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Temple of the Sacred Spiral
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The myth of creation is given in a series of seven tablets from the library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh. Water is the primordial element. From the fusion of sweet water (Apsu) and salt water (Tiamat) arose all beings, beginning with the Gods. The Apsu was an abyss filled with water and circling the earth, which itself was a round plateau bounded by mountains on which rested the vault of heaven. From the Apsu came the springs which broke through the surface of the earth (compare with the River Oceanus of the Greeks, which Homer also called the Father Of All Things). Tiamat was the personification of the sea and represented the feminine element which gave birth to the world. She represents the blind forces of primitive chaos against which the intelligent and organizing Gods later struggle.
From Apsu, the primordial ocean, and Tiamat, the tumultuous sea, came first Mummu, the tumult of the waves, then a pair of monstrous serpents, Lakhmu and Lakhamu who in turn gave birth to An, the celestial world, the male principle and to Ki, the terrestrial world, the female principle. (Compare here the Greek legends of the union of Uranus, the sky, and Gaia, the earth). To Ki and An were born Anu, who in turn begot his own likeness Ea the master of understanding, greatly wise and mighty in strength and Enlil, Lord of the Air. These divine beings troubled and disturbed the inner parts of Tiamat by moving, running about within their divine abode. They gave Apsu reason for concern. He could not diminish their clamor and Tiamat remained silent concerning them, although what they were doing gave pain, for their behaviour was not good.
Wherefore Apsu, the begetter of the great Gods, called his vizier Mummu and said to him "Mummu, you who gladden my heart, let us go and get Tiamat". They took council with Tiamat concerning the Gods, their first born. Apsu said in a loud voice to the glistening one, Tiamat, "Their behaviour has become an annoyance to me. By day I cannot rest, by night I cannot sleep. I shall destroy them and put an end to their behaviour and, when silence has been restored, let us sleep".
But Tiamat hearing this became angry and cried out to her spouse, raging furiously, pondering his evil in her heart: "Why destroy what we ourselves have produced? Their behaviour is indeed painful, but let us take it with good will".
Mummu gave Apsu unfavorable advice: "Yes father, let us put an end to their disorder and have rest by day and sleep by night". Whereupon Apsu brightened with the wicked plan against his children the Gods, while Mummu embraced his neck, sat on his knee and kissed him.
But the great Gods became aware and when they learned of it they made haste. Ea, supreme in knowledge, skillful and wise, who understood all things, comprehended the wicked plan. He drew a magick circle against it, within which all took protection; and then he composed a powerful incantation which he recited over the water, out of which sleep poured down upon Apsu and Mummu slept. When both Apsu and Mummu were asleep, Ea loosened Apsu's chin strap, tore off his tiara, carried off his splendour and put it on himself, and finally slew him. To honour Apsu, he then built his dwelling place and Mummu he seized for himself, holding him by a nose-rope.
The waters of Apsu, Tiamat and Mummu are undifferentiated. They represent a state of consciousness, deep dreamless sleep, the 'oceanic' feeling and, in fact, the peace of sleep was Apsu's sole desire. In this mythology the plane of attention shifts to duality and combat, power, profit, loss. Where the aim of earlier mythology had been to support a state of indifference to the modalities of time and identification with the inhabiting non-dual mystery of all-being; that of the new was to foster action in the field of time where the subject and object are two separate things and not the same - death is not life, virtue is not vice, the slayer is not the slain. The virtuous younger son here overcomes the wicked father in his own inimitable way and takes the elder wicked son, the knower and the lover of the father, by the nose.
After Ea had vanquished his enemies and confirmed his victory over his foes, and peacefully occupied his abode, he dwelt in splendour with his spouse Damkina and it was here that Marduk, the wisest of the wise, most knowing of the Gods, the Lord Himself, was born. He was filled with awe-inspiring majesty, his figure was enticing, flashing the look of his eyes, manly his going forth. Marduk was exalted beyond the Gods in all ways, in all his members marvelously arranged, incomprehensible and difficult to look upon, he had four eyes and four ears and when his lips moved fire blazed forth. Each of the ears grew large, each of the eyes also to see all. He was prodigious and was clothed with the radiance of ten Gods, with the majesty to inspire fear.
And it was at this season that the God Anu begat the four winds, raising waves upon the surface of the waters of Tiamat. He also filled his hands and created dirt, which the waves stirred up. Tiamat became disturbed. Day and night she moved about. Those around her said to their agitated mother , "When they killed Apsu, your spouse, you did not march at his side; now the four winds are created, you are agitated within. We cannot rest … We cannot sleep …"
Tiamat became enraged and filled with battle fury. As All Mother - she who fashions all things - she gave birth to monster serpents, sharp of tooth and fang, filled with poison instead of blood, ferocious, terrible and crowned with fear-inspiring glory, such that to look upon them was to perish; the viper, the dragon, the great lion, the mad dog, the scorpion man and various demons of storm, powerful and irresistible, fishmen, rams and furious hurricanes. Of these the first born, Kingu by name, Tiamat exalted and made great. "I give you dominion over all the Gods and I make you my unique spouse" Tiamat said, "may your name become great". She fastened upon his breast the tablet of destinies and said, "May your words quell and your overwhelming poison overwhelm all opposition". After this she and her brood made ready for a battle with the Gods.
