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Inanna: A New English Version
Inanna, a goddess of ancient Mesopotamia, was worshipped around 1800 BCE by our ancestors in the land that is now modern-day Iraq. But who was she? Who were her followers? And what did her stories mean for their lives? Lost for millennia, Inanna’s stories were buried and forgotten, unearthed by archaeologists only recently, around the turn of the 19th century. Their translation has been a remarkable work of collaboration by scholars from disparate parts of the globe, as fragments of stone tablets were pieced together and the symbols on them recorded, transliterated, and interpreted. And although we still know relatively little about this ancient time, a picture of this extraordinary figure has slowly begun to emerge, through the painstaking work of these dedicated scholars: Inanna the creator, Inanna the destroyer; the leader, the warrior, the lover, the friend. Inanna was a guiding light for her followers, a commanding symbol of justice and honour, and her stories have much to teach a contemporary readership about love, power, independence, and compassion. Now, these stories are brought to vivid, visceral life by beloved Canadian author Kim Echlin, who brings her trademark passion and poet’s sensibility to the translation of the Inanna myth. With a new introduction and comprehensive notes, this new English version renders Inanna’s powerful story accessible and captivating for a new generation of eager readers.
272 pages, Paperback
Published August 4, 2015
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46 people want to read
About the author
Kim Echlin
20 books112 followersAward-winning author Kim Echlin lives in Toronto. She is the author of Elephant Winter and Dagmar’s Daughter, and her third novel, The Disappeared, was short-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award for Fiction. She has translated a collection of poetry about the goddess Inanna, the earliest written poetry in the world. Her new novel, Speak, Silence is coming out in March 2021.
Kim has lived and worked around the world. She has been a documentary producer at the CBC and currently teaches creative writing.
Kim has lived and worked around the world. She has been a documentary producer at the CBC and currently teaches creative writing.
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March 11, 2024
A disappointment.
Inanna, as the name suggests, is a collection of translations of the Sumerian poems about Inanna, the Mesapotamian goddess of war, sex, fertility, and thus kingship/sovereignty (as well as a bunch of other things), of which there are an incredible abundance of, putting to shame almost every other deity in terms of sheer volume. A fascinating thing about the Inanna poems is that, for a variety of reasons tied to religion where Inanna was portrayed sometimes as a naive virginal girl and as the goddess of sex, prostitution, gender deviance, etc, as the cultic setting called for, there is an unintentional but very strong feeling of linearity to these poems, almost as if they form the "Inanna Cycle", a divine myth not of succession but character development - perhaps the first one ever.
Not only that, but there are also the two hymns of Enheduanna, undeniably the best or at least best written literature in the whole of the extant Sumerian corpus, a complexity that unfortunately only fully comes through in the original, but remains wonderful regardless. Enheduanna, regardless if she actually wrote these poems or if she was merely a literary character from history that Old Babylonian scribes used as a poetic persona, is the first author in history.
This, of course, is not new, and I am not the first to note it - Diane Wolkstein noted it, and she was helped by Samuel Kramer, who was a Sumerologist for basically as long as the discipline existed and, in fact, was among the main forces in getting all the fragments of Inanna's Descent to the Underworld together and getting it translated for the first time. They too had translated them before, though the author seems to not mention this, their book, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, only mentioned as the very last one of the bibliography cited, even though the organization of the stories and hymns, and thus of the whole book's composition, seems nearly identical to Wolkstein's.
I will start with a positive, though it might sound like damming by faint praise: It at least appears like Kim Echlin has actually translated these from the Sumerian, using whatever resources online (there are quite a few now), which is only worth bringing up because of the amount of people "translating" things by either collaging others' translations, a la David Ferry, or by doing a "version" of something you can't read in the original and thus don't understand, a la Stephen Mitchell, or even just basically doing your version of what pre-fair use classic poetry you can grab, a la Coleman Barks' "translations" of Rumi. So, if I am right, props to that.
The other positives will be those whose credit is to the Sumerians themselves because, well, many of these are still highly enjoyable to read because, quite simply, Inanna is highly enjoyable to read about.
Beyond the fact that it contains all these fantastic stories and poems from the first written literature in human history, this book is entirely lacking and this is for a very simple reason: the translator and her introduction+commentary on the poems is clearly from someone who has not studied the first thing about either Sumerian religion or Assyriology as a whole, or even understands the context of these poems.
