Inanna new moon goddess

Inanna, rain and new moon steps down to Underworld.

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Queen of the new moon Inanna was the Goddess of Town in Uruk at former Persian Gulf. Of the cities in Sumer Uruk was probably the second. Eridu was older and founded by a sea god with a temple in harbour and the god got a lot of fish as offer.

Every town had a deity as ruler interpreted by the priests. The towns were lead by priest kings and councils at least until the Akkadian Sargon c.2350 BC shoved there could be a ruler outside the temple. He was the first known to play world ruler.

This means that most of the orders of power were supposed to come from the deities thorough the mouth of a high priest or priestess of course. All doings were done in the name of the deity. That gives some totally different languages compared with ours. On the other hand they referred to most deities as existing in the sky ... no filled brains when the ideas was in the sky! In written text there is always a star sign above the name.

Inanna is as important to us as to the Sumerians because she is behind the culture of double axe, boat axe and ground chisels or axes for ritual purposes. The figures on our rocks may be simple, but there is no doubt that a lot of them are a sign of Inanna. That is the case in many figures of the Girl with a plait too.

The poems are of the third millennium and most of them are written in Uruk and shown in plays at the Town Theatre of Uruk I suppose:

The me were icons of archetypes of moral precepts and ritual we may not really understand: Good, pure, given, taken, held, lifted as a few examples and a lot of instruments of power and rituals. These formed the law and order of the city-states.

The following poems is from c.2250 BC when king Isin-Dagan becomes half god and marry Inanna. I suppose his wife was the priestess and in place of Inanna. This was a century after the great Sargon. The goddess was becoming more in armour like the Dragon of heaven:

Inanna was surely master of Ishtar and of the virgin Maria too. The motives of bible and torah are much older than the Babylonian captivity otherwise Hebrews would have lived on an isolated island in dessert.

The myths of Inanna and other motives were some processes going on during the third millennium. It was a millennium of more intelligence than ever before or after. The Sumerians were too kind and friendly to be true ... at least the writers were. There is no reason to admire our destroying technology and man-eating politics in comparison with the Sumerians.

Our heritage as Indo-Europeans comes mostly from the Sumerians and the custom of small states or half-ethnic communities with its small city-states too. We know them from Greece and still Europe consists of small states. The Hittites designed a treaty of equivalent city-states or what we would call a federation. This principle made it possible to form greater areas with common law. A federation is of course a sort of brotherhood.

Inanna lured the boys

Now back to Inanna and how she got the laws from Enki. He was the ruler of the older Eridu town. The name Enki may mean "First on earth" and it is understood, he was the follower of Oannes a Fishman.

Birth sagas are not much to lean on and that counts for the first people of Sumer too. Probably Eridu was an enclave founded by traders, as the custom in the Middle East was to found enclaves with the same rituals as the master city. Because a Fishman as god is found at Balkan, may be traders from Balkan founded Eridu. Balkan was ahead in many things in the time before 4000 BC. I suppose my guess is as good as others and as always up to present knowledge.

In the following I have tried to reconstruct the earliest myth of Inanna. She was in pair with her twin sister Ereshkigal, the Great to give Birth. In symbols they were the new moon and the morning star. However, there is an early myth of birth of Sin, the moon too. But, let it us look at it in understandable order.

This tale is about first time-events ... always essential in Sumerian thinking and strategy. All work and rituals were repeating the first time as that of success. In the face of Leo, is in face of the star or written as new moon in the Leo. The table might be the dolmen and other images of the real agenda as the table of a feast. I suppose it is a close guess that some of our cup-marks were used in offering corn-cakes with butter as told in late folk-tales. Now a side-step.

We were about six or seven my sweetie and I when we explored the passage graves belonging to her parent's farm. She was afraid of the darkness in the grave and said. "Ma says there are Huha-men inside" ... it was of course the best urge she could make. No man could resist showing who is the hero. My concerns were the burning nettles guarding the passage.

Later in life I understood that those nettles have regenerated nutriment and especially nitrogen for more than five millenniums at the same place. It was on a long barrow that had remained untouched since it was used.

We know that folks had their feasts at the mouth of the passage graves. Then comes the question: Did they also celebrate the journey of Inanna when she went to the underworld or the temple beneath in front of passage graves? ... By the way there was nothing to see in there - and no Huha-men. Archaeologists had taken it all. There were only small stony boxes for the skeletons left. But now back to the Virgin.

Maybe she had some Belladonna in her eyes. If so they turned to be like dark lakes in the woods. That usually set ants in the pants of men. The beer did the rest. When they sat at the table she fooled the old man to give her his tablets of me. Furthermore his rope and the stick used when staking out and a lot more.

The witchcraft of Enki set ants in her hair ... but she turned to the song and read it three times at least with the ants fooling around in her hair. She tried to simplify the long song. Sumerian songs were long as the ceremonies and with many doubled lines.

A summary she made of the songs ... everything happened long times ago and before they created the legs of gods. That means that mankind was the legs.

In the town of Nippur lived its young man Enlil and its young girl Ninlil with her mother Nun-barshegunu. The mother cannot give birth and she decided to marry her daughter in order to get food on the table. She advises her daughter:

The girl was shy and should not be too eager ... bucks are many and the buck in Enlil was awake so Ninlil was seduced. But they do not allow that among gods. The council of gods condemns Enlil to the underworld. They do not allow rape.