Compare this with the pattern of the Greek War of the Titans and the Gods, the darker brood of the 'all mother', Gaia produced of her own female power; and the brighter, fairer, secondary sons produced by her submission to the male. It is an effect of the conquest of a local matriarchal order by invading patriarchal nomads and their re-shaping of the local lore of the productive earth to their own ends. It is also an example of mythological defamation which has been in constant use ever since, consisting of terming the Gods of the others as demons and enlarging one's own counterparts to lordship over the whole universe and inventing all sorts of small and great myths to illustrate on one hand the impotence and malice of the Demons, the vanquished Gods, and the majesty and righteousness of the Great Gods, the Gods of the victor. This battle was between the two aspects of the human psyche, at a critical moment of human history, when the light and rational divisive functions under the sign of the heroic male overcame the fascination of the dark mystery of the deeper levels of the soul.
When Ea learned of the attack of Tiamat he became numb with fear and again went to this father, An, to let him know what Tiamat was doing. An cried out in wrath, he struck his thigh, he bit his lip and his stomach, knew no more rest. He summoned Anu, his eldest son, to stand against Tiamat but, unable to withstand her, Anu returned.
All the Gods were assembled, and sat in silence, full of fear. Ea, when he saw their case, called his son Marduk and disclosed to him the secret of his heart, "You are my son" he said, "Harken to your father, prepare yourself for battle and stand before An who, when he sees you, will be at rest". Marduk was pleased at the word of Ea, his father, and having prepared himself drew near and stood before An who when he beheld him was filled with joy. He kissed his lips and his fear was gone. "I will accomplish" said Marduk, "all that is within your heart. Tiamat, a woman, is coming at you with arms. Soon you will trample on her neck, but Oh Lord of the Destiny of the Great Gods if I am to be your avenger, to slay Tiamat and keep you alive, convene the assembly and proclaim my lot supreme, namely that not you but I shall henceforth fix the destinies of the Gods by utterances and that whatever I create shall remain without change". An told his grandson, "Assemble the Gods, let them converse and sit down to a banquet, eat bread and consume wine. Declare to them that Tiamat, our bearer, hates us - that all the lesser Gods have gone over to her side, even those whom we ourselves created, that Tiamat who fashions all things has now brought forth weapons, serpents, dragons exalting Kingu as her spouse. Anu has been sent and failed and now Marduk, the wisest of the Gods declares that if he is to be our avenger, whatever his lips command shall not be changed". The Gods gathered, kissed one another in the assembly, conversed, sat to a banquet. Their bodies swelled as they drank, they became carefree and exalted and they set Marduk their lord and avenger on a lordly throne. "Oh Lord", they said, "your destiny is to be supreme henceforth among the Gods, to raise up or to bring low - these shall be in your hand. Your utterance shall be truth, your command unimpeachable, none among the Gods shall transgress your bounds, we grant to you kingship of the universe". They bestowed upon Marduk the sceptre, the throne, the royal king and the irresistible thunderbolt. He made ready his bow, took up his club in his right hand, set lightning before him, filled his body with flame, made a net to enmesh Tiamat, called the winds of the quarters and various hurricanes, mounted his irresistible chariot of storm with four steeds yoked before, whose names were Killer, Pitiless, Trampler and Flyer, their mouths, their lips and their teeth bearing poison. He placed battle smiter on his right, combat on his left and clad in terrifying mail, with a fierce turban haloing his head set his face towards the place of furious Tiamat; a spell was ready in his mouth; a herb against poison was held in his hand; the Gods were milling all around him.
The death of Tiamat spread confusion among her followers. Her auxiliaries fled in disorder to save their lives but Marduk caught them in his net and took them all prisoner, with Kingu he threw them in chains into the infernal regions, then returning to Tiamat he split her skull and cut the arteries of her blood; and as he contemplated the corpse he conceived works of art; he clothed the body like a fish into its two parts - from one half he fashioned the vault of the heavens and from the other the solid earth and that done he organized the world. He constructed a dwelling place for the great Gods in the sky and installed the stars which were their image; he fixed the length of the year and regulated the course of the heavenly bodies; Anu he assigned to heaven, Enlil to earth and Ea to the abyss. The victorious Marduk defined the year and its zodiac of twelve signs; the days of the year; the various stellar and planetary orders and the manner of the moon, its waxing to the middle of the month in opposition to the sun, after which its waning and disappearance in approach to the station of the sun.
"Blood shall I amass" said Marduk to Ea, his father, "Bone I shall frame and set up a creature, man shall be his name, he will be required to serve the Gods and these then will be free to rest at ease". Ea answered: "Take one of the wicked Gods to be delivered up and destroyed and mankind fashioned of his parts". Marduk concurred. Kingu was delivered up before Ea who slashed the arteries of his blood and with his blood created mankind. Ea then imposed upon mankind the service of the Gods and with that set the Gods free from all labour.
