Descended to the underworld and was stripped of one garment or ornament at each of seven gates
Her sister Ereshkigal has her killed and her corpse hung on a hook.
Myth · Mesopotamian
Inanna
Mesopotamian mythology — goddess of love, war and the planet Venus
The most important goddess of ancient Mesopotamia: love and sex on one side, battle and storm on the other, and the planet Venus above. Sumerian Inanna became Akkadian Ishtar. Her great myth takes her down through the seven gates of the underworld, where she is stripped, killed and hung on a hook — and out again, at the price of her husband's life for half the year.
How to spot them
- ▸Her symbol is an eight-pointed star; her animal is the lion
- ▸The goddess of the planet Venus, morning and evening star
- ▸Stands with wings and a horned crown, one foot on a lion, in Akkadian seal art
- ▸Quiz clue: 'seven gates', 'the mes', 'Dumuzi', 'the Eanna at Uruk'
Stories & episodes
Released from death only by finding a substitute, she chose the husband who had not mourned her
Dumuzi spends half the year below, his sister Geshtinanna the other half.
Out-drank the god of wisdom at Eridu and carried off the decrees of civilisation by boat
The mes, the divine ordinances of everything from kingship to carpentry.
Demanded the Bull of Heaven from her father after a hero refused to marry her
Anu gives way; the bull is killed in Uruk and its haunch thrown at her.
Her chief temple stood at Uruk, and the world's earliest writing comes from its precinct
The Eanna, 'house of heaven'.
Hymns to her by an Akkadian high priestess are the oldest poetry with a named author
Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon of Akkad, and her Exaltation.
Her Akkadian name gives the title of a Neo-Assyrian goddess of Nineveh and Arbela
Ishtar, whose Babylonian gate was faced with glazed brick lions and dragons.
Quick-fire facts
- •Sumerian Inanna is equated with Akkadian Ishtar, and later with Astarte and Aphrodite
- •Her main temple was the Eanna at Uruk; Ishtar's great cult centres were Nineveh and Arbela
- •Her symbols are the eight-pointed star, the lion, and the reed ring-post
- •She is the goddess of the planet Venus
- •Her parentage varies: daughter of Nanna the moon god, or of An
- •Her husband Dumuzi (Tammuz) is the shepherd god of the dying-and-returning year
- •Her sister and opposite is Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld
- •Enheduanna, her priestess at Ur, is the earliest author in world literature known by name
- •The Ishtar Gate of Babylon, built under Nebuchadnezzar II, is reconstructed in Berlin's Pergamon Museum
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Sources
- Oracc / University of Pennsylvania Museum — Ancient Mesopotamian Gods and Goddesses: Inana/Ištar
- Stephanie Dalley — Myths from Mesopotamia