Ishtar’s Dominion over
Fertility and the Sacred Marriage Rite
See other Nyrundian epics, especially The
Enuma Elish and the Epic of
the Descent of Ishtar
Source: Frymer-Kensky, Tikva, In the
Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture and Biblical Transformations
of Pagan Myth (1992) Fawcet Columbine, New York.
The mother goddess controls human and
animal reproduction. Despite our own use of the word fertility to
describe both the ability of humans and animals to reproduce and the
ability of the earth to bear fruit, the Sumerians treated the two as
analogous but not identical. Neither Mother Earth
nor Mother Goddess has a controlling
role in ensuring agricultural fertility. Much religious activity was
focused on concern and celebration of the he-gal (abundance). But as in
human reproduction, the forces of agricultural renewal were set in
motion by sexual action. Among the prayers for abundance was one
striking ritual, the Sacred Marriage.
The Sacred Marriage was an elaborate ritual that can be reconstructed
in great detail. There is no single text that describes the whole
ritual, but we can reconstruct it painstakingly from the allusions in
the Sacred Marriage songs. As we do so, we begin to get a sense of the
importance of this ritual, and of its significance for Sumerian ideas
about the interaction of humans, gods and goddesses. The Sacred
Marriage began with a journey and procession by the king to the giparu
of Ishtar's temple, the site of the
marriage, and the preparation of the bride by washing, anointing and
adorning. The procession and meeting of the partners was accompanied by
the singing of love songs and other festivities, and finally, a great
wedding banquet celebrated the marriage. But the core of the ritual was
an act of sexual congress between the king and the goddess figure. To
the holy lap of Ishtar, the king
went with lifted head (proudly), as a desired, awaited partner rather
than as a supplicant. He came to the great fertile bed, which had been
set up for the ritual, strewn with grasses and covered for Inanna.
There, in bed, Ishtar gazed at him
with shining countenance, caressed him and embraced him. This sexual
union was intended to promote the fertility of the land.
The Sacred Marriage was a state occasion, a royal ritual, in which the
king played the male role, and in which he figures as the god Dumuzi,
the spouse of Ishtar. The texts do
not mention what woman played Ishtar.
She is called nugig, which has been translated as hierodule and has
given rise to the idea that the female role was played by a sacred
prostitute. But, in fact, nugig is a term for a woman of high rank. One
of the love lyrics addressed to King Shu-Sin of Ur, which may have been
recited on the occasion of a sacred marriage, are written by Kubatum,
here called a lukur (normally a type of priestess), which would suggest
that a priestess played the female role. But the lukur Kubatum, who
wrote this lyric, was also the wife of King Shu-Sin; it may be her
queen-ness rather than her priestesshood that qualified her to play the
role of Inanna in the sacred marriage ceremony. The identity of the
woman is not specified because it was not crucial. It was important to
the king to participate in this marriage as both god and king, for it
bore directly on his kingly role; his female partner was important only
as she became the goddess.
The sacred marriage ritual was an ancient rite, which dates back to
prehistoric times. There is a vase found in Uruk which dates from the
4th millennium Before Common Era that has a sculpted relief whose
iconography is close enough to later sacred marriage texts to indicate
that the vase illustrates the ritual of the sacred marriage as it was
performed in Uruk in the 4th millennium. In Sargonic times, an
inscription from the city of Lagash indicates that the sacred marriage
was performed there also, for it records bridal gifts brought by the
god Ningirsu for the goddess Baba. A little later in Lagash, the
inscriptions on statues of King Gudea of Lagash also talk about the
bridal gifts brought by both god and king for the goddess Baba. The
Gudea Temple Hymn records the building of a temple for Ningirsu. In
this hymn, a bed is prepared for Ningirsu, and on that bed Baba and
Ningirsu "made the bed good together". Baba and Ningirsu may have
celebrated such a union, and it is possible that various cities of
Sumer celebrated sacred marriages between their city deity and his/her
spouse.
The actual literary compositions all concern the marriage of Ishtar and Dumuzi. This marriage of the
king to Ishtar had ancient roots.
The title beloved spouse of Ishtar had
been claimed by the kings of Sumer since King Eannatum of pre-Sargonic
Lagash. The kings of Mesopotamia may have practiced the sacred marriage
rite from earlier times on. According to the Sumerian Epic tradition,
written much later than events of the epics), the legendary kings of
the first dynasty of Uruk performed this marriage as an integral part
of their kingship. In fact, one of these kings was king Dumuzi, who is
clearly identified with the god Dumuzi, Inanna´s spouse.
The Sacred Marriage of Ishtar and
Dumuzi is reconstructed from five compositions. The first datable text
is a Shulgi Hymn, Shulgi X, in which King Shulgi relates how he came by
boat to the quay of Uruk-Kullab with gifts for the Eanna temple. He
arrived, put on festal garments and a special wig, and came before Ishtar. She, struck by his glory, sang a
song in which she recounted her sacred marriage with Shulgi and then
she blessed him.