This is immediately apparent in the intro, where the explanation of what the cuneiform script is is so butchered that if I didn't know myself I would be left entirely confused. This is not a hard thing to get right - it is normally the first thing you are taught about.
The intros to each section of the book shows a shocking degree of unabashed presentism: while I am okay with interpreting Inanna from the POVs of queer studies etc - her great variety of gender-deviant cultic personnel are, in fact, a part of what makes her so fascinating - it is quite another thing, per example, to take prostitution in Sumerian society as Americans do in the sex workers debate now. The karkid, tavern prostitutes, are thus naively and wishfully described as "the earthy and sensual woman who frequents the taverns".
In the same vein, multiple times the author explains her enjoyment of the seeming importance to female pleasure in the love poems, but, quite simply, this is projection - there is no pleasure in either direction since the point of it was a show of fertility, sexual fertility tied to agrarian one (contrary to "common wisdom", Inanna is not a goddess of the land, i.e. an agrarian one, as Demeter is, she is a sex goddess and it is the metaphorical, sexual plowing that is then applied to crops likewise, the "shuba jewels" (cum symbolism, as the author notes) being their "seed".
Sometimes even well-known interpretations of stories go entirely undiscussed: Inanna's Descent, the most famous story of the entire Sumerian corpus, is taken as a bid for immortality and death-defiance, rather than a story tied with the usual cycles of Bronze Age vegetation spirits like Telipinu, Baal (in Ugarit), Velchanos/Dionysus (of Minoan origin), Adonis, Osiris (kinda tbh), etc. Talking about its meaning as a seasonal-change myth wouldn't even be close to new, but what we have is even lamer instead. Nothing interesting is discussed - why, per example, is Inanna saved by her two effeminate cultic attendants? Is it not curious that a fertility myth of not birth but outright resurrection is tied with what were potentially eunuchs - as was the case in much elsewhere, i.e. priests of Attis, Dionysus, Atargatis, likely the Minoan crossdressing priests, etc?
Obscure stories are taken at face value in this way too: the incredibly strange and weird tale Inanna and Šukaletuda is taken to be entirely about "justice", which would maybe fit, if the story was not absolutely bonkers nonsensical and if its imagery and language did not clearly show it to be a celestial myth of the Orion type, though meaning what exactly is very hard to say.
It is lame because it is uncurious, and worse than uncurious, it is so unconcerned with understanding them in even the most basic way that the author simply gives you her entirely modern opinions on the story as if they are what they are about, robbing them of that primeval magic, and these stories specifically have them in more abundance than most mythos and fairy tales.
In the mentality that Inanna is tied to gender - in the modern understanding - Inanna is taken as a reflection for women in Sumerian times, but if she is a reflection of that at all, it is only for the aristocratic elite, as shown in some poems that were not collected here presumably for that reason: i.e. a simple story, likely a sort of short musical performance, where Inanna kills one of her handmaids because Dumuzid cheated on her with that handmaid, then realizing that killing the girl did not satisfy her at all and must confront Dumuzid - it is highly implied that the encounter between Dumuzid and the handmaid was not consensual, making the killing akin to Odysseus' female slave-servants. But in all likelihood, the opposite of "Inanna reflects womanhood" is true, in that no woman was like Inanna, hence her deep ties with gender-non-conformity.
It's not even a more complete collection of the stories! Beyond that song mentioned above, the damaged story where the young Inanna and her older twin brother Utu go off into the mountains to find the "Tree of Knowledge" so Inanna can learn about sex isn't even here. It's an important story - Inanna and her relationship with Utu in songs and literature is something akin to the primeval shoujo nii-chan relationship, complete with the strange, funny incest subtext between the two celestial twins. If you think I am joking about this, read chapter 9 of Gwendolyn Leick's Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, appropriately just titled "Inanna and Her Brother".
In fact, Inanna is really something like the primeval mahou shoujo heroine herself is she not? She goes from boycrazy "maiden Inanna" to a powerful goddess of war who defeats all her enemies and even escapes death. This power is acquired by a transformation sequence, repeated and stereotyped no less, in which she puts she either puts on a bunch of sexy clothing, or crossdresses in military clothing. She has an homoerotic relationship with her vizier, and is around attractive effeminate males. I mean, have I not made my point?
