Inanna exemplifies in several of her myths 238 Inanna and Ebih ETCSL 1 3 2 otherwise known as Goddess of the Fearsome Divine Powers is a 184 line poem written by the Akkadian poet Enheduanna describing Inanna s confrontation with Mount Ebih a mountain in the Zagros mountain range 239 The poem begins with an introductory hymn praising Inanna 240 The goddess journeys all over the entire world until she comes across Mount Ebih and becomes infuriated by its glorious might and natural beauty 241 considering its very existence as an outright affront to her own authority 242 239 She rails at Mount Ebih shouting Mountain because of your elevation because of your height Because of your goodness because of your beauty Because you wore a holy garment Because An organized you Because you did not bring your nose close to the ground Because you did not press your lips in the dust 243 Inanna petitions to An the Sumerian god of the heavens to allow her to destroy Mount Ebih 241 An warns Inanna not to attack the mountain 241 but she ignores his warning and proceeds to attack and destroy Mount Ebih regardless 241 In the conclusion of the myth she explains to Mount Ebih why she attacked it 243 In Sumerian poetry the phrase destroyer of Kur is occasionally used as one of Inanna s epithets 244 The poem Inanna and Shukaletuda ETCSL 1 3 3 begins with a hymn to Inanna praising her as the planet Venus 245 It then introduces Shukaletuda a gardener who is terrible at his job All of his plants die except for one poplar tree 245 Shukaletuda prays to the gods for guidance in his work To his surprise the goddess Inanna sees his one poplar tree and decides to rest under the shade of its branches 245 Shukaletuda removes her clothes and rapes Inanna while she sleeps 245 When the goddess wakes up and realizes she has been violated she becomes furious and determines to bring her attacker to justice 245 In a fit of rage Inanna unleashes horrible plagues upon the Earth turning water into blood 245 Shukaletuda terrified for his life pleads his father for advice on how to escape Inanna s wrath 245 His father tells him to hide in the city amongst the hordes of people where he will hopefully blend in 245 Inanna searches the mountains of the East for her attacker 245 but is not able to find him 245 She then releases a series of storms and closes all roads to the city but is still unable to find Shukaletuda 245 so she asks Enki to help her find him threatening to leave her temple in Uruk if he does not 245 Enki consents and Inanna flies across the sky like a rainbow 245 Inanna finally locates Shukaletuda who vainly attempts to invent excuses for his crime against her Inanna rejects these excuses and kills him 246 Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has cited the story of Shukaletuda as a Sumerian astral myth arguing that the movements of Inanna in the story correspond with the movements of the planet Venus 89 He has also stated that while Shukaletuda was praying to the goddess he may have been looking toward Venus on the horizon 246 The text of the poem Inanna and Bilulu ETCSL 1 4 4 discovered at Nippur is badly mutilated 247 and scholars have interpreted it in a number of different ways 247 The beginning of the poem is mostly destroyed 247 but seems to be a lament 247 The intelligible part of the poem describes Inanna pining after her husband Dumuzid who is in the steppe watching his flocks 247 248 Inanna sets out to find him 247 After this a large portion of the text is missing 247 When the story resumes Inanna is being told that Dumuzid has been murdered 247 Inanna discovers that the old bandit woman Bilulu and her son Girgire are responsible 249 248 She travels along the road to Edenlila and stops at an inn where she finds the two murderers 247 Inanna stands on top of a stool 247 and transforms Bilulu into the waterskin that men carry in the desert 250 forcing her to pour the funerary libations for Dumuzid 247 248 Descent into the underworld edit nbsp Copy of the Akkadian version of Ishtar s Descent into the Underworld from the Library of Assurbanipal currently held in the British Museum in London England nbsp Depiction of Inanna Ishtar from the Ishtar Vase dating to the early second millennium BCE Mesopotamian Terracotta with cut moulded and painted decoration from Larsa Two different versions of the story of Inanna Ishtar s descent into the underworld have survived 251 252 a Sumerian version dating to the Third Dynasty of Ur circa 2112 BCE 2004 BCE ETCSL 1 4 1 251 252 and a clearly derivative Akkadian version from the early second millennium BCE 251 252 g The Sumerian version of the story is nearly three times the length of the later Akkadian version and contains much greater detail 254 Sumerian version edit In Sumerian religion the Kur was conceived of as a dark dreary cavern located deep underground 255 life there was envisioned as a shadowy version of life on earth 255 It was ruled by Inanna s sister the goddess Ereshkigal 131 255 Before leaving Inanna instructs her minister and servant Ninshubur to plead with the deities Enlil Nanna An and Enki to rescue her if she does not return after three days 256 257 The laws of the underworld dictate that with the exception of appointed messengers those who enter it may never leave 256 Inanna dresses elaborately for the visit she wears a turban wig lapis lazuli necklace beads upon her breast the pala dress the ladyship garment mascara a pectoral and golden ring and holds a lapis lazuli measuring rod 258 259 Each garment is a representation of a powerful me she possesses 260 Inanna pounds on the gates of the underworld demanding to be let in 261 262 257 The gatekeeper Neti asks her why she has come 261 263 and Inanna replies that she wishes to attend the funeral rites of Gugalanna the husband of my elder sister Ereshkigal 131 261 263 Neti reports this to Ereshkigal 264 265 who tells him Bolt the seven gates of the underworld Then one by one open each gate a crack Let Inanna enter As she enters remove her royal garments 266 Perhaps Inanna s garments unsuitable for a funeral along with Inanna s haughty behavior make Ereshkigal suspicious 267 Following Ereshkigal s instructions Neti tells Inanna she may enter the first gate of the underworld but she must hand over her lapis lazuli measuring rod She asks why and is told It is just the ways of the underworld She obliges and passes through Inanna passes through a total of seven gates at each one removing a piece of clothing or jewelry she had been wearing at the start of her journey 268 thus stripping her of her power 269 257 When she arrives in front of her sister she is naked 269 257 After she had crouched down and had her clothes removed they were carried away Then she made her sister Erec ki gala rise from her throne and instead she sat on her throne The Anna the seven judges rendered their decision against her They looked at her it was the look of death They spoke to her it was the speech of anger They shouted at her it was the shout of heavy guilt The afflicted woman was turned into a corpse And the corpse was hung on a hook 270 Three days and three nights pass and Ninshubur following instructions goes to the temples of Enlil Nanna An and Enki and pleads with each of them to rescue Inanna 271 272 273 The first three deities refuse saying Inanna s fate is her own fault 271 274 275 but Enki is deeply troubled and agrees to help 276 277 275 He creates two sexless figures named gala tura and the kur jara from the dirt under the fingernails of two of his fingers 276 278 275 He instructs them to appease Ereshkigal 276 278 and when she asks them what they want ask for the corpse of Inanna which they must sprinkle with the food and water of life 276 278 When they come before Ereshkigal she is in agony like a woman giving birth 279 She offers them whatever they want including life giving rivers of water and fields of grain if they can relieve her 280 but they refuse all of her offers and ask only for Inanna s corpse 279 The gala tura and the kur jara sprinkle Inanna s corpse with the food and water of life and revive her 281 282 275 Galla demons sent by Ereshkigal follow Inanna out of the underworld insisting that someone else must be taken to the underworld as Inanna s replacement 283 284 275 They first come upon Ninshubur and attempt to take her 283 284 275 but Inanna stops them insisting that Ninshubur is her loyal servant and that she had rightfully mourned for her while she was in the underworld 283 284 275 They next come upon Shara Inanna s beautician who is still in mourning 285 286 275 The demons attempt to take him but Inanna insists that they may not because he had also mourned for her 287 288 275 The third person they come