A fresh retelling of the ancient texts about Ishtar, the world's first goddess. Illustrated with visual artifacts of the period. "A great masterpiece of universal literature."--Mircea Eliade

Around 2,300 BC Enheduanna was high priestess to the moon god Nanna at his temple in Ur, a position she held for almost forty years. This volume translates Enheduanna's three devotional poems to the goddess Inanna accompanied by an extensive commentary and discussion which places these highly personal and unique expressions within the context of Sumerian culture and religion. The author highlights the importance of the poems and the princess for our understanding of the place of women in Near Eastern society and religion.

A fresh retelling of the ancient texts about Ishtar, the world's first goddess. Illustrated with visual artifacts of the period. "A great masterpiece of universal literature."--Mircea Eliade Copyright © Libri GmbH. All rights reserved.

Path-breaking lesbian storyteller & scholar Judy Grahn explores poetry written over four thousand years ago on the life and loves of the great goddess Inanna

Stories about the goddess Inanna showing her growth from child to adult with great powers for good and ill.

When stars were many and people few, a great story was told everywhere. The first storytellers were women. Their story was so large it filled the universe it told of a Great Mother encompassing life, death and return of everything. When Neolithic farming people settled, and depended on plentiful crops and herds, a goddess of fertility stepped into stardom. Inanna is the Sumerian goddess of love, crescent moon, evening star, fertility and renewal. She is the longest lasting supreme goddess of the Ancient Near East. Inannas biography includes her rise to supreme holder of almost all the powers of culture and civilization. 5000 year old poems bring Inanna to life. She sings to her miraculous vulva and to her consort-lover; she struggles to keep her powers and complains of her losses and demotions. Inanna represents lifes powerful contradictions. She changes peace to war and back again; she causes strife and brings love; she turns women into men and men into women. Inanna loves all her people, every one. A biography must have adversity and Inanna has plenty; she must always conquer of the ever-rising tide of patriarchal domination in all its forms. Buried and forgotten for two millennia, she now steps from the dust, ties up her sandals, applies her kohl, adjusts her tiara, summons her lions, and returns. Her story is also womans story. Let me introduce you to Inanna, Queen of Heaven, Earth, and almost everything

This shape-shifter is back and ready to fight even more gods. After becoming Inanna’s champion, Val is an ordinary starchild in an ordinary cult with ordinary humans. The war over and branded with a star on their shoulder to mark them as her personal fighter. While the outside of the temple looks as if it could fall under the slightest breeze, inside is teeming with women and eunuchs serving the goddess. The roof garden is full of life and a lazy river in the temple perfect for relaxation. The strays that roam the streets and ships that fly in the night sky kind of the same as the forest back home. It’s not the worst life while waiting to learn what battle they might fight next. But things change when a woman is found dumped at the door. Nearly beaten to death and Inanna the only one who has the power to save her in time, a starchild’s world is about to become a lot more violent, again. The human speaks of a man nicknamed “Jackie” taking prostitutes off the street as part of a game. The closer to dying, the more points earned. A rumor he competes against others in a twisted competition. But when it seems that is the worst Jackie could do, he murders his family and goes missing. When Inanna’s twin and god of the sun and justice teams up for divine law and order, it becomes far worse than they ever imagined. The one man with a knife quickly turning into five gods and a demented plan they can only guess what the end goal is.

Inanna, a goddess of ancient Mesopotamia, was worshipped around 1800 BCE by our ancestors in the land that is now modern-day Iraq. But who was she? Who were her followers? And what did her stories mean for their lives? Lost for millennia, Inanna’s stories were buried and forgotten, unearthed by archaeologists only recently, around the turn of the 19th century. Their translation has been a remarkable work of collaboration by scholars from disparate parts of the globe, as fragments of stone tablets were pieced together and the symbols on them recorded, transliterated, and interpreted. And although we still know relatively little about this ancient time, a picture of this extraordinary figure has slowly begun to emerge, through the painstaking work of these dedicated scholars: Inanna the creator, Inanna the destroyer; the leader, the warrior, the lover, the friend. Inanna was a guiding light for her followers, a commanding symbol of justice and honour, and her stories have much to teach a contemporary readership about love, power, independence, and compassion. Now, these stories are brought to vivid, visceral life by beloved Canadian author Kim Echlin, who brings her trademark passion and poet’s sensibility to the translation of the Inanna myth. With a new introduction and comprehensive notes, this new English version renders Inanna’s powerful story accessible and captivating for a new generation of eager readers.

Inanna, in heaven, gazes happily down at the city of Uruk. Inanna: How they sing praises to me! How the people of Uruk worship me, the Queen of Heaven and Earth! They make sacrifices to me! They pray to me! Day and night, the people of Uruk show how much they love the Queen of Heaven and— Mamtar, an angel, enters. She stands before Inanna and bows her head...