Maybe if you don't get where I'm coming from I haven't, but I very simply mean that Inanna is not only the primeval female protagonist, but that in many ways the rather literature that surrounds her remains emotionally evocative and compelling for the same reason something like Sailor Moon, or any given piece of popular female-oriented media focused on young characters. With that said, I hope it's clear that I am not criticizing the author here for her female-focused analysis or what-have-you, because I am actually greatly into exactly that. An analysis of why that is, what are the core mythologems in Inanna that make her still compelling and how they still exist in more modern media in altered form, would be deeply interesting to read, but the author can only provide the same type of goddess-worship type presentist inanity that you've seen a million times before. If you are not going to present something new like that, you could at least present some properly interesting interpretative essays as does Sophus Helle in his two translations, or, indeed, Wolkstein's original book.
Overall, it is not the worst thing ever, but only because it is about Inanna... I think you are better off picking up Wolkstein's book. If you are curious about Inanna herself, get Henriette Broekema's Inanna, Lady of Heaven and Earth, which doesn't even scratch the surface beyond the Sumerian Inanna (as the title would indicate) because, as is well known, with her Semitic name Ishtar, she would spread over literally everywhere - Canaan and Egypt as Ashtart, Cyprus and then Greece as Aphrodite, to Hittite Anatolia as Shaushka, and be syncretized or confused with countless other "Queens of Heaven", like Hera, Anahita, and specially Atargatis who retains the most similarities to her. That said, if you are just curious and just want to read the stories of Inanna, I suppose you could do worse, so it is not without merit.
Inanna, as the name suggests, is a collection of translations of the Sumerian poems about Inanna, the Mesapotamian goddess of war, sex, fertility, and thus kingship/sovereignty (as well as a bunch of other things), of which there are an incredible abundance of, putting to shame almost every other deity in terms of sheer volume. A fascinating thing about the Inanna poems is that, for a variety of reasons tied to religion where Inanna was portrayed sometimes as a naive virginal girl and as the goddess of sex, prostitution, gender deviance, etc, as the cultic setting called for, there is an unintentional but very strong feeling of linearity to these poems, almost as if they form the "Inanna Cycle", a divine myth not of succession but character development - perhaps the first one ever.
Not only that, but there are also the two hymns of Enheduanna, undeniably the best or at least best written literature in the whole of the extant Sumerian corpus, a complexity that unfortunately only fully comes through in the original, but remains wonderful regardless. Enheduanna, regardless if she actually wrote these poems or if she was merely a literary character from history that Old Babylonian scribes used as a poetic persona, is the first author in history.
This, of course, is not new, and I am not the first to note it - Diane Wolkstein noted it, and she was helped by Samuel Kramer, who was a Sumerologist for basically as long as the discipline existed and, in fact, was among the main forces in getting all the fragments of Inanna's Descent to the Underworld together and getting it translated for the first time. They too had translated them before, though the author seems to not mention this, their book, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, only mentioned as the very last one of the bibliography cited, even though the organization of the stories and hymns, and thus of the whole book's composition, seems nearly identical to Wolkstein's.
I will start with a positive, though it might sound like damming by faint praise: It at least appears like Kim Echlin has actually translated these from the Sumerian, using whatever resources online (there are quite a few now), which is only worth bringing up because of the amount of people "translating" things by either collaging others' translations, a la David Ferry, or by doing a "version" of something you can't read in the original and thus don't understand, a la Stephen Mitchell, or even just basically doing your version of what pre-fair use classic poetry you can grab, a la Coleman Barks' "translations" of Rumi. So, if I am right, props to that.
The other positives will be those whose credit is to the Sumerians themselves because, well, many of these are still highly enjoyable to read because, quite simply, Inanna is highly enjoyable to read about.
Beyond the fact that it contains all these fantastic stories and poems from the first written literature in human history, this book is entirely lacking and this is for a very simple reason: the translator and her introduction+commentary on the poems is clearly from someone who has not studied the first thing about either Sumerian religion or Assyriology as a whole, or even understands the context of these poems.
This is immediately apparent in the intro, where the explanation of what the cuneiform script is is so butchered that if I didn't know myself I would be left entirely confused. This is not a hard thing to get right - it is normally the first thing you are taught about.
The intros to each section of the book shows a shocking degree of unabashed presentism: while I am okay with interpreting Inanna from the POVs of queer studies etc - her great variety of gender-deviant cultic personnel are, in fact, a part of what makes her so fascinating - it is quite another thing, per example, to take prostitution in Sumerian society as Americans do in the sex workers debate now. The karkid, tavern prostitutes, are thus naively and wishfully described as "the earthy and sensual woman who frequents the taverns".