upon is Lulal who is also in mourning 287 289 275 The demons try to take him but Inanna stops them once again 287 289 275 nbsp Ancient Sumerian cylinder seal impression showing Dumuzid being tortured in the underworld by the galla demonsFinally they come upon Dumuzid Inanna s husband 290 275 Despite Inanna s fate and in contrast to the other individuals who were properly mourning her Dumuzid is lavishly clothed and resting beneath a tree or upon her throne entertained by slave girls Inanna displeased decrees that the galla shall take him 290 275 291 The galla then drag Dumuzid down to the underworld 290 275 Another text known as Dumuzid s Dream ETCSL 1 4 3 describes Dumuzid s repeated attempts to evade capture by the galla demons an effort in which he is aided by the sun god Utu 292 293 h In the Sumerian poem The Return of Dumuzid which begins where The Dream of Dumuzid ends Dumuzid s sister Geshtinanna laments continually for days and nights over Dumuzid s death joined by Inanna who has apparently experienced a change of heart and Sirtur Dumuzid s mother 294 The three goddesses mourn continually until a fly reveals to Inanna the location of her husband 295 Together Inanna and Geshtinanna go to the place where the fly has told them they will find Dumuzid 296 They find him there and Inanna decrees that from that point onwards Dumuzid will spend half of the year with her sister Ereshkigal in the underworld and the other half of the year in Heaven with her while his sister Geshtinanna takes his place in the underworld 297 275 298 Akkadian version edit This version had two manuscripts found in the Library of Ashurbanipal and a third was found in Asshur all dating from the first half of the first millennium before the common era 299 Of the Ninevite version the first cuneiform version was published in 1873 by Francois Lenormant and the transliterated version was published by Peter Jensen in 1901 299 Its title in Akkadian is Ana Kurnuge qaqqari la tari 299 The Akkadian version begins with Ishtar approaching the gates of the underworld and demanding the gatekeeper to let her in If you do not open the gate for me to come in I shall smash the door and shatter the bolt I shall smash the doorpost and overturn the doors I shall raise up the dead and they shall eat the living And the dead shall outnumber the living 300 301 The gatekeeper whose name is not given in the Akkadian version 300 hurries to tell Ereshkigal of Ishtar s arrival Ereshkigal orders him to let Ishtar enter but tells him to treat her according to the ancient rites 302 The gatekeeper lets Ishtar into the underworld opening one gate at a time 302 At each gate Ishtar is forced to shed one article of clothing When she finally passes the seventh gate she is naked 303 In a rage Ishtar throws herself at Ereshkigal but Ereshkigal orders her servant Namtar to imprison Ishtar and unleash sixty diseases against her 304 After Ishtar descends to the underworld all sexual activity ceases on earth 305 306 The god Papsukkal the Akkadian counterpart to Ninshubur 307 reports the situation to Ea the god of wisdom and culture 305 Ea creates an androgynous being called Asu shu namir and sends them to Ereshkigal telling them to invoke the name of the great gods against her and to ask for the bag containing the waters of life Ereshkigal becomes enraged when she hears Asu shu namir s demand but she is forced to give them the water of life Asu shu namir sprinkles Ishtar with this water reviving her Then Ishtar passes back through the seven gates receiving one article of clothing back at each gate and exiting the final gate fully clothed 305 Interpretations in modern assyriology edit nbsp The Burney Relief which is speculated to represent either Ishtar or her older sister Ereshkigal c 19th or 18th century BCE Dina Katz an authority on Sumerian afterlife beliefs and funerary customs considers the narrative of Inanna s descent to be a combination of two distinct preexisting traditions rooted in broader context of Mesopotamian religion In one tradition Inanna was only able to leave the underworld with the help of Enki s trick with no mention of the possibility of finding a substitute 308 This part of the myth belongs to the genre of myths about deities struggling to obtain power glory etc such as Lugal e or Enuma Elish 308 and possibly served as a representation of Inanna s character as a personification of a periodically vanishing astral body 309 According to Katz the fact that Inanna s instructions to Ninshubur contain a correct prediction of her eventual fate including the exact means of her rescue show that the purpose of this composition was simply highlighting Inanna s ability to traverse both the heavens and the underworld much like how Venus was able to rise over and over again 309 She also points out Inanna s return has parallels in some Udug hul incantations 309 Another was simply one of the many myths about the death of Dumuzi such as Dumuzi s Dream or Inana and Bilulu in these myths Inanna is not to blame for his death 310 tied to his role as an embodiment of vegetation She considers it possible that the connection between the two parts of the narrative was meant to mirror some well attested healing rituals which required a symbolic substitute of the person being treated 105 Katz also notes that the Sumerian version of the myth is not concerned with matters of fertility and points out any references to it e g to nature being infertile while Ishtar is dead were only added in later Akkadian translations 311 so was the description of Tammuz s funeral 311 The purpose of these changes was likely to make the myth closer to cultic traditions linked to Tammuz namely the annual mourning of his death followed by celebration of a temporary return 312 According to Katz it is notable that known many copies of the later versions of the myth come from Assyrian cities which were known for their veneration of Tammuz such as Ashur and Nineveh 311 Other interpretations edit A number of less scholarly interpretations of the myth arose through the 20th century many of them rooted in the tradition of Jungian analysis rather than assyriology Some authors draw comparisons to the Greek myth of the abduction of Persephone as well 313 Monica Otterrmann performed a feminist interpretation of the myth questioning its interpretation as related to the cycle of nature 314 claiming that the narratives represent that Inanna s powers were being restricted by the Mesopotamian patriarchy due to the fact that according to her the region was not conducive to fertility 315 Brandao questions this idea in part for although Inanna s power is at stake in the Sumerian text in the Akkadian text the goddess relationship to fertility and fertilization is at stake Furthermore in the Sumerian text Inanna s power is not limited by a man but by another equally powerful goddess Ereskigal 315 Later myths editEpic of Gilgamesh edit nbsp Ancient Mesopotamian terracotta relief showing Gilgamesh slaying the Bull of Heaven sent by Ishtar in Tablet VI of the Epic of Gilgamesh after he spurns her amorous advances 316 Main article Epic of Gilgamesh In the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh Ishtar appears to Gilgamesh after he and his companion Enkidu have returned to Uruk from defeating the ogre Humbaba and demands Gilgamesh to become her consort 317 i Gilgamesh refuses her pointing out that all of her previous lovers have suffered 317 Listen to me while I tell the tale of your lovers There was Tammuz the lover of your youth for him you decreed wailing year after year You loved the many coloured Lilac breasted Roller but still you struck and broke his wing You have loved the lion tremendous in strength seven pits you dug for him and seven You have loved the stallion magnificent in battle and for him you decreed the whip and spur and a thong You have loved the shepherd of the flock he made meal cake for you day after day he killed kids for your sake You struck and turned him into a wolf now his own herd boys chase him away his own hounds worry his flanks 102 Infuriated by Gilgamesh s refusal 317 Ishtar goes to heaven and tells her father Anu that Gilgamesh has insulted her 317 Anu asks her why she is complaining to him instead of confronting Gilgamesh herself 317 Ishtar demands that Anu give her the Bull of Heaven 317 and swears that if he does not give it to her she will break in the doors of hell and smash the bolts there will be confusion i e mixing of people those above with those from the lower depths I shall bring up the dead to eat food like the living and the hosts of the dead will outnumber the living 319 nbsp Original Akkadian Tablet XI the Deluge Tablet of the Epic of GilgameshAnu gives