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Ereshkigal 83
different time periods according to the relative
strength of their respective city. Thus Marduk,
patron of Babylon, rose from the status of a rather
obscure divinity to become king of the gods with
the rise of Babylon’s political fortunes.
Like the gods of the Greek and Roman
pantheons, Mesopotamian divinities were pictured
as human beings “drawn large.” The gods were, in
other words, not much more than strong human
beings, possessing magical powers and immortality.
Humanity, for its part, was created out of clay
to serve the gods. Unlike Judaism, Christianity, or
Islam, this creation did not include the fashioning
of an immortal soul. Hence the afterlife was
conceived of as a pale shadow of earthly life, much
like the Jewish Sheol or the Greek Hades.
Mesopotamians, like many of the other traditional
peoples of the world, imagined the universe
as a three-tiered cosmos of heaven (above the
earth), earth, and hell (beneath the earth).
Heaven was reserved for deities, most of whom
resided there. Living human beings occupied the
middle world. The spirits of the dead resided
beneath the earth.
The chief deity of the Mesopotamian underworld
was the goddess Ereshkigal. Although she
could be harsh, Ereshkigal was not as irredeemably
evil as the Christian Satan. The dead
stood before her and she pronounced their death
sentence. Simultaneously, their names were
entered in the ranks of the dead by the scribe
Geshtinana. Rather than enjoying her job, the
queen of the underworld was portrayed as
saddened by the fate of many of her subjects: “I
weep for young men forced to abandon sweethearts.
I weep for girls wrenched from their lovers’
laps. For the infant child I weep, expelled before its
time” (Dalley 1989, 156).
One of the more widespread Mesopotamian
stories involved the descent of the goddess Ishtar
to the underworld. The first version of this tale
was recorded by the Sumerians, whose name for
Ishtar was Inanna. The second version was a later,
Akkadian text. Ishtar was the most important
goddess in all periods of Mesopotamian history,
the parallel of the Mediterranean Aphrodite/
Venus. Precisely why Ishtar should have undertaken
such a perilous journey is obscure. Some
interpreters have speculated that Ishtar wished
to usurp her sister and extend her rule to the
underworld; others that she simply wished to
visit her sister.
Before embarking, she has the wisdom to
inform her chief minister that she is about to
undertake a journey to the underworld, and
instructs him to appeal to the gods in heaven to
intervene should it become necessary to retrieve
her from her sister’s realm. As it turns out, Ishtar is
unable to return. Because Inanna/Ishtar is the
goddess of sex and therefore the goddess of fertility,
her absence from the earth is immediately
noticed: “No bull mounted a cow, no donkey
impregnated a jenny. No young man impregnated
a girl. The young man slept in his private room.
The girl slept in the company of her friends.” In
order to reactivate the natural forces of life and
reproduction, the gods in heaven are forced to
come to Inanna/Ishtar’s aid.
The ancient Mesopotamians also told several
variants of another, more upbeat, story of descent
to the underworld, the tale of Nergal and
Ereshkigal. In this story Nergal, as a consequence
of an affront to Ereshkigal’s vizier, is required to
appear in the queen of the underworld’s court to
offer an apology. Ereshkigal finds herself attracted
to this upper world god and attempts to seduce
him by allowing Nergal, the Mesopotamian Mars,
to see her undress for a bath. He resists her charms
at first, but gives in on her second try. After a full
week of lovemaking, Nergal steals away before
dawn. When she hears that he has abandoned her,
Ereshkigal falls to the ground and cries. She then
sends her vizier to heaven, demanding that they
return Nergal to her:
Ever since I was a child, I have not known the
companionship of other girls. I have not
known the romping of children. As mistress
of the dead, I am not pure enough to take my
rightful place among the other great gods. I
have dwelt alone in sadness, but the god
whom you sent to me has opened my heart to
love. Return him to me! Return him to me or
I shall raise up the dead, and they will eat the
living, until the dead outnumber the living!
(Dalley 1989, 173).