Inanna
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Inanna, the original "Holy Virgin," as the Sumerians called her, is the first known divinity associated with the planet Venus. This Sumerian goddess became identified with the Semitic goddesses Ishtar and Astarte, Greek Aphrodite and Etruscan/Roman Venus. Inanna's name may originally have been Nin-anna. Nin = Lady; An = heaven, sky, or the god An; Na = of, so Ninanna = Lady of Heaven or Lady An (the female version or consort of An [Akkadian Anu]). It sounds very close to "Nanna" the name of the Sumerian moon god, which indicates that the two deities may at one time have been one, or they may have a common origin. Inanna's name is also similar to that of the Hurrian and Hittite goddess Hannahanna, whose name means grandmother (Hannah = mother).For more on this goddess see http://www.utexas.edu/cola/depts/lrc/eieol/hitol-2-X.html One culture may have borrowed the name from the other, or the two names may have a common origin. In some traditions Inanna was said to be a granddaughter of the creator goddess Nammu or Namma.
Inanna's permanent status as "maiden" was irrespective of her behaviour. The goddess of love and war, if she wasn't strapping on her battle sandals,"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." ETCSL translation: t.4.07.3. See link to ETCSL was swaggering around the streets of her home town, dragging young men out of the taverns to have sex with her."When the servants let the flocks loose, and when cattle and sheep are returned to cow-pen and sheepfold, then, my lady, like the nameless poor, you wear only a single garment. The pearls of a prostitute are placed around your neck, and you are likely to snatch a man from the tavern. As you hasten to the embrace of your spouse Dumuzid, Inana, then the seven paranymphs share the bedchamber with you." ETCSL translation: t.4.07.4 In Sumerian art she was associated with lions — even then a symbol of power — and was frequently shown standing on the backs of two lionesses. This gives her iconographic similarity with the Anatolian Cybele. Her cuneiform ideogram was a hook-shaped twisted knot of reeds, symbol of divine authority, ancestor of the crozier later carried by Catholic bishops.
Along the Tigris and Euphrates rivers were many shrines and temples dedicated to Inanna. The temple of Eanna, meaning "house of heaven" or "house of An"é-an-na = sanctuary ('house' + 'Heaven'[='An'] + genitive) [John Halloran's Sumerian Lexicon v. 3.0 -- see link below] in Urukmodern-day Warka, Biblical Erechwas the greatest of these. The god of this fourth-millennium city was probably originally An. After its dedication to Inanna the temple seems to have housed priestess-prostitutes of the goddess. The high priestess would choose for her bed a young man who represented the shepherd Dumuzid, consort of Inanna, in a hieros gamos or sacred marriage, celebrated during the annual Akitu (New Year) ceremony, at the Spring Equinox. In late Sumerian history (end of the third millennium) kings established their legitimacy by taking the place of Dumuzid in the temple for one night on the occasion of the New Year festival.
According to one story Inanna stole some of her powers from the culture god Father Enki who was worshipped in the city of Eridu. Inanna is supposed to have traveled to Enki's city Eridu and removed the one hundred cultural symbols from Enki during a drinking bout. These symbols or Mes (truth and justice, as well as practical skills such as weaving and pottery-making) she took to her city of Uruk. Enki, recovering his wits, sent mighty Abgallu (sea monsters from Ab = sea or abyss, Gal = Great, Lu = Man) to stop her boat as it sailed the Euphrates to retrieve his gifts, but she gave him the slip. This story may represent the historic transfer of power from Eridu to Uruk.
Most curious is perhaps the story of Inanna's descent to the underworld. The background to the story may be another story in which Gilgamesh, the King of Uruk, killed the Great Bull of Heaven Gudgalanna (Gud = bull, Gal = great, Anna = of heaven or of An), husband of Inanna's sister Ereškigal or Ereckigala(Ereš = queen, lady; Ki = earth, Gal = great), goddess of death. When Inanna decided to pay a visit to the underworld she said it was "Because Lord Gud-gal-ana, the husband of my elder sister holy Ereckigala, has died; in order to have his funeral rites observed, she offers generous libations at his wake — that is the reason." To prepare for the worst she instructed her minister Nincubur to let Inanna's three "fathers" know where she was, and to implore them not to allow her to suffer eternal death. "Father Enki, the lord of great wisdom, knows about the life-giving plant and the life-giving water. He is the one who will restore me to life." As she passed through each of seven gateways Inanna was required to surrender her clothes and jewels, symbols of her power, arriving in her sister's realm naked and helpless (as though to be reborn). Ereškigal was furious (we don't know why). She seized Inanna, and killed her, then hung her on a meat-hook. After three days Nincubur, having in vain asked Father Enlil the Wind and Father Nanna the Moon for assistance, finally went to Father Enki, who, typically, immediately set everything aside to give all the help he could. He sent a pair of worthy flies (trust them to find meat on a hook!) who managed to confuse the guardians at each gateway and arrived in Ereškigal's court (the Egalgina). They successfully bargained for the release of Holy Inanna, on condition she find someone to take her place. Accompanied by a pair of zombies who are supposed to cart off her replacement, she makes her way back home. Upon arriving in the plain of Kulaba Inanna was horrified to find her shepherd consort Dumuzid seated on her throne and lording it over the assembled company in her absence. In a rage, Inanna sent Dumuzid to hell in her place,[2] "She looked at him, it was the look of death. She spoke to him [...], it was the speech of anger. She shouted at him, it was the shout of heavy guilt: 'How much longer? Take him away.' Holy Inana gave Dumuzid the shepherd into their hands." From "Inana's Descent to the Netherworld" on the ETCSL site linked to below. but later she began to miss him and wept and tore her hair out in despair. (This is probably the origin of the story of the women weeping for Tammuz in the Bible). Dumuzid's sister Geštinannameaning "wine or grapevine of heaven/An" (giš, 'tree', + tin, 'life; wine' [Halloran Sumerian Dict.]), out of pity for her brother, took his place six months of the year.
Inanna's three-day disappearance in hell may point to her origin as a moon goddess, since the moon is dark for three days before the first crescent of the new moon-month appears. In a later tradition her death and resurrection were perhaps subsumed into that of Dumuzid, who probably came to represent the death of vegetation after the drought of summer and its renewal during winter rains. In Babylonian Mesopotamia Dumuzid's Akkadian name Tammuz was absorbed by the Jewish religion during the Babylonian exile of the Jews. In both the Babylonian and the Jewish calendarTammuz is the fourth month, that of the summer solstice, when, in Mesopotamia, the force of the sun would kill the vegetation and the harvest could begin. It was also the period when the sun began its slow movement along the horizon toward the southern hemisphere. Thus the time of the sun's greatest power is also that of its decline. The period from July to the end of December was that of Geštianna's life and Dumuzid's death; the period from January to the end of June was that of Dumuzid's life and Geštianna's death. Each winter solstice staged the birth of a new or renewed sun.
The Inanna and Dumuzid story prefigures those of Cybele and Attis, of Aphrodite and Adonis, of Osiris and Isis, of Christ and Mary — all of them tales of a young god who dies, and a goddess who mourns him.
Notes
References
- Wolkstein, Diana & Kramer, Samuel Noah (1983) Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth (Harper Perennial) ISBN 0060908548
- George, Andrew, translator (1999) The Epic of Gilgamesh (Penguin Books) ISBN 0140449191
Further reading
- Clickable map of Mesopotamia http://oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IS/SANDERS/PHOTOS/meso_map.html
- The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/
- John Halloran's Sumerian Lexicon Version 3.0 http://www.sumerian.org/sumerlex.htm
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