Ishtar the Bull of Heaven and Ishtar sends it to attack Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu 316 320 Gilgamesh and Enkidu kill the Bull and offer its heart to the sun god Shamash 321 320 While Gilgamesh and Enkidu are resting Ishtar stands up on the walls of Uruk and curses Gilgamesh 321 322 Enkidu tears off the Bull s right thigh and throws it in Ishtar s face 321 322 saying If I could lay my hands on you it is this I should do to you and lash your entrails to your side 323 Enkidu later dies for this impiety 322 Ishtar calls together the crimped courtesans prostitutes and harlots 321 and orders them to mourn for the Bull of Heaven 321 322 Meanwhile Gilgamesh holds a celebration over the Bull of Heaven s defeat 324 322 Later in the epic Utnapishtim tells Gilgamesh the story of the Great Flood 325 which was sent by the god Enlil to annihilate all life on earth because the humans who were vastly overpopulated made too much noise and prevented him from sleeping 326 Utnapishtim tells how when the flood came Ishtar wept and mourned over the destruction of humanity alongside the Anunnaki 327 Later after the flood subsides Utnapishtim makes an offering to the gods 328 Ishtar appears to Utnapishtim wearing a lapis lazuli necklace with beads shaped like flies and tells him that Enlil never discussed the flood with any of the other gods 329 She swears him that she will never allow Enlil to cause another flood 329 and declares her lapis lazuli necklace a sign of her oath 329 Ishtar invites all the gods except for Enlil to gather around the offering and enjoy 330 Song of Agushaya edit Main article Agushaya Hymn The Song of Agushaya 331 an Akkadian text presumably from the time of Hammurapi tells a myth mixed with hymnic passages the war goddess Ishtar is filled with constant wrath and plagues the earth with war and battle With her roar she finally even threatens the wise god Ea in Apsu He appears before the assembly of gods and decides similar to Enkidu in the Epic of Gilgames to create an equal opponent for Ishtar From the dirt of his fingernails he forms the powerful goddess Ṣaltum fight quarrel whom he instructs to confront Ishtar disrespectfully and plague her day and night with her roar The text section with the confrontation of both goddesses is not preserved but it is followed by a scene in which Ishtar demands from Ea to call Ṣaltum back which he does Subsequently Ea establishes a festival in which henceforth a whirl dance gustu is to be performed annually in commemoration of the events The text ends with the statement that Ishtar s heart has calmed down Other tales edit A myth about the childhood of the god Ishum viewed as a son of Shamash describes Ishtar seemingly temporarily taking care of him and possibly expressing annoyance at that situation 332 In a pseudepigraphical Neo Assyrian text written in the seventh century BCE but which claims to be the autobiography of Sargon of Akkad 333 Ishtar is claimed to have appeared to Sargon surrounded by a cloud of doves while he was working as a gardener for Akki the drawer of the water 333 Ishtar then proclaimed Sargon her lover and allowed him to become the ruler of Sumer and Akkad 333 In Hurro Hittite texts the logogram dISHTAR denotes the goddess Sauska who was identified with Ishtar in god lists and similar documents as well and influenced the development of the late Assyrian cult of Ishtar of Nineveh according to hittitologist Gary Beckman 189 She plays a prominent role in the Hurrian myths of the Kumarbi cycle 334 Later influence editIn antiquity edit nbsp Phoenician figure dating to the seventh century BCE representing a goddess probably Astarte called the Lady of Galera National Archaeological Museum of Spain The cult of Inanna Ishtar may have been introduced to the Kingdom of Judah during the reign of King Manasseh 335 and although Inanna herself is not directly mentioned in the Bible by name 336 the Old Testament contains numerous allusions to her cult 337 Jeremiah 7 18 and Jeremiah 44 15 19 mention the Queen of Heaven who is probably a syncretism of Inanna Ishtar and the West Semitic goddess Astarte 335 338 339 71 Jeremiah states that the Queen of Heaven was worshipped by women who baked cakes for her 73 The Song of Songs bears strong similarities to the Sumerian love poems involving Inanna and Dumuzid 340 particularly in its usage of natural symbolism to represent the lovers physicality 340 Song of Songs 6 10 Ezekiel 8 14 mentions Inanna s husband Dumuzid under his later East Semitic name Tammuz 341 342 343 and describes a group of women mourning Tammuz s death while sitting near the north gate of the Temple in Jerusalem 342 343 Marina Warner a literary critic rather than Assyriologist claims that early Christians in the Middle East assimilated elements of Ishtar into the cult of the Virgin Mary 344 She argues that the Syrian writers Jacob of Serugh and Romanos the Melodist both wrote laments in which the Virgin Mary describes her compassion for her son at the foot of the cross in deeply personal terms closely resembling Ishtar s laments over the death of Tammuz 345 However broad comparisons between Tammuz and other dying gods are rooted in the work of James George Frazer and are regarded as a relic of less rigorous early 20th century Assyriology by more recent publications 346 The cult of Inanna Ishtar also heavily influenced the cult of the Phoenician goddess Astarte 347 The Phoenicians introduced Astarte to the Greek islands of Cyprus and Cythera 338 348 where she either gave rise to or heavily influenced the Greek goddess Aphrodite 349 348 350 347 Aphrodite took on Inanna Ishtar s associations with sexuality and procreation 351 352 Furthermore she was known as Ourania Oὐrania which means heavenly 353 352 a title corresponding to Inanna s role as the Queen of Heaven 353 352 nbsp Altar from the Greek city of Taras in Magna Graecia dating to c 400 c 375 BCE depicting Aphrodite and Adonis whose myth is derived from the Mesopotamian myth of Inanna and Dumuzid 354 355 Early artistic and literary portrayals of Aphrodite are extremely similar to Inanna Ishtar 351 352 Aphrodite was also a warrior goddess 351 348 356 the second century AD Greek geographer Pausanias records that in Sparta Aphrodite was worshipped as Aphrodite Areia which means warlike 357 358 He also mentions that Aphrodite s most ancient cult statues in Sparta and on Cythera showed her bearing arms 359 Modern scholars note that Aphrodite s warrior goddess aspects appear in the oldest strata of her worship 360 and see it as an indication of her Near Eastern origins 360 356 Aphrodite also absorbed Ishtar s association with doves 86 356 which were sacrificed to her alone 356 The Greek word for dove was peristera 86 87 which may be derived from the Semitic phrase peraḥ Istar meaning bird of Ishtar 87 The myth of Aphrodite and Adonis is derived from the story of Inanna and Dumuzid 354 355 Classical scholar Charles Penglase has written that Athena the Greek goddess of wisdom and war resembles Inanna s role as a terrifying warrior goddess 361 Others have noted that the birth of Athena from the head of her father Zeus could be derived from Inanna s descent into and return from the Underworld 362 However as noted by Gary Beckman a rather direct parallel to Athena s birth is found in the Hurrian Kumarbi cycle where Teshub is born from the surgically split skull of Kumarbi 363 rather than in any Inanna myths In Mandaean cosmology one of the names for Venus is ʿStira which is derived from the name Ishtar 364 Anthropologist Kevin Tuite argues that the Georgian goddess Dali was also influenced by Inanna 365 noting that both Dali and Inanna were associated with the morning star 366 both were characteristically depicted nude 367 but Assyriologists assume the naked goddess motif in Mesopotamian art in most cases cannot be Ishtar 368 and the goddess most consistently depicted as naked was Shala a weather goddess unrelated to Ishtar 369 both were associated with gold jewelry 367 both sexually preyed on mortal men 370 both were associated with human and animal fertility 371 note however that Assyriologist Dina Katz pointed out the references to fertility are more likely to be connected to Dumuzi than Inanna Ishtar in at least some cases 312 and both had ambiguous natures as sexually attractive but dangerous women 372 Traditional Mesopotamian religion began to gradually decline between the third and fifth centuries AD as ethnic Assyrians converted to Christianity Nonetheless the cult of Ishtar and Tammuz managed to survive in parts of Upper Mesopotamia 343 In the tenth century AD an Arab traveler wrote that All the Sabaeans of our time those of Babylonia as well as those of Harran