Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth. - book reviews

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1992 by Karen Smith

Storyteller and folklorist Diane Wolkstein was looking for a "`grand' story of a woman" when she discovered translations of the 4,00O-year-old cuneiform tablets recounting the cycle olinanna, also called Ishtar. As she writes in her introduction, "Inannas scribe, [Sumerologist and cuneiformist] Samuel Noah Kramer, gave me her words. I have sung them as best as I can. Now, we pass them on to you." What they pass on is the story olinanna's coming of age; her courtship and marriage; the deal (some might say swindle) with the God of Wisdom that won her the entire Order of the Universe, the dharma the way it is; and the descent to, and return from, her dank sisters underworld, The Great Below. The story is as compelling and accessible now as it was back in ancient Sumer (southem Iraq). --Karen Smith

Inanna is Queen of Heaven and Earth, but she does not know the underworld. Until her ear opens to the Great Below, her understanding is necessarily limited. In Sumerian, the word for ear and wisdom is the same. The ear, which is located mostly internally and is coiled like a spiral or labyrinth, takes in sounds and begins to transform the imperceptible into meaning.

At that time, a tree, a single tree, a huluppu-tree

Was planted by the banks of the Euphrates.

The South Wind pulled at its roots and ripped at its branches

Until the waters of the Euphrates carried it away.

I plucked the tree from the river;

I brought it to my holy garden.

I tended the tree, waiting for my shining throne and bed.

Then a serpent who could not be charmed

Made its nest in the roots of the tree,

The Anzu-bird set his young in the branches of the tree,

And the dark maid Lilith built her home in the trunk.

I wept.

How I wept ! (Yet they would not leave my tree.)

Inanna spoke:

"What I tell you

Let the singer weave into song,

What I tell you,

Let it flow from ear to mouth,

Let it pass from old to young:

My vulva, the horn,

The Boat of Heaven,

Is full of eagerness like the young moon.

My untilled land lies fallow."