Inana And Dumuzid - Arts and Humanities Assignment Help

Assignment Task

Inana was the most powerful and ambitious goddess in the Sumerian  pantheon. Much of this power stemmed from her role as the goddess of  sexual love and agricultural fertility, the relationship between the two con veyed in metaphors which equate making love with plant cultivation, and sexual satisfaction with fruitful livestock and crops. Her partner in these  celebrations was the shepherd-god Dumuzid, although this male role was often taken by a king who thus established his pastoral responsibility for his (human) flock, proximity to the divine, and contribution to agriculture, the economic foundation on which urban civilization was based. In Dumuzid and Enkimdu the shepherd-god vies successfully with the farmer for the affections of Inana, with whom she was initially smitten. The relationship between Inana and her lover is celebrated joyously and lyrically in Ploughing with the jewels and A love song for Su-Suen. 
However, passion can have more than one object of desire, emotions take many forms, and, as the biblical Song of Songs reminds us, ‘love is as strong as death’. Consequently Inana’s fervour extends beyond the boundaries of sexual love and her power also exultantly manifests itself in rage and war,  
military success being a further essential to a Mesopotamian ruler. It is this terrifying aspect of the goddess which dominates Inana and Isme-Dagan and A hymn to Inana. In one case her wrath is harnessed for the king against his enemies; in the other it is turned against the priestess En-hedu-ana. 
Sex and death are most closely intertwined in the narratives Inana’s descent to the Underworld and Dumuzid’s dream, which are interrelated yet not directly sequential. The first is concerned with Inana’s attempt to extend her rule to the Underworld, recounting her confinement there and subsequent release from this land of no return on condition that she be replaced by another deity (in the end, Dumuzid and his sister Gestin-ana in alternation). The second provides a different account of Dumuzid’s capture by the demons of the Underworld. These works exploit parallels between, on the one hand, what happens to deities and, on the other, the fruitfulness and cycle of the seasons with which they were associated, the human world being depicted as an inextricable complement to the divine. 
They also contrast, however, jealous and destructive sexual passions with other kinds of love. Although Gestin-ana is selflessly devoted to her brother Dumuzid, just as Inana’s entourage unequivocally miss and mourn her, Dumuzid and Inana quarrel as soon as they are reunited, with fatal con sequences that they will regret for evermore. This is the flipside to the eroti cism that is celebrated in the love songs of Inana and Dumuzid: an exploration of the ways in which emotional intensity can have the most terrible consequences when allowed to run out of control. (See also the Introduction to Group F.) 
Abusch, T., ‘Ishtar’, K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P. W. van der Horst (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible(Brill: Leiden, 2nd edn. 1999, pp. 452–6) gives a stimulating discussion of Inana (whose Akkadian name was Istar or Estar), supplemented by an extensive bibliography. 
Alster, B., ‘Tammuz’, in K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, and P. W. van der Horst (eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Brill: Leiden, 2nd edn. 1999,  pp. 828–4) performs the same service for Dumuzid (whose name in Hebrew was Tammuz). 
Katz, D., The Image of the Netherworld in the Sumerian Sources (CDL Press: Potomac, 2003) surveys Sumerian literature on the Underworld. 
Sefati, Y., Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna Songs (Bar-Ilan University Press: Ramat-Gan, 1998) is an excellent edition of most of the relevant love songs.  

Inana’s descent to the Underworld 
The brisk linear narrative of Inana’s descent to the Underworld is made up of many repeated episodes and phrases, and creates thereby the atmosphere of a vividly told folk-tale. The end point of the story is to explain how it came about that the god Dumuzid and his sister, Gestin-ana, spend alternating periods of six months in the Underworld, which was doubtless envisaged as an explanation for the seasonal cycle. 
No explanation is offered why Inana should take it into her head to seek domination over the Underworld. The fierce, ambitious aspect of her  character and her insatiable desire for power are reasons enough. She sets off for the Underworld, dressed up to the nines and taking various divine  powers with her. She anticipates trouble, and leaves instructions with her 
minister Ninsubura in case she should not return. At the gates, she claims to have come to attend the funeral rites of her sister Ereskigala’s husband. She is not prepared for being stripped of all her jewellery and clothes in order to gain admittance—but of course this is the only state in which one enters the Underworld. She ends up dead, a corpse hanging on a hook. Ninsubura eventually secures the assistance of the wise god Enki, who creates two  
assistants from the dirt under his fingernails. These were real enough: as  classes of people, they were among the cultic personnel of Inana’s temples. The galatura sang laments and the kurgara sang and danced with swords. Both seem to have been slightly frightening. 
The two nearly succeed in rescuing Inana from the Underworld. But as they are about to leave, the Underworld gods insist that she must provide a substitute to take her place, since no one leaves the Underworld unaccounted for. She is escorted by demons, functioning as the Underworld police, as they look for a suitable victim. Eventually they find Dumuzid, Inana’s lover, who alone had made no effort to mourn her absence in the Underworld. Inana is incensed, and he is chosen as an acceptable substitute. Dumuzid nearly suc ceeds in escaping (a theme focused on in more detail in Dumuzid’s dream) but is ultimately captured. 
In an unexpected twist, Inana is overcome by a sense of loss and seems not 66

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