The Sumerians designed and developed an elaborate network of canals between the rivers to irrigate their fields, a system which necessitated a great deal of collaboration and organization. Thus they could produce a surplus of grain that they were able to trade for other commodities. For their buildings, the people shaped bricks from the mud of the rivers, and wove mats and huts from the reeds.

So many inventions are credited to the Sumerians - the potter’s wheel, the plow, the sailboat, and the techniques of working metal, brewing beer and writing on clay tablets with reed pens. They created the cuneiform alphabet and originated a body of literature that has endured for five thousand years. The Sumerian flood story was the source of the Biblical myth, and the Epic of Gilgamesh contains the universal theme of a man trying to outwit death.

Many of their stories are concerned with the order and the disposition of the cosmos. Because their lives were so dependent upon human effort and labor to maintain the irrigation canals and farm the land, the Sumerians thought that their deities were similarly engaged on a grand scale to sustain the very structure of the universe. One of the most significant legends is those of Sumer's best-known Goddess, Inanna.

Her story is a journey of development and evolution. The young Inanna rescues the huluppu-tree, the sacred tree, when a flood has carried it into the river; she plants this tree in her garden so that eventually its wood can be used to make her "shining throne" and "her shining bed". From the beginning, her desire for rulership is paramount, and she is angry and frustrated because the older deities have all the me, the manifestations of authority, wisdom and ability.

There is a trickster aspect to her acquisition of her power from her grandfather Enki, the god of wisdom and the waters. When she pays him a visit, they observe the honorable Sumerian custom of drinking beer together, and Enki becomes so drunk that he begins to grant her all the me. She encourages him to continue bestowing his treasures upon her, and when he falls asleep, she takes all the me home. When he awakes and realizes what has happened, Enki is furious and sends hordes of monstrous creatures after her, but her sukkal Ninshubur routs them and established Inanna’s sovereignty. Thus Inanna becomes Queen of Heaven, and she brightens the sky as the morning star of dawn and the evening star of dusk.

Most Sumerian deities had a sukkal, who acts to implement the commands or desires of the deity on the practical level. The sukkal is something like a vizier and chief attendant and often has greater powers than the deity. Ninshubur is the champion who fights off Enki’s henchmen; she also serves as Inanna’s friend and counselor. As a sort of bridesmaid, she leads the chosen consort Dumuzi to Inanna’s shining bed.

The sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi, the Shepherd King, engenders the fecundity of the earth - Dumuzi’s function is to literally fill Inanna’s storehouse. This deed was enacted every year in Sumer (and in succeeding civilizations) by the ritual mating of the king of the city with the high priestess of Inanna at the New Year. Besides its obvious fertility aspects, this ceremony also confirmed the king in his position of power as the chosen one of Inanna.

Inanna seems to have everything now, yet she decides to go the Underworld. Why? The Underworld is a dry, dusty, dismal realm, ruled by Inanna’s older sister Ereshkigal. Ereshkigal herself did not choose this awful place; she has been stuck with it because none of the other deities had wanted it. Enki did attempt to go there - possibly he was intending to rescue Ereshkigal - but he was turned back by the very storm that brought Inanna her huluppu-tree.

The story of Inanna’s descent into the Underworld marks the path of the magician, the initiation into the mysteries. Unlike the more famous story of Ishtar (her later Semitic counterpart), Inanna does not go down to rescue her husband, but because she hears the call of the Great Below. Though Inanna has been blessed with earthly delight and celestial glory, she still feels the need to know more, and she wants to obtain even more power.

Inanna’s reasoning is that her sister’s husband has died, and she wants to witness the funeral, perhaps so that she can gain the power of death by observation instead of experience. She does acknowledge that she might indeed be killed, and she has the foresight to leave word with Ninshubur to get help if she does not return.

Inanna, Ninshubur and Ereshkigal here represent the primary Sumerian elements of silver, stone and wood. [The classic Western elemental system of air, fire, water and earth would not be developed by the Greeks for another fifteen hundred years.] Inanna is silver, the shining realm of Heaven, also corresponding to enlightenment, aspiration and the highest self. Ninshubur is stone, the solid domain of Earth, relating to all the practical, necessary tasks of human existence. Ereshkigal is wood, the withering region of the Underworld, associated with the shadow and the hidden aspects of the psyche. Inanna’s journey is the amalgamation of these three elements.

