The Descent of Inana
The Babylonian, Assyrian, and Akkadian cultures of the ancient Fertile Crescent regarded the star of Venus as the avatar of the goddess of love, sex, and war; a goddess they called Ishtar.
Ishtar (Ashar, Astaroeth, Astarte, Eoster, Ostara) was drawn from the pantheon of an earlier culture; she had been called Inana by the Sumerians, a people regarded as the premogenitors of civilization.
Before proceeding with Inana’s Descent, lets iron out some of the terminology for non-specialists like myself:
Sumer was an ancient city-state located in what is now Iraq, at the southern tip of the Mesopotamian Fertile Crescent; this is the region historians and anthropologists refer to as ‘the cradle of civilization’.
The Sumerian cultural and political hegemony was cemented by about 4,000 BC, with the Babylonian culture absorbing or displacing it by about 2,000 BC.
The Descent of Inana is considered the worlds first epic poem, though it is contemporary to Sumerian fragments that were later combined to form the Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh. Recorded on clay tablets in Sumerian Cuneiform sometime during the third millenium BC, the Descent of Inana describes the goddesses journey to hell and back.
Sumerian Cuneiform is distinct from the Semitic language used by the Babylonians. Though culturally (and perhaps ethnographically) distinct, the Babylonians fully embraced the myth-cycles of the Sumerian pantheon.
The first organized attempts to catalog the movements of the stars are attributed to the Assyro-Babylonians and dated to about 1000 BC, roughly a millenia after The Descent of Inana was recorded.
Despite this massive parallax in time, we might find embedded in the narrative of Inana’s Descent a detailed working knowledge of the machinery of the sky; for the story of Inana’s Descent appears to describe the occultations of the planet Venus.
HERE IS A FULL TRANSLATION OF INANA’S POEM
The Occultations of Venus
‘Occultation’ is a word which means ‘to hide’; twice a year, the star of Venus goes missing from the sky. During these periods of occultation, Venus disappears for between one and two weeks at a time. When she returns, it’s always on the opposite side of the sky.
As the evening-star, she is seen for a few hours after sunset before setting into the west. In this form Venus is called ‘Hesperian’.
As the morning-star, she is seen rising boldly before the sun, heralding the dawn. The rising of the sun eventually subsumes her light; this is Venus in her ‘Luciferian’ aspect.
When Luciferian Venus goes into occultation, she will return as the evening star. When Hesperian Venus goes into occultation, she will return as the morning star.
This process must have seemed as magical to the ancients as it does to us. Inanna’s Poem suggests the Sumerians understood that the morning-star and the evening-star were in fact the same planet; this, in turn, suggests that Assyro-Babylonian astronomy crystalized on a framework thousands of years older than itself.
Solar Conjunction
When a planet appears to ‘conjoin’ with another celestial body from a geocentric perspective, it’s called a conjunction— the occultations of Venus are related to its cyclic solar conjunctions.
During inferior conjunction, Venus passes between Earth and the Sun.
Inferior conjunction occurs every 19 months and aligns with late winter— early spring.
Another period of occultation takes place during the superior conjunction of Venus, when the planet is on the far side of the Sun from Earth.
The superior conjunction of Venus is typically observed from late summer — early autumn.
During each period of conjunction, Venus is ‘occulted’ for one to two weeks at a time.
Inanna’s journey into the underworld is thought to parallel these phases of disappearance and re-appearance; Just as Inanna re-emerges from the underworld to reaffirm her divine status, so Venus reappears in our sky as either the morning or evening star after the period of occultation has elapsed.
This cyclical pattern highlights themes of renewal and transformation; the mythological narrative of Inana’s Descent into the Underworld finds its mirror in observable celestial cycles.
Venus describes an incredible geometric pattern when her movements through the sky are plotted over an eight-year period, called ‘the Rose of Venus’:
Summary of Inana's Descent
When Inana descends into the underworld, it’s because she lusts for power. The underworld is ruled by her sister Erishkergal, and Inana seeks to dethrone her.
Upon reaching the gates of hell, Inana is met by guardian deities who refuse her entry. She insists. The guardians relent, ultimately grating her access, but there is a price: at each of the seven gates she must shed a piece of her attire. When she finally stands before her sister Ereshkergal she is naked and humiliated, stripped of her divine status.
Ereshkigal sentences her petulant sister to death for her presumption. Inana is killed and suspended on a hook as a grim trophy, her body left to decay.
Inana’s absence causes distress and imbalance in the world above, so the other gods intervene on her behalf.
Inana’s faithful minister Nishubur, who accompanied her part of the way on her journey, enlists the help of Inana’s father Enki. The chief of the gods sends two androgynous spirits called galla to enter the dark realm of Erishkergal and lobby for Inana’s release.
The Queen of the Hell is having labor pains, and the galla offer her sympathy and help. In gratitude, Erishkergal promises them anything they might ask. They ask only for the corpse on the wall, which Erishkergal grants.
Inana is restored to life with the water and bread of life.
Upon returning to the world above, the galla become demons— they are tasked now with finding a soul to take Inana’s place in the underworld, for even a goddess cannot cheat death.
When Inana see’s her lover Tammuz reclining in his finery and untroubled by her absence, she chooses him to take her place in wrath.
The galla seize him for death’s satisfaction, but his sister Geshtianna volunteers to go in his stead.
Sort of like in the myth of Hades and Persephone, it is arranged that Geshtianna and Tammuz will spend half of every year in the underworld, each in their turn.
Thus brother and sister are forever divided, and the marriage of Inana and Tammuz is re-enacted around the same time every year.
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Venus and the Bull's Horns
The Zodiacal Sign of Taurus is ruled by Venus. If you plot the movements of the planet Venus from morning star to evening star and back across her 1.6 year synodic period you end up with this shape:
It looks like the horns of a bull!
In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Inanna summons the great Bull of Heaven to punish the hero Gilgamesh for rejecting her advances.
The star codes run deep.
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