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In the city of Nippur, Ninshebargunu was the goddess of barley, and in the city of

Shuruppak, she was known as Sud, the goddess of cleaned, naked grains. The symbol of Sala,

a Mesopotamian goddess of Anatolian origin, was a barley stalk, indicating her connection to

agriculture.^48 Bau or Baba, a daughter of the sky- god An, was represented by a sign thought to

be a winnowing fan, used for separating the grain from the chaff. Finally, the goddess Ninkasi

presided over the important industry of beer- making, as described in the “Hymn to Ninkasi”:

Ninkasi, it is you who handle the ... dough with a big shovel, mixing, in a pit, the

beerbread with sweet aromatics.

It is you who bake the beerbread in the big oven, and put in order the piles of

hulled grain.

It is you who water the earth- covered malt; the noble dogs guard it even from the

potentates.

It is you who soak the malt in a jar; the waves rise, the waves fall.

It is you who spread the cooked mash on large reed mats; coolness overcomes.

It is you who hold with both hands the great sweetwort, brewing it with honey

and wine.

You place the fermenting vat, which makes a pleasant sound, appropriately on top of

a large collector vat.

It is you who pour out the filtered beer of the collector vat; it is like the onrush of the

Tigris and the Euphrates.^49

The goddess of writing, Nissaba, may have originally been a grain goddess as well.^50 Thus,

Sumerians continued the Neolithic tradition of associating the growing and processing of

cereal crops with women.

Wine- making was also associated with a female deity, the goddess of grape vines,

Geshtinanna. Geshtinanna was the sister of Dumuzi, the shepherd god who became the

passionate lover of Inanna and who is Inanna’s consort in sacred marriage rituals. Dumuzi

dies and becomes an underworld deity, whose consummated marriage to Inanna is neces-

sary for agricultural fertility. Geshtinanna’s association with Dumuzi could suggest wine’s

reputation as an aphrodisiac.

Inanna as “Lady of Vegetation.” According to tradition, it was the poet Enheduanna, daugh-

ter of the Akkadian King Sargon and priestess of the moon- god Nanna at Ur, who began her

poem Exaltation of Inanna with the salutation, “Lady of all the divine powers, resplendent

light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Urash [Ki]!” The Inanna in

Enheduanna’s hymn is a warrior goddess, befitting Babylon under Sargon’s imperial rule:

At your battle cry, my lady, the foreign lands bow low. When humanity comes before

you in awed silence at the terrifying radiance and tempest, you grasp the most terrible

of all the divine powers.^51

Yet, for the most part, the myths of Inanna dating to 3500 bce or earlier empha-

size her close connection to the natural world— to sexuality, fertility, and agricultural