Faces of the Goddess Magazine SGC 21

The Origin of Inanna and the Birth of the Gods
Steffy Vonscott
“The first Gods were elemental beings. They
were Gods of air and sky and sea. They were
Gods of the natural elements that surround
us. They were Gods of the Heavenly bodies,
and of the celestial sphere. They were Gods
of the Sun and Moon, of the stars, and of the
Planet Venus. They were the humanization
and anthropomorphization of nature and
the natural world around us. They emerged
at a time when mankind took control of his
own habitat, and when the human race took
mastery of his own surroundings.”
Inanna stands as the dawn of history: a wild
woman; beautiful, passionate, ferocious and
untameable; a union of opposites. Mother
of love, lust, passion and warfare. She sits
astride a mighty lion, teeth-bared, her
roar resounding down through the ages, a
stark reminder of her immense power and
influence. She is a Goddess of Kingship and
dominion, of love and of passionate embraces,
of ambition and the attainment of great
victories: both in warfare and in personal
conflicts. She is a Goddess with the power to
raise the dead, and bring the sick, weak and
weary back to health, wealth and wellbeing.
She is a Goddess of women and children, of
great armies and mighty Kingdoms, of the
lost and those who wish to be found. She
is a Goddess of mothers and sons, of Kings
and Queens and High Priestesses, of tavern
keepers and prostitutes. She is a Goddess for
all of the people, no matter their position
or place in society, nor sexuality; all were
welcome in her Temple Cult, and the people
revered her for it.
Inanna’s worship dates back long before
recorded history. It dates back to before even
the Sumerian Era. It dates to a time when her
patron city of Uruk was still a small settlement
called Kullaba. This settlement first emerged
during the early Ubadian Period c.5300 BCE.
According to the Archaeology of the region,
this settlement merged with a neighbouring
settlement known as the Eanna. The two
distinct regions, Kulab and Eanna, would
go on to become two major Districts of the
City of Uruk. We find this captured in the
literature from the earliest myths from Sumer,
which come from Uruk itself.
We have this preserved IN the epic
‘Lugalbanda and the Anzu Bird’, the myth
which details Inanna’s place in the earliest
history of the city of Uruk. The myth tells how
Inanna once lived far off in the mountains;
the place where the people of Sumer once saw
the rising and setting of Inanna to the West in
her earliest form of the Goddess as the living
embodiment of the Planet Venus. The myth
then tells the tale of how Inanna moved from
the mountains to the settlements of Uruk, and
into the “brick-built Kullaba” at the earliest
history of the city, before both settlements
merged. The myth describes how these
settlements began as marshes; full of water
and thick reed thickets. In time, the reeds
were cut down, canals were dug, the ground
water drained, and the settlements merged,
and over time they grew into one of the
first cities in history, with Inanna its patron
Goddess.
At this time period, Inanna was venerated
as the tutelary Goddess of the storehouse,
and a guardian Goddess of dates, wool, meat
and grain, and foods that were stored there to
prevent them perishing. Inanna’s earliest role
as a guardian of the Harvest was an incredibly
important role when civilization first began,
as she ensured the protection of the food and
sustenance that would be later redistributed
by the temple to feed the city.
We see that role represented in the earliest
written form of Inanna’s name, where she was
first represented as a pictograph of the gate
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