Inanna: Mourning the Queen Who Left the Building

Leave your power at the door

Inanna/Ishtar on an Akkadian seal. By Sailko.

Quick housekeeping: This is the first time I’m putting in a paywall. It’s just because this piece is particularly personal. I don’t really have a working model yet and would rather keep more things free than not. Still, if you can support my work or share it, thank you! And if you want to email me, hit midwifingthemother@gmail.com.

Inanna, the queen of heaven

Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of love, lust, and fertility, is one of my favourite deities. Her stories represent the first literature we have, inscribed by the priestess and princess Enheduanna, 2000 years before Bible stories were whispers.

The throne where we meet Inanna is carved from the huluppu tree, the same tree from which Eve plucked the fatal apple. Nestled in its branches are a snake, an Anzu-bird, and Lilith, Adam’s first wife and the alleged mother of demons.

Inanna’s arrival on the scene of humanity is a glorious inversion of Eve’s fall from grace. From Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer’s Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth:

She leaned back against the apple tree.
When she leaned against the apple tree, her vulva was wondrous to behold.
Rejoicing at her wondrous vulva, the young woman Inanna applauded herself.

What a queen, legs akimbo in the open air, applauding what we’re first taught to hide.

This is the story of Inanna’s descent.

From the great above to the great below

Inanna has a sister called Ereshkigal, who rules the underworld. Ereshkigal’s husband, the Bull of Heaven, has died, so Inanna decides to attend the funeral rites.

Before leaving, she adorns herself with the vestiges of her power:

She placed the shugurra, the crown of the steppe, on her head.
She arranged the dark locks of hair across her forehead.
She tied the small lapis beads around her neck,
Let the double strand of beads fall to her breast,
And wrapped the royal robe around her body.
She daubed her eyes with ointment called “Let him come, let him come,”
Bound the breastplate called “Come, man, come!” around her chest,
Slipped the gold ring over her wrist,
And took the lapis measuring rod and line in her hand.

With these fantastic adornments in place, she sets out. But she also leaves instructions for Ninshubar— Inanna’s highest priestess and wingwoman on all adventures. If she doesn’t return in a few days, Ninshubar knows what to do.

Adornments from Ur, including some made with lapis, 2500BC. From the Louvre. Photo mine.

The adventure begins. Inanna arrives at the doorway to darkness and knocks loudly. “Open the door, gatekeeper! Open the door, Neti! I alone would enter!”

Neti is hell’s chief gatekeeper. I can’t imagine he delights in this greeting, because his first question is “Who are you?!”

“I am Inanna, Queen of Heaven, on my way to the East.” She’s here for the funeral, see? Neti tells her to stay outside while he talks to Ereshkigal.

At Ereshkigal’s feet he gives a formidable description: “My queen, a maid as tall as heaven, as wide as the earth, as strong as the foundations of the city wall, waits outside the palace gates.” He describes the powers she carries via every adornment on her body, from her carefully arranged hair to her provocative breastplate that beckons, “Come man, come!”

Ereshkigal slaps her thigh and bites her lip. She takes a minute. Then she tells Neti to open each gate just a crack. As Inanna passes each threshold, one vestment must be shed.

“Let the holy priestess of heaven enter bowed low.”

Neti follows these instructions. The underworld contains seven gates … and each time Inanna steps through one, something is removed, beginning with the shugurra, the crown of the steppe.

“What is this?” she asks.

Neti replies, “Quiet, Inanna, the ways of the underworld are perfect. They may not be questioned.”

This procedure continues. She loses the lapis beads around her neck. Then from her breast, another double strand of beads. The “come man, come!” breastplate follows, her gold ring, and the lapis measuring rod and line. Finally, she is deprived even of her royal robe.

Naked and bowed low, she enters her sister’s reception hall.

Ereshkigal rose from her throne.
Inanna started toward the throne.
The Annuna, the judges of the underworld, surrounded her.
They passed judgment against her.

Then Ereshkigal fastened on Inanna the eye of death.
She spoke against her the word of wrath.
She uttered against her the cry of guilt.

She struck her.

At this, Inanna becomes a corpse, “a piece of rotting meat.” Ereshkigal hangs her from a hook on the wall.

Ereshkigal ruminates over Inanna’s arrival. I like the crown’s jaunty top-hat energy. Credit: Mesopotamian Gods.

Sisterly rage and dark paths

How familiar that meeting feels. I have two sisters. I have definitely felt the “eye of death” and had the “word of wrath” flung at me, with bonus guilt.

But this stripping-away of adornment resonates most. We assume jewelry and clothes are superficial, but Inanna shows us they represent power and identity. They are protection, and each time one goes, Inanna stops and is rebuked.

In myths that centre women, there is often some variant of this underworld trip. No “hero’s journey” for us: We are stripped and often violently killed, often at the hand of another woman—the initiator. We inherit this bleak, solitary voyage in fairy tales: The dark forest, where we meet a witch or angry stepmother. Death is common; resurrection not guaranteed.

So it goes for Inanna. In her cult, feminine vestments were power and beauty. That “come man, come” breastplate? You don’t know if it’s designed to seduce or destroy. It’s very Alexander McQueen: “I want people to be afraid of the women I dress.”

In a separate story, Inanna asks Gilgamesh to marry her and he shies away, a demigod so ferocious he slept with every woman in his kingdom before her wedding day. “I know what you do to your husbands,” he says. In another story, she engages in battle with a mountain and wins, proclaiming victory to the sky god while covered in blood.

To lose every aspect of that power, one by one. To appear naked and trembling before the slaughter…