Ishtar

Louise M. Pryke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317506645
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Ishtar is the first book dedicated to providing an accessible analysis of the mythology and image of this complex goddess. The polarity of her nature is reflected in her role as goddess of sexual love and war, and has made her difficult to characterise in modern scholarship. By exploring this complexity, Ishtar offers insight into Mesopotamian culture and thought, and elucidates a goddess who transcended the limits of gender, divinity and nature. It gives an accessible introduction to the Near Eastern pantheon, while also opening a pathway for comparison with the later Near Eastern and Mediterranean deities who followed her.

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KEY THEMES

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1

LOVE AND INTIMACY

Inanna and Ishtar are the Sumerian and Akkadian faces of a primary Mesopotamian deity, known for having strong associations with sexuality, love and beauty. Among the many defining features of this Mesopotamian goddess, the literary theme most integral to her image is love. Ishtar is a goddess depicted with strong, anthropomorphic emotions; she experiences happiness, sadness, anger – but especially love. The goddess’ association with love takes many forms; her name is invoked in ancient love magic as well as in spells to forestall impotence, and the goddess herself is widely presented as the object of many varying types of love. Ishtar’s love, and her identity in the ancient world, is inextricably linked to the emotions of joy and fulfilment, as can be seen in hymns of praise from the Old Babylonian period:

She is the joyous one, clad in loveliness,

She is adorned with allure, appeal, charm,

Ishtar is the joyous one, clad in loveliness.

(Praise Hymn to Ishtar II.1,¹ Foster, 2005: 85)

The goddess’ association with love and happiness is frequently expressed in textual evidence using imagery of agricultural abundance, wealth and the provision of gifts. Ishtar’s joy brings blessings and increased prosperity for the community, and she displays a special competence for promoting close social ties – an ability she most frequently uses for her own benefit. The connection between Inanna and the promise of blessings of abundance, especially in terms of domesticated animals and plants, is extensively evidenced from the earliest visual sources, such as cult objects from Inanna’s temple at Uruk (Winter, 2010: 199–217).

The focus of this chapter is the romantic love between Inanna and her consort. Inanna’s romantic partner is the shepherd king, Dumuzi, whose rustic charms delight the young goddess. We consider how the divine lovers appear in Sumerian love poetry, as well as how the loss of love is expressed through lamentations and mourning.

The love story between Inanna and Dumuzi (Semitic Ishtar and Tammuz) is a fitting place to begin to explore Ishtar’s identity in ancient Mesopotamian literature as the relationship between these two deities holds a unique and significant position in Ishtar’s characterisations through a diverse array of periods and genres. Inanna and Dumuzi are paired in love magic and ritual texts, works of Mesopotamian epic, hymns and prayers, as well as in royal inscriptions and poetry, which makes the relationship one of the most common motifs associated with the goddess. This motif of the divine lovers binds together the elements of the goddess’ image that are considered here to be most significant: her connections to love and social connectedness, her relationship with kingship and cosmic justice, her powerful voice and the ability to span extremes, including the extremes of life and death.

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The consideration of love poetry depicting the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi at the start of this book’s main section also provides an early emphasis on the goddess’ connection to all kinds of love, and on her significant influence during times of changes in status, such as marriage or death. Beginning with a chapter considering love and intimacy, rather than sexuality, reflects the aim here to redress the historiographical imbalance in Ishtar’s image – an imbalance that has overly privileged the goddess’ sexuality, to the preclusion of her other important features.

Of course, it would be inaccurate to suggest that the courtship between Inanna and Dumuzi is not presented with an emphasis on sexuality in the ancient evidence – the love poetry is highly sexual in nature, and the goddess’ sexuality is central to her image (a theme considered in detail in Chapter 3). Much productive work has been done on considering the eroticism of texts depicting the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi (see Leick, 2003), and the sexual imagery of Sumerian love poetry is considered later. Yet there is more to the love poetry than physical intimacy, and the more subtly romantic aspects of the literature have not received the scholarly attention they deserve.