In the same vein, multiple times the author explains her enjoyment of the seeming importance to female pleasure in the love poems, but, quite simply, this is projection - there is no pleasure in either direction since the point of it was a show of fertility, sexual fertility tied to agrarian one (contrary to "common wisdom", Inanna is not a goddess of the land, i.e. an agrarian one, as Demeter is, she is a sex goddess and it is the metaphorical, sexual plowing that is then applied to crops likewise, the "shuba jewels" (cum symbolism, as the author notes) being their "seed".
Sometimes even well-known interpretations of stories go entirely undiscussed: Inanna's Descent, the most famous story of the entire Sumerian corpus, is taken as a bid for immortality and death-defiance, rather than a story tied with the usual cycles of Bronze Age vegetation spirits like Telipinu, Baal (in Ugarit), Velchanos/Dionysus (of Minoan origin), Adonis, Osiris (kinda tbh), etc. Talking about its meaning as a seasonal-change myth wouldn't even be close to new, but what we have is even lamer instead. Nothing interesting is discussed - why, per example, is Inanna saved by her two effeminate cultic attendants? Is it not curious that a fertility myth of not birth but outright resurrection is tied with what were potentially eunuchs - as was the case in much elsewhere, i.e. priests of Attis, Dionysus, Atargatis, likely the Minoan crossdressing priests, etc?
Obscure stories are taken at face value in this way too: the incredibly strange and weird tale Inanna and Šukaletuda is taken to be entirely about "justice", which would maybe fit, if the story was not absolutely bonkers nonsensical and if its imagery and language did not clearly show it to be a celestial myth of the Orion type, though meaning what exactly is very hard to say.
It is lame because it is uncurious, and worse than uncurious, it is so unconcerned with understanding them in even the most basic way that the author simply gives you her entirely modern opinions on the story as if they are what they are about, robbing them of that primeval magic, and these stories specifically have them in more abundance than most mythos and fairy tales.
In the mentality that Inanna is tied to gender - in the modern understanding - Inanna is taken as a reflection for women in Sumerian times, but if she is a reflection of that at all, it is only for the aristocratic elite, as shown in some poems that were not collected here presumably for that reason: i.e. a simple story, likely a sort of short musical performance, where Inanna kills one of her handmaids because Dumuzid cheated on her with that handmaid, then realizing that killing the girl did not satisfy her at all and must confront Dumuzid - it is highly implied that the encounter between Dumuzid and the handmaid was not consensual, making the killing akin to Odysseus' female slave-servants. But in all likelihood, the opposite of "Inanna reflects womanhood" is true, in that no woman was like Inanna, hence her deep ties with gender-non-conformity.
It's not even a more complete collection of the stories! Beyond that song mentioned above, the damaged story where the young Inanna and her older twin brother Utu go off into the mountains to find the "Tree of Knowledge" so Inanna can learn about sex isn't even here. It's an important story - Inanna and her relationship with Utu in songs and literature is something akin to the primeval shoujo nii-chan relationship, complete with the strange, funny incest subtext between the two celestial twins. If you think I am joking about this, read chapter 9 of Gwendolyn Leick's Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, appropriately just titled "Inanna and Her Brother".
In fact, Inanna is really something like the primeval mahou shoujo heroine herself is she not? She goes from boycrazy "maiden Inanna" to a powerful goddess of war who defeats all her enemies and even escapes death. This power is acquired by a transformation sequence, repeated and stereotyped no less, in which she puts she either puts on a bunch of sexy clothing, or crossdresses in military clothing. She has an homoerotic relationship with her vizier, and is around attractive effeminate males. I mean, have I not made my point?
Maybe if you don't get where I'm coming from I haven't, but I very simply mean that Inanna is not only the primeval female protagonist, but that in many ways the rather literature that surrounds her remains emotionally evocative and compelling for the same reason something like Sailor Moon, or any given piece of popular female-oriented media focused on young characters. With that said, I hope it's clear that I am not criticizing the author here for her female-focused analysis or what-have-you, because I am actually greatly into exactly that. An analysis of why that is, what are the core mythologems in Inanna that make her still compelling and how they still exist in more modern media in altered form, would be deeply interesting to read, but the author can only provide the same type of goddess-worship type presentist inanity that you've seen a million times before. If you are not going to present something new like that, you could at least present some properly interesting interpretative essays as does Sophus Helle in his two translations, or, indeed, Wolkstein's original book.
