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Authors: Georges Roux
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entertained many lovers whom she regularly discarded. Beautiful and voluptuous as she undoubtedly was imagined and portrayed, she often acted perfidiously and had violent outbursts of anger which made this incarnation of pleasure a formidable goddess of war. In the course of time, this second aspect of her personality raised her to the rank of the male gods who led the armies into battle.11 Dumuzi, the only god she seems to have loved tenderly, probably resulted from the fusion of two prehistoric deities, for he was both the protector of herds and flocks and the god of the vegetation that dies in the summer and revives in the spring. The Sumerians believed that the reproduction of cattle and the renewal of edible plants and fruit could be secured only by a ceremony, on New Year's Day, in which the king, playing the role of Dumuzi, consummated a marital union with Inanna, represented by one of her priestesses. Love poems where overt erotism mixes with tender affection celebrate this ‘Sacred Marriage’, 12 while the ritual itself is described in some royal hymns, the most explicit of which is a hymn to Iddin-Dagan (1974-1954 B.C .), the third king of the dynasty of Isin. 13 A scented bed of rushes is set up in a special room of the palace and on it is spread a comfortable cover. The goddess has bathed and has sprinkled sweet-smelling cedar oil on the ground. Then comes the King:
The King approaches her pure lap proudly,
He approaches the lap of Inanna proudly,
Ama‘ushumgalanna * lies down beside her,
He caresses her pure lap.
When the Lady has stretched out on the bed, in his pure lap,
When the pure Inanna has stretched out on the bed, in his pure lap,
She makes love with him on her bed,
(She says) to Iddin-Dagan ‘You are surely my beloved‘.
Thereafter the people, carrying presents, are invited to enter, together with musicians, and a special meal is served:
The palace is festive, the King is joyous,
The people spend the day in plenty.
However, the rapports between Inanna and Dumuzi were not always harmonious, as shown by a famous text called ‘Inanna's descent to the Netherworld’ of which two versions have been preserved, one Sumerian, the other Assyrian. 14 In the Sumerian text Inanna goes down to the ‘land of no return’, casting off a piece of clothing or a jewel at each stage, in order to snatch this lugubrious domain from the hands of her sister Ereshkigal, the Sumerian equivalent of Persephone. Unfortunately, Inanna fails; she is put to death, then resurrected by Enki, but she is not allowed to return to earth unless she finds a replacement. After a long voyage in search of a potential victim, she chooses none other than her favourite lover. Dumuzi is promptly seized by demons and taken to the Netherworld, to the sorrow of his sister Geshtin-anna, the goddess of vines. Finally, Inanna is moved by Dumuzi's lamentations: she decides that he will spend one half of the year underground, and Geshtin-anna the other half.
The Sacred Marriage rite probably originated in Uruk, but it was performed in other cities, at least until the end of the dynasty of Isin (1794). After that date, Dumuzi fell to the rank of a relatively minor deity, although a month bore his name in its Semitic form Tammuz, and still bears it in the Arab world. In the last centuries of the first millennium B.C. , however, the cult of Tammuz was revived in the Levant. A god of vegetation more or less akin to Osiris, he became
adon
(‘the Lord’), i.e.Adonis who died each year and was mourned in Jerusalem, Byblos, Cyprus and later even in Rome. In a Greek legend, Persephone and Aphrodite were quarrelling for the favours of the handsome young god when Zeus intervened and ruled that Adonis would share the year between the two goddesses. 15 Thus, the old Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent to the Netherworld had not been entirely forgotten: slightly distorted but recognizable, it had reached the Aegean Sea by some unknown channel, as
The King approaches her pure lap proudly,
He approaches the lap of Inanna proudly,
Ama‘ushumgalanna * lies down beside her,
He caresses her pure lap.
When the Lady has stretched out on the bed, in his pure lap,
When the pure Inanna has stretched out on the bed, in his pure lap,
She makes love with him on her bed,
(She says) to Iddin-Dagan ‘You are surely my beloved‘.
Thereafter the people, carrying presents, are invited to enter, together with musicians, and a special meal is served:
The palace is festive, the King is joyous,
The people spend the day in plenty.
However, the rapports between Inanna and Dumuzi were not always harmonious, as shown by a famous text called ‘Inanna's descent to the Netherworld’ of which two versions have been preserved, one Sumerian, the other Assyrian. 14 In the Sumerian text Inanna goes down to the ‘land of no return’, casting off a piece of clothing or a jewel at each stage, in order to snatch this lugubrious domain from the hands of her sister Ereshkigal, the Sumerian equivalent of Persephone. Unfortunately, Inanna fails; she is put to death, then resurrected by Enki, but she is not allowed to return to earth unless she finds a replacement. After a long voyage in search of a potential victim, she chooses none other than her favourite lover. Dumuzi is promptly seized by demons and taken to the Netherworld, to the sorrow of his sister Geshtin-anna, the goddess of vines. Finally, Inanna is moved by Dumuzi's lamentations: she decides that he will spend one half of the year underground, and Geshtin-anna the other half.
The Sacred Marriage rite probably originated in Uruk, but it was performed in other cities, at least until the end of the dynasty of Isin (1794). After that date, Dumuzi fell to the rank of a relatively minor deity, although a month bore his name in its Semitic form Tammuz, and still bears it in the Arab world. In the last centuries of the first millennium B.C. , however, the cult of Tammuz was revived in the Levant. A god of vegetation more or less akin to Osiris, he became
adon
(‘the Lord’), i.e.Adonis who died each year and was mourned in Jerusalem, Byblos, Cyprus and later even in Rome. In a Greek legend, Persephone and Aphrodite were quarrelling for the favours of the handsome young god when Zeus intervened and ruled that Adonis would share the year between the two goddesses. 15 Thus, the old Sumerian myth of Inanna's descent to the Netherworld had not been entirely forgotten: slightly distorted but recognizable, it had reached the Aegean Sea by some unknown channel, as
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