Sexuality in the love poetry of Inanna forms an important element in an overarching thematic concern with intimacy, both in terms of physical and emotional closeness. While many parts of the goddess’ body are carefully described in love poetry, it is the goddess’ heart, more than any other organ, which is the dominant physical locus for her love. Further emotional closeness between the goddess and her lover is created through speech. This chapter explores the emotional intimacy of the goddess’ love, along with its physical side.

Further, the literary courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi involves a wider exploration of the theme of love than might be provided by focusing exclusively on intimate bonds between the lovers. ‘Love’ in Sumerian love poetry is not purely sexual, the loving (and mostly non-sexual) relations between family members is also thematically significant. The importance of close relational ties is a central element of the ‘genre’, placing the transitional event of marriage into a clear social context. Marriage brings changes to relationships and status and involves the potential for community upheaval. The potential for friction between community members, as new relational ties are formed, is subtly referenced in love poetry. The genre’s emphasis on communication, gift-giving and joy highlights the significance of maintaining family and community bonds during challenging transitional times.

Exploring the romantic love, courtship and marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi holds significance for understanding a frequently referenced trope of the goddess in myth, magic, literature and royal rhetoric. To analyse the theme of love and intimacy as it applies to Inanna/Ishtar in a thorough manner, the depiction of this theme in a variety of literature, such as hymns, love poetry, songs, myths and proverbs, many from varying contexts and time periods, is considered. In considering different ‘genres’ of Mesopotamian literature, we must first acknowledge that the division of Mesopotamian literary works is something of an artificial process, more representative of modern literary theory and scholarship than a reflection of any ancient ordering of texts (Rubio, 2009: 22–25). Grouping the evidence thematically in this way should by no means be understood to impose an artificial sense of coherence on the theme of romantic and family love. While the approach here may not fully replicate the complexity of the various materials and their possible meanings, the intention is to provide the reader with an overview of the theme of love, intimacy, and marriage, and to give a sense of the special significance of this aspect of the goddess’ image in ancient times.

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CUNEIFORM LITERATURE AND CONTEXT

A sure chronology of Sumerian literature is not currently available (or perhaps, at all possible, see Hallo, 2010: 57). Understanding the ancient context of the texts considered in this book is an important and swiftly developing field of study.

The various myths involving Inanna and Dumuzi are often treated in modern scholarship as closely related, but it is hard to know whether this treatment is in line with the Sumerian view, due to the difficulty of accurately placing the myths into a definite temporal or thematic context. The Inanna–Dumuzi corpus of myths, as it is now known, has been brought together through contemporary scholarly endeavour, and defined along thematic grounds (Tinney, 2000: 23). It is difficult to say whether this modern collecting of texts is representative of the grouping of these literary works in the ancient world. Certainly, the differences of Inanna’s parentage between hymns are suggestive of works generated from alternate traditions (Assante, 2000: 55).

Figure 1.1 Cuneiform tablet fragment containing the Hymn to Ishtar. Nearly complete fragment, containing the Hymn to Ishtar on two columns. Courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, item no. B7847.

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The authorship of love poetry, like cuneiform literary works more generally, is an area where modern understanding is very limited. Cuneiform texts that have survived to the modern day are frequently later copies, and matters such as the potential time of composition, author and audience are, to say the least, extremely difficult to ascertain. As noted in the Introduction of this book, these difficulties mean that the content of the texts themselves becomes almost the only key that we have for their interpretation. This chapter focuses on analysing the literary theme of love and courtship involving the Mesopotamian goddess of love, in awareness of the restrictions placed on any conclusions drawn by the multitude of currently unresolved questions of authorship, audience and context.

THE SETTING OF THE POETRY

As stated in the Introduction, I will tend to use the name ‘Inanna’ when speaking primarily of Sumerian texts, and ‘Ishtar’ more generally. Inanna, in Sumerian literature depicting her courtship with Dumuzi, is at the stage of youth just following puberty, and she lives with her mother and father. The domestic context of the love poetry allows for the exploration of inter-family dynamics, as well as the potential for social change that accompanies love and marriage. Change is presented as a concern for Inanna and Dumuzi, as their love powerfully affects them and those around them. Both lovers express their awareness of the altered family dynamics that will result from their union, and the inevitability of Inanna leaving her established home and loved ones to join Dumuzi in his home, and become part of his family (Dumuzid-Inana C1, ETCSL 4.08.29).