Overall, it is not the worst thing ever, but only because it is about Inanna... I think you are better off picking up Wolkstein's book. If you are curious about Inanna herself, get Henriette Broekema's Inanna, Lady of Heaven and Earth, which doesn't even scratch the surface beyond the Sumerian Inanna (as the title would indicate) because, as is well known, with her Semitic name Ishtar, she would spread over literally everywhere - Canaan and Egypt as Ashtart, Cyprus and then Greece as Aphrodite, to Hittite Anatolia as Shaushka, and be syncretized or confused with countless other "Queens of Heaven", like Hera, Anahita, and specially Atargatis who retains the most similarities to her. That said, if you are just curious and just want to read the stories of Inanna, I suppose you could do worse, so it is not without merit.
Read
July 25, 2017oldest book in the world, a paean to a sensual goddess. I can't believe a Sumerian-English translation is actually possible!
July 13, 2019
Before we have novels, we have poetry. Before poetry, we have tax records and other business related writings, but those aren’t super riveting to read. (Except for the complaint tablet to Ea-nasir which is hilarious that we’re still joking about it almost 4000 years later.)
To quote Sofia Samatar from her recent AMA on r/fantasy:
“I think in some ways poetry is the beginning of fantasy. Poetry is play, it’s fancy, it’s the derangement of the senses. And it’s a vehicle for so many fantasy narratives–I’m thinking of old folk ballads, for example, folk poetry that’s so often about fantastic scenes and events. I really believe that the magic of words in poetry–rhythm and rhyme, with their relationship to spells, incantations, and prayers–that word-magic is fantasy.”
Now while we’re thinking about poetry as fantasy and the origin of writing, lets go back to ancient Sumer, the first literate society in ancient Mesopotamia. One of the things I love the most about human imagination is how we repeat and transform narrative. We can trace the transformation of different gods and goddesses across cultures as they were adopted by new people. And they are older still and they most likely existed long before writing.
I’d like to tell you about Inanna. Inanna the queen of heaven. Inanna the lion of Heaven. Inanna the morning and evening star.
Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, combat, justice, and political power. The Hittites, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians later worshiped her as Ishtar. The old Testament provides allusions to her cult. The Phoenicians worshiped her as Asarte, introducing her to the Greek Islands were she gave rise to Aphrodite. The Romans then called her Venus.
We know of Inanna from fragments of cuneiform tablets, some written by Enheduanna, the earliest known poet whose name has been recorded (23rd century BCE).
Inanna: A New English Version is one of the few books of poetry about Inanna that I have been able to find (in print I mean. There’s a lot of older translations gracing the dusty shelves of university libraries).
These are old stories. Beautiful stories though, of the creation of the world, destruction, power, marriage, love and betrayal. Here are some personal highlights of the poems.
We have the oldest reference to jaw dropping amazement (as Inanna wonders over the perfection of her vulva). (“Inanna and Enki”, pg. 36-60)
She […] of the desert
she put the sugurra-turban on her head
the desert-crown on her head […]
[…] when she appeared for the sheperd
to the house of […]
[…]
her vulva was something to marvel at
her vulva was marvellous
her vulva was marvellous
She praised herself
her jaw dropped in wonder at her vulva
She sang her own praises
she was delighted by her vulva
Inanna decides to destroy a whole mountain because it infuriates her with its beauty and lack of respect for her. (“Inanna and Ebih”, pg. 185-95)
When I, fearsome Inanna
approached the mountain
it showed me no respect
When I approached Mount Ebih
it showed me no respect
The mountain reared up
did not pay homage
did not put its nose to the ground before me
did not brush its lips in the dust
I will take the lofty mountain in hand
and make it acknowledge my fearsomeness
Inanna hunts her rapist to the ends of the earth to kill him for his crime. (“Inanna and Sukaletuda”, pg. 160-175)
Inanna thought about
what should be done
because of what happened to her
She filled the wells of the land with blood
blood filled the wells of the land
Slaves who collected firewood
drank blood
slave-girls who drew water
drank blood
The black-headed people
drank blood
No one knew when this would end
She wanders into the underworld for a power grab, dies, is rescued by her minister but has to chose a someone to take her place in the underworld. She return home to find her beloved husband on her throne not terribly upset that she was gone. So she banishes him in her place. (“Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld”, pg. 124-150)
She looked at him
the look of death
She spoke to him
the speech of anger
She shouted at him
she judged him guilty
How much longer
how much longer would he have sat
on my throne
Take him
I love these poems so much. It’s incredible to me that we are able to read writing from 4000 years ago. That so many stories have continued on. That the themes and concerns we have grappled with still exist. I love the fact that one goddess impacted ancient civilization so much that we still have references to her in the Bible.