It has been frequently remarked that the name of the Babylonian mother monster in this epic of creation, Tiamat, is related to the Hebrew term Tehom The Deep, (second verse of Genesis); and that as the wind of Anu blew upon the deep and that of Marduk into the face of Tiamat, so in Genesis the wind of Elohim hovered over the face of the waters. Moreover as Marduk spread out the upper half of the mother body as a roof with the waters of heaven above, so in Genesis Elohim made the firmament and separated the waters that were under the firmament from those that were above the firmament and again as Ea conquered Apsu and Marduk conquered Tiamat so did Yahweh conquer the sea monsters Rahab (Job 26: 12-13) and Leviathan (Job 41: Psalm 74 verse 14). Here the Bible represents a later stage in the patriarchal development wherein the female principal represented in the Bronze Age by the Great Goddess, mother of all things; in the Tiamat epic by a monstrous demoness, is finally reduced to its elemental state Tehom and the male deity alone creates out of himself as the mother alone had created in the past.
The mythology of the Sumerian Goddesses and Gods seemed to affect the uneasy fusion of at least four different cultures.
First there is the imagery of the Mother Goddess which can be traced to the Al-Ubaid culture of the people who settled this area in the sixth Millenium BC and who were highly gifted potters and craftsmen. She is closely concerned with earth and water, together with imagery that reflects mountain and sky Gods who ruled the sky, air and storm.
Then there is the culture of the Sumerians themselves who arrived in the second half of the fourth Millenium.
Thirdly the Akkadian Semites who established themselves in the north of Sumeria.
And finally the Indo European tribes which descended from the north, introducing the horse-drawn war chariot, the devastating power of the mounted warrior in the third Millenium BC.
All these different tribes brought with them their own deities. The arrival of tribes worshipping Sky Gods explains the strong trinity of Gods in Sumeria, An, Enlil and Enki and the gradual rise to supremacy of Enlil, the God of Air, whose city was Nippur and whose power as creative word lies behind the image of the biblical Father God Yahweh. These Gods were superimposed on an equally strong Goddess tradition descending from the settled Neolithic Al-Ubaid people. After the initial devastation a new civilisation arose in which elements of both cultures were integrated, their cosmology and philosophy that were grounded in the images of unity belonging to the older one. The high position of women in Sumeria in the fourth and early third millenia suggests that either European or Semetic influence began to gain ground only in the second half of the third Millenium. After this time then the Akkadian influence of the north became paramount, the position of Goddesses in relation to Gods and of women in relation to men was down-graded. Finally the ruling God of the conquering Babylonians took over all the roles of the Goddess and finally destroyed her. It is important to remember Ishtar's/Inanna's role as Queen of Heaven because it is in this aspect, the Goddess, that was first lost. She is the Goddess of Fertility, the Lunar Mother who gave birth to the Solar God of Vegetation, bride who wed him and the sorrowful wife who mourned him; she was the Goddess of animals, surrounded by lions; the Goddess of birds, surrounded by owls; and the Goddess of snakes; she was the Goddess of the grain and the vine, the date palm, cedar, sycamore, fig, olive and apple tree all of which accompanied her and were her sacred trees. Her principal animal images were the lion, the cow; her bird images the dove and the sparrow; and the underworld aspect images of the viper, the scorpion, the serpent and the dragon revealed her connection with the underworld aspect of the Neolithic Goddess.
The Sumerians, and later the Babylonians and Assyrians, had a mythological framework that influenced all subsequent cultures with the idea of transcendence of the Gods, separation from heaven and earth, and married this to a mathematical structure where the cycles of heavenly time were minutely aligned with the passage of time on earth so that humanity, by attuning the cycles of its own life and the life of earth to the immensely greater cycles of cosmic time, could discover its place in the world of the universe and co-operate with the unseen powers of nature and lauded their hidden relationship. Both the invading Aryans and the Semites introduced the idea of opposition between the powers of light and darkness and imposed this polarity on the older view in which the whole contained both light and darkness in an ever-changing relationship. Thus nature and human life came to be "desacralized" which was starkly contrasted to the attitude of the Neolithic farmers living close to the soil and to the rhythmic lores of the Goddesses, immanent in all life. They also brought to the literature of this age a deep sense of futility of life, the finality of death and the fundamental conviction of human guilt and a relationship of servitude to the Gods. Indeed, life in this time seemed to justify this dismal picture. Life was untrustworthy, violent death became the norm, relationship with nature was disrupted as people left villages and sought refuge in towns and then cities, girdled by immense walls. The 'warrior' caste came into being and the former honoured farmers became little more than serfs. Even the Goddesses took on the role of warrior and the art, in contradistinction to that of Crete, depicted war and victories, sacrifices, violence, aggressive aggrandizement of the leaders who were measured not by their artistic endeavors but by the numbers of people slaughtered, the numbers of oxen captured, the amount of treasure accumulated.
