Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal, the goddess of the underworld, darkness and decease, both loved Dumuzi ( besides known as Tammuz ) . Because Dumuzi chose to populate above the land with Inanna, Ereshkigal had him killed so that he would everlastingly brood with her in the Land of No Return. Inanna, armed with every appeal and talisman she had, journeyed to the underworld to deliver Dumuzi.
When Inanna arrived at the Gatess of the underworld to demand Dumuzi ‘s return, she was commanded by her sister to take all of her vesture and decorations, piece by piece, if she wanted to go on her journey. By the clip Inanna arrived at Ereshkigal ‘s throne, she was bare of her jewellery and her powers, and was so angry she flew at her sister in a fury. At one time she was overcome by Ereshkigal ‘s minions, who murdered Inanna and hung her organic structure on a hook.
While Inanna remained in the underworld, the Earth suffered sterility and uninterrupted winter. After intercession by other Sumerian Gods, Ereshkigal relented and allowed her sister to return to earth in exchange for sharing Dumuzi for six months of every twelvemonth. When Dumuzi was with Inanna, spring came to the Earth and blossomed into summer ; when he returned to Ereshkigal, fall fell one time more, followed by winter.
Discussion
In the patriarchal pantheon of Sumer, Inanna is the most august goddess, Queen of Heaven and Earth. The beautiful Inanna is the queen of love and gender, but besides of force and war. Her hungriness for power is about illimitable. All the Gods are scared of her – a dazzling, a contradictory personality.
Her lover is Dumuzi, a shepherd, or the defender of her sheep and caprine animals, a reasonably inactive personality who ne’er performs any epic efforts. There are many really poetic and titillating love songs dedicated to Inanna and Dumuzi. A really different image is given in the every bit extended Mourning literature where the Great Goddess is disconsolate over the loss of her Dumuzi, stolen by the enemy.
For about throughout clip, neonates are separated from their female parents. The first early civilisations that have practiced this are the Sumerians. It is an version of the disaffection of an person when they live in another town. These patterns have been developed and recorded through their authorship system called as the cuneiform.
The narrative of the great goddess Inanna and her lover boy, Dmuzi is the first recorded play of such event. While Inanna remained in the underworld, the Earth suffered sterility and uninterrupted winter. After intercession by other Sumerian Gods, Ereshkigal relented and allowed her sister to return to earth in exchange for sharing Dumuzi for six months of every twelvemonth. When Dumuzi was with Inanna, spring came to the Earth and blossomed into summer ; when he returned to Ereshkigal, fall fell one time more, followed by winter. Therefore, Inanna was separated from her kid and lover. Because Dumuzi chose to populate above the land with Inanna, Ereshkigal had him killed so that he would everlastingly brood with her in the Land of No Return. Inanna, armed with every appeal and talisman she had, journeyed to the underworld to deliver Dumuzi.
Who is this Dumuzi, Inanna ‘s lover? Literally translated his name means “ the good kid ” or the “ true boy ” . And this is why I mentioned the bereavement literature in which Inanna mourns her “ dead hubby ” , her “ dead boy ” . But there are many other such female parent goddesses – besides Inanna – in the antediluvian Near East, who seek their immature Gods and so mourn for them. And here lies excessively the cradle of our civilisation: here, for the first clip in history, babes are separated from their female parents. All the birth or female parent goddesses, who seek their vernal “ lover ” and who later mourn his decease in diverse rites, can be taken as a symbolic representation of the female parents who despair because they were separated from their babies after birth.
And Dumuzi spends half of each twelvemonth in the underworld, the kingdom of the dead, in the myth of Inanna ‘s descent: an image of the baby ‘s wretchedness and despairing solitariness. In the bereavement literature on the one manus it is the immature God ‘s crying which is extolled, and on the other the female parent ‘s bootless hunt for him.
It is of import to observe in this context that it is ne’er the female parents who have volitionally relinquished their babes, but that they were forced into this behaviour, this separation, by their civilization. Thus the agony of all these godly female parent figures.
Another facet of the descent to the underworld myth should be mentioned here. Inanna herself is a typical representative of the period. Her at odds nature has its beginnings in her ain separation play, in the forsaking by her ain female parent. Inanna ‘s descent to her sister Ereshkigal in the dark underworld can be understood as her want to acquire to cognize and incorporate her ain shadow, her depressive side. She wishes to go whole, but fails in the effort. She dies. She merely returns to life thanks to a fast one, and in her stead sends her boy Dumuzi to the underworld, to decease i.e. into forsaking and solitariness. An first-class image of how the female parent ‘s depression is passed on to her boy, her babe, how unsolved desperation is passed on from one coevals to the following.
In the inundation myth the gestation is portrayed as the great conflict between the main God Enlil and Enki, the umbilical cord which wishes to destruct everything against the protective facet of the amnionic fluid, the female parent ‘s lap. Francis Mott already described how the babe experiences all the aggressive feelings of rejection from its female parent as the blood implosion therapy in through the umbilical cord, by which it is destroyed. Harmonizing to the belief of the Sumerians a kid, is therefore, from its really get downing, from construct, torn between the loving, protective facet of its female parent, represented in images of the amnionic fluid, or its female parent ‘s uterus, the God Enki and the urges of the umbilical cord, which wishes to destruct it under any fortunes, the God Enlil. An first-class image of the ambivalency of the female parent of that clip, her struggle during the whole gestation. And of class it has to be said, these were non ‘wicked ‘ female parents. Their ambivalency is ‘born ‘ of their ain primal lesion: when they were separated from their female parents at birth, forced by their civilization and society. Then we must non bury: no female parent relinquishes her kid volitionally. When the female parents of that period became pregnant, I surmise, that their old, ain injury of separation, their injury of forsaking resurfaced strongly. As a consequence they could non, even during gestation, decently prosecute emotionally with their developing kids, they are disturbed in their ability to bond emotionally, or even reject their babes.
It should besides be mentioned it is in this injury that the cause for the ageless struggles within the goddess Inanna lies, who eventually in her desperation, sacrifices her ain lover, her babe Dumuzi and exiles him to the snake pit of solitariness, to the underworld.
Decision
All of Inanna ‘s assorted facets and maps involve passage, crossing of boundary and transmutation. She is a goddess of sexual love, a love goddess, a goddess of war and besides a batch more. True plenty, she is a maiden of infinite fluctuation ; nevertheless she is a divinity of contradiction but of integrity. She is united by alteration, passage and transmutation. She is your manner in and out, the door and the gateway. She will be everlastingly posted as an stripling at the threshold of full muliebrity. She will be the ageless threshold in which everything will go through in the fulfilment the life rhythm.
