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- [00:00]
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- [00:30]
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Dr. Kate Lister
The Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug. Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Savings vary Written by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates excludes.
- [01:00]
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- [01:34]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Hey guys, I hope you're keeping well. I'm doing all right. I am a bit under the weather at the moment, so I'm just sitting in my living room, I'm drinking a cup of tea and let my current condition not take anything away from how excited I am for today's release because it's a history hit crossover episode. We are talking with the host of the Betwixt the Sheets podcast, the sex historian Dr. Kate Lister. She's a lot of fun and she's here on the show today to take us back initially more than 5,000 years to explore the story of a deity, a goddess of sex and so much more, called Inanna. I really do hope you enjoy let's she was a goddess of love, war, fertility and political power. She was worshipped for thousands of years by different peoples and under different names across ancient Mesopotamia and beyond, from Uruk and ancient Sumer to Ishtar at Babylon to Aphrodite, the island of Cyprus and the Greco Roman world. Her story is one filled with myths and movement over Millennia. This is the story of Inanna with our guest, Dr. Kate Lister. Kate, it is wonderful to have you back on the podcast. It has been too long, hasn't it?
- [03:12]
Dr. Kate Lister
I'm very excited to be here with you.
- [03:15]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
We are talking ancient Mesopotamian gods, in particular one God, Sumerian God of Inanna. Now, no such thing as a silly question. Who exactly was Inanna?
- [03:26]
Dr. Kate Lister
That's not a silly question at all. She is, she's such an important goddess in ancient mythology and certainly with an ancient Sumerian and Arcadian mythology, she was one of the most powerful goddesses that they had and her influence over not just Sumerian, Arcadian mythology, but European ancient mythology has been quite profound. So who was she? Well, she starts to show up in literary records round about 3000 BC.ish. but she will have been knocking around before then and when she turns up, she's actually, it's quite a humble origin story. She's a goddess of the store of like storing wheat and sort of things like that. So she's quite important, an agricultural goddess, basically. But by the time she fully develops, she's become this hugely powerful goddess of both sex and war, those two dominions. So it's quite a career shift that she's had. But those are primarily her domains, sex and war.
- [04:33]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
It's quite an interesting contrast as well, isn't it? You wouldn't think that they would go together.
- [04:37]
Dr. Kate Lister
No, no, not at all. And when you first hear it, you're like, I'm sorry, what was, what was that like? That's like, how do those things fit? But when you think about it and really think about it, sex and war actually have quite a lot of things in common. They're both very physical acts that at the time, certainly if you're going to war into battle with someone, you would be getting very close to them. Not to get too graphic, but penetration and bodily fluids feature quite prominently in both of these acts. Four very different reasons. And one can create life and the other can kill and destroy life. So there is a sort of a poetic juxtaposition between the two states. And I think that's kind of what they were calling on. And also there are other gods and goddesses that preside over both of these realms, like Freyja in Norse mythology, for example. She's about sex worship, lots of things, but she definitely presides over sex and.
- [05:37]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
War in regards to the Sumerian pantheon. And actually, maybe we should get a date first of all. So with the Sumerians, we're talking more than 5,000 years ago, right?
- [05:45]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yeah, it's some of the earliest, but it is the earliest archaeological evidence that we've got of a civilization with written down cuneiform language that we can actually trace. And we're looking at what's modern day Iraq and when we're looking at Sumerians, what southern Iraq, but that's where we are looking at and that's the time span that we're, that we're looking at so very ancient and great cities like.
- [06:08]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Uruk and the like. In regards to Inanna's characteristics, I mean, was it quite unique in the Sumerian pantheon of gods? Were there others who had this seemingly kind of contrasting, you know, sex and war idea? I mean, how did her attributes compare to other deities of this pantheon?