Inanna prepares by adorning herself with her ornaments of authority, makes her descent and arrogantly demands entrance at the gates of the Underworld. But at these seven gates she is stripped of all her finery, for she is forced to release everything she has and holds. Seven was the most magical number for the Sumerians - seven planets of the ancient world, seven days of the week. The Sumerians may have had some kind of chakra system as well, since they did trade with India.

Still not entirely humbled, Inanna appears before her sister. Ereshkigal breathes the musty air of decay and barrenness, lacking the luxuries that Inanna takes for granted, and she is a recent widow, raw with grief. Perhaps if Inanna had brought gifts or offered condolences, Ereshkigal’s response would have been different. But Inanna in her pride and beauty aroused all Ereshkigal’s bitterness and anger, and her reaction was immediate and instinctual: destroy. Inanna is turned into a corpse and hung upon the wall for three days.

From the viewpoint that the deities are personifications of natural forces, Inanna represents the abundant storehouse, replete with the harvest of the fields and the orchards. But over the winter the supplies are consumed, and the empty storehouse, with its threat of famine, begins to resemble the desolation of the Underworld. In this sense, Inanna could be considered to be appropriating the domain of Ereshkigal; a storehouse containing nothing but a putrefying side of meat resembles the corpse of Inanna rotting in her sister’s realm.

The dying Goddess theme is far rarer in the Western tradition than that of the dying God (despite some Wiccans’ insistence that the Goddess never dies!). However, the death of Inanna is not nearly as much a part of the organic cycle as are those of Osiris, Tammuz, Persephone and Adonis. These vegetative deities do not choose to go to the Underworld; their absence and return results from the processes of nature.

Inanna’s decision to enter the Underworld is most similar to the experience of the Norse God Odin (German Wotan). He is the All-Father, the God of sorcery, poetry and battle. In his endless quest for wisdom, he chooses to hang himself upon the World Tree for nine days, and in this state of ecstatic torment he receives the vision of the runes, the powerful Teutonic alphabet of magic and divination.

Inanna undergoes her own transformative experience with Ereshkigal. After killing Inanna, Ereshkigal begins to suffer the agony of a woman in labor. And when Inanna does not return, Ninshubur on earth seeks help from grandfather Enki, who forms two sexless creatures from the dirt beneath his fingernails. As beings without the ability to create life, these creatures of Enki can easily enter the realm of death, and there they mourn with Ereshkigal, echoing all her anguish.

His wisdom has discerned the need for healing. Through the compassion of his creatures, Ereshkigal, who had been abandoned and despised, is finally comforted. She offers them gifts, and they insist on receiving the corpse of Inanna, which they resurrect. Both sisters are thus restored to a new state of wholeness.

Though Inanna could now leave, she had to find a substitute to take her place in the Underworld. Upon her return, she saw the loyal Ninshubur and her sons mourning for her, but her husband Dumuzi was amusing himself in royal regalia upon her throne. "Take him," she cried, for she had now learned of sorrow and rage, and her harsh condemnation of him was as drastic as Ereshkigal’s had been of her.

Inanna later relented, but it was too late. The consignment of Dumuzi to the Underworld now began to correspond to the vegetation cycle, for Dumuzi’s loyal sister Geshtinanna offered to share his exile. She was the Goddess of the vine, as he was of the grain - he went to the Underworld after the barley harvest in the spring, while Geshtinanna returned to earth to preside over the grapes. [One suspects that Ereshkigal enjoyed having this handsome young man for part of the year.]

In the fall, the grapes were harvested, so Geshtinanna went down and Dumuzi came back to perform the sacred marriage with Inanna at the autumn equinox. Thus Inanna’s descent became a catalyst and a catharsis, activating the interplay of life and death between the worlds.

Sources:

Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer, Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer. (Kramer is a renowned Sumeriologist and translator, and Wolkstein is a poet and folklorist, so this book contains renditions of the ancient narratives and hymns that are both accurate and a delight to read.) The pictures shown above are also taken from this book.

The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion, Thorkild Jacobsen

Illustrated History of Early Man, John Haygood

Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond