This is the fourth and final episode in the 4-part series on the Sumerian myth of Inanna. We’ve crossed into the new year in the meantime, and this mixing of beginnings and endings felt appropriate for this myth and for these times.
What is the difference between a “beginning” and an “end?” What binds the realms of the Great Above and the Great Below? What is the shared reality of Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal, and Dumuzi and the rest of us mere mortals, for that matter?
Transcript of Dumuzi’s Dream & the regions of kindness (Inanna Myth #4)
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
A belated Happy New Year! I hope that you found reason to celebrate as we move together, and alone, through the many changes currently in progress. Today I’m going to tell you the end of the Sumerian myth of Inanna. This is the first episode of my third season as Myth Matters and my 7th or 8th season podcasting(!), and somehow the combination of beginnings and ending in the context of this myth feels especially appropriate for this time. The difference between an end and a beginning is a matter of perspective. A loss is also an invitation, an opening–this is the principle that we call transformation, and the real magic.
So let’s have a brief recap. In the last episode, the goddess Inanna is rescued from the underworld through the combined efforts of Ninshubur and the god Enki. Enki creates two little creatures from the dirt under his fingernails, and sends them down to Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Great Below, with specific instructions. The empathy these two creatures express for Ereshkigal, who is also Inanna’s sister, convinces the dark goddess to let Inanna off the hook. Literally. But no one can leave the underworld unmarked. Someone near and dear to Inanna must take her place in the dusty, dry, lifeless Great Below.
So, when Inanna returns, she is accompanied by the galla, heartless underworld demons, and they are going to take someone back to the underworld in Inanna’s place.
The first person they meet is Ninshubur, Inanna’s faithful advisor and friend. The galla want to take Ninshubur but Inanna says “no.” Next they meet Inanna’s son Shara and Inanna says “no” once again. Then they meet Inanna’s youngest son. Like the others, he has been mourning and praying and throws himself in the dust at Inanna’s feet when he sees her with the galla. Inanna protects him also.
Now the galla say, “Alright Inanna, let us walk on to your city of Uruk, and the big apple tree.” And there, sitting on his throne under the apple tree, is the husband and king Dumuzi. He’s dressed in his royal finery, busy with the affairs of state, and doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about Inanna’s absence or her reappearance. Inanna fixes him with the eye of death and tells the galla, “Take him. Take Dumuzi away.”
Dumuzi wails and prays to the god Utu, Inanna’s brother, and asks him to give him snake hands and feet so he can escape. Utu answers Dumuzi’s prayers and he slips away from the underworld demons.
And that was the end of the last podcast, episode 3 in this series.
Now, I invite you to sit back and relax and let the story take you where you need to go right now. Note the moments or details that catch your attention. Whatever it is, this is an opening into the meaning this story holds for you right now. I’ll make a few comments at the end of the story.
Dumuzi’s Dream
Dumuzi was terrified. His heart was filled with tears. He ran back to his home on the steppe and stumbled across the grasslands crying, “Oh frogs in the river, oh crabs in the river, weep for me. If something happens to me, if I disappear, please tell my mother. My mother will mourn for me. My sister will mourn for me.”
Exhausted, Dumuzi lay down among the rushes to sleep. He had a dream. When he woke up he shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and began to tremble. He called out for his sister. “Bring me my wise woman,” he said, “Bring me my little sister Geshtinanna, my sister the scribe, who knows many songs, who can interpret dreams. She will tell me the meaning of this dream.”
Geshtinanna came to her brother Dumuzi. He said, “A dream my sister, I must tell you my dream. Rushes grow thick about me. A single reed trembles alone. A double growing reed bends in the wind, first one is removed and then the other. Water is poured on my hearth. My churn is broken. My cup falls from its peg. My shepherd crook disappears. An eagle catches a lamb. A falcon catches a sparrow. My sister, your goats drag their lapis beards in the dirt. No milk is poured, the cup lies shattered, the sheepfold is given to the winds.”
Geshtinanna said “My brother, don’t tell me such a dream. Dumuzi, I don’t want to hear this dream. The rushes that grow about you are the galla who will surround you. The single reed is our mother, who grieves for you. The double reed is you and me, for we will share the same fate. You are the lamb Dumuzi, and the sparrow. You will die and your house will be no more.”
When Geshtinanna finished speaking, Dumuzi heard a sound. “Quick sister,” he cried, “Run up to the top of that hill, quickly, quickly, and tell me who is coming.” Geshtinanna and a friend of Dumuzi’s ran up to the top of the hill. They saw the galla. The friend cried back to Dumuzi, “It’s the galla, the big galla and the small galla, with thongs to bind you.”
They ran back down the hill. Geshtinanna was frantic for her brother’s safety and told him to hide. Dumuzi said, “I will hide in the low plants. I’ll hide in the tall grass. I’ll hide in the ditches in Arali, on the edge of the steppe. Don’t tell anyone.” Geshtinanna and the friend swore secrecy. “May your black dogs, your black sheepherding dogs, tear us to bits if we betray you,” they said. They all ran away in separate directions.
