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Ink, digital colors.

Why Inanna?

My first exposure to Sumerian culture came several years ago with my reading of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It was the first known epic about the first known hero in human history, and at that time I was all about the epics.

The work, like all Sumerian literature, was very short for an epic; having to write a story using a reed stylus to draw complex shapes in a wet clay tablet encourages brevity. As such, there wasn't much room for character exposition. All the same, one character stood out above the others, even though she appeared only briefly in a single chapter: Inanna.

I had heard of her before, under a more familiar name: Ishtar. Indeed, she had various names over 5000 years of worship as her cult spread up the Tigris and Euphrates and into the Levant. But it is always the same goddess, patron deity of war and sexual love; not a patronage that seems intuitive to us today, especially for a feminine demiurge. Throughout Sumerian literature, however, Inanna reveals in her every appearance that, for all we still borrow from the Sumerians - wheels, writing, 60 minute hours - we did not inherit from them our enduring association of femininity with weakness or submission.

Inanna's character is startlingly consistent across works that were written thousands of years apart. She blazes off of the page and into life in every tale in which she is featured, including her brief appearance as an antagonist in the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is domineering, implacable, proud, fiercely aware of her power and prone to using it - and never forgiving. Indeed, probably the most ominous phrase I have yet encountered in my reading of Sumerian is three words: "Inanna was furious."

In another story, Inanna and Shukaletuda, she falls asleep under the one tree that an inept gardner can keep alive; he subsequently rapes her and flees. When she awakens, she realizes she has been violated, and, in an effort to chase the perpetrator out of hiding, unleashes a series of plagues - the same that the Abrahamic God would use 2000 years later in the book of Exodus. To extract more power to search from her "superior" gods, she finally makes a threat that she always kept in store, but never had to use: "I will cause the dead to arise, and devour the living. And the dead shall outnumber the living." They bow to her demands. When she finally locates Shukaletuda, he begs her forgiveness. Inanna kills him anyway.

The original "Queen of Heaven" was far less forgiving than later deities who would co-opt this title from her.

For all her wrath, Inanna was still the patron deity of sexual love, and was probably looked upon by most of her followers with loving reverence. When she is trapped by her sister Erishkegal in the Babylonian "Ishtar's Descent to the Underworld," all sex on Earth ceases. She was the first goddess of love to be asssociated with the planet Venus, and the latter myth - as well as the frequency with which she heads "towards the mountains" in other stories - may be an attempt by the Sumerians to explain the path of Venus across the sky. For this reason, the planet occupies a spot behind her in my print.

Inanna was untamed and powerful. Her name was invoked in the heat of passion and the carnage of the battlefield. Those who opposed or crossed her suffered; those who violated or sought to control her suffered worse. She is the epitome of feminine power and abandon.

I think we can all see why she is still relevant in our time.

One final note; the first author in human history whose name we know was a priestess of Inanna in the city of Ur during the 2200s BC. Enheduanna, also a daughter of the king Sargon of Akkad, composed many hymns to her goddess, and from one of them I will quote to close this explanatory note.

"It is her game to speed conflict and battle, untiring, strapping on her sandals... she cuts to pieces him who shows no respect... To interchange the brute and the strong and the weak and the powerless is yours, Inanna... To give the crown, the throne and the royal sceptre is yours, Inanna... Your great deeds are unparallelled, your magnificence is praised! Young woman, Inanna, your praise is sweet!"

- A hymn to Inanna (Inanna C), copied from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.

Description
Ink, digital colors.

Why Inanna?

My first exposure to Sumerian culture came several years ago with my reading of the Epic of Gilgamesh. It was the first known epic about the first known hero in human history, and at that time I was all about the epics.

The work, like all Sumerian literature, was very short for an epic; having to write a story using a reed stylus to draw complex shapes in a wet clay tablet encourages brevity. As such, there wasn't much room for character exposition. All the same, one character stood out above the others, even though she appeared only briefly in a single chapter: Inanna.

I had heard of her before, under a more familiar name: Ishtar. Indeed, she had various names over 5000 years of worship as her cult spread up the Tigris and Euphrates and into the Levant. But it is always the same goddess, patron deity of war and sexual love; not a patronage that seems intuitive to us today, especially for a feminine demiurge. Throughout Sumerian literature, however, Inanna reveals in her every appearance that, for all we still borrow from the Sumerians - wheels, writing, 60 minute hours - we did not inherit from them our enduring association of femininity with weakness or submission.

Inanna's character is startlingly consistent across works that were written thousands of years apart. She blazes off of the page and into life in every tale in which she is featured, including her brief appearance as an antagonist in the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is domineering, implacable, proud, fiercely aware of her power and prone to using it - and never forgiving. Indeed, probably the most ominous phrase I have yet encountered in my reading of Sumerian is three words: "Inanna was furious."

In another story, Inanna and Shukaletuda, she falls asleep under the one tree that an inept gardner can keep alive; he subsequently rapes her and flees. When she awakens, she realizes she has been violated, and, in an effort to chase the perpetrator out of hiding, unleashes a series of plagues - the same that the Abrahamic God would use 2000 years later in the book of Exodus. To extract more power to search from her "superior" gods, she finally makes a threat that she always kept in store, but never had to use: "I will cause the dead to arise, and devour the living. And the dead shall outnumber the living." They bow to her demands. When she finally locates Shukaletuda, he begs her forgiveness. Inanna kills him anyway.

The original "Queen of Heaven" was far less forgiving than later deities who would co-opt this title from her.

For all her wrath, Inanna was still the patron deity of sexual love, and was probably looked upon by most of her followers with loving reverence. When she is trapped by her sister Erishkegal in the Babylonian "Ishtar's Descent to the Underworld," all sex on Earth ceases. She was the first goddess of love to be asssociated with the planet Venus, and the latter myth - as well as the frequency with which she heads "towards the mountains" in other stories - may be an attempt by the Sumerians to explain the path of Venus across the sky. For this reason, the planet occupies a spot behind her in my print.

Inanna was untamed and powerful. Her name was invoked in the heat of passion and the carnage of the battlefield. Those who opposed or crossed her suffered; those who violated or sought to control her suffered worse. She is the epitome of feminine power and abandon.

I think we can all see why she is still relevant in our time.

One final note; the first author in human history whose name we know was a priestess of Inanna in the city of Ur during the 2200s BC. Enheduanna, also a daughter of the king Sargon of Akkad, composed many hymns to her goddess, and from one of them I will quote to close this explanatory note.

"It is her game to speed conflict and battle, untiring, strapping on her sandals... she cuts to pieces him who shows no respect... To interchange the brute and the strong and the weak and the powerless is yours, Inanna... To give the crown, the throne and the royal sceptre is yours, Inanna... Your great deeds are unparallelled, your magnificence is praised! Young woman, Inanna, your praise is sweet!"

- A hymn to Inanna (Inanna C), copied from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.