Inanna (ISO of source material)

[Revenance]

Oh, please do forgive me, I am very new to serious study of Mesopotamia, and I know Inanna is such a popular topic!  I poked around a bit on the board but was unable to find what I was looking for, so any direction would be quite welcome.

I have an assignment of a mini-thesis of my choosing, and I would like to take the opportunity to further my understanding of Inanna / Ishtar.  I was hoping you might be able to send me the way of reliable sources, because the world is fraught with the nonsense of neo-pagans.  I have just finished "Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth", and "Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart".  The broad purpose of my paper (perhaps to yet be narrowed down - I'm mayyyybe a bit ambitious for a 25 page paper!) is to examine the worship of Inanna, her development over time, how her cult faded as did so many others with the rise of monotheism, and remnants of her veneration in our post-modern world.  

Thank you in advance for helping a poor beginner out!

[us4-he2-gal2]

Revenance:



I would be happy to offer some advice on this effort. Inanna/Ishtar is a deity who really covers the entirety of Mesopotamian history, from the Archaic Sumerian period (circa 3200 BC) to the Hellenistic period, approx, 3000 years of history. In order to chart the development of this goddess then, it will be necessary to build a working model of Mesopotamian history, the major epochs and so on.

Firstly, Diane Wolkstein is perhaps a good place to start, to gain an initiation, but since you are seeking more information you may have sensed some flaws with her scholarship, which are indeed there. I gave some opinions about Wolkstein here on enenuru in 2008, mainly that she delt dishonestly with the scholar upon whom she relied for her knowledge - this basically is academic dishonesty: See Wollstein


Secondly, there is a thread wherein we discuss Inanna/Ishtar to some degree, not all posts are sound. My own posts attempt to summarize academic articles for the reader, giving a flavor for some of the central points (but especially in those days I did not include page numbers as one would in a formal paper). See Inanna/Ishtar.



Thirdly I think the study of Inanna in the earliest period is perhaps most interesting. Her home city of Uruk in Sumer is the oldest city we have records from, but those records are administrative, there are no written myths from the earliest period..but there are hints that Inanna was already there. The earliest notions of the goddess are thus frustratingly obscure. Around 2400 a Semitic people, the Akkadians, overran Sumer and introduced their own goddess, Ishtar, who was decidedly more warlike in character, subsequently the Sumerian Inanna and the Semitic Ishtar merged into one goddess. Hints of the original Inanna are seen in the early city seals, for example: see city seals.

[us4-he2-gal2]

A nice resource on Inanna/Ishtar and some bibliography is available at ORRAC (a massive online web project connecting Assyriological departments around the world): see here.


I also have a number of pdfs that may be useful, feel free to e-mail me at [e-mail] if you'd like further materials. Best Regards - Bill.

[Revenance]

Thank you very much for taking the time to reply! I read over your post on Wolkstein and yes, I'm inclined to agree with you. I appreciated the poetry and the general overview of "Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth", but I had a strong distaste for many of Wolkstein's "interpretations". Even as a beginner, they reeked of her own agenda. I will absolutely be e-mailing you for those pdfs, cannot thank you enough!