Long ago, the Sumerian goddess Inanna was real. The Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians worshiped her because she had power over love, war, giving birth, predicting the future, and being wise. She was like a mix of the best parts of Aphrodite and Athena, the Greek gods of love and war. You should read more about Inanna because she was a powerful and complicated goddess who shows how deep Sumerian folklore goes.
In Sumerian folklore, the goddess Inanna is talked about more than any other god. She is from ancient Mesopotamia. What is now Iraq used to be home to the old city of Sumer. Inanna is portrayed in different stories as either passionate and feminine, or violent, sexual, or even hostile at different points in her life. Inanna is the goddess of love, war, fertility, and power. She is known to loom over other gods. There were many people who liked her, but the farmers Enkimdu and Dumuzi stood out.
Even though Inanna first liked Enkimdu, her brother Utu eventually persuaded her to pick him instead. After that, she married Dumuzi, but their marriage was pretty rough. After seeing that her leaving didn’t change his behavior, she finally made him take over her job from now on. Ishtar was also very important to the Akkadians and the Assyrians. You could connect her to Astarte, a goddess from the West Semitic people. They thought Ishtar was so great that they put her on the same level as or even higher than Ashur, their most important god. About 2300 BCE, the maker first used the name Ishtar, which comes from the Akkadian language.
Throughout mythology, she took on many roles. As a goddess of opposites, like love and war, she was linked to death and disaster. She was a protector for prostitutes, and prostitution was freely done in temples that were dedicated to her. Ishtar was a lot like Inanna in a lot of ways, but she also showed up in her own special ways. Ishtar is adored as a goddess of love, sexuality, and fertility, but she is never shown as a caring parent. She rules over battle. That’s why pictures of her generally show wings and weapons. At first, it wasn’t clear if Inanna also came from a Semitic background. So, there was no link between the two spirits. They were thought to be the same god with different names during the reign of the Akkadian king Sargon.
Like the Roman goddess of the same name, Inanna had a close connection to Venus. Another possibility is that Ishtar’s place as a goddess of heaven plays a part in this. In many historical reports, she is seen as the Earth herself. People have linked the story of Inanna’s trip to the underworld to the way Venus, Mercury, and the Sun move around the sun every year. Because of this, she was worshiped as Venus and Ninshubur as Mercury. In ancient Mesopotamia, Venus was already linked to Inanna long before it was named as a constellation. With this information, we might be able to guess how long ago Mesopotamians first learned to recognize stars.
A lot of experts have different ideas about where the names of some Mesopotamian gods came from. There are questions about more than just Inanna’s name. This is because the thing she’s meant to represent isn’t as clear-cut as the things other gods represent. The Sumerian goddess Inanna was thought to be one of the seven most important gods. The other six were An, the sky god, the wind and storm god, the woman who made man, the sun and justice, and the moon and knowledge. On the other hand, we don’t know much about her Sumerian heritage. No one ever said who her mother was, and different myths about her father’s life give different versions of what happened. Some have said that the goddess was the child of the gods Nanna, Enlil, and Enki, while others have said that she was the child of the sky goddess An. But in all of these stories, Utu was his brother. In other stories, she was his twin sister Ereshkigal.
As a goddess with many sides, Inanna is shown by many things, even ones that don’t seem to go together, like love and war. She used the lion, the dove, the butterfly, the bat, the snake, flowers, fruits, veggies, and things that aren’t alive. As signs, she also used colors, stones, metals, and perfume scents.
Besides her connection to the afterlife, these images also show that she is a woman and that she is wise, brave, and bold. People have looked to Inanna for a long time as a sign of wealth and new life. For this reason, a bundle of spiral reeds, which is a common sign for farmers, is the most common goddess symbol for Inanna. Some people say that Inanna had. Ancient Mesopotamian writing was full of stories about Inanna, the goddess of love and beauty. In some of them, she seemed to take on the parts of other gods. This story is about a time when Inanna was still learning how to be a strong leader. On the banks of the Euphrates River, a huluppu tree once sparked the whole project. As Inanna soaked the tree in water, she thought about the day she would finally get a chair and a soft bed.