So I’d like to end with two more quotes.
“Bold-Hearted Woman”, p. 204-220
Young Woman
Inanna
sweet is your praise
“Song of Solomon” 6:10
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
To quote Sofia Samatar from her recent AMA on r/fantasy:
“I think in some ways poetry is the beginning of fantasy. Poetry is play, it’s fancy, it’s the derangement of the senses. And it’s a vehicle for so many fantasy narratives–I’m thinking of old folk ballads, for example, folk poetry that’s so often about fantastic scenes and events. I really believe that the magic of words in poetry–rhythm and rhyme, with their relationship to spells, incantations, and prayers–that word-magic is fantasy.”
Now while we’re thinking about poetry as fantasy and the origin of writing, lets go back to ancient Sumer, the first literate society in ancient Mesopotamia. One of the things I love the most about human imagination is how we repeat and transform narrative. We can trace the transformation of different gods and goddesses across cultures as they were adopted by new people. And they are older still and they most likely existed long before writing.
I’d like to tell you about Inanna. Inanna the queen of heaven. Inanna the lion of Heaven. Inanna the morning and evening star.
Inanna is the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sex, desire, fertility, war, combat, justice, and political power. The Hittites, Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians later worshiped her as Ishtar. The old Testament provides allusions to her cult. The Phoenicians worshiped her as Asarte, introducing her to the Greek Islands were she gave rise to Aphrodite. The Romans then called her Venus.
We know of Inanna from fragments of cuneiform tablets, some written by Enheduanna, the earliest known poet whose name has been recorded (23rd century BCE).
Inanna: A New English Version is one of the few books of poetry about Inanna that I have been able to find (in print I mean. There’s a lot of older translations gracing the dusty shelves of university libraries).
These are old stories. Beautiful stories though, of the creation of the world, destruction, power, marriage, love and betrayal. Here are some personal highlights of the poems.
We have the oldest reference to jaw dropping amazement (as Inanna wonders over the perfection of her vulva). (“Inanna and Enki”, pg. 36-60)
She […] of the desert
she put the sugurra-turban on her head
the desert-crown on her head […]
[…] when she appeared for the sheperd
to the house of […]
[…]
her vulva was something to marvel at
her vulva was marvellous
her vulva was marvellous
She praised herself
her jaw dropped in wonder at her vulva
She sang her own praises
she was delighted by her vulva
Inanna decides to destroy a whole mountain because it infuriates her with its beauty and lack of respect for her. (“Inanna and Ebih”, pg. 185-95)
When I, fearsome Inanna
approached the mountain
it showed me no respect
When I approached Mount Ebih
it showed me no respect
The mountain reared up
did not pay homage
did not put its nose to the ground before me
did not brush its lips in the dust
I will take the lofty mountain in hand
and make it acknowledge my fearsomeness
Inanna hunts her rapist to the ends of the earth to kill him for his crime. (“Inanna and Sukaletuda”, pg. 160-175)
Inanna thought about
what should be done
because of what happened to her
She filled the wells of the land with blood
blood filled the wells of the land
Slaves who collected firewood
drank blood
slave-girls who drew water
drank blood
The black-headed people
drank blood
No one knew when this would end
She wanders into the underworld for a power grab, dies, is rescued by her minister but has to chose a someone to take her place in the underworld. She return home to find her beloved husband on her throne not terribly upset that she was gone. So she banishes him in her place. (“Inanna’s Descent to the Netherworld”, pg. 124-150)
She looked at him
the look of death
She spoke to him
the speech of anger
She shouted at him
she judged him guilty
How much longer
how much longer would he have sat
on my throne
Take him
I love these poems so much. It’s incredible to me that we are able to read writing from 4000 years ago. That so many stories have continued on. That the themes and concerns we have grappled with still exist. I love the fact that one goddess impacted ancient civilization so much that we still have references to her in the Bible.
So I’d like to end with two more quotes.
“Bold-Hearted Woman”, p. 204-220
Young Woman
Inanna
sweet is your praise
“Song of Solomon” 6:10
Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners?
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