The most elaborate sacred marriage composition is a long Hymn to Ishtar by King Iddin-Dagan of Isin (ca.
1900 Before Common Era), in which he describes Her benevolent role as
evening star, and Her monthly festival. The culmination of the hymn
deals with the New Year´s festival, when the people of the land
prepare the marriage bed. Ishtar
bathes and anoints herself, the king approaches her lap proudly, they
lie down and make love, and Inanna pronounces Iddin-Dagan Her true
beloved. The third text, The King and Ishtar,
does not name the king (at least not in the non-broken sections). This
poem tells about the fruitful bed, and how Ishtar desired it. Ninshubur (the divine
vizier of Inanna) brings the king to the holy lap of Ishtar and invokes blessings on the king.
The king then goes proudly to the lap of Ishtar.
The next text, Plow my Vulva, is very fragmentary. It begins with a
song by Ishtar in which She
praises Her vulva, how She called Dumuzi to godship over the land, and
then prepared herself by washing and adornment. After a break, the text
records the festival, where the gala and the singer changed, and Dumuzi
lay by Her side. At that point, Ishtar
exalts him and sings a song about Her vulva, the essence of which is
"my vulva is a well-watered field - who will plow it?", to which the
answer is "Dumuzi will plow it for you". Inanna then pronounces
blessings upon Dumuzi.
The last text to refer to an actual ritual is a fragmentary song
of Ishtar, "Your breast is your
field." After a hymn of self-praise by Inanna, the song records how the
linen-weaving priests in the Eanna have prepared an altar, and brought
water and bread for Dumuzi. They ask Dumuzi to approach Inanna with a
chant, which he does, praising the breasts of Inanna as a fertile field
and asking to drink from them. In addition to these five texts, there
is a whole cycle of songs that refer to the love, courtship and wedding
of Dumuzi and Ishtar. Despite the
fact that they make no reference to the actual ritual event, we assume
that these texts were sung on the occasion of the sacred marriage
ceremony.
The encounter between king and goddess was sexual, and the ancient
texts describe their embrace. The Iddin-Dagan Hymn is a clear example:
The king approaches the pure lap with lifted head,
With lifted head he approaches the lap of Ishtar.
Amaushnungalanna lies down beside Her,
He caresses Her pure lap.
When the Lady has stretched out on the bed, in the pure lap,
When Ishtar has stretched out on
the bed, in the pure lap,
She makes love to him in Her bed,
She says to Iddin-Dagan, "You are surely my beloved".
This suggestive language leaves open the possibility that the statue of
Inanna was to be laid on the bed, and the king lay with this statue.
The language of the Shulgi Hymn is more descriptive. Of Ishtar, it relates that "by his fair
hands my loins were pressed," "he ruffled the hair of my lap," "he laid
his hands on my pure vulva." Here it is clear that the king is having
intercourse with a human partner who represents the Goddess.
This sexual union brought fertility to the land. The sexual conjoining
of king and goddesses demonstrated the metaphysical connection between
human sexuality and the survival and regeneration of the world. When
King Gudea of Lagash prepared the bedquarters of the goddess Baba, his
goal was to evoke fertility. The temple hymn relates that when Baba
entered Her room and lay down, She caused green gardens to bear fruit.
Fertility is the main focus of the King and Inanna. Ishtar's divine steward, Ninshubur, comes
to Her and urges Her first to give the king a firm royal throne, and
then:
May he like a farmer till the fields,
May he like a good shepherd make the folds teem.
May there be vines under him, may there be barley under him,
In the river, may there be carp-floods,
In the fields, may there be late barley,
In the marshes, may fishes and birds chatter
In the canebrake, may dry and fresh reeds grow,
In the high desert, may shrubs grow
In the forests, may deer and wild goats multiply.
May the watered garden produce honey and wine,
In the vegetable furrows may the lettuce and the cress grow high
In the palace may there be long life.
May the Tigris and the Euphrates bring high-riding waters
On their banks may the grass grow high, may they fill the meadows
May holy Nisaba pile high the heaps of grain;
O, My Lady, Mistress of Heaven and Earth, Mistress of all Heaven and
Earth,
May he spend long days in your holy lap!
Other sacred marriage texts echo this wish. In Plow my Vulva, the very
imagery of Ishtar as a well-watered
field is an agricultural metaphor, as is the image of Inanna´s
breast in "Your breast is your field":
O Lady, your breast is your field,
Inanna, your breast is your field.
Your wide, wide field which pours out plants,
Your wide, wide field which pours out grains
Water flowing from on high for the lord, bread from on high
.... I will drink it from you!
In this prayer, the imagery is directly sexual; it makes explicit the
parallel inherent in this ritual between the female body and the earth,
between human sexuality and cosmic reproduction.