As they grew up, the Anzu bird, the “who cannot be charmed” snake, and the evil spirit Lilith lived in the trees. The thought of this made Inanna very sad, and she started to cry. She asked her brother Utu to help her scare the animals off the tree, but he said no. After another cry, Inanna called for Gilgamesh, who came and killed the snake. When the bird with Lilith saw this, it took off. Gilgamesh had the tree cut down, and then his servants used the wood to make him a throne and a bed. To thank Gilgamesh for being brave, Inanna gave him a drum with drumsticks.
After she told Inanna how happy she was about her “wonderful vulva,” she gave her the crown as a sign of respect for how grown up she was. She knew how great she was and set out to help Enki claim the “me,” which is the powerful list of both good and bad traits that make society work. Enki’s sukkah, Esimud, received her with open arms, and the two of them ate and drank until Enki was drunk. Enki began to toast and promised Inanna many things, such as the seat of kingship, the priesthood, the godhood, the truth, a trip into the underworld, a journey out of the netherworld, sexuality, and more. Fourteen times, they raised their glasses, and each time, he offered Inanna seven “mes,” which she gladly took.
After accepting the mess, Inanna was smart and got on the Boat of Heaven, taking all the gifts that Enki had given her while he was drunk. When Enki woke up and realized what was going on, he told his helper to leave with the goddess and the powers. There were several times they tried before the Boat from Heaven got to Uruk, but each time they failed. The people were then given the mes that Inanna had brought with her. Enki said that Uruk’s holy shrine would be where the stolen mes would be kept.
A lot of people think that this poem or song is one of the oldest pieces ever written about love. It was most likely written around 2800 BCE. Here, we learn about the ways that Inanna’s future husband, Dumuzi, tried to win her love. The poem also talks about a society that relied on farming and how farming got better so that people could get food.
This story is linked to the song “Inanna Prefers the Farmer” because Utu wrote it to tell his sister Inanna that she was going to marry a farmer. A farmer named Enkimdu was chosen over a hunter named Dumuzi at first. But Utu and Dumuzi were able to persuade her by showing her all the ways he was better than Enkidu. When Inanna finally chose Dumuzi, their happy ending in marriage was written about in a series of sensual love poems. The next story, “The Descent of Inanna,” is about a love story that doesn’t end happily.
Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, had just lost her husband, and the song tells of Inanna’s trip to the netherworld to comfort her. It was important for Inanna to hear her sister’s sad groans, even though she knew that the future was a place from which there was no way back. Nine days and nights later, she didn’t come back. She told Ninshubur, her sukkah, or private servant, that if she hadn’t, he should mourn in the ruin mounds, drum at the shrine, and pray to Enlil, Nanna, and Enki to bring her back.
As you might expect, Ereshkigal was wary of Inanna when she first came into the underworld. Ereshkigal told Neti, who was in charge of the gates, to keep Inanna from having power or clothes by making her leave one me at each gate. Ereshkigal saw her for the first time while she wasn’t dressed. Once Inanna had pushed her sister off the chair, she sat down on it herself. Anna told her she was wrong, and her sister killed her in the end. Her dead body was hanging from a hook.
Ninshubur would have done what she was told and gone to Enlil, Nanna, or Enki if Inanna hadn’t come back after three days. As the only one who cared about Inanna, Enki went outside and began gathering dirt to make messengers who brought food and water to Inanna. These animals were able to bring Inanna back to life. The judges, on the other hand, said she should be changed. They came up from the depths, even the demons, looking for someone to replace her. Dumuzi was sitting on the chair in a beautiful robe and didn’t seem to notice that Inanna wasn’t there. So, Inanna picked Dumuzi to take over after her.
Gilgamesh, the hero-king of Uruk, is the main character of this story. He faces death in his search for meaning and becomes the first hero in world literature. Anyone who has ever wondered why they were born after their death can understand Gilgamesh’s pain and the problems that his friend’s death caused.
The story about Inanna, especially in the poem “Gilgamesh as well as the Bull of Heaven,” talks about how she forced her father to let the bull of heaven go. What took place after Gilgamesh turned down Inanna’s love advances? In the afterlife, she went to An and told him she would have the dead eat the living if my father didn’t give her her Bull of Heaven.
The fact that Enkidu helped Gilgamesh kill the bull made Inanna even more angry. In the meantime, Enkidu had a dream that the gods had decided that he or Gilgamesh would die because they killed the bull. After that, Enkidu got sick and died. She is different from other gods and deities of the same kind, though, because she has many sides to her.
