Liberate Yourself

nanshe-of-nina:

MYTHOLOGY MEME || OTPS (3/5) ↬Inanna and Dumuzi

In Sumerian mythology, Inanna (known as “Ishtar” in Akkadian) was the goddess of love, fertility, and warfare, whereas Dumuzi (also known as “Tammuz”) was a god of agriculture and vegetation. A number of poems and songs told of their love, but the most famous account of their relationship was in “Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld.” In that aforementioned epic, Inanna travels to Irkalla, the domain of her sister, Ereshkigal. There, Inanna dies and is confined in Irkalla for three days and three nights. Eventually, however, Inanna’s handmaid, Ninshubur, begged the other gods for help. Of them, Enki agreed to help and struck a deal with Ereshkigal: Inanna could return to life if she found someone to take her place.

Inanna found her servants and sons mourning her demise. But when she saw her husband, Dumuzi, in good spirits. In anger that her husband was not mourning, Inanna selected him to take her place. Later, Inanna regretted her rashness and mourned the loss of her beloved husband. His sister, Geshtinanna, agreed to take Dumuzi’s place for half of the year. When Dumuzi in the Underworld, Inanna mourns and the world withers.

manticoreimaginary:

[MYTHOLOGY MEME]  2/6 Myths - Inanna’s Descent

From the great heaven Inanna set her mind on the great below. My mistress abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, and descended to the underworld.

In Sumerian mythology, there is a story of the goddess Inanna and the journey she makes into Irkalla, the dreary and dark underworld ruled over by her sister, Ereshkigal.

To the gatekeeper of the underworld, Inanna gives her reasoning as coming to the funeral of her sister’s husband, Gud-gal-ana, the Bull of Heaven. But despite her claims she has dressed herself up in all her finery and jewels, her makeup elaborate, her queenly sceptre in hand. This is not mourning attire.

Her entry is allowed, but there are seven gates she must pass through first. At each of these gates she is forced to abandon something of her clothing or jewellry, stripping her of her power as she goes. It is an arrogant endeavour on Inanna’s part, as any who enter the underworld are never allowed to leave, just as Ereshkigal - as a denizen of Irkalla - is never allowed to go to the surface to be with the other gods.

By the time she reaches Ereshkigal, Inanna is naked and powerless. Despite that, she forces Ereshkigal to get off the throne so that she can take it for herself and the judges of the underworld then take action against her: Inanna is turned into a corpse and hung upon a hook.

Before Inanna left the living world, she gave clear instructions to the goddess Ninshubur (her second-in-command, vassal, and friend) that if Inanna didn’t return then Ninshubur was to plead to the other gods to save her from Irkalla. After three days, this was what Ninshubur does, going to Enlil, Nanna, and Enki, demanding them each in turn to help Inanna. Only Enki agree, and with the dirt from under his fingernails he creates two figures named the gala-tura and the kur-jara. They are instructed to go to Ereshkigal and ask for Inanna’s corpse to revive.

With their help, Inanna ascends from Irkalla but demons accompany her; Inanna cannot be truly free of the underworld until she finds someone else to take her place. The first person they come upon is Ninshubur and when the demons try to take her, Inanna refuses as Ninshubur is her loyal servant and has mourned her loss and fought for her life.

They come upon two more people who are deep in mourning for Inanna and so she refuses to let them be taken.The fourth person they come upon is Inanna’s husband, Dumuzi, who is dressed lavishly and lounging beneath a tree without a care. Inanna tells the demons to take him.

Out of love for him, Dumazi’s sister begs to be allowed to take his place. It comes to be that each of them spends half a year in the underworld, and during the time that Dumazi is gone, Inanna mourns him (despite being the one that put them there). The end of this myth can then be read as an explanation for the changes in seasons, with the goddess of fertility mourning her lover and making the earth less abundant because of it.

massarrah:

Bowl Dedicated to the Goddess Inanna

An alabaster bowl dedicated by a merchant named AK-Enlil to the goddess Inanna, whose name is written in the far right column. The inscription is in Sumerian.

Inanna (or Inana) is the Sumerian name of the goddess Ishtar, the goddess of love and war, and one of the more complicated deities in the Mesopotamian pantheon. In the early period from which this vase comes, she is usually listed in the top tier of the pantheon after Anu and Enlil.

Nippur, Early Dynastic IIIa (c. 2600-2500 BCE).

Metropolitan Museum of Art. Image from CDLI.

pulsarae:

~4,000 year old stone carvings of the Platonic Solids found in Scotland 

thelightofthecenter:

Of the forces contributing to the intense and complex growth of ancient Egyptian civilization, one of the most vital was the notion of the living gods, or the concept of “neteru neteru.” Egyptian gods and goddesses are the divine impulses that reveal themselves in the natural world and in the body.

-Jean Houston Ph.D

Image-a version of the Egyptian Ennead