To establish a clear parentage for Inanna is a difficult task. As with many myths from the ancient world, the details of the story show a certain degree of fluidity. One explanation for this somewhat confounding quality of ancient myth is that details of the narrative in some varieties of myth may have been subsumed for the purposes of the story overall. There are two main traditions in the identification of Inanna’s father. It is generally thought that Inanna is the daughter of the moon-god Nanna-Su’en (Babylonian Sin), and his beautiful wife, Ningal. Therefore, she is the sister of the sun-god Utu (Babylonian Shamash), and the god of heaven, An (Babylonian Anu) would be her great-grandfather (Beaulieu, 2003: 111). The other, less dominant tradition simply has An as Inanna’s father. Much less commonly, Enlil, a primary god linked to leadership, or even Enki, the god of wisdom, may appear in the paternal role.

Although Dumuzi is at times referred to as Inanna’s brother, this term is used to signify the close relationship between the two lovers, rather than a genuine blood relation. The identification of Dumuzi as Inanna’s lover but not her blood relative is supported by the contrast of his presentation with Utu, a deity who is indisputably Inanna’s brother. The sun god Utu is shown in the texts to have easy access to Inanna, as a sibling might, where in comparison Dumuzi is shown attempting to gain access to the goddess, occasionally through the means of deception. While Dumuzi and Utu both bring Inanna gifts, Utu specifically identifies Dumuzi as the man to share the marriage bed with Inanna. Dumuzi’s sister by blood in myth and poetry is Geshtinanna.

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THE YOUNG GODDESS IN LOVE

The love poetry has a clear domestic setting, and it is staged at a specific time of Inanna’s life; she is a young woman either just about to be married, or who has recently wed. She has been through puberty and notes the changes in her body. In copies of texts dated to the Old Babylonian period, the presence of dark pubic hair on Inanna’s vulva is poetically described through the symbolism of a flock of ducks on a well-watered field or a narrow doorway framed in glossy black lapis-lazuli (Assante, 2002: 39). In a Sumerian balbale, the deity praises her newly firm breasts; a balbale is a type of poem that is difficult to categorise, appearing likely to have been ‘multimodal’ (Rubio, 2009).

See now, our breasts stand out; see now, hair has grown on our genitals, signifying my progress to the embrace of a man!

(Dumuzid-Inana C, ETCSL 4.08.3)

The goddess demonstrates awareness of the significance for her new status as a woman of sexual maturity, and is depicted celebrating the newly established sexual allure and capacity that is associated with her development. The youthful enthusiasm of Inanna, rejoicing in her womanly physicality, suggests a high level of sexual confidence despite her young age.

The repeated invitation from Inanna to her lover to ‘plough’ her vulva has strong connotations of youth and virginity (Leick, 2003: 91). To ‘plough’ the vulva of the goddess has specific implications for initial sexual penetration; as Leick observes, the young woman is the field awaiting the plough (the penis) driven by the bull (the young man). As a fertility metaphor, this imagery of fields, ploughing and bulls might seem at first to be a reasonably passive means to describe the goddess associated with erotic love. However, the ‘field’ of the goddess is shown in texts to be ‘wet’ (Inana H, ETCSL 4.07.8), making the erotic readiness and participation of the goddess overt.

The poetic texts, and indeed, the goddess herself, can be seen to demonstrate a great deal of practical knowledge of the stages of female sexual arousal. By presenting Inanna herself as describing these stages of arousal in her body, the texts add to the sense of assured sexuality surrounding the young goddess. Any suggestion of sexual passivity from the goddess is further countered by the poetic descriptions in the text of a rich fantasy life. Several scholars have commented on the presence of the goddess’ erotic fantasies in the texts involving her union with Dumuzi/Tammuz (see, for example, Black, 1983; and Leick, 2003: 79). These fantas...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• ISHTAR
• Gods and Heroes of the Ancient World
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• List of Figures
• Why Ishtar?
• Part I Key Themes
• Part II Ishtar Afterwards
• Further Reading
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Timeline
• Index