The great Gods of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon and Assyria were roughly the same although the chief God changed from Ea in the time of Sumer and Akkad to Marduk in the time of Babylon to Ashur in the time of Assyria. The triad of great gods consisted of:
He is known as the Father of the Gods, the King of Heaven and Earth, the King of all the Lands. He is conceived to be a most beneficent deity who is responsible for the planning and creation of the most productive features of the cosmos. He made the day come forth; he took pity on humans; he laid plans which brought forth all seeds; plants and trees from the earth; he established plenty, abundance and prosperity in the land; he fashioned the pick-axe and the plough. He was not a destructive storm deity. The misunderstanding about this has arisen because of the earlier Sumerian compositions that were discovered, there was a large proportion of 'lamentation' types in which of necessity Enlil had the unhappy duty of carrying out the destruction and misfortunes decreed by the Gods for one reason or another.
Thus Marduk absorbed all the other Gods and took over their various functions and prerogatives, organizing the universe etc.
In the great poem of her descent into the netherworld Inanna as the moon is the life principle that seeks its own sacrifice and is reborn from its own darkness. In the later Akkadian and Babylonian myth the renamed Ishtar descends to the underworld to waken her son lover Tammuz and to bring him forth as the new cycle of life. When Ishtar is in the underworld the impulse for fertility disappears.
Ishtar was the daughter of Anu and she called herself the Goddess Of The Morn, Goddess Of The Evening. She was the divine personification of the planet Venus. She had extremely complex functions. She was a War Goddess and also the Goddess Of Love. As the War Goddess she was the lady of battles, valiant among Goddesses and in this form she was married to Ashur the chief God of the Assyrians. She went on expeditions and took part in battles covered in combat and arrayed in terror. She is represented standing on a chariot drawn by seven lions with a bow in her hands. She was the sister of Erishkigal, queen of the underworld, and she helped greatly to people the infernal regions for she was the star of lamentation who made brothers who were on good terms quarrel among themselves and friends forget friendship. As such she was worshipped, particularly at Nineveh and Arbela.
On the other hand she was also the Goddess of Love and Voluptuousness. She was often seen as irritable, violent and incapable of tolerating the least obstacle to her wishes. As she said to her father, Anu, "if you do not create the celestial bull I shall break something open and the dead will become more numerous than the living". When she found that the gates of the underworld did not open quickly enough for her she threatened the porter:
She roused amorous desire in all creatures however and as soon as she withdrew her influence when she went down to the underworld:
Sacred prostitution formed part of her cult and when she descended to Earth she was accompanied by courtesans, harlots and strumpets. Her holy city Uruk was called the Town Of The Sacred Courtesans. Ishtar herself was the courtesan of the Gods and her lovers were legion and she chose them from all walks of life.
But woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured. The fickle Goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favors heaped on them. Animals enslaved by love lost their native figure, they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them. As Gilgamesh said:
But Ishtar was not a stranger to kindness. Many a king owed his elevation to the throne to Ishtar's love and Sargon, King of Akkad, states that while he was a gardener the Goddess Ishtar loved him and then he became king. And those whom she cherished Ishtar treated with maternal tenderness.
Sovereign of the world by virtue of love's omnipotence Ishtar was the popular Goddess in Assyria and Babylonia. Under the name of Astarte she was one of the great Goddesses of Phoenicia and bequeathed more than one of her traits to the Greek Aphrodite. The evidence is that Ishtar was the great Goddess of the above and Erishkigal, her sister, was the great Goddess of the below and Ea or Anu was the consort. However under the influence of increasingly patriarchal based priesthood Anu became Ishtar's father, Ishtar's relationships with men became somewhat debased and Erishkigal was married to Nergal. Finally the Goddess was re-named Tiamat and, under the influence of later Babylonian monarchs, who in turn were influenced by the Hittites, Marduk the God defeated Tiamat as related above. And yet the Goddess lived on, if not in Tiamat then in Ishtar, who undoubtedly was the most loved of all the deities in this pantheon.
This difference in the various functions of the Goddess is no doubt due to the rising tide of barbarism during the third Millenium BC. Sudden death by the sword in wars or raids by bandits joined famine as equally fearsome threats to life. The previously peaceful fourth Millenium was now replaced by wars and raids. No-one was safe. Queens and great ladies, like their humble sisters, faced the constant possibility that the next day might find them widowed, torn from home and children and enslaved in some barbarous household. Death was no longer viewed as a continuance of the wonder of life but came to be welcomed as rescue from this terror. Enormous walls were built around every city like the one's Gilgamesh built around Uruk in 2700BC. With the rise of the powerful kings the epic came into being through celebrating the heroic exploits of the warrior ruler, and patriarchalism began an inexorable rise. The Goddess became effectively a servant of the king's will to power; and so the figure who in totality used to inspire reverence for the sanctity of life now fragmented, justified a profane disregard for it in the image of a War Goddess. She brought fear to the heart and destruction of those named as enemies and she drank the blood of the victims who were formerly her children. As the Goddess Ishtar proclaimed "I will flay your enemies and present them to you", a chilling evocation of the degenerated Goddess.