- [06:25]
Dr. Kate Lister
There were lots of other really powerful deities. And one of the interesting things about this particular line of mythology is that you can trace its development. And that's something that you don't get with a lot of other gods and goddesses in other religions and cultures. They sort of show up, they do their thing and then they disappear again. This mythology stretches thousands and thousands of years. So Inanna is, I'm going to get this right, she's the daughter of Nanna, who is a moon God. She's not the daughter of the most powerful God that was the sun God and he was called utu, but you do get other powerful women. One of Inanna's big enemies is the goddess of the underworld and she was called Ereshkigal. And they seem to fight with each other quite a lot. But Inanna, as I said, she comes from quite modest background story, but by the time her character is fully developed, she is one of their most powerful and worse behaved goddesses as well. She's really naughty.
- [07:23]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
So what are some of the most significant myths or stories that we have about Inanna that maybe show us as really naughty or something like that? I've got in my notes Inanna and the Hullopoo tree, but I don't know if that's the one you want to talk about.
- [07:35]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yeah, so Inanna and her tree that she really, really likes. This is one of the surviving stories that we've got of her. It's not my favorite, but it's an interesting one. So she wants to plant a sacred tree basically, and she finds this tree and she nicks it and she goes and plants it in her garden and she keeps trying to grow it. And then a demon takes over the tree, like a serpent lives in it and she gets really upset with it. And then at one point I think Lilith the demon is there as well. So we get a bit of a shout out to Lilith and her origin story, and she's really upset that she can't get the demons out of this tree that she wants. And then Gilgamesh shows up. So this is pre epic of Gilgamesh, and he goes to war and he rips this tree up and then he gives Inanna a bit of what's left of the tree and she makes this throne out of it, in a nutshell. So it's partly about terrible gardening practices because that's, that's. As anyone on Gardener's Question Time will tell you, that's not how you get a demon out of a tree. But it's is also like, look at the violence that was unleashed by her on this tree to get what she wants. And then rather than continuing life, she's made a throne out of it and this throne of power. So there's a lot going on in that story for Inanna.
- [08:57]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
It's interesting there. So you mentioned a snake in a tree and that immediately makes you think of Adam and Eve, right?
- [09:03]
Dr. Kate Lister
Doesn't it? Doesn't it? I mean, you don't have enough sources to be able to directly link it up and go, oh, that was that. And that was that. But it's one of those things that scholars have to look at and go, well, we can't deny that sounds incredibly similar. And one of the things that you get with Inanna is there's a lot of stories about her that you go, hang on a minute, that sounds a lot like. Because there's this other one that's the Descent of Inanna. It's called Now Inanna as a goddess. This is her being naughty. She's not supposed to go to the underworld, which is ruled over by Ereshkigal, that you're just not supposed to do that. Don't go there. So what does she do? She goes and she. The only motivation for this seems to be, I just wanted to know. I just wanted to know what it was like. So she goes and Ereshkigal loses her stuff completely and basically traps Inanna in the underworld, effectively killing her. And the only way that she can get back to the world and to be alive again is, is to trade her place with her husband at that time Dumuzi, who was a God of harvesting, I think he was. So she trades places with him and then Dumuzi will be there for six months of the year and then he will go back to the world of the living and does that sound similar?
- [10:16]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
It does, doesn't it? Certainly. With a young Greek goddess.
- [10:20]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yes, exactly. Persephone and Hades. And that myth developed to explain, again, the changing of the seasons, as does the Persephone and Hades story. So that's. That's one of hers. And there's lots of just these little similarities that you listen to them and you go, that just. It's too much of a coincidence for that to have been no influence.
- [10:41]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Do you think this also emphasizes how I also can't get my head around is that these myths were more than 5,000 years old, and yet you can talk through them with those amazing details now, Kate, is testament to how they've endured through history.
- [10:55]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yeah, they have, because they're foundational myths, not just of this culture, but they are some of the earliest stories that we've got from what we call civilization, just because we have the written word. And we tend to view ancient cultures, or at least some people do, in isolation to one another. But the influence that they have on one another, as these cultures are invading and conquering and borrowing and stealing and appropriating, and it does all start to come together, and you get this real melting pot of gods merging onto one another. And so the stories continue.
