Tales Of Men & Women by Stone Riley www.stoneriley.com Website Edition © 2007 by Stone Riley, all rights reserved
Queen Of Heaven And Of Earth
an historic essay
Down southeastward from the rugged mountains of Anatolia, east across the desert from the valley of the Nile, west from the green plateau of India, there lies a land of dry rolling hills and plains, scattered with lakes and thick lush marshes. Here two rivers, broad and mighty, wander to the Lower Sea. Rain here is scarce (the desert lies on either hand) but the rivers do not fail and the silt they carry from the distant mountains is marvelously rich. Long ago, when only hunters roamed the distant mountain woods, when Egypt was a string of isolated towns, when metal tools were new in human hands, a people came and made this country bloom. They organized themselves to cut and dike and constantly maintain canals across the land, to channel water through their fields from many miles away. These two rivers are now called Tigris and Euphrates. This land is known to the modern world as Mesopotamia or southern Iraq. The nation which those ancient builders built here is now called Sumer.
In Sumer the people wrote on small clay tablets with a pointed stylus in a script of quick little marks and punches, then they baked the clay tablets to last for eons. In our own age there are men and women who come to dig out relics from the great high mounds of earth and crumbled brick which once were cities and these clay tablets are prized above all other relics that they find. And these tablets, among the many things that they have taught us, have taught us songs and stories of the people's goddess, the divine Inanna.
All up and down the rivers with their many winding branches and their many lakes and marshes and canals, the people built up fields from swamp and cut out fields from the scrubby dry land where shepherds long before and long since ranged, and they channeled in the brown water to make crops grow. All up and down the waters they built big towns. Some of their towns, like Babylon and Ur whose names are still familiar to our ears, would stand in place for ages and grow great while others lapsed into oblivion. They lived together in big towns because in this country, with this kind of massive irrigation, farming had to be the business of a big organization. They believed in law between themselves and natural law which ruled the universe. (If there were no immortal law, how could such age-long work go on?) And so therefore, among all of the goddesses and gods of the sun, moon and stars, of storm and fire and wind and war and elemental creation, they worshipped a special patron goddess who was both justice and fertility and who was said to own all fertile land.
All things which sprang from the womb were Hers, all things which sprang from Earth. She was Venus, the star which rules the morning and the dusk, a silver flame. She stood upon the winged lion which drew the rain god's car. She was Inanna, Queen of Heaven and of Earth, who loved the people and was loved by all, all gods and goddesses, all women and men.
The ancient Sumerians were marvelously inventive. They built up fields from swamp by weaving tons of reed into mats and laying it down. The land was without timber or stone so they created fired brick and with brick they did build large. They built brick palaces and slums, city walls and towering pyramidal ziggurats atop which their grandest temples stood. (Date palms and fruit trees they had in plenty, and willow trees and such, but stone and real timber lay far beyond the borders.) They made money, silver disks and rings of standard size. They fished the waters from boats of bundled reed and built their country huts of reed. Furniture and fences and a thousand things were woven from the ever-present reeds. They made written law and contracts and bills of sale and loans and receipts and written accounting, for they had a thriving trade. In fact, scholars say they were first to invent writing itself, beginning with accounting tokens (little modeled bits of clay that represented so many sheep or bullocks or bushels of grain) and ending with a literature that recorded the farthest heights and depths of beauty and ugliness we humans can know.
From this literature, from the pages which our scholars have restored, I would like to briefly recount four tales of the divine Inanna. These tales were surely performed in the streets and temples as ritual plays at certain times each year. The words our scholars find for them are beautiful, with a kind of unrhymed mythic power equal to our own greatest poems. Their rhythms have a subtle whispering command. The goddess who emerges from these baked clay pages is beautiful indeed. Among the many deities of Sumer, Inanna was the people's special patroness for it was She whose marriage to a mortal man brought both fertility and law to their land, and it was She who stole justice from the gods into the human world and it was She who forced the gates of Death itself to bring back ever-renewing life.
The first of our four stories tells entry into womanhood. It shows Inanna as a girl in a house by the river, both desiring and fearing what may come. Her destiny, her hope, is shown as a willow tree – nurtured by Her hands for years in Her secret garden – in which three demons of Her fear have come to dwell. She calls the gods for aid but none can harvest this tree to help Her into womanhood. Divine realms are realms of eternal balance, of hope and fear balancing, of law and chaos balancing, of male and female balancing forever. Instead, Her mortal brother Gilgamesh, mighty workman, hero, man of men, will chase the demons from the willow tree and chop it down with his great axe. He bids the craftsmen of his city carve from this tree Her shining throne and bed. She fashions the regalia of a king for him to wear.
