A Hymn to Inanna
A wonderful eulogy of the "earth mother" from Sumer, 4000-5000 years ago.
Oh mistress, let your breasts be your fields,
Inanna, let your breasts be your fields,
your wide fields, which pour forth flax,
your wide fields, which pour forth grain,
make water flow from them,
provide it from them for mankind,
make water flow and flow from them,
keep providing it from them for mankind.
[The goddess Inanna
terracotta plaque from circa 2,000-1,700 BCE]
Inanna was the ancient Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, fertility, war, and justice. She was known as the "Queen of Heaven" and was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, which was her main cult center. She was associated with the planet Venus and her most prominent symbols included the lion and the eight-pointed star. She was later worshiped by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians under the name Ishtar.
In Inanna, life and death, order and chaos come together. On the one hand, Inanna is portrayed as a timid virgin, on the other as a voluptuous whore. On a terracotta plaque from 2,000-1,700 BCE Inanna is depicted as a naked goddess, winged like a bee, and with a typical headdress made up of six or seven thick open rings, of which the pleated front sides are slightly upwards. They look like bull horns. Furthermore, she has feet like the claws of a vulture with which she stands on top of a pair of lions. In each of the raised hands this figure holds an infinity loop. She is flanked by owls, who later in Greek mythology will also turn out to be the symbol animal of the wise divine virgin Pallas Athena.
Many temples erected in the worship of Inanna are still found along the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. The Eanna temple complex near Uruk contains the largest of these. This 5000 year old temple complex has been rebuilt regularly. The temple wall was lined with red, black and white cones, pressed into the soft clay. The columns had a height of 3 meters and were made in the shape of palm trees.
Inanna is a so-called "mother goddess", a symbol of creativity and fertility. Although she has a definite personality in myths, she has roots in the more generalized, cosmogonic "earth mother," the eternally fruitful source of everything. Such figures can be found all around the world, dating from the Stone Age. A good example is the so-called "Jomon Venus," a clay female figurine from the Middle Jomon period (3,000–2,000 BC), discovered in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Its shape is thought to resemble a pregnant woman: broad hips, prominent breasts and an enlarged belly.
[Jomon Venus, Japan]
Source of citation: Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998- . (https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section4/tr4077.htm). I have changed the interpunction and also made a small change to the translation.
Great Poetry Around the World Index