- [11:31]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
I must also ask then about the nature of the source material that we have. So do we learn about these stories in their detail from the cuneiform tablets?
- [11:40]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yes, mostly. And that wasn't done until it's like the 19th century, the late 19th century, when people could start to be able to translate them, because we don't have a situation where, you know, a lot of nice books showed up with very clear textual evidence that people can go, oh, this is what happened. You're dealing with tablet form and cuneiform tablets, and it's so difficult to actually read and translate it. There's only a handful of scholars that can actually still do that to this day. And we're all sort of reliant on them producing their work. And that didn't happen until, I think, it was the 19th century and it was the Epic of Gilgamesh that was first translated by a scholar in the British Library. And he was so excited when he first realized that he could understand it apparently started dancing around the British Library, singing and shrieking. Very unbecoming for a scholar. But it's from that that we start to get this information. And then other sources are obviously archaeological finds. You mentioned the city of Uruk that is in today in southern Iraq. It's now an archaeological site known as Warwick and They find evidence of temples and when. Then you might find things scrawled on walls. So this is a real piecemeal of information that's put together, which is frustrating for scholars because what they wouldn't give for a book to turn up with just really clear stories all laid out in. But at the same time it gives people a lot to discuss and to mull over and to try and piece this world back together.
- [13:15]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
So are there any other particular myths, stories about Inanna that really focus on that duality between love and war?
- [13:24]
Dr. Kate Lister
Stories about Inanna. So we get fractional stories from her, from the very early sources. You've got a lot of songs that are dedicated to her and they tend to be incredibly raunchy in nature because she is a goddess of sex. Is that sometimes scholars try and say that she's a fertility goddess, which it's. No, she's not. She's not really. At no point is she displayed as a mother. At no point is she celebrated for being a dutiful, sensible wife. She is very dramatic, she's very petulant and she appears to be very horny most of the time. So you get some of the earliest records are songs that she sings to her husband, Dumuzi, where she sings about Please plough my furrow and she talks about her wet lettuce and about her, you know, like her grass that is wet and that she wants attending to. And it's all so erotic, what she's doing here. And it caused quite a shock to the 19th century scholars when they first started translating this stuff, because it is very open. I mean, it's obviously it's dressed up in poetic language, but there's not much disguising what's actually going on here.
- [14:44]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
This is 50 Shades of Inanna, almost.
- [14:46]
Dr. Kate Lister
This is 50 Shades of InAnna, yes.
- [14:50]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
So how was she worshipped in a place like uruk more than 5,000 years ago? Do we know much about the worship of Inanna?
- [14:57]
Dr. Kate Lister
We know bits and pieces, but again, the scholarly debate around this is quite ferocious. So for the longest time, people thought that Inanna was worshipped through a practice called sacred prostitution, and that that story took hold, that. That women would go and sell sex in the temples of Inanna and it became this whole thing. But when you actually break it down, and this is largely the work of Stephanie Boudin, when you break it down, really what that is is Herodotus saying stuff. It comes from his account of ancient Babylon, where women would sell every woman who is devoted. And I don't even think he says it was Inanna. I think he says it was Aphrodite. But all women have to worship the goddess by selling sex to anybody who would buy sex from them. That's his big claim. And as a lot of stuff with Herodotus, you have to kind of go, that's a nice story that. I like the story, but can you show me your source work there? And when you break it down, there isn't much evidence to this other than Herodotus saying it himself. And then other people take up the story and keep repeating it. But when you look at the literature of Inanna, you do get this word kid or himratu, which is associated with Inanna. And for the longest time, that was translated as prostitute. And Inanna herself is described as a himuratu. Again, that strengthened this argument around sacred prostitution. But the work of Stephanie Boudin has investigated it a bit further, and she suggested that that's not what that word means. And what that word means is just a single woman. And the evidence that she gives for that, there's quite a lot of it. But what I find most convincing is that in the records, you've often got people who have jobs who are also described as himratu. So you have bartenders and you have people that work in shops, for example. So why would you give them two professions? And you've got wills that exist where a father has left money to his daughter, if she's a wife or if she's a himratu. Now, there might be fathers going, look, either you're going to be a wife or you're going to be on the game. But it seems more likely that they're saying, you're going to be married or you're not going to be married. So for the longest time, there was this idea that worship of Inanna was done through sex. And certainly, as we've seen, Inanna like to have a lot of sex. But that has been challenged repeatedly. What we do have is there's evidence of priests and priestesses. The priests in particular are really interesting. They were called the Gala G A L A. And they seem to have been an example of gender variance from the ancient world. When they started worshiping Inanna, they would often use feminine pronouns. They would often take on women's names. And there's some. There's quite a lot of erotic verse around them where they are having sex with other men, with them bottoming. And again, we're piecing together little bits of information here. And try. You've got to try and make A story out of it, but not get too carried away. But that was the Gala are definitely associated with worshipping Inanna. And they were the male priests, the female priests. The debate will go on whether or not they were having sex in celebration of Inanna. We don't know.