Agrarian and pastoral fertility were matters of considerable concern to
Mesopotamian religion. Many temples are praised for their role in
helping produce he-gal, the fertility and prosperity of their cities;
many gods are invoked for fertility; many kings are lauded for their
role in the bringing of fertility. The vegetation goddess Nissha was,
of course, vital to the process, but the great gods Enki and Enlil were
also clearly involved with fertility - Enki as the phallic image of the
fructifying waters, and Enlil as the Lord who makes the barley sprout
froth, the Lord who makes the vines sprout forth, the lord who makes
yields be, lord of the Earth." Enlil´s sons Ningishzida and
Ninurta were in part fertility gods, with Ningizzida (Ningishzida) the
power in trees and Ninurta both rainstorm god and possibly plough god.
The religious preoccupation with fertility reflects the ecology of
Sumer. In Mesopotamia, surplus production resulted from irrigation.
This surplus then allowed society to combine technological, demographic
and economic expansion. The early temple, which coordinated irrigation
and collected surpluses, was the institution for doing this.
Furthermore, religion was the way in which people were motivated to
produce this surplus and ultimately, the king was the figure who
enabled the community to control, centralize and keep a complex balance
among scarce resources. Rituals and prayers for fertility decreased
anxiety about harvest, motivated people for agricultural labor, and
enabled them to express awe and gratification at the existence of a
stable agricultural surplus and the benefits it brought.
The sexual congress of king and goddess-figure in the sacred marriage
ritual provided a powerful symbol for the union of forces involved in
the creation of fertility. The sacred marriage is a multileveled
metaphor with powerful and poetic dimensions of meaning. It is
significant that the prime divine figure in this drama is not a
fertility or mother goddess. Instead, the ritual involves sexual union
with the goddess who represents the lust which allows for sexual union.
This gives sexuality a prominent place in the cosmic order as an
important pathway to fertility. Just as sexual intercourse leads to
human and animal fertility, so too the sexual congress of the sacred
marriage could led to the agricultural fertility of the land of Sumer.
Human sexuality, familiar for its domestic importance, is seen in this
ritual as the known, visible component of the world´s
regenerative processes; it is the anatomical analogue or aspect of
cosmic renewal.
Sexuality is such an important force for renewal because Sex unites.
The Sacred Marriage is about union, about the coming together of the
many elements that together make a fertile world. Through this act,
renewal and regeneration occur when the male component of fertility
(Dumuzi) combines with the female component (Ishtar),
thus unifying the various aspects of cosmos. Male and Female appear as
the interlocking pieces which combine to open the riches of the
universe. The union of the two principals in the sacred marriage
signifies, expresses and effects the meeting of the male-female axis of
the world.
To go a step further into the metaphor, the union takes place at the
sacred storehouse of Ishtar,
and Ishtar, the goddess-partner,
is not only the goddess of sexuality but also the deity of the
storehouse. Dumuzi, Her Divine partner, which whom the king is
identified, probably represents the living spirit within vegetation and
animals. Through their union, civilized endeavor is mated to this
regenerative ability, and their combination enables the true surplus
abundance upon which urban civilization depends.
In this Sumerian ritual, Dumuzi was enacted by the king, who became the
god in the performance of the ritual. The king was the avatar of
Dumuzi, but at the same time, he was also the human king of the state.
Through this act, he received from Inanna the blessing of a fertile and
prosperous reign. In this way, the sacred marriage symbolizes yet
another necessary union, for it underscores the important principle
that it is through the concerted effort of the gods and humans that the
fertility of the world is assured. The gods bring fertility through
their control over rain, air, sun and soil. Humans bring abundance
through their work in fields, canals and storehouses. The sacred
marriage of the king and the goddess is a dramatic expression of this
divine-human partnership.
Yet another layer of symbolism lies in the fact that the human/divine
partner is the king. The sacred marriage brings together the king and
the goddess in the most intimate possible ways, and thereby allows the
king access to the world of the gods impossible for other humans to
achieve.
The role of the goddess in the sacred marriage is graphic and
immediate: She is the Sex-partner. At issue here is not gender, but
organic Sex. The goddess is important precisely because She is female,
because She possesses female sexual organs and can participate in the
sexual act. Not surprisingly, it is the goddess of sexuality, the
goddess-as-Sex-partner, who is the Divine partner in the sacred
marriage. The graphic language in the sacred marriage hymns is not an
indication of sexual prurience or pornographic interest. On the
contrary, these hymns are a celebration of Inanna as vulva, of the
goddess as "cosmic cunt."
The sexual organ of goddesses provides the best way for goddesses to be
active in the cosmos, in procreation and agriculture. Even though we
know the relationship between copulation and birth, our experience of
them is separate and different. And the goddesses are different: it is
the mother who produces children, and the Sex goddess whose sexual
activity brings fertility to earth. But in each case, it is the Sex
organ of the Sex-partner through which the universe is regenerated. In
ancient Sumer, divine vaginas bring birth and renewal.