lament and weep to this day over Tammuz at a festival which they more particularly the women hold in the month of the same name 343 Worship of Venus deities possibly connected to Inanna Ishtar was known in Pre Islamic Arabia right up until the Islamic period Isaac of Antioch d 406 AD says that the Arabs worshipped the Star kawkabta also known as Al Uzza which many identify with Venus 373 Isaac also mentions an Arabian deity named Baltis which according to Jan Retso most likely was another designation for Ishtar 374 In pre Islamic Arabian inscriptions themselves it appears that the deity known as Allat was also a Venusian deity 375 Attar a male god whose name is a cognate of Ishtar s is a plausible candidate for the role of Arabian Venus deity too on the account of both his name and his epithet eastern and western 376 Modern relevance edit nbsp Illustration of Ishtar s Midnight Courtship from Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton s 1884 book length poem Ishtar and Izdubar loosely based on George Smith s recent translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh 377 In his 1853 pamphlet The Two Babylons as part of his argument that Roman Catholicism is actually Babylonian paganism in disguise Alexander Hislop a Protestant minister in the Free Church of Scotland incorrectly argued that the modern English word Easter must be derived from Ishtar due to the phonetic similarity of the two words 378 Modern scholars have unanimously rejected Hislop s arguments as erroneous and based on a flawed understanding of Babylonian religion 379 380 381 Nonetheless Hislop s book is still popular among some groups of evangelical Protestants 379 and the ideas promoted in it have become widely circulated especially through the Internet due to a number of popular Internet memes 381 Ishtar had a major appearance in Ishtar and Izdubar 382 a book length poem written in 1884 by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton an American lawyer and businessman loosely based on the recently translated Epic of Gilgamesh 382 Ishtar and Izdubar expanded the original roughly 3 000 lines of the Epic of Gilgamesh to roughly 6 000 lines of rhyming couplets grouped into forty eight cantos 377 Hamilton significantly altered most of the characters and introduced entirely new episodes not found in the original epic 377 Significantly influenced by Edward FitzGerald s Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Edwin Arnold s The Light of Asia 377 Hamilton s characters dress more like nineteenth century Turks than ancient Babylonians 383 In the poem Izdubar the earlier misreading for the name Gilgamesh falls in love with Ishtar 384 but then with hot and balmy breath and trembling form aglow she attempts to seduce him leading Izdubar to reject her advances 384 Several columns of the book are devoted to an account of Ishtar s descent into the Underworld 383 At the conclusion of the book Izdubar now a god is reconciled with Ishtar in Heaven 385 In 1887 the composer Vincent d Indy wrote Symphony Ishtar variations symphonique Op 42 a symphony inspired by the Assyrian monuments in the British Museum 386 nbsp A modern illustration depicting Inanna Ishtar s descent into the Underworld taken from Lewis Spence s Myths and Legends of Babylonia and Assyria 1916 Inanna has become an important figure in modern feminist theory because she appears in the male dominated Sumerian pantheon 387 but is equally as powerful if not more powerful than the male deities she appears alongside 387 Simone de Beauvoir in her book The Second Sex 1949 argues that Inanna along with other powerful female deities from antiquity have been marginalized by modern culture in favor of male deities 386 Tikva Frymer Kensky has argued that Inanna was a marginal figure in Sumerian religion who embodies the socially unacceptable archetype of the undomesticated unattached woman 386 Feminist author Johanna Stuckey has argued against this idea pointing out Inanna s centrality in Sumerian religion and her broad diversity of powers neither of which seem to fit the idea that she was in any way regarded as marginal 386 Assyriologist Julia M Asher Greve who specializes in the study of position of women in antiquity criticizes Frymer Kensky s studies of Mesopotamian religion as a whole highlighting the problems with her focus on fertility the small selection of sources her works relied on her view that position of goddesses in the pantheon reflected that of ordinary women in society so called mirror theory as well as the fact her works do not accurately reflect the complexity of changes of roles of goddesses in religions of ancient Mesopotamia 388 Ilona Zsolnay regards Frymer Kensky s methodology as faulty 389 Inanna is also an important figure in BDSM culture The portrayal of Inanna in the Inanna and Ebih myth is cited as a precursor example of the dominatrix archetype characterizing her as a powerful woman who forces gods and men to submit to her 390 In mythology Inanna s submissives danced in rituals while being whipped by her to satisfy her When submissives asked for mercy Inanna ended the flagellation making such an action the pioneer of the BDSM safeword concept 390 391 In Neopaganism and Sumerian reconstructionism edit Inanna is the primary ancient source for Aleister Crowley s Babalon a principal goddess in the religion Thelema Inanna s name is also used to refer to the Goddess in modern Neopaganism and Wicca 392 Her name occurs in the refrain of the Burning Times Chant 393 one of the most widely used Wiccan liturgies 393 Inanna s Descent into the Underworld was the inspiration for the Descent of the Goddess 394 one of the most popular texts of Gardnerian Wicca 394 Paul Thomas a scholar of new religious movements has criticized the modern portrayal of Inanna accusing it of anachronistically imposing modern gender conventions on the ancient Sumerian story portraying Inanna as a wife and mother 395 two roles the ancient Sumerians never ascribed to her 395 28 while ignoring the more masculine elements of Inanna s cult particularly her associations with warfare and violence 395 Gary Beckman a researcher of religions of ancient Near East calls neopagan authors not revivalists but inventors 396 and notes that they often incorrectly view all historically attested female divinities as full or partial manifestations of a single figure 397 and highlights that while Ishtar did overshadow many other deities she was never a single Goddess 398 In popular culture editIshtar is central to the plot of Blood Feast a 1963 splatter film widely considered to be the first of its genre Features as Gilgamesh s archenemy and a huntress in SMITE 2014 under her Ishtar name Inanna appears as separate and playable Archer class Rider class and Avenger class Servants in Fate Grand Order 2015 under her Ishtar name Her Avenger class form is later revealed to be Astarte stylized in game as Ashtart sharing a similar form as Ishtar Inanna or Ishtar sometimes portrayed as entities distinct from each other appear in various entries of the Megami Tensei franchise In the comic series The Wicked The Divine the deity Inanna is a prominent deity Innana appears in the 453 Recurrence marrying and murdering Attila the Hun with her power during their wedding night She appears again in the 1830 Recurrence as Claire Clairmont step sister of author Mary Shelley She murders the babies of her step sister in order to become a God In the 2010 recurrence Innana resurrects in the body of Zahid a queer South Asian man In the video game Catherine and its remake Catherine Full Body Ishtar is revealed to have been masquerading as the game s narrator Trisha and offers the player a chance to become her consort in a secret ending of the game if they complete certain challenges Dates approximate editHistorical sourcesTime Period Sourcec 5300 4100 BCE Ubaid period c 4100 2900 BCE Uruk period Uruk vase 29 c 2900 2334 BCE Early Dynastic period c 2334 2218 BCE Akkadian Empire writings by Enheduanna 34 35 Nin me sara The Exaltation of Inanna In nin sa gur ra A Hymn to Inanna Inana C In nin me hus a Inanna and Ebih The Temple HymnsHymn to Nanna The Exaltation of Inanna c 2218 2047 BCE Gutian Period c 2047 1940 BCE Ur III Period Enmerkar and the Lord of ArattaGilgamesh Enkidu and the NetherworldInanna and Enki 212 Inanna s Descent into the UnderworldSee also editAnat Kali Lakshmi Nana Bactrian goddess Isis Star of Ishtar BabalonNotes edit ɪ ˈ n ɑː n e Sumerian 𒀭𒈹 romanized Dinanna also 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒀭𒈾 Dnin an na 3 4 ˈ ɪ ʃ t ɑːr Sumerian 𒀭𒀹𒁯 romanized Distar 3 With exception of Ana Kurnuge qaqqari la tari and Sha naqba imuru who use the name Ishtar all others texts use the