- [18:12]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
And do we think that the kings of a Rook and people like that, the prominent figures, would have gone to one of these temples and laid eyes on whatever rites were actually going on there?
- [18:23]
Dr. Kate Lister
That's another thing where you're like, I hope that's true. I want that to be true. There's some suggestion that the kings would have married the goddess symbolically. And maybe that's what these songs of Inanna were doing, these erotic songs where she's singing and calling out to Dumuzi, plough my furrow and tend my lettuce and all the rest of it. The king might have symbolically married the goddess. That has been suggested, but we don't know. But what's interesting, though, is that there were male priests of Inanna, because a lot of the time when you get goddesses that are worshipped, the idea that men worship them as well, that's a really interesting conversation. Like, what happened to them? And there certainly seems to have been a slight feminizing of them, although I know some scholars have disagreed with that and said, no, they were very manly. But so, I mean, the king may well have worshiped and he certainly wouldn't have ignored her because she was a very, very powerful goddess.
- [19:20]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Absolutely. I'd like to ask about that, the fertility word next, because of course it can allude to sex and reproduction, but I always think with fertility, it could also be about farming, isn't it? And when you think about the Sumerians and ancient Mesopotamia, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, irrigation, the importance of farming to these societies. So can you see an agricultural tilt to the worship of Inanna?
- [19:46]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I think you'd be foolish to ignore that as well, especially because she does start as an agricultural goddess and then her role develops and fertility and about calling life back is important to the ancient world in ways that we can't really even comprehend. I mean, you know, we can go down the. The garage at the end of the road and get food, but it's. It really is life and death stuff. So the land being fertile of being able to help animals reproduce with one another, I should stress, and, you know, help crop cycles, all of that is caught up with the worship of this goddess. And even if when she's in her full Realization she doesn't seem to be associated with agriculture anymore. Those were her roots. That's where she's, where she comes from. So you can see that there is a link there between agriculture, tending the land, and later this association with both life and death, which is effectively sex and war. In Inanna, do we think there would.
- [20:48]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Have been, like, an equivalent of the harvest festival today in regards to, like, a festival of Inanna regarding, you know, the blessing of the land so that they had good crops and so on.
- [20:59]
Dr. Kate Lister
Would you even want Inanna to come to your harvest festival? I've just got this image of, like, kids in secondary school singing about the harvest festival and this mad goddess showing up. Yeah, there does seem to have been evidence that she was worshipped, that she had her own festivals. I mean, a temple of Inannas was discovered in, again, in southern Iraq. I think it was in nepal in the 1950s. So we know that she was worshipped. And again, it's just one of those examples of, like, we know she would have been worshipped, we know there would have been festivals. But finding the exact details lost amongst the sources is quite difficult.
- [21:36]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Did the worship of Inanna, did it also influence Sumerian ideals and norms around marriage?