The Bronze Age myth of the Goddess and her half divine, half human son and consort comes to life in the poetry of Sumer. For the first time we can listen to the words and visualise the images that tell the story of death and resurrection of the God and the Goddess' search for him in the underworld. The consort of Inanna was Dumuzi in Sumer and the consort of Ishtar was Tammuz in Akkad. Both names mean 'the faithful son'. Both Gods carried the title of 'The Green One', an image that appears thousands of years later in faces that gaze from the carved foliage of Gothic Cathedrals and in the Gaia legends of Gawain and Parcifal who release the waters and restore the waste land to verdant life. The young son/lover of the Goddess was associated not just with vegetation in general but also with specific crops, the fruit tree in the north of Sumer and the date palm in the south. He was the lord of the sheepfold and the cattle store and his life was identified with the fecundity of sheep, cattle and goats. In the mythology that tells their story they are primarily named as shepherds which is also the title of the Kings of Sumer in their role of servant of the Gods and custodian of the land and its produce. Dumuzi and Tammuz had titles 'Lord of Life,' 'Lord of the Net', 'Lord of the Flood'. They were keeper of the sheepfold and shepherd of the people. When sacrificed they were the lamb. Compare these titles to Jesus the good shepherd and the sacrificed lamb and the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
The sacred Marriage Rite between Ishtar and Tammuz, Inanna and Dumuzi was celebrated at the New Year Ceremony to consecrate the king of the city as the bridegroom and son of the Goddess. The holy nuptials between the king and the Goddess had a two fold purpose; to ensure the fertility of the land and, at least so the king hoped, to ensure his long life as a husband of the Goddess. The romance inspired a number of different songs and tales revolving around a central rite and theme: the sacred marriage of this mortal king to the Goddess which begins in a mood of wistful yearning and ends inevitably in bitter frustration and disaster. Milk, water, semen, dew and honey were all images of the moon's nourishing and fertilizing power. Dumuzi says:
And Inanna says:
Dumuzi replies:
And Inanna says:
It is probable that our honeymoon, the honey month, descends from this ceremony. Another poem equally rich in sexual imagery shows the close bond between priest, shepherd and king and the symbolism of the bull:
He shaped my loins with his fair hands,
The shepherd Dumuzi filled my lap with cream and milk,
He stroked my pubic hair,
He watered my womb,
He laid his hands on my holy vulva,
He smoothed my black breasts with cream,
He quickened my nipple buds with milk,
He caressed me on the bed.
Now I will caress my high priest on the bed,
I will caress the faithful shepherd Dumuzi,
I will caress his loins, the shepherdship of the land,
I will decree a sweet treat for him.
We now come to the descent of the Goddess, the oldest ritual dramatization of a lunar myth, at least two to three thousand years older than the Christian myth of crucifixion, descent into hell and resurrection.
After her marriage to Dumuzi, Inanna, though already Queen of Heaven, set her heart on becoming the Mistress of the Netherworld as well. Inanna makes her descent into the dark realm of her sister, Ereshkigal, removing piece by piece the regalia of her office at each of the seven gates of the underworld. At each gate she stripped off one by one a piece of adornment or dress, the great crown from her head, pendants from her ears, the necklace from her throat, the jewels from her breast, the girdle adorned with birth stone's, the bracelets from her hands and from her feet and finally the garment which covered her nakedness. Ereshkigal fastens upon Inanna the eye of death and for three days she hangs like a carcass on a hook.
Her faithful companion, Ninshubur, appeals to the God Enlil and then to the Moon God Nanna and then finally to Enki. Enki, the God of Wisdom, responds to her and sends two creatures to plead with Ereshkigal for Inanna's release. They find Ereshkigal in the process of giving birth and after healing her and giving the water and seed of life to the dead Inanna, Inanna is restored to life and ascends, like the moon after its three days death, to assume her place once more as queen of heaven.
But Inanna's perils were not ended for, according to the Me of the Netherworld, no-one, not even a deity, once having passed its portals could ascend again to the World of the Living without supplying another human substitute for him. Resurrected Inanna, allowed to leave the underworld, was escorted by a group of Galla, the little devils who inhabit the lower regions, who had orders to return Inanna to the netherworld unless she found a replacement.
Inanna and her devilish intendants wandered from city to city looking for a deity whom the Gallic would carry off as a substitute. The Gods of the first two cities she came to put on sack cloth and prostrated themselves before her. Though the Galla were eager to seize these frightened creatures Inanna refused to let them do so. But when Inanna and her ghostly entourage arrived at her own city, Erech, she found Dumuzi sitting on a high throne in a noble robe, only too happy to be free of his aggressive and domineering spouse to whom he would always have to play second fiddle. Furious at this betrayal Inanna told the demons to take him away. Dumuzi implored the aid of the sun god as a 'just' judge who was Inanna's brother and therefore his brother-in-law who took pity on him and transformed him into a snake but to no avail. The Galla caught up with him, tortured him to death and carried him to the netherworld where he would remain forever as Inanna's surrogate. However his loving and self-sacrificing sister, the Goddess Geshtinanna, agreed to take his place for half the year.