name are about Inanna 15 modern day Warka Biblical Erech e an na means sanctuary house Heaven An genitive 42 According to Graham Cunningham 1997 p 171 incantations are connected with forms of symbolic identification and it seems obvious that symbolic identitification with some goddesses relates to their divine function or domain e g sex and love related matters with Inana and Nanaya J M Asher Greve 2013 p 242 101 Brandao 2019 disagrees that the Akkadian poem only summarizes or distorts the Sumerian poem although there is no doubt of the intertextual relations 253 Dumuzid s Dream is attested in seventy five known sources fifty five of which come from Nippur nine from Ur three probably from the region around Sippar one each from Uruk Kish Shaduppum and Susa 291 Abush proposes the thesis that Ishtar s proposal would be for Gilgamesh to become a worker in the world of the dead 318 References edit a b Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 230 Electronic Corpus of Sumerian Literature ETCSL Inanna and Enki lines 76 87 Inanna addresses Enki as my father and Enki himself is regarded in the third person as Inanna s father as stated by Enki s minister Isimud who calls him your father while talking to Inanna a b Heffron 2016a Sumerian dictionary oracc iaas upenn edu Steinkeller Piotr Archaic City Seals and the Question of Early Babylonian Unity in Riches Hidden in Secret Places Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen edited by Tzvi Abusch University Park USA Penn State University Press pp 249 258 2002 Szarzynska Krystyna Offerings for the Goddess Inana in Archaic Uruk Revue d Assyriologie et d archeologie Orientale vol 87 no 1 pp 7 28 1993 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p xviii Nemet Nejat 1998 p 182 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p xv Penglase 1994 pp 42 43 a b c d e Kramer 1961 p 101 Wiggermann 1999 p 216 Leick 1998 p 87 Black amp Green 1992 p 108 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p xviii xv Collins 1994 p 110 111 Brandao 2019 p 43 Leick 1998 p 87 Black amp Green 1992 p 108 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p xviii xv Collins 1994 p 110 111 Brandao 2019 p 65 a b c Leick 1998 p 86 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Harris 1991 pp 261 278 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp xiii xix Rubio 1999 pp 1 16 a b c d Collins 1994 p 110 a b Leick 1998 p 96 a b c Collins 1994 pp 110 111 Suter 2014 p 51 a b c Vanstiphout 1984 pp 225 228 a b Vanstiphout 1984 p 228 Brandao 2019 p 43 Vanstiphout 1984 pp 228 229 a b c d e f g h i Black amp Green 1992 p 108 a b Suter 2014 p 551 a b Suter 2014 pp 550 552 Suter 2014 pp 552 554 a b c d van der Mierop 2007 p 55 Maeda 1981 p 8 a b c d e f g h i Leick 1998 p 87 a b Collins 1994 p 111 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp xviii xv A Archi The Gods of Ebla in J Eidem C H van Zoest eds Annual Report NINO and NIT 2010 2011 p 3 a b Meador Betty De Shong 2000 Inanna Lady of Largest Heart Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna University of Texas Press pp 14 15 ISBN 978 0 292 75242 9 Site officiel du musee du Louvre cartelfr louvre fr Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 27 Kramer 1961 p 101 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp xiii xix Nemet Nejat 1998 p 182 a b c d Black amp Green 1992 pp 108 109 Halloran 2009 a b Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 42 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 50 a b c d Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 62 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 172 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 79 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 21 a b Black amp Green 1992 p 99 Guirand 1968 p 58 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 20 Leick 2013 pp 157 158 Leick 2013 p 285 Roscoe amp Murray 1997 p 65 a b Roscoe amp Murray 1997 pp 65 66 Leick 2013 pp 158 163 Roscoe amp Murray 1997 p 66 Brandao 2019 p 63 Kramer 1970 Nemet Nejat 1998 p 196 Brandao 2019 p 56 a b Pryke 2017 pp 128 129 George 2006 p 6 Pryke 2017 p 129 Day 2004 pp 15 17 Marcovich 1996 p 49 Guirand 1968 p 58 Nemet Nejat 1998 p 193 Assante 2003 pp 14 47 Day 2004 pp 2 21 Sweet 1994 pp 85 104 Pryke 2017 p 61 Marcovich 1996 p 49 Day 2004 pp 2 21 Sweet 1994 pp 85 104 Assante 2003 pp 14 47 a b Ackerman 2006 pp 116 117 a b Ackerman 2006 p 115 a b Ackerman 2006 pp 115 116 a b Black amp Green 1992 pp 156 169 170 a b c Liungman 2004 p 228 a b c Black amp Green 1992 p 118 a b c d Collins 1994 pp 113 114 Kleiner 2005 p 49 a b c Black amp Green 1992 p 170 a b Black amp Green 1992 pp 169 170 Nemet Nejat 1998 pp 193 194 Jacobsen 1976 a b Black amp Green 1992 p 156 Black amp Green 1992 pp 156 157 Black amp Green 1992 pp 119 a b c d e Lewis amp Llewellyn Jones 2018 p 335 a b c d e Botterweck amp Ringgren 1990 p 35 Nemet Nejat 1998 p 203 a b c d e f g h i j Cooley 2008 pp 161 172 Cooley 2008 pp 163 164 Caton 2012 Meyer n d a b Foxvog 1993 p 106 Black amp Green 1992 pp 34 35 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 92 193 a b Penglase 1994 pp 15 17 a b Black amp Green 1992 pp 108 9 Leick 2013 pp 65 66 George 2015 p 8 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 140 Asher Greve 2003 cf Groneberg 1986a 45 argues that Inana is significant because she is not a mother goddess a b Asher Greve Julia M 2013 Images In Asher Greve Julia M Westenholz Joan Goodnick eds Goddesses in Context On divine powers roles relationships and gender in Mesopotamian textual and visual sources PDF Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Vol 259 Fribourg DE Academic Press p 242 ISBN 9783525543825 Retrieved 26 August 2022 a b Gilgamesh p 86 Pryke 2017 p 146 a b Katz 1996 p 93 103 a b c Katz 2015 p 67 68 Vanstiphout 1984 pp 226 227 Enheduanna pre 2250 BCE A hymn to Inana Inana C The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature 2003 lines 18 28 4 07 3 Vanstiphout 1984 p 227 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 203 204 Westenholz 1997 p 78 Wiggermann 1997 p 42 Streck amp Wasserman 2013 p 184 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 113 114 Wiggermann 1999a p 369 371 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 71 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 133 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 286 Zsolnay 2010 p 397 401 Zsolnay 2010 p 393 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 17 Beckman 1999 p 25 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 127 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 116 117 Zsolnay 2010 p 401 Lung 2014 Black amp Green 1992 pp 108 182 a b Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp x xi Pryke 2017 p 36 a b c Pryke 2017 pp 36 37 Black amp Green 1992 p 183 a b c Black amp Green 1992 p 77 a b Pryke 2017 p 108 Wiggermann 1997 p 47 48 Schwemer 2007 p 157 a b Wilcke 1980 p 80 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 45 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 75 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 116 a b Beckman 2002 p 37 a b Leick 1998 p 88 Brandao 2019 pp 47 74 Brandao 2019 p 74 Asher Greve Julia M 2013 Facets of Change In Asher Greve Julia M Westenholz Joan Goodnick eds Goddesses in Context On divine powers roles relationships and gender in Mesopotamian textual and visual sources PDF Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis Vol 259 Fribourg DE Academic Press p 140 ISBN 9783525543825 Retrieved 26 August 2022 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 71 84 a b Leick 1998 p 93 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 89 Peterson 2010 p 253 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 80 a b Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 78 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 38 Black amp Green 1992 p 173 a b Hallo 2010 p 233 Lambert 1987 p 163 164 Drewnowska Rymarz 2008 p 30 a b c Pryke 2017 p 94 a b Wiggermann 1988 p 228 229 a b c Wiggermann 2010 p 417 a b Stol 1998 p 146 Beckman 2002 p 37 38 Drewnowska Rymarz 2008 p 23 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 109 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 48 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 100 Behrens amp Klein 1998 p 345 Litke 1998 p 148 Beckman 1999 p 26 Beckman 1998 p 4 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 110 111 Potts 2010 p 487 Smith 2014 p 35 Smith 2014 p 36 Smith 2014 p 39 74 75 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 134 a b Murat 2009 p 176 Taracha 2009 p 124 128 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 282 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 92 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 