A great and powerful civilization once flourished in Mesopotamia (Greek for 'between the rivers'). This area, now in modern Iraq, included the kingdoms of Sumeria, Akkadia, Assyria and Babylonia, although its culture and influence spread over a much wider area of the Middle East.
"In the radiant heavens, to give omens in abundance, I appear, I appear in perfection. With exaltation in my supremacy, with exaltation do I, a Goddess, walk supreme; Ishtar, the Goddess of evening am I; Ishtar, the Goddess of morning, am I; Ishtar, who opens the portals of heaven, in my supremacy."
The Goddess Ishtar"The Lightbringer". Babylonian High-Mother-Goddess.Like Inanna, she is the goddess of fertility, love and war.Her cult was the most important one in ancient Babylon and Ishtar became under various names the most important Goddessof the Near-East and Western Asia.
She is Goddess of the Morning and the Evening star, Venus. Some writers have tried to fit her to a later pair of Semitic deities representing morning and evening stars as distinct, but the Sumerians recognised the identity, and even coined a specific title, "Ninsianna" (Heaven's radiant queen) to describe her as the Goddess of both, a goddess linking the daylight realm of her brother, the sun-god Utu (Shamash) with the night realm of her parents, the moon-god and goddess, Nanna (Sin) and Ningal.
She is not only a Goddess of beauty and love, sacred and profane, but also a very bloodthirsty Goddess of war. "When I stand in the front (line) of battle I am the leader of all the lands, When I stand at the opening of the battle, I am the quiver ready to hand, When I stand in the midst of the battle, The arm of the warriors, When I begin moving at the end of the battle, I am an evilly rising flood, ?" [Jacobsen: Treasures of Darkness.]
This two-fold nature of Inanna (identified as Ishtar) is easily explained in terms of modern biochemistry. Love and war, sexuality and aggression are two manifestations of one very important hormone, adrenaline. (Medical students for decades have been taught that adrenaline is the four Fs hormone - fighting, fleeing, feeding, and, er ... mating?) There is a more serious interpretation. The Sumerians like the pre-Socratic Greeks two millennia later, conceived of the universe as comprising four components, fire, air, earth and water, presided over by the twin powers of love and strife. Inanna personifies that twin presiding power, of ana- meaning building up, the affinitive power of love; and -lysis, splitting, the power of war. These two words constitute analysis, of which she is the ultimate presiding goal and thus impetus. We now recognise the Sumerian view of the four "elements" in its psychological context as representing the four functions (thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition) presided over by what Jung called the transcendent function, uniting opposites in such a way as to lead to further development.
Inanna's personification of two major aspects of libido, spirituality and sensuality, illustrates this very elegantly. She even transcended gender. Despite being depicted invariably as a beautiful feminine deity, she was worshipped in some rituals by people who wore clothing, which was half feminine and half masculine, denoting her equal importance for everyone, regardless of sex. It should come as no surprise then that Inanna was seen as a judge, not only of people but of gods too.
"Monthly, at new moon, that the offices be carried out properly, the country's gods gather unto her. The great Anunnaki, having bowed to her, are stepping up for prayer, petition, and plaint, able to voice unto her the pleas of all the lands, and Milady decides the country's cases, settling them." [Jacobsen: Harps p 114]
