Dictionary Of God And Godedesses

INANA 137to Imra, at a small town called Kushteki, wasdestroyed in the early 1900s, but was an imposingand ornately carved wooden structure. Othersmaller shrines survive, scattered throughout theregion.Imra is generally perceived as a beneficentteacher who has endowed mankind with variousgifts including cattle, dogs, wheat, the wheel andthe element iron. He also has a destructive side tohis nature, causing floods and other havoc.Ina’hitelanGuardian spirit. Koryak [southeastern Siberia].The father of cloud man YA’HALAN, he is perceivedas a supervisor of the skies and reindeer aresacrificed to him.INANA (queen of heaven)ORIGIN Mesopotamian (Sumerian) [Iraq]. Goddessof fertility and war.KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP circa 3500 BC to1750 BC.SYNONYMS Inninna; IŠTAR [Akkadian]; Nin-mesar-ra(lady of a myriad offices)CENTER(S) OF CULT Unug [Warka]; also Erbiland Nineveh.ART REFERENCES plaques, reliefs, votive stelae,glyptics, etc.LITERARY SOURCES cuneiform texts, particularlythe Gilgameš Epic and Inana’s Descent and theDeath of Dumuzi; temple hymns, etc.The paramount goddess of the Sumerian pantheon.Though not technically a “mother goddess,”she constitutes the first in a long line ofhistorically recorded female deities concernedwith the fertility of the natural world. Inana isalso a warrior goddess. She is the daughter of themoon god NANNA and sister of UTU and IŠKUR.In alternative tradition, she is the daughter of AN.Her attendant is the minor goddess NINŠUBUR,and her champion is the mythical hero Gilgameš.Of her many consorts, the most significant is thevegetation god DUMUZI. She becomes the handmaidenof An, the god of heaven. She is also identifiedas the younger sister of the underworldgoddess EREŠKIGAL. She is the tutelary deity ofthe southern Mesopotamian city of Unug (Uruk),where her sanctuary is the Eanna temple.Inana is usually depicted wearing a hornedheaddress and tiered skirt, with wings and withweapon cases at her shoulders. Her earliest symbolis a bundle of reeds tied in three places andwith streamers. Later, in the Sargonic period, hersymbol changes to a star or a rose. She may beassociated with a lion or lion cub and is oftendepicted standing atop a mountain. She may beembodied in the sacred tree of Mesopotamia,which evolved into a stylized totem made of woodand decorated with precious stones and bands ofmetal.Originally Inana may have been goddess of thedate palm, as Dumuzi was god of the date harvest.Her role then extended to wool, meat and grainand ultimately to the whole of the natural world.She was also perceived as a rain goddess and as thegoddess of the morning and evening stars. Shewas worshiped at dawn with offerings, and in theevening she became the patroness of temple prostituteswhen the evening star was seen as a harlotsoliciting in the night skies. In less commonlyencountered roles she is goddess of lighting andextinguishing fires, of tears and rejoicing, ofenmity and fair dealing and many other, usuallyconflicting, principles.According to legend, ENKI, who lives in thewatery abyss or Abzu beneath the city of Eridu,was persuaded while drunk, and through Inana’ssubterfuge, to endow her with more than a hundreddivine decrees, which she took back to Unugin her reed boat and which formed the basis of theSumerian cultural constitution.