Ninlil, the pregnant followed him. But Enlil did not like it, because their coming son they would condemn Sin also to stay in the underworld. So he planned to lure the three guards of the underworld by a tricky plan. The first had the key to the underworld. The second controlled the river of the underworld and third was the ferryman. Together they were "the three lock of earth". The plan of Enlil was to get into their guise. Then he made Ninlil pregnant with these guards. It was a pledge of love so that their son Sin might rise against the sky.

As she prepared for the life in Uruk, she also read about two brothers who brought the seed from the mountains. An idea was born that now she should be the manager of growing.

In her thoughts she changed the name of Sin to kunisu the corn in her mind. She selected the role of making love for herself. They thought her twin sister to be the pregnant and bearer of the unborn.

The birth of Sin was a first time act and she split it in stages. It was typical for the Sumerian mind. That is why we see the odd act on seals where the Virgin is giving the seed to her twin sister vulva to vulva.

But when Inanna met reality the problems came. The first problem was the struggle between the farmers and cowboys or shepherds. A lot of Belladonna in her eyes and a tour to the wood was the solution and she married Dumuzi.

Then came the question how to get the work done on the field. The young men were as always more interested in playing games or hunting. The best was to be laying in a boat out of reach for insects and demands from women.

Well. Her art of attraction had worked before and her plays on a scene as well. Now she planed the play "The Rise from the underworld". Again she should be the leading actress and again make the trip to the underworld:

Tell what young man will resist. Her ritual in the song texts is about ten sides long with a lot of repeated lines. As pledge of love she sends Dumuzi in her stead. She painted him green ... it was the colour of the underworld also in Egypt. Maybe he was the symbolic fertilisation.

It was no help that Inanna dressed up for her visit to her sister Ereshkigal in Underworld. There are other rules there so she was forced to strip off and be naked.

The poem "Inanna steps down" is 412 lines in cuneiform and we should add that she rises again since she is the New Moon daughter of the moon Nanna. She also symbolises the growing seed instead of the earlier myth with Sin as the new moon and seed. After this came a new version and her consort Dumuzi and his sister Ghestin-ana took the roles of the roots.

In the original myth with Enlil raping Ninlil there was only three steps to Underworld like the farming instructions of braking the surface, going through the soil, to the wet ground. Inanna stepped seven steps and that number was later used many ritual connections. The happenings underground is naturally fantasies and a speculation about what happens when seed grows or not. Some of the details are right conclusions but hard to see without being the cultivator.

Firstly the time should be right by experience that the Sun warmth heath the soil to 4 degrees Celsius before water get the seed to start growing and sprout break the shell. At that time and at that climate the suitable time was spring equinox. So we get "When New Moon Inanna is in Scorpio" in the lines 29 - 45

The Scorpio gives us the time for the "first-time-event" around 3100 BC when they in many places started to use Scorpio and Oxen as time markers for half years. Unfortunately many words are missing but we get at least the connection to the Animal Round and spring equinox. The highest god / Might An does not like that Inanna is stronger than him. That is the wonder of growth!

Secondly the seed have to get water and fertiliser to grow further. The helping gods become worried should Inanna = seed come up again? They were her father full moon Nanna, Enki the great creator and heavenly water god with Ninshubur as messenger. The story goes shortened here:

In logic and tradition man has to leave a pledge when he takes something. So Inanna decided that after her "first-time-act" her consort Dumuzi could do that in lines 354 … 393

I am wondering about his hands and feet turning to snakes. That means maybe becoming roots. As late as in Nordic symbolism on the golden bract we see a man with "rubber legs" in the Snake Pit and there is some amulet from Roman times showing Yahve with "snake legs"

There are later poems about him and his sister Ghestin-ana sharing the time in Underworld. Overall the long poem is about the disappearing moon as well as about sowing and resurrection. Inanna should maybe be defined as the fertile flow symbolised as water. Some images show her as the rain and thunder goddess. We should remember that it rains only 200 mm in Sumer yearly so they were more or less "rainmakers"

Maybe they, the couple had some barter transactions in order to help each other. She invented also shadowing trees. She found that lop of the branches could be harvested and used as food for goats. This could be safe for winter because growing was with great risks in the Sumerian landscape.

She made of course a new play and with her as the actress. The story was that she was sleeping under a tree. To the garden comes the young gardener. He takes the goddess with force ... he was sought three times. You are forbidden to rape. But she got the story together and her folks understood that shadowing trees are a necessity.

For original texts see

A lot of archaeologists imagine that there has been some offer of human. Hard to believe as those idols come together every year under the apple tree:

Under the apple tree

Dumuzi says:

Inanna says:

Finally a song, with priests and priestesses playing the old bull game.

Seeing her as a young girl full of enterprising spirit is easy. She was of course just an image or idol to follow. The myths tell a lot of the writers and people of Sumer and about their problems.

They followed her and she got a lot of cousins as time passed. She is Artemis as well as the Girl with the braid ... or why not a modern Pippi Longstocking but with two braids ... never mind, the Naked in Levant had also two thick braids. We meet now and then details of her myth in carvings and different artefacts too.