if the allegorical reading is accepted, their mythological content is more of a narrative
strategy than exemplary of mythopoeic thought.
In a negative response to the perennial question of mythologists, did the Sumerians
or Babylonians believe in their own myths, Sumerian mythological narratives can also
be read as a sub-category of Sumerian literature, set in a primeval world of gods for
artistic rather than mythopoeic reasons (survey of Sumerian literature in Rubio 2009 ).
Although they lack the light elegance of Sumerian epic and the witty brilliance of
Sumerian contest literature, the mythological stories share an intense preoccupa-
tion with Sumerian culture and history; they are set in the Sumerian alluvium and
acted out on a landscape in which Sumerian cities and their linking watercourses were
center stage.
TYPOLOGY AND SUMMARYInanna and EnkiOne group of Sumerian mythological narratives focuses on Inanna, goddess of love and
procreation, and Enki, god of wisdom, intelligence, and magic. In Inanna and Enki,
which, at about 800 lines, was one of the longest of the Sumerian myths, Inanna leaves
her city, Uruk, to visit Enki at his city, Eridu (Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 230 – 256 ; Farber
in Hallo 1997 : 522 – 526 ). In the course of a banquet to entertain Inanna, Enki becomes
intoxicated and gives her the cosmic powers that control over 100 Sumerian cultural
attributes, including the scribal arts, prostitution, family strife, music, kissing, archi-
tecture, intelligence, and lighting and extinguishing fire. She makes off with them all
to Uruk, despite Enki’s repeated attempts to recover them. Although the list of cultural
attributes is of considerable interest as an early articulation of human culture, its sheer
bulk and repetition foregrounds the list itself as the core of the composition, as if a
romance had been constructed to showcase a speculative list of concepts. In a historical
reading, the story might express a transfer of cultural prestige from Eridu to Uruk.
Enki and Inanna are at odds in another story, Inanna and Shukaletuda(Bottéro and
Kramer 1989 : 257 – 276 ; Volk 1995 ; Black et al. 2004 : 197 – 205 ) in which the goddess
plants a date palm and a gardener, Shukaletuda, incorporates it in a garden he lays out.
When the goddess visits the garden, he rapes her. Inanna tries to punish him for his
offense, first by turning his water supply to blood, then by sending a tempest, and
finally by blocking access to his garden. Each time, Shukaletuda asks Enki’s advice as
to how to escape punishment, and Enki advises him to live in a city rather than his
garden. Finally Inanna demands that Enki himself hand over the offender, whom she
then interrogates and “strikes,” perhaps to kill or transform him, but promises in
compensation that he will never be forgotten.
In The Descent of Inanna(Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 276 – 295 ; Jacobsen 1987 a:
205 – 232 ; Black et al. 2004 : 77 – 84 ), Inanna descends to visit her sister, Ereshkigal,
queen of the netherworld, who, in a jealous fury, kills Inanna. Procreation thereby
disappears from the world. To bring her back to life, Enki sends a singer and a female
impersonator to soothe Ereshkigal, instructing them to refuse all gifts but the corpse
of Inanna. When Ereshkigal, realizing that she has been tricked, surrenders the corpse,
she requires that Inanna provide a substitute. On her journey back, Inanna meets her
courier and her attendant who used to sing to her and dress her hair. These she is loath
–– Sumerian mythology ––