This great lunar drama tells the story of the darkening of the moon and the appearance of the new crescent after the three days of darkness (compare the three days that Christ took to rise again). The Goddess appears in a terracotta image dating to 2300BC, wearing a crown with four horned tiers, her hair frames her face and is drawn into a 'bun' at the back, she wears a necklace around her throat. She is winged, showing her relationship to the sky and heaven and her wings are painted alternately black and red. Her taloned feet rest on lions and the lions in turn rest upon the sacred mountain. To her left and right stand both owl and a lion. In this myth it is as if Inanna, as Goddess of Life, requires the passage through her own depths in order to be reunited with her underworld aspect. Behind these powerful images is a lunar myth where the light has to descend into darkness in order to reappear in the next cycle. The two sisters together represent the whole, the unified faces of the Great Mother, the one imaging the light, the other the dark that kills it yet restores it in the new cycle to its place in heaven. It is not a mere bynote that Erishkigal was about to give birth when Inanna is rescued. Erishkigal is the dark moon who kills her younger sister, disrobing her as she descends into the underworld through the seven stages or days of the waning moon, impaling her on a stake through the three days of darkness when the moon is gone and who is then restored to her full splendour as she ascends from the dark regions through the stages or days of the waxing moon.
The Babylonian story of Ishtar's descent has a few different features. Here, Tammuz, her son/lover is mortally wounded by a wild boar. Ishtar is cast into grief and she descends into the underworld to awaken him from the sleep that holds him spellbound. Her manner is more imperious than Inanna's and she demands entrance at the gates of the underworld. Ishtar also is divested of her robes and comes naked into the presence of Erishkigal. A sleep is cast on the upper world whilst she is there, fertility is suspended, everything falls asleep. The imagery of the 'sleeping beauty' comes irresistibly to mind, although in the story of Ishtar and Tammuz it is the prince who falls asleep and the queen who awakens him and breaks the enchantment.
Just as the sacred marriage ritualized sexuality and the ecstatic experience of life, so the sacrifice of the son/lover ritualized the counterpole of human experience and the loss of life. The sacrifice of Dumuzi in place of the Goddess embodies the dark phase of the lunar myth and yet always with the promise of return in the new cycle of life. Inanna laments the death of her husband:
The difficulty of awakening the God from sleep and bringing him back to life was part of the ritual drama of the myth of the Goddess. The soul had to be awakened from its sleep in the underworld to return to its home.
The underworld of Sumerian and Babylonian mythology appears to personify everything that is most terrifying to human consciousness, that moves further and further away from a sense of wholeness and sacredness of life. Death begins to be treated as something final and absolute, rather than a rite of passage between the two dimensions as in a sense that the Egyptians imagined it. The more the known and unknown, light and dark phases of life are split apart and associated with good and evil, the more terrifying the dimension beyond death becomes and the more demonic is the activity of its rulers and emissaries. The ultimate legacy of this fear is reached in the Christian image of hell and the devil and Zoroastrian realm of Angramia.
Although the Sumerian version has been gathered from fragments of a third of a clay tablet, the story can be re-constructed with the aid of Akkadian versions in the following form: some time after man, plants and animals had been created and kingship had been established in five special cities, the Gods determined to bring the floods and destroy mankind (the passage giving the reason for this melancholy judgment is broken away but possibly relates to disobedience on the part of man), but the tale continues that some of the Gods were unhappy with the extreme severity of the decree. One of them, Enki, revealed to Ziusudra, whose name in Akkadian is Utnapish-tim, a mortal being noted for his humble obedience and reverence, and counseled him to build a giant boat to ride out the tempestuous flood and so save his own life and the seed of mankind. Ziusudra faithfully followed the God's directions and was delivered from destruction, or as the poet puts it:
Ziusudra now prostrates himself before An and Enlil who is so pleased with his god-fearing humility that they give him life like a God and breath eternal and carry him to the paradise of Dilman, the place where the sun rises. It is interesting to note that this is where Gilgamesh has to travel before he learns of the place of the thorny plant which confers immortality, and is nearly certainly the prototype of the Garden of Eden.
Gilgamesh was two thirds god and one third man but a tyrant, unbridled in arrogance, who leaves not the son to his father nor the maid to her mother. The people prayed to the Gods who harkened to their plea. They conceived a likeness of Anu, the God of Heaven, and so created the valiant Enkidu.
The creating element here was the Mother Goddess and she is, in fact, the chief divine figure of the epic of El Gilgamesh which is no surprise since it precedes the overthrow of the Goddess by her sons.
A hunter and a temple prostitute set forth and three days later reached the watering place where Enkidu lay. His body was hairy and his locks were like a woman. He ate grass with the gazelles and was content with the animals. Gilgamesh had sent forth the hunter and the prostitute to entrap this wild man. The hunter told the woman:
"Make free your breasts, disclose your nakedness that he may take your favors. Do not fear, lay hold of his soul. He will see you and draw near. Put aside his clothes that he may lie upon you, and yield to him the rapture of your woman's art. His beasts that grow on his plain will desert him when he is knowing you in love".
The woman did as she was told and Enkidu came and took possession of her. For six days and seven nights Enkidu remained mating with that temple maid, after which he turned his face and made a move towards the beasts. On seeing him they ran off and Enkidu was amazed. He went with the woman to the ramparts of Uruk, the holy temple city of Anu and Ishtar where Gilgamesh, the king, dwelt. Gilgamesh and Enkidu met. They grappled and locked like bulls. The doorpost of the temple shattered, the walls shook and at last Gilgamesh relented. His fury gone, he turned away and the two thereafter became inseparable friends.
