Inanna went down to the underworld, and her husband paid the price
Inanna, Sumer's Queen of Heaven, starred in more myths than any other Sumerian deity. In the most famous, she descends into her sister's underworld, is judged and struck dead, then revived three days later. Leaving has a cost: demons drag her husband Dumuzid down in her place, and his half-year returns became the turning of the seasons.
She was the Mesopotamian goddess of love, sex and war, with political power and divine law in her portfolio as well. Akkadians, Babylonians and Assyrians called her Ishtar. Her early home was the Eanna temple at Uruk, where she was worshipped by about 4000 to 3100 BCE in forms including a morning and an evening Inanna, matching the two appearances of her planet, Venus. The lion and the eight-pointed star were her emblems.
Her myths often show her seizing other gods' territory. She obtained from Enki, god of wisdom, the mes, the powers underpinning every part of civilisation, good and bad, and took the Eanna temple from the sky god An. With her twin Utu she enforced divine justice, flattening Mount Ebih for defying her. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, when the hero scornfully refuses to be her consort, she sends the Bull of Heaven, setting off the death of Enkidu and Gilgamesh's struggle with mortality.
In the descent myth, the seven judges of the underworld condemn her in the throne room of her older sister Ereshkigal. Her attendant Ninshubur begs the gods for help; only Enki agrees, sending two sexless beings to bring her back. Dumuzid is taken as her substitute, but eventually spends half the year above while his sister Geshtinanna takes the other half below.
Her origins puzzle scholars because her powers are more varied and contradictory than any other deity's. One theory says several Sumerian goddesses merged; another says she was a Semitic deity who arrived late and absorbed every unclaimed role. Inanna and Ishtar were probably separate goddesses fused during the reign of Sargon of Akkad, after which her cult spread across Mesopotamia. The Assyrians ranked her near their national god Ashur, she influenced the Phoenician Astarte and possibly Aphrodite, and her worship faded between the first and sixth centuries CE as Christianity spread.
Source: Inanna
