to send in her stead because they obviously have been mourning her death. When,
however, she meets her lover, Dumuzi, he shows no signs of grieving, so she gives him
to the demons of the netherworld. Dumuzi’s sister, Geshtinanna, tries to save her
brother by hiding him, but the demons find him with the help of a tattling fly.
Geshtinanna sacrifices herself by consenting to spend half the year in the kingdom of
the dead so Dumuzi can come up to earth.
The theme of the pitiless demons searching for the young Dumuzi is taken up at
length in Dumuzi’s Dream(Alster 1972 a; Jacobsen 1987 a: 28 – 46 ; Bottéro and Kramer
1989 : 300 – 312 ), in which Dumuzi, terrified by a dream of being carried off to the
netherworld by demons of death, asks his sister to hide him from them, but is betrayed
by friends. After several escapes and recaptures, he is carried off to the netherworld.
Inanna has no overt role in this particular tale, but, in Inanna and Bilulu(Jacobsen and
Kramer 1953 , with quite different understanding of plot; Bottéro and Kramer 1989 :
330 – 337 ), she seeks Dumuzi’s body so she can lament over it. She meets Bilulu, a god
in the form of a tavern keeper, and three people from the steppe are turned into spirits
to cry out for funerary offerings for Dumuzi. A bird calls upon his sister, Geshtinanna,
to join Inanna for the lament. Sumerian and Akkadian literature preserve various
laments for Dumuzi; furthermore, the youthful love and courtship of Inanna and
Dumuzi were a favored subject of Sumerian love poetry and epithalamia (Jacobsen
1987 a: 1 – 84 ; Sefati 1998 ).
These are stories in which the complicated, self-centered, and passionate tempera-
ment of Inanna provides the dynamic element. Akkadian literature contains a version
of the Descent of Inanna(called by her Semitic name, Ishtar, B. Foster 2005 : 498 – 505 ),
and preserves another story about Ishtar and Enki written with Sumerian performance
rubrics, called Ea and Saltu(ibid.: 96 – 106 ). In the latter, Ishtar’s fondness for violence
so annoys Enki that he creates a counterpart for her named “Discord.” When Ishtar is
disgusted by Discord, she sets aside her violent ways and Enki ordains that people will
perform a kind of ritual battle dance in her honor. This shows that the tension between
Ishtar and Enki and Ishtar and her sister, Ereshkigal, queen of the netherworld, were
themes explored in both Sumerian and Akkadian writings, with stories in common and
with stories unique to each.
NinurtaA similar fund of themes common to Sumerian and Akkadian, alongside stories unique
to each literature, is found with Ninurta, a hero-god who is the subject of four major
Sumerian mythological narratives and one Akkadian one. In the poem Lugale
(Jacobsen 1987 a: 233 – 272 ; Bottéro and Kramer 1989 : 339 – 377 ; K. Foster 2000 ; Black
et al. 2004 : 163 – 180 ), Ninurta defeats a volcanic monster and his army of stone allies,
and then decrees a destiny for each stone. Blessed stones were to be prized for their own
sake by the human race, whereas cursed stones were useful only when broken, chipped,
or ground to powder. This work enjoyed unique popularity in Mesopotamian
tradition. It was provided with an Akkadian translation during the second millennium
and was studied as a “Classic” well into the first. Its comprehensive aetiology of the
use of stones in early Mesopotamian culture, original and brilliantly done, touched on
a subject of importance in Mesopotamian thought, which took a great interest in the
appearance, properties, and magical potential of stones (Schuster-Brandis 2008 ). The
–– Benjamin R. Foster ––