116 117 120 Behrens amp Klein 1998 p 343 345 a b c d Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 86 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 270 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 92 93 Heimpel 1998 p 487 488 Beckman 1999 p 27 Beckman 2002 p 37 39 Abdi 2017 p 10 Henkelman 2008 p 266 Beckman 1999 p 25 27 a b Beckman 1998 p 1 3 Beckman 1998 p 7 8 Frantz Szabo 1983 p 304 Wilhelm 1989 p 52 Kramer 1963 pp 172 174 Kramer 1963 p 174 Kramer 1963 p 182 Kramer 1963 p 183 Kramer 1961 p 30 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 141 Pryke 2017 pp 153 154 a b c d Kramer 1961 p 33 a b c d e f Fontenrose 1980 p 172 CDLI Tablet P346140 cdli ucla edu Kramer 1961 pp 33 34 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 140 Kramer 1961 p 34 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 9 a b c d e f g Leick 1998 p 91 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 30 49 a b Kramer 1961 pp 102 103 Kramer 1961 pp 101 103 Kramer 1961 pp 32 33 a b Leick 1998 p 90 a b c d Kramer 1961 p 66 a b Black amp Green 1992 p 130 Kramer 1961 p 65 Kramer 1961 pp 65 66 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 13 14 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 14 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 14 20 a b Kramer 1961 pp 66 67 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 20 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 20 21 Kramer 1961 p 67 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 21 Kramer 1961 pp 67 68 a b Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 20 24 a b Kramer 1961 p 68 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 24 25 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 26 27 Green 2003 p 74 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 146 150 Vanstiphout 2003 pp 57 61 a b Vanstiphout 2003 p 49 Vanstiphout 2003 pp 57 63 Vanstiphout 2003 pp 61 63 Vanstiphout 2003 pp 63 87 Vanstiphout 2003 p 50 Pryke 2017 pp 162 173 a b Pryke 2017 p 165 Attinger 1988 pp 164 195 a b c d Karahashi 2004 p 111 Kramer 1961 pp 82 83 a b Karahashi 2004 pp 111 118 Kramer 1961 p 82 a b c d e f g h i j k l m Cooley 2008 p 162 a b Cooley 2008 p 163 a b c d e f g h i j k Leick 1998 p 89 a b c Fontenrose 1980 p 165 Pryke 2017 p 166 Leick 1998 p 89 Black amp Green 1992 p 109 Pryke 2017 p 166 Fontenrose 1980 p 165 a b c Kramer 1961 pp 83 86 a b c Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 127 135 Brandao 2019 pp 19 65 67 Dalley 1989 p 154 a b c Choksi 2014 a b Kramer 1961 pp 86 87 a b c d Penglase 1994 p 17 Kramer 1961 p 88 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 56 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 157 a b c Kramer 1961 p 90 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 54 55 a b Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 55 Kramer 1961 p 91 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 56 57 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 57 Kilmer 1971 pp 299 309 Kramer 1961 p 87 a b Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 157 159 Black Jeremy Cunningham Graham Fluckiger Hawker Esther Robson Eleanor Taylor John Zolyomi Gabor Inana s descent to the netherworld Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Oxford University Retrieved 22 June 2017 a b Kramer 1961 pp 93 94 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 61 64 Penglase 1994 pp 17 18 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 61 62 a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o Penglase 1994 p 18 a b c d Kramer 1961 p 94 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 62 63 a b c Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 64 a b Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 65 66 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 p 65 Kramer 1961 pp 94 95 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 67 68 a b c Kramer 1961 p 95 a b c Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 68 69 Kramer 1961 pp 95 96 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 69 70 a b c Kramer 1961 p 96 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 70 a b Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 70 71 a b c Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 71 73 a b Tinney 2018 p 86 Tinney 2018 pp 85 86 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 74 84 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 85 87 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 87 89 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 88 89 Kramer 1966 p 31 Wolkstein amp Kramer 1983 pp 85 89 a b c Brandao 2019 p 11 a b Dalley 1989 p 155 Brandao 2019 p 13 a b Dalley 1989 p 156 Dalley 1989 pp 156 157 Dalley 1989 p 157 158 a b c Dalley 1989 pp 158 160 Brandao 2019 pp 15 16 Bertman 2003 p 124 a b Katz 2015 p 65 a b c Katz 2015 p 66 Katz 2015 p 68 a b c Katz 2015 p 70 a b Katz 2015 p 70 71 Dobson 1992 Brandao 2019 p 71 a b Brandao 2019 p 72 a b Dalley 1989 pp 81 82 a b c d e f Dalley 1989 p 80 Brandao 2019 p 59 Gilgamesh p 87 a b Fontenrose 1980 pp 168 169 a b c d e Dalley 1989 p 82 a b c d e Fontenrose 1980 p 169 Gilgamesh p 88 Dalley 1989 p 82 83 Dalley 1989 pp 109 116 Dalley 1989 pp 109 111 Dalley 1989 p 113 Dalley 1989 p 114 a b c Dalley 1989 pp 114 115 Dalley 1989 p 115 Foster Benjamin R 2005c Before the Muses An anthology of Akkadian literature Bethesda pp 96 106 Agusaya A VS 10 214 Sources of Early Akkadian Literature SEAL image transcription amp translation Institute of Archaeology Jerusalem IL Leipzig DE The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Universitat Leipzig 7493 Agusaya B RA 15 159ff Sources of Early Akkadian Literature SEAL image transcription amp translation Institute of Archaeology Jerusalem IL Leipzig DE The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Universitat Leipzig 7494 George 2015 p 7 8 a b c Westenholz 1997 pp 33 49 Hoffner 1998 p 41 a b Pryke 2017 p 193 Pryke 2017 pp 193 195 Pryke 2017 pp 193 195 a b Breitenberger 2007 p 10 Smith 2002 p 182 a b Pryke 2017 p 194 Black amp Green 1992 p 73 a b Pryke 2017 p 195 a b c d Warner 2016 p 211 Warner 2016 pp 210 212 Warner 2016 p 212 Alster 2013 p 433 434 a b Marcovich 1996 pp 43 59 a b c Cyrino 2010 pp 49 52 Breitenberger 2007 pp 8 12 Puhvel 1987 p 27 a b c Breitenberger 2007 p 8 a b c d Penglase 1994 p 162 a b Breitenberger 2007 pp 10 11 a b West 1997 p 57 a b Burkert 1985 p 177 a b c d Penglase 1994 p 163 Cyrino 2010 pp 51 52 Budin 2010 pp 85 86 96 100 102 103 112 123 125 Cyrino 2010 pp 51 52 Budin 2010 pp 85 86 96 100 102 103 112 123 125 Graz 1984 p 250 Breitenberger 2007 p 8 a b Iossif amp Lorber 2007 p 77 Penglase 1994 p 235 Penglase 1994 pp 233 325 Beckman 2010 p 29 Bhayro Siam 10 February 2020 Cosmology in Mandaean texts Hellenistic Astronomy Brill pp 572 579 doi 10 1163 9789004400566 046 ISBN 9789004400566 S2CID 213438712 Retrieved 3 September 2021 Tuite 2004 pp 16 18 Tuite 2004 p 16 a b Tuite 2004 pp 16 17 Wiggermann 1998 p 49 Wiggermann 1998 p 51 Tuite 2004 p 17 Tuite 2004 pp 17 18 Tuite 2004 p 18 Healey 2001 p 114 119 Retso 2014 p 604 605 Al Jallad 2021 p 569 571 Ayali Darshan 2014 p 100 101 a b c d Ziolkowski 2012 p 21 Hislop 1903 p 103 a b Grabbe 1997 p 28 Brown 1976 p 268 a b D Costa 2013 a b Ziolkowski 2012 pp 20 21 a b Ziolkowski 2012 pp 22 23 a b Ziolkowski 2012 p 22 Ziolkowski 2012 p 23 a b c d Pryke 2017 p 196 a b Pryke 2017 pp 196 197 Asher Greve amp Westenholz 2013 p 25 26 Zsolnay 2009 p 105 a b Nomis Anne O 2013 The History and Arts of the Dominatrix Mary Egan Publishing amp Anna Nomis Ltd p 53 ISBN 978 0 992701 0 00 Fonrouge Gabrielle 22 March 2018 This vital part of BDSM is a lot less sexy than you d think New York Post Rountree 2017 p 167 a b Weston amp Bennett 2013 p 165 a b Buckland 2001 pp 74 75 a b c Thomas 2007 p 1 Beckman 2000 p 23 Beckman 2000 p 14 Beckman 2000 p 18 Bibliography edit Abdi Kamyar 2017 Elamo Hittitica I An Elamite Goddess in Hittite Court Dabir Digital Archive of Brief Notes amp Iran Review Irvine Jordan Center for Persian Studies 3 Retrieved 10 August 2021 Ackerman Susan 2006 1989 Day Peggy Lynne ed Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel Minneapolis Minnesota Fortress Press ISBN 978 0 8006 2393 7 Al Jallad Ahmad 2021 On the origins of the god Ruḍaw and some remarks on the pre Islamic North Arabian pantheon Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Cambridge University Press CUP 31 3 559 571 doi 10 1017 s1356186321000043 ISSN 1356 1863 S2CID 233679011 Alster Bendt 2013 Tammuz Dumuzi Reallexikon der Assyriologie Retrieved 10 August 2021 Archi Alfonso 2014 The Anatolian fate goddesses and their different traditions Diversity and Standardization Munchen de Gruyter pp 1 26 doi 10 1524 