Now the galla reached the crest of the hill. They looked out on the grasslands and saw no one. Where shall they look? The small galla said to the large galla, “Dumuzi must be very uneasy, he must be afraid. A man in that state of mind will not be at a friend’s house. He will not be with his mother. Let’s look for Dumuzi at his sister Geshtinanna’s house.”
The galla went to Geshtinanna and asked her where Dumuzi. was hiding She did not speak. They offered her the water gift but she remained silent. They offered her the grain gift but she made no sound. The galla threatened Geshtinanna. They pressed up close to her. They made ugly noises. But she was silent. The galla tortured her. They poured pitch into her vulva. But Geshtinanna refused to make a sound.
At last, the small galla said to the large galla, “Forget it. Who ever heard of a sister revealing her brother’s hiding place. Let’s go to see Dumuzi’s friend.” They went to the house of Dumuzi’s friend. They offered him the water gift and he accepted it. They offered him the grain gift and he accepted that too. They asked him where Dumuzi was hiding and he told them, “Dumuzi is hiding among the low plants.” The galla looked but they didn’t find Dumuzi. They returned to the friend. “You need to tell us more,” they said. The friend said, “Dumuzi is among the tall grasses.” The galla searched among the tall grasses but they still didn’t find Dumuzi.
The demons went back to the friend. “Okay,” he said, “Dumuzi might be in the ditches in Arali, on the edge of the steppe…” The galla went to that place and found Dumuzi. They grabbed him and Dumuzi cursed his friend. he fought with all his might and prayed once more to Utu. “Utu, I am your brother-in-law. I brought gifts to your house and treated your mother as if she were my own. I am the husband of your sister, I danced on the holy knees, the holy knees of Inanna. Please turn my hands into gazelle hands. Turn my feet into gazelle feet so I can get away.”
Utu granted Dumuzi’s prayers. Dumuzi slipped away from the galla and fled to the city of Kubiresh. But the galla followed him there. Now Dumuzi decided to go to the house of the old woman called Belili, to hide and get something to eat and drink. When he arrived, he told Belili “I am no ordinary mortal. I am Dumuzi, husband of Inanna. Please pour out some water for me to drink and sprinkle some flour for me to eat.”
Belili did this him. Then she looked out of the window and saw what looked like trouble. A dark cloud, a flapping flurry of demons was heading toward her house. She slipped out of the back door. The galla saw her leave, and they entered.
Dumuzi escaped the house and ran. He ran to his sister Geshtinanna’s sheepfold and crouched among the animals. But the galla were close behind and they found him there. Geshtinanna came out of her house. When she saw Dumuzi and the galla she began to weep and tear at her hair and clothing. Her brother’s terrible dream was coming true. The first galla scratched Dumuzi on the cheek. The second galla pierced his other cheek. The third galla knocked Dumuzi’s cup from the peg. The fourth galla broke the bottom of his churn. The fifth galla broke his shepherd crook in two. The sixth galla smashed his cup.
The seventh galla said “Rise Dumuzi, husband of Inanna, son of Sirtur, brother of Geshtinanna. Your days here are finished, the race is over. Take off your holy crown, remove your robe, the robe of kingship, and let your sceptre fall. You’re coming with us.”
Geshtinanna’s goats dragged their beards in the dust. There was no sound but that of the wind and Geshtinanna’s weeping. Dumuzi was gone.
A lament went up over the land. Word of Dumuzi’s fate spread from city to city, from town to town, and the people grieved for their king. Among them was the goddess Inanna. Inanna was distraught at the loss of her husband. She missed him terribly and wept bitterly. “Gone is my husband,” she cried, “Gone is my sweet love, my honey man, my beloved. The wild bull is no more. He has been taken away before I could wrap him in a proper shroud. I can no longer serve him food and drink, I can no longer lie down beside him. The jackal lies down in his bed.”
Sirtur, Dumuzi’s mother, was also distraught. She went to the steppes, to the grasslands where he used to wander, playing his reed pipe and tending his flocks. “Oh my son,” she said, “how I would love to hear your voice, how I long to hear your songs. Now there is only the wind in the reeds.” Sirtur went weeping to the sheepfold, the place where Dumuzi was captured by the galla. She looked at the slain wild bull and stroked his face. “My son,” she said, “the face is yours, but the spirit is gone.”
The goddess Inanna met Geshtinanna in the streets of Uruk. The sister was crying out in grief. “Where is my brother? I would comfort him. Where is Dumuzi? I would go to him. I would share his fate. My brother, the day that dawns for you will also dawn for me.” Inanna was moved by Geshtinanna’s deep feelings. She wrapped her arms around the sister and said, “Geshtinanna, your brother is dead, his house is no more. I would take you to him if I could, but I do not know the place.”
Then a fly appeared. It buzzed around the two women. It flew close to Inanna’s ear. “What will you give me,” said the fly, “if I tell you where you can find Dumuzi?”
Inanna said, “Fly, if you will tell me where to find Dumuzi, I will let you buzz around the beer halls and taverns, I will let you frequent the temples, and you will hear the words of all the wise ones.”