Honored counselor, Jewel of Heaven, Creation's Joy!
The second tale I would recount describes Her daring seizure of wisdom and power, how She took boat from the wharf of the human city to the dwelling of the gods and brought back law. Her mother's father was the god of all waters, keeper of all wisdom's treasures, embodiment of thought itself, and She outwitted Him. With a cunning and haughty eye, He sat Her down to feast and drink, as if in honor, and sought to overawe Her with the powers at His command. The god sought to make the girl a fool. He twisted Her around with flattery and promises of gifts. They ate and drank in high frivolity, and though he lost His wits, She kept about Her business all the while. He promised all the treasure chests of wisdom. When He called for them to dazzle Her, She bade Her servants seize them and She made away. Back to the city of humans She rode in her boat to give them justice, science and skill, all the powers of the mind, and to rule among us in Her glory.
It seems that on Her holidays the people would parade with songs and costumes and dance. Pipes and harps and drums and a kind of tambourine they had would lead them through the streets with all the priests and priestesses.
I sing "Hail!" to the Holy One who appears on the horizon!
Each city had a king (their word was "lugal", meaning "strong man") and at the new year festival in autumn when the deadly heat of summer was past, when life returned after death, the king would come in marriage to their queen. The story of this marriage is our third tale today. It tells of their bodily joy and all their words of love and it says that She chose him. Without a blessing such as this from their own goddess, a king could be never be aught but a warlord in the people's eyes so every year the king would lead the march to Her secret chamber in the temple, atop a tall hill built of brick, to lie there with Her honored priestess and so to seal the nation's union with the divine. In the tale he is Dumuzi, chieftain shepherd, mighty hunter, smart and strong and fast, but he is a man. Only by his union with the Goddess, by the gifts of skill and wisdom which She gives, could he truly rule. For after all, She is fertility and truth, the green land Hers. And after all, through all the turmoil of a nation built of city states as Sumer was, through all the civil wars and dynasties of a nation which stood for eighteen hundred years as Sumer did, when everything grew old, it was only the sacred temples with their knowledge of the sacred rites, which stood through time and pressed law onto the power of kings.
Our fourth and final story shows Her death and return. The high summer begins to burn, the time of death on Earth approaching inexorably. Inanna turns Her ear to "the great below", knowing this is the only realm where She holds no sway, knowing there is nought else that She fears, and knowing that with this fear Her life could never be complete. Adorned with regal crown and jewels and gorgeous gown, She sets out on the mystic path but then at each of the seven gates of Hell, deeper and deeper into the Earth, She is stripped of Her powers and adornments one by one. At last She kneels before the judges naked, kneels before the throne of Her long-lost sister who is the Queen of Death. And they pronounce Her guilty and they strike her down. For three days the Queen of Heaven and of Earth hangs lifeless from a hook in the cavern below the Earth and beneath the Sea, beyond salvation. To know the meaning of this tale, we must now know that it is She Herself who was the Queen of Death; it was She Herself who was the tortured and forsaken Queen of Hell. It was all the fear in Her of Herself, cast away when glorious womanhood was seized, when the willow tree was cut for Her throne and bed, which now pronounced the guilt of glorious life and struck it down.
For three days the Queen of Life hangs lifeless in the cavern of the Great Below and Her sister Death writhes in torment at the sight. But Wisdom hears the tale and will not rest. Wisdom, Her mother's father, hears the tale and will not let it be. But Wisdom has no powers there in Hell. Yet Wisdom sees that He can turn the trick of sending Death a love for life. This is the trick of making the desert sun revive a seed to see it grow. Withered Death Herself must quicken to the hope of growth. And so He sends two servants down to comfort the loneliness of Death's pain. Wisdom sends two servants down to moan with Death Herself in pain. She is persuaded and she lets life go. She is comforted and lets Inanna go. Alive once more, and greater than before, for She has regained the half of Herself which was forsaken, Inanna flies with angels of death on either side. Now in one being, life and death, out from the gates of Hell flies forth the Queen of Earth, the queen of love and fear.
And so we see, it is the law that life and death by turns shall rule. So it shall be forever.