Inanna-Ishtar

[Nyktelios]

Her name probably means "Lady of Heaven", coming from Sumerian nin, "lady" and anu, "heaven". It also could be related to "Nanna" the god of the moon, who is sometimes said in myth to be her father (as were Anu and Enlil).

Not much is known about Inanna herself during the Sumerian civilization, but the Assyro-Babylonian goddess Ishtar is thought to have absorbed many of her functions. She is the cruel goddess of carnal desire and sexuality who ruled over the fertility of the universe, a goddess of war, and tutelary deity of the ruling dynasty. Ishtar is a bisexual goddess, symbolized by the planet Venus, which is only visible in the morning and evening. As Venus in the morning, Ishtar is in her masculine aspect, depicted in male form as a war deity. In the evening, she is in her feminine aspect, as the goddess of sex and fertility.

Her most famous myth is her descent into the underworld to her sister Ereshkigal's realm. Those who enter the realm of death are not allowed to leave, so she needed to find someone to take her place in the underworld. Her mortal shepherd husband Dumuzi (Sumerian)/Tammuz (Babylonian) was partying it up in her absence, so she angrily made him her replacement.

The new year festival around the vernal equinox was an important occasion for Inanna and Dumuzi, when their sacred marriage was celebrated. It isn't known whether it was celebrated with actual sex between human representatives of Inanna and Dumuzi, or if it was just a symbolic union of their cult statues. The ancient texts concerning the sacred marriage are pretty sexually explicit, with Inanna asking Dumuzi to "plow my vulva" and "plow my wet ground", which implies this was probably a ritual to ensure the fertility of the earth for the coming year.