The fly told Inanna and Geshtinanna to go back to Arali on the edge of the steppe, the place where Dumuzi first hid from the galla. The two women went. There they found Dumuzi, weeping. Inanna took her husband by the hand. She said, “You have been chosen for the underworld, but you will only go for half of the year. Geshtinanna will go for the other half, as she has pledged to share your fate. On the day that you are called, you will be taken. On the day that she is called, you will be set free.”
Then Inanna placed Dumuzi into the hands of the eternal.
Praise be to holy Ereshkigal, through whom everything is realized!
Praise be to holy Ereshkigal. Interesting ending. I’m going to share a few thoughts about Inanna’s choice of Dumuzi as her surrogate which is one way of also talking about the purpose and significance of the underworld descent, and also about the fully realized nature of Inanna. There are a number of ways to look at this, different dimensions. I hope this will fuel your own reflections on this story.
One, Dumuzi is Inanna’s husband and the only one with sufficient value to fill her place. That there must be an exchange of value reminds us that the Great Above and the Great Below are aspects of the One reality. One can’t exist without the other. What sustains one, sustains the other.
Then we remember that Dumuzi is Inanna’s partner on the transpersonal level. He is the yang to her yin. They are more than spouse to each other, and they are more to our world– as individuals and as a couple. You might recall from the 2nd podcast, the courtship of Inanna and Dumuzi, that we talked about their coupling and fertility as material and metaphorical. Their union, its beauty and life-sustaining qualities, are understood metaphorically in all of the ways that we use the metaphors of seeds and flowering and growth and harvest– to describe the natural world, outer processes, and inner processes and states of being. In the story, because it is a narrative and a description, Dumuzi follows Inanna and yet, his descent began when she turned her ear to the ground.
Dumuzi is also Inanna’s “subject” or rather he is subject to her transformative power, as are all things. What is this transformation? In his discussion of the Great Goddess, like Inanna, Joseph Campbell notes that the fertility expressed in the female form of the goddess is material and spiritual. The link between these two realms (remember the tree from the first podcast on Inanna?) is an aspect of the enduring, amazing mystery of existence. Campbell writes, “Just as the past is converted into the future by the Goddess, so is the material life translated into the spiritual.” Reflect on this statement for a moment. This is what happens, isn’t it, when a seed is planted and sprouts? When someone or something dies? When you are able, through practice or grace or both, to experience the eternal in the simple act of washing a dish or taking a breath? In the dissolution of the boundaries between material and spiritual is also the realization of the eternal in the transitory, what is called enlightenment.
Let’s also consider that Dumuzi is king. To rule correctly, to have true authority, to have the right and privilege to be king, and to have wisdom, you must be acquainted with the depths. You must know yourself and your own depths. This includes the loss of illusions about life and about our own self, our character and capacities. In this myth there is the stripping away, the stripping down, and Dumuzi is stripped of his powers and identity when he descends, as was Inanna.
A descent to the underworld also brings you to a fuller understanding of life in its depth and complexity, beauty and suffering. To know life, you must die. This is the great paradox. We make many deaths before the final physical death of the body. What has this taught you? Do you understand the relationship between vulnerability and wisdom? How knowledge of what truly matters changes when you are aware of your fragility? When you risk openness? When you understand that we’re in this together, that we face a common end? Wisdom requires compassion, that sense of the common end and the willingness to imagine yourself in the place of another. What Enki’s little creatures bring to Ereshkigal, what moves even the Queen of the lifeless realm of the Great Below, is their empathy.
Finally, just as Inanna and Dumuzi are a pair and also the One, so too are Inanna and Ereshkigal. They are sisters.They are aspects of the same self, of the energy of life and death that is All. So we see that Dumuzi is always with Inanna. Now he is with her in all of her Great Above aspects, and in all of her Great below aspects.
What makes this fruitful, beautiful, bearable for us mortal beings, is the currency of compassion that links what is for us, two separate states of being.
Let me read one of my favorite poems for you. It expresses this idea much better than I can. It’s “Kindness” by Naomi Shihab Nye.
Kindness
Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.
Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.
Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.
Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.
It is only kindness that makes sense anymore, my friend, like a shadow or a friend. In my mind that beautifully encapsulates the true essence of Inanna and her sister Ereshkigal, of the partnership and reality of the yin and yang of Inanna and Dumuzi, and of the purpose on this plane, of the underworld descents that we are called to make. It is only kindness that makes sense anymore. Let’s carry this awareness into the coming year together.
Feel free to contact me if you have questions or comments about today’s program. Welcome new subscribers. If you are new to this podcast, I invite you head over to the Mythic Mojo website where you can subscribe via email to receive a brief announcement and link from me if you like, when I post a new episode.
A big thank you to my new patron on patreon, Giedre. Thank you Giedre! I say” my patron” but of course these are “our” patreon patrons and bandcamp supporters as their monthly contributions to Myth Matters make this story circle possible for all of us. If you’re finding value in Myth Matters and have the means, please consider becoming a patron on patreon too.
And that’s it for me. Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, happy mythmaking and keep the mystery in your life alive.