The Goddess Ishtar is seen here as harlot, mother, bride and guide and the wild Enkidu as the old lunar god in his character of Lord Of The Beasts.
What of the feeling of Gilgamesh to the Goddess Ishtar?
This is best summed up in the epic itself where Gilgamish rejects Ishtar for her faithlessness and for her cruel 'turning' on her lovers. It is perhaps the forerunner of the misogyny that has beset all the major religions ever since.
After Gilgamesh triumphs against the demon Khumbaba he purified himself of his battle stains, rearranges his hair and puts on clean raiment. He fastens his robe and resumes his crown and at this point the Goddess Ishtar sights him. Struck by his beauty she speaks:
Now, remember that Ishtar is one of the great Goddesses - Goddess of War, Goddess of Love, Goddess of Fertility.
But Gilgamesh roughly repels the Goddess.
On hearing these harsh words Ishtar, not unexpectedly, smoldered with rage. She approached Anu, her father, and said "Gilgamesh has cursed me, Gilgamesh has recounted my shame. Send a celestial bull against him". Anu sent against Gilgamesh a furious bull. He was about to overthrow the hero when Enkidu rushed to his assistance, seized the beast by its tail and tore it to pieces. But Ishtar gains her final revenge. Enkidu is stricken with illness and on the thirteenth day he expires and sends Gilgamesh upon his vain quest for immortality. Thus the Goddess, in the end, prevailed over the lordly arrogance of man who sought to berate her for her divine harlotry.
Gilgamesh touched Enkidu's heart but it did not beat and like a lion storming, like a lione'ss bereaved of her cubs, the great king paced back and forth before the couch, pulled out his hair and strewed it to the quarters, tore off and flung down his ornaments, called for his craftsmen to fashion a statue of his friend, wept bitterly and lay stretched upon the ground. "Oh let me not die like my friend Enkidu", he cried, "Grief has entered my body, of death I am afraid, I shall go forth and I shall not tarry." He set forth in quest of a plant of immortality. He passed many obstacles and at the shore of the World Sea came to the residence of a mysterious female spirit who received him with these celebrated lines:
Oh Gilgamesh fill your belly,
Make merry day and night;
Make of each day a festival of joy,
Dance and play day and night!
Let your raiment be kept clean,
Your head washed, body bathed.
Pay heed to the little one holding on to your hand,
Let your wife delight your heart.
For in this is the portion of man.
Gilgamesh insisted on his quest and the woman sent him to the ferry man of death who would pole him across the Cosmic Sea to the Isle of the Blessed where the ever-living hero of the flood (Utnapish-fim) dwelt with his wife in everlasting bliss. Here he was told of the plant of immortality at the bottom of the Cosmic Sea. Gilgamesh tied heavy stones to his feet which drew him into the deep. He spied the plant which was like a buckthorn and its thorns tore at his hands but he plucked it, cut away the stone's and returned to the surface. "I shall take the plant to ramparted Uruk". He told the boatman "I shall give it to be consumed and eat of it myself and it's name shall be 'Man Becomes Young In Old Age'".
But when he had landed and was on his way he paused by a fresh lake for the night and when he went to bathe, a serpent, sniffling the fragrance of the plant, came out of the water, took the plant and consumed it and then shed its skin whereby Gilgamesh sat down and wept.
That is why the serpent power of immortal life, which formerly was known as a property of man, was taken away and now remains a part in the keep of the cursed serpent and the famed Goddess in the lost paradise of the innocent of fear.
And what of the place of the dead?
When Gilgamesh regained Uruk he was still haunted by the fear of death and he evoked the shade of Enkidu to learn from him the law of the world. Enkidu could only describe to his friend the mournful condition of those who were everlastingly imprisoned in the sombre Kingdom of Nergal.
It is upon this disheartening vision that the adventures of Gilgamesh close.
All in all the Babylonian/Assyrian mythology which starts in the days of Sumer and Akkad with a divine, all creating, mother ends with a male chief God who slays the creating mother, who organizes the world out of her body and who rules supreme. His heroes berate the lesser Goddess Ishtar for her infidelity and her volatile moods. He belittles her descent into the underworld to rescue Tammuz, her lover. He belittles her grief at Tammuz' death. The role of woman in society, which was known to be equal to that of man in early Sumerian times has now degenerated into that of a mere chattel and possession. The tenth commandment reveals that 'thou shalt not covet a man's wife, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any other possession that is his'. Woman has now been degraded to that of a possession. And in the celestial sphere the Father God reigns supreme. Goddesses are secondary and of doubtful morality. The underworld is seen as a place to be feared.
It requires but one step further to create the prevailing mythology of the last two thousand years, that of the "good", all-powerful Father God in eternal war against the not so all-powerful "evil" adversary. And at death men will be consigned either to the delights of paradise or to the torments of hell. The light and dark have now been separated. There is no dusk, there is no dawn, just a gulf between the two. And not surprisingly, it is always the feminine element that represents the dark, the unconscious, that to be feared, the devil. Indeed the very image of Ishtar, the winged Goddess with taloned feet, was used by medieval authors for that of the Succubus, the female temptress who would drag a man's soul into the everlasting torments of hell.