9783050057576 1 ISBN 978 3 05 005756 9 Asher Greve Julia M Westenholz Joan G eds 2013 Goddesses in Context On divine powers roles relationships and gender in Mesopotamian textual and visual sources PDF Academic Press Fribourg ISBN 978 3 7278 1738 0 Assante Julia 2003 From whores to Hierodules The historiographic invention of Mesopotamian female sex professionals In Donahue A A Fullerton Mark D eds Ancient Art and Its Historiography Cambridge England Cambridge University Press pp 13 47 Attinger Pascal 1988 Inana et Ebih Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie 3 164 195 Ayali Darshan Noga 2014 The Role of Astabi in the Song of Ullikummi and the eastern Mediterranean failed god stories Journal of Near Eastern Studies University of Chicago Press 73 1 95 103 doi 10 1086 674665 ISSN 0022 2968 S2CID 163770018 Baring Anne Cashford Jules 1991 The Myth of the Goddess Evolution of an image London England Penguin Books ISBN 978 0 14 019292 6 Beckman Gary 1998 Istar of Nineveh Reconsidered Journal of Cuneiform Studies American Schools of Oriental Research 50 1 10 doi 10 2307 1360026 ISSN 0022 0256 JSTOR 1360026 S2CID 163362140 Retrieved 28 July 2021 Beckman Gary 1999 The goddess Pirinkir and her ritual from Ḫattusa CTH 644 Ktema Civilisations de l Orient de la Grece et de Rome antiques PERSEE Program 24 1 25 39 doi 10 3406 ktema 1999 2206 hdl 2027 42 77419 ISSN 0221 5896 Beckman Gary 2000 Goddess Worship Ancient and Modern A Wise and Discerning Mind Essays in honor of Burke O Long Brown Judaic Studies pp 11 24 doi 10 2307 j ctvzgb93t 9 hdl 2027 42 77415 ISBN 978 1 946527 90 5 JSTOR j ctvzgb93t 9 S2CID 190264355 Retrieved 10 August 2021 Beckman Gary 2002 Babyloniaca hethitica The babilili ritual from Bogazkoy CTH 718 Recent Developments in Hittite Archaeology and History Penn State University Press doi 10 5325 j ctv1bxh36t 6 Beckman Gary 18 20 February 2010 Primordial Obstetrics The Song of Emergence CTH 344 Hethitische Literatur Uberlieferungsprozesse Textstrukturen Ausdrucksformen und Nachwirken Symposiums uber Hethitische Literatur vom 18 bis 20 Februar 2010 in Bonn Munster Ugarit Verlag published 2011 ISBN 978 3 86835 063 0 OCLC 768810899 Behrens H Klein J 1998 Ninegalla Reallexikon der Assyriologie Retrieved 10 August 2021 Bertman Stephen 2003 Handbook to Life in Ancient Mesopotamia Oxford England Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 518364 1 Black Jeremy Green Anthony 1992 Gods Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia An illustrated dictionary The British Museum Press ISBN 978 0 7141 1705 8 Botterweck G Johannes Ringgren Helmer 1990 Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament Vol VI Grand Rapids Michigan Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Co ISBN 978 0 8028 2330 4 Breitenberger Barbara 2007 Aphrodite and Eros The Development of Greek Erotic Mythology New York NY amp London UK ISBN 978 0 415 96823 2 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Ao Kurnugu Terra sem Retorno in Brazilian Portuguese Translated by Jacyntho Lins Brandao Curitiba Kotter Editorial 2019 p 208 ISBN 978 65 80103 41 6 Brown Peter Lancaster 1976 Megaliths Myths and Men An Introduction to Astro Archaeology New York City New York Dover Publications ISBN 978 0 8008 5187 3 Buckland Raymond 2001 Wicca for Life The way of the Craft from birth to Summerland New York NY Kensington Publishing Corporation ISBN 978 0 8065 2455 9 Budin Stephanie L 2010 Aphrodite Enoplion In Smith Amy C Pickup Sadie eds Brill s Companion to Aphrodite Brill s Companions in Classical Studies Leiden NL Brill Publishers pp 85 86 96 100 102 103 112 123 125 ISBN 978 90 474 4450 3 Burkert Walter 1982 Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual University of California Press ISBN 978 0520047709 Burkert Walter 1985 Greek Religion Cambridge Massachusetts Harvard University Press ISBN 978 0 674 36281 9 Caton Gary P 14 May 2012 Venus retrograde Astrology as if the Sky Matters Retrieved 12 August 2021 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a website ignored help Chicago Judy 2007 The Dinner Party From creation to preservation London UK Merrell ISBN 978 1 85894 370 1 Choksi M 2014 Ancient Mesopotamian Beliefs in the Afterlife World History Encyclopedia Collins Paul 1994 The Sumerian goddess Inanna 3400 2200 BCE Papers from the Institute of Archaeology UCL 5 doi 10 5334 pia 57 Cooley Jeffrey L 2008 Inana and Sukaletuda A Sumerian Astral Myth KASKAL 5 161 172 ISSN 1971 8608 Cyrino Monica S 2010 Aphrodite Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World New York City New York and London England Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 77523 6 Dalley Stephanie 1989 Myths from Mesopotamia Creation the flood Gilgamesh and others Oxford England Oxford University Press ISBN 978 0 19 283589 5 Day John 2004 Does the Old Testament refer to sacred prostitution and did it actual exist in ancient Israel In McCarthy Carmel Healey John F eds Biblical and Near Eastern Essays Studies in Honour of Kevin J Cathcart Cromwell Press pp 2 21 ISBN 978 0 8264 6690 7 D Costa Krystal 31 March 2013 Beyond Ishtar The tradition of eggs at Easter Don t believe every meme you encounter Anthropology in practice Scientific American blog Nature America Inc Dobson Marcia W D S 1992 Ritual Death Patriarchal Violence and Female Relationships in the Hymns to Demeter and Inanna NWSA Journal 4 1 42 58 JSTOR 4316175 Drewnowska Rymarz Olga 2008 Mesopotamian goddess Nanaja Warszawa Agade ISBN 978 83 87111 41 0 OCLC 263460607 Enheduanna The exaltation of Inanna The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature translation 2001 Inanna B Fiore Simon 1965 Voices from the Clay The development of Assyro Babylonian literature Norman University of Oklahoma Press Fontenrose Joseph Eddy 1980 1959 Python A Study of Delphic Myth and Its Origins reprint ed Berkeley California Los Angeles California and London England The University of California Press ISBN 978 0 520 04106 6 Foxvog D 1993 Astral Dumuzi In Hallo William W Cohen Mark E Snell Daniel C Weisberg David B eds The Tablet and the scroll Near Eastern studies in honor of William W Hallo 2nd ed CDL Press p 106 ISBN 978 0 9620013 9 0 Frantz Szabo Gabriella 1983 Kulitta Ninatta und Reallexikon der Assyriologie in German Retrieved 10 August 2021 George Andrew ed 1999 The Epic of Gilgamesh The Babylonian epic poem and other texts in Akkadian and Sumerian Penguin ISBN 0 14 044919 1 George Andrew R 2006 Review The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence by Pirjo Lapinkivi Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies University of London Cambridge University Press 69 2 315 317 doi 10 1017 S0041977X06210140 JSTOR 20182041 S2CID 59020637 George Andrew R 2015 The Gods Isum and Ḫendursanga Night Watchmen and Street lighting in Babylonia Journal of Near Eastern Studies 74 1 1 8 doi 10 1086 679387 ISSN 0022 2968 S2CID 161546618 Grabbe Lester L 1997 Can a History of Israel be written The Library of Hebrew Bible Old Testament Studies Sheffield England Sheffield Academic Press 245 ISBN 978 0 567 04320 7 Graz F 1984 Eck W ed Women War and Warlike Divinities Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik Bonn Germany Dr Rudolf Habelt GmbH 55 55 245 254 JSTOR 20184039 Green Alberto R W 2003 The Storm God in the Ancient Near East Winona Lake IN Eisenbrauns ISBN 978 1 57506 069 9 Guirand Felix 1968 Assyro Babylonian mythology New Larousse Encyclopedia of Mythology Translated by Aldington Ames London UK Hamlyn pp 49 72 Healey John 2001 The religion of the Nabataeans a conspectus Leiden Boston Brill ISBN 90 04 10754 1 OCLC 43185847 Hallo William W 2010 The World s Oldest Literature Studies in Sumerian Belles Lettres Leiden The Netherlands Brill ISBN 978 90 04 17381 1 Halloran John A 2009 Sumerian Lexicon Version 3 0 Harris Rivkah February 1991 Inanna Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites History of Religions 30 3 261 278 doi 10 1086 463228 JSTOR 1062957 S2CID 162322517 Heffron Yagmur 2016a Inana Istar goddess Penn Museum Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses Report Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus University of Pennsylvania Heimpel Wolfgang 1998 Ninsiana Reallexikon der Assyriologie in German Retrieved 10 August 2021 Henkelman Wouter F M 2008 The Other Gods Who Are Studies in Elamite Iranian acculturation based on the Persepolis fortification texts Leiden Nederlands Instituut voor het Nabije Oosten ISBN 978 90 6258 414 7 Hislop Alexander 1903 1853 The Two Babylons The papal worship proved to be the worship of Nimrod and his wife 3rd ed S W Partridge Hoffner Harry 1998 Hittite myths Atlanta GA Scholars Press ISBN 978 0 7885 0488 4 OCLC 39455874 Jacobsen Thorkild 1976 