- [21:44]
Dr. Kate Lister
Oh, there's a question, because it's very tempting to look at Inanna, who is unashamedly erotic and explicit and makes demands of her husband sexually that she wants and also throws tantrums when she doesn't get her own way and also disobeys laws and think, that must have been what life was like for a Sumerian woman. And we've got to be careful before we make that link because the gods have always been allowed to be extraordinary. So we can't think just because we have a creation myth of the goddess behaving like this, that it was all right for other people to behave like this. But one of the things I think that we can extrapolate is at least the kind of discussions and the kind of things that were important to these people. Sexual pleasure being quite a big one, it seems, because the goddess is very unashamed in asking for it. She isn't judged and she isn't shamed. This is her loving her husband and she's going to do it physically. So I think that this would have been a culture where women, we need to be careful. I don't think that they were emancipated. There's clear evidence it was a very patriarchal culture. But sex doesn't seem to have been pushed up and stigmatized in the way that we might recognize it today, to the point where a goddess is openly saying, plough my furrow.
- [23:05]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
And does it almost seem like it's the extraordinary case with the king with the leader of a rook and this almost sacred marriage to Inanna, like him being united in marriage to a God, like that was very much to emphasize their, I guess, their unique connection they had with the divine, I'm presuming, Yes.
- [23:25]
Dr. Kate Lister
I mean, the kings and royalty, they always want that connection, don't they? They've always got some kind of link to it, whether it's our own royal family going, well, look, God decided, he chose and he chose us, or whether it's creation stories about. I mean, you've told me before on, on my podcast about the stories about Alexander the Great and his. He was conceived because his mum had sex with a God in the shape of a snake and all of these things. And it's, it's always trying to get that link to the divine. Otherwise, what are you? You're just a guy with a crown on his head. So I think the idea of marrying or symbolically marrying Inanna would have been very important in this idea of legitimizing what, ruling or kingship in itself, and.
- [24:09]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Given her importance in agriculture, the success of crops, maybe that could also play into it as well, that you need to keep the goddess happy.
- [24:17]
Dr. Kate Lister
And war, these were very war like people, you know, if you're going to go into war, if you've got it in your head of like, I'm going to go and invade the next group of people. Inanna is a goddess that you would want on your side and that you would pray to, to get her support and you would. You'd want her backing. I don't think you'd go without it.
- [24:36]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Do we have any idea, and I appreciate we may well not of how, let's say a Sumerian army from Uruk was marching out to battle. Would they be worshipping Inanna as they went into battle or anything like that when they were actually actively on campaign?
- [24:49]
Dr. Kate Lister
We don't have evidence from this point, but as the goddess develops and she merges into other goddesses later on, then we start to get a sense of how these goddesses would have been worshipped in battle. So without giving the game away too much, but there's a lot of evidence and a lot of scholars agree that Inanna probably developed into the cult of Venus in Aphrodite.
- [25:12]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Wow.
- [25:13]
Dr. Kate Lister
That's the straggled route that she takes and some of the clear evidence that we have for that. Although we think of Aphrodite and Venus as being rather soft, opulent goddesses draped on a chaise long and being fed grapes. They were originally war goddesses, especially someone. I mean, Aphrodite was worshipped by the Spartans as a war goddess. And sometimes she's shown with a beard in some like, rarely, but it happens. The bearded Aphrodite and Venus as well. She's one of the only Roman goddesses that her name, her suffix, Venus, that's not feminine. That's a masculine end to that name. And she was worshipped as a war goddess. Certainly Julius Caesar took her on as his patron and he had a ring with. With Venus on. And he tried to claim descendants from Venus. And when he won in campaigns he built temples to Venus so you can get a sense of how a goddess of war would have been or at least how she was worshipped later on.
- [26:12]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
So there could be an idea that if a returning successful Sumerian army came back to Uruk, they could erect a trophy or a monument or an inscription and have Inanna right there in the center so that they're thanking Inanna for the victory.
- [26:24]
Dr. Kate Lister
We better thank her. That's not a goddess that you would want to upset or miff off in any way at all. So, yeah, I think that, you know, temples would have to be built, prayers would have to be offered. Thanks. Would have to be given only Boost Mobile. Boost Mobile will give you a free year of service.
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