One fundamental moral problem never troubled the Sumerian thinkers at all, namely the delicate problem of free will. Convinced beyond all need for argument that man was created by the Gods solely for the benefit and leisure, the Sumerians accepted their dependant status just as they accepted the divine decision that death was man's lot and only the Gods were immortal. All credit for the high moral qualities and ethical virtues that the Sumerians had evolved gradually and painfully over the centuries was attributed to the Gods. It was the Gods who planned it that way and man was only following divine orders.
The Sumerians cherished goodness and truth, law and order, justice and freedom, righteousness and straightforwardness, mercy and compassion and naturally abhorred their opposites. Kings and rulers in particular boasted constantly of the fact that they had established law and order in the land, protected the weak from the strong, the poor from the rich and wipes out evil and violence. The Gods also preferred the ethical and moral to the unethical and immoral and practically all the major deities of the Sumerian Pantheon are extolled in their hymns as lovers of the good and just, of truth and righteousness. Unfortunately the fact remained that they were also the ones who, in the process of establishing civilization had planned evil and falsehood, violence and oppression. The Sumerian sages, faced with the question as to why the Gods found it necessary to plan and create sin and evil admitted their ignorance in this respect. The will of the Gods and their motives were at time inscrutable. The appropriate course was not to argue and complain in the face of seemingly unjustifiable misfortune but to plead and wail, lament and confess his inevitable sins and failings. The Gods however were unlikely to give heed to a lone and not very effective mortal, even if he prostrated and humbled himself in heartfelt prayer. The Gods were like mortal rulers and no doubt had more important things to attend to. As a result the Sumerians evolved the notion of a personal God, a kind of good angel to each individual and it was to this God that the individual sufferer bared his heart in prayer and supplication and through him that he found salvation. The Sumerian equivalent of the Book of Job represents man's first recorded attempt to deal with the age-old and very modern problem of human suffering. The main thesis is that in cases of suffering and adversity, no matter how seemingly unjustified, the victim has but one valid, effective recourse which is to continue to glorify his God and keep wailing and lamenting before him until he turns a favourable ear to his prayers.
From other archeological sources we learn that the Sumerians held the view that the sun, after setting, continued its journey through the netherworld at night, turning its night into day and that the moon spent its day of rest (that is the last day of each month) in the netherworld. There was judgement of the dead by the sun God Utu and moon God Nanna. The Sumerian document which provides the most detailed information about the netherworld is the poem "Gilgamesh, Enkidu And The Netherworld". The netherworld is characterised euphemistically as the Great Dwelling and anyone wishing to descend to the netherworld must not wear clean clothes, must not be anointed with the good oil or carry a weapon or staff, or wear sandals or make a noise or behave normally toward the members of his families. In the case of Enkidu, it was Enki who came to his rescue. Utu opened the gate of the netherworld and Enkidu reascended to earth in the flesh, rather than as a ghost. Enkidu then describes the state of the dead as being one of torment. The netherworld was ruled by Erishkegal and Nergal who had a special entourage of deities, including seven Anunnaki as well as a number of 'constable' like demons known as Gallas. There were all kinds of rules and regulations in the netherworld but in general it was dark and dreary, apart from those whom Utu and Inanna judged favourably when the dead man's soul would then live in happiness and contentment. But by and large the Sumerians were convinced that life in the netherworld was a dismal wretched reflection of life on earth.
In the temple of every major city daily sacrifices were offered consisting of animal and vegetable foods, libations of water, wine and beer and the burning of incense, with more spectacular special ceremonies on special feasts and holidays. Some of these feasts lasted several days and were celebrated with special sacrifices and processions. In addition there were regular monthly feasts on the day of the new moon as well as the seventh, fifteenth and last day of each month. The most important holiday of all was the New Year holiday, celebrated over several days with special feasts and celebrations. The most significant rite of the New Year was the Hieros-Gamos or Holy Marriage between the king, representing the God Demuzi and one of the priestesses representing the Goddess Inanna to ensure effectively the fecundity and prosperity of Sumer and its people.
The achievement of the Sumerians in the areas of religion, education and literature left a deep impression, not only on their neighbours but also especially through their influence, indirect as it was, on the ancient Hebrews and the bible. Sumerian influence penetrated the bible through the Canaanite, Hurrian, Hittite and Akkadian literatures. There is another source of Sumerian influence which is more direct and immediate than through the medium of other cultures. While the Abraham saga as told in the bible is mostly legendary, it does have an important kernel of truth, including Abraham's birth in Ur about 1700BCE and his early life there. Ur was the capital of Sumer in three different periods in its history. Abraham and his forefathers would have had acquaintance with Sumerian literary products and it is by no means impossible that he and the members of his family brought this law with them to Palestine where they gradually became part of the traditions and sources utilised by the Hebrew 'men of letters' in composing the books of the bible.
There are a number of biblical parallels from Sumerian literature which unquestionably point to traces of Sumerian influence:
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