Inanna, Sumerian Queen of the Gods
In ancient times, one goddess stood above all others...
In ancient times, one goddess stood above all others, and her legend spanned many cultures over thousands of years. Inanna was the Sumerian queen of the gods, dating back to 4,000 BC.
You may be more familiar with the name Ishtar. She was the Akkadian, Babylonian, and Assyrian incarnation of the goddess Inanna, whose worship spread from the earlier Sumerian society.
Inanna’s mythology portrays her as a complex and powerful figure. She was revered as the Queen of Heaven and Earth and is often considered the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, and war.
If those concepts seem contradictory, remember that the most important areas of life in the ancient world revolved around fertility—not only that of humans but also of crops and livestock, without which even the strongest empires could fall into ruin by starvation and internecine competition.
While women’s roles ranged from limited to downright oppressed in many cultures of the ancient world, a surprising number of them cast goddesses in the important role of war deity, including ancient Greece, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Babylonia.
Inanna is also described as impetuous and power-hungry, and her romantic conquests were legion. Her most famous myth is her "Descent into the Underworld" to visit her sister, Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Dead.
The Seven Gates
The Underworld is protected by seven gates. At each gate, Inanna was forced to give up one of her royal items: her crown, her jewelry, her measuring rod, and her royal robes. By the final gate, she entered the Underworld naked and powerless.
The idea is that no one but the Queen of the Underworld has the ability to enter and exit the Underworld. Then as now, dying is a one-way trip. Just as humans are stripped of their worldly possessions and the trappings of their station in life when they die, the goddess Inanna had to give up everything, and enter the Underworld with nothing.
Sisterly Rivals
Inanna’s sister, Ereshkigal, is the dark goddess of the Underworld, another unusual occupation for a female deity in ancient times. When Inanna entered her throne room, her sister was angered by her arrival, and commanded her servants to strike Inanna dead, hanging her body on a hook.
Eventually, with the help of the god Enki, Inanna escaped the Underworld, but only by striking a bargain to offer up the life of her husband and consort, Dumuzi—and in some tellings, his sister, who were forced to spend half the year in the Underworld, a metaphor for the changing of the seasons similar to the Greek myth of Persephone.
The Venus Cycle
Inanna was revived and returned to the world of the living, symbolizing the cyclical nature of life, death, and resurrection. Her descent and rebirth is also symbolically associated with the orbit of Venus around the Sun, and the beautiful pattern it traces in the sky as it circles and retrogrades throughout its cycle as seen from the Earth.
From Earth, the orbit of Venus appears to trace a beautiful, five-pointed, petal-like pattern in the sky over a period of eight years. The planet’s geometric path creates a pentagram, which is why Inanna is closely associated with the Venus.
Video credit: Reddit
In astrology, Inanna’s descent into the Underworld mirrors the journey Venus makes as it moves between being the Morning and Evening Star:
The Evening Star (Descent): Venus shines brightly in the western sky for about nine months, representing Inanna ruling as the Queen of Heaven. When the planet drops toward the horizon, it symbolizes Inanna’s journey to the Underworld.
The Underworld (Disappearance): Venus disappears from the sky for about 60 to 90 days as it passes between the Earth and the Sun. This is the part of the myth where Inanna passes through seven gates into the Underworld, disappearing from life.
Astronomically, this is when Venus appears to to turn retrograde (backwards) in the sky, and hides behind the Sun’s glare from our perspective on Earth.
The Morning Star (Rebirth): When Venus reappears in the eastern sky as the Morning Star, she is a brilliant beacon of resurrection. This mirrors her escape from the Underworld and her return to the heavens, to preside as a symbol of war, triumph and rebirth.