The Treasures of Darkness A history of Mesopotamian religion Yale University Press ISBN 978 0 300 02291 9 Iossif Panagiotis Lorber Catharine 2007 Laodikai and the goddess Nikephoros L Antiquite Classique 76 63 88 doi 10 3406 antiq 2007 2618 hdl 2066 205290 ISSN 0770 2817 JSTOR 41665635 Karahashi Fumi April 2004 Fighting the mountain Some observations on the Sumerian myths of Inanna and Ninurta Journal of Near Eastern Studies 63 2 111 118 doi 10 1086 422302 JSTOR 422302 S2CID 161211611 Katz Dina 1996 How Dumuzi became Inanna s victim On the formation of Inanna s Descent Acta Sumerologica Dept of Linguistics University of Hiroshima 18 93 103 Katz Dina 2015 Myth and ritual through tradition and innovation Tradition and Innovation in the Ancient Near East Penn State University Press pp 59 74 doi 10 1515 9781575063584 007 ISBN 9781575063584 via academia edu Kilmer Anne Draffkorn 1971 How was Queen Ereshkigal tricked A new interpretation of the Descent of Ishtar Ugarit Forschungen 3 299 309 Kleiner Fred 2005 Gardner s Art Through the Ages Belmont California Thompson Learning Inc p 49 ISBN 978 0 15 505090 7 Kramer Samuel Noah 1961 Sumerian Mythology A study of spiritual and literary achievement in the third millennium B C revised ed Philadelphia Pennsylvania University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978 0 8122 1047 7 Kramer Samuel Noah 1963 The Sumerians Their History Culture and Character Chicago Illinois University of Chicago Press ISBN 978 0 226 45238 8 Kramer Samuel Noah October 1966 Dumuzi s annual resurrection An important correction to Inanna s Descent Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 183 183 31 doi 10 2307 1356459 JSTOR 1356459 S2CID 163544444 Kramer Samuel Noah 28 April 1970 The Sacred Marriage Rite Bloomington Indiana Indiana University Press ISBN 978 0 253 35035 0 Kramer Samuel Noah 1988 History Begins at Sumer Thirty nine firsts in recorded history 3rd ed University of Pennsylvania Press ISBN 978 0 8122 1276 1 Lambert Wilfred G 1987 Lulal Latarak Reallexikon der Assyriologie Retrieved 6 August 2021 Leick Gwendolyn 1998 1991 A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology New York City New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 19811 0 Leick Gwendolyn 2013 1994 Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature New York City New York Routledge ISBN 978 1 134 92074 7 Lewis Sian Llewellyn Jones Lloyd 2018 The Culture of Animals in Antiquity A sourcebook with commentaries New York City New York and London England Routledge ISBN 978 1 315 20160 3 Litke Richard L 1998 A reconstruction of the Assyro Babylonian god lists AN dA nu umm and AN Anu sa Ameli PDF New Haven Yale Babylonian Collection ISBN 978 0 9667495 0 2 OCLC 470337605 permanent dead link Lung Tang 2014 Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi World History Encyclopedia Liungman Carl G 2004 Symbols Encyclopedia of Western Signs and Ideograms Lidingo Sweden HME Publishing ISBN 978 91 972705 0 2 Maeda Tohru 1981 King of Kish in pre Sarogonic Sumer Orient The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan 17 1 17 doi 10 5356 orient1960 17 1 ISSN 1884 1392 Marcovich Miroslav 1996 From Ishtar to Aphrodite Journal of Aesthetic Education 39 2 43 59 doi 10 2307 3333191 JSTOR 3333191 Mcllhenny Albert M 2011 This is the Sun Zeitgeist and Religion Vol I Comparative Religion Lulu com p 60 ISBN 978 1 105 33967 7 Meyer Michael R n d Venus Morning Star Venus Evening Star Astro com Retrieved 12 August 2021 Murat Leyla 2009 Goddess Ishara Ankara Universitesi Dil ve Tarih Cografya Fakultesi Tarih Bolumu Tarih Arastirmalari Dergisi 45 Nemet Nejat Karen Rhea 1998 Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia Greenwood ISBN 978 0 313 29497 6 Penglase Charles 1994 Greek Myths and Mesopotamia Parallels and influence in the Homeric hymns and Hesiod New York City New York Routledge ISBN 978 0 415 15706 3 Peterson Jeremiah 2010 A fragmentary Erotic Sumerian Context Featuring Inana Aula orientalis Revista de estudios del Proximo Oriente Antiguo 28 2 253 258 ISSN 0212 5730 Piveteau Jean 1981 1964 Man before history In Dunan Marcel Bowle John eds The Larousse Encyclopedia of Ancient and Medieval History New York NY Excaliber Books ISBN 978 0 89673 083 0 Potts Daniel T 2010 Appendix 2 Catalogue of Elamite sources From the Foundations to the Crenellations Essays on temple building in the Ancient Near East and Hebrew Bible Munster Ugarit Verlag ISBN 978 3 86835 031 9 OCLC 618338811 Pryke Louise M 2017 Ishtar New York and London Routledge ISBN 978 1 138 86073 5 Puhvel Jaan 1987 Comparative Mythology Baltimore Maryland Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN 978 0 8018 3938 2 Retso Jan 2014 The Arabs in Antiquity Their history from the Assyrians to the Umayyads London New York Routledge Taylor amp Francis Group ISBN 978 0 415 76003 4 OCLC 960211049 Roscoe Will Murray Stephen O 1997 Islamic Homosexualities Culture History and Literature New York NY New York University Press ISBN 978 0 8147 7467 0 Rountree Kathryn 2017 Rountree Kathryn ed Cosmopolitanism Nationalism and Modern Paganism Palgrave Studies in New and Alternative Spiritualities p 167 doi 10 1057 978 1 137 56200 5 ISBN 978 1 137 57040 6 Rubio Gonzalo 1999 On the alleged Pre Sumerian substratum Journal of Cuneiform Studies 51 1 16 doi 10 2307 1359726 JSTOR 1359726 S2CID 163985956 Inana s descent to the nether world translation The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Report Faculty of Oriental Studies University of Oxford 2001 Schwemer Daniel 2007 The Storm Gods of the Ancient Near East Summary Synthesis Recent Studies Part I PDF Journal of Ancient Near Eastern Religions Brill 7 2 121 168 doi 10 1163 156921207783876404 ISSN 1569 2116 Smith Mark S 2002 The Early History of God Yahweh and the other deities in ancient Israel 2nd ed Wm B Eerdmans Publishing Company p 28 ISBN 978 0 8028 3972 5 Smith Mark S 2014 Athtart in late Bronze Age Syrian texts Transformation of a Goddess Ishtar Astarte Aphrodite Fribourg Gottingen Academic Press Vandenhoeck amp Ruprecht ISBN 978 3 7278 1748 9 OCLC 881612038 Stol Martin 1998 Nanaja Reallexikon der Assyriologie in German Retrieved 1 August 2021 Streck Michael P Wasserman Nathan 2013 More light on Nanaya PDF Zeitschrift fur Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archaologie Walter de Gruyter GmbH 102 2 183 201 doi 10 1515 za 2012 0010 ISSN 1613 1150 S2CID 163386405 Suter Claudia E 2014 Human divine or both The Uruk Vase and the problem of ambiguity in early Mesopotamian visual arts In Feldman Marian Brown Brian eds Approaches to Ancient Near Eastern Art Berlin Germany Walter de Gruyter pp 545 568 ISBN 978 1 61451 035 2 Sweet R 1994 A new look at the Sacred Marriage in ancient Mesopotamia In Robbins E Sandahl E eds Corolla Torontonensis Studies in Honour of Ronald Morton Smith Toronto pp 85 104 a href Template Cite book html title Template Cite book cite book a CS1 maint location missing publisher link Taracha Piotr 2009 Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia Harrassowitz ISBN 978 3447058858 Thomas Paul 2007 Re imagining Inanna The gendered re appropriation of the ancient goddess in modern Goddess worship The Pomegranate The International Journal of Pagan Studies 6 53 69 doi 10 1558 pome v6i1 53 Thompson Gary D 2020 The development heyday and demise of panbabylonism Westnet Retrieved 10 August 2021 Tinney Steve April 2018 Dumuzi s Dream revisited Journal of Near Eastern Studies 77 1 85 89 doi 10 1086 696146 ISSN 0022 2968 S2CID 165931671 Tuite Kevin 20 February 2004 2000 The meaning of dael Symbolic and spatial associations of the south Caucasian goddess of game animals PDF Linguaculture Studies in the interpenetration of language and culture Essays to Honor Paul Friedrich Montreal Quebec University of Montreal van der Mierop Marc 2007 A History of the Ancient Near East 3 000 323 BCE Blackwell ISBN 978 1 4051 4911 2 Vanstiphout H L 1984 Inanna Ishtar as a figure of controversy Struggles of Gods Papers of the Groningen Work Group for the Study of the History of Religions Berlin DE Mouton Publishers 31 ISBN 978 90 279 3460 4 Vanstiphout Herman 2003 Epics of Sumerian Kings PDF Atlanta Georgia Society of Biblical Literature pp 49 96 ISBN 978 1 58983 083 7 Warner Marina 2016 1976 Alone of All Her Sex The myth and cult of the Virgin Mary Oxford UK Oxford University Press p 210 ISBN 978 0 19 963994 6 West M L 1997 The East Face of Helicon West Asiatic elements in Greek poetry and myth Oxford England Clarendon Press p 57 ISBN 978 0 19 815221 7 Westenholz Joan Goodnick 1997 Legends of the Kings of Akkade The texts Eisenbrauns pp 33 49 ISBN 978 0 931464 85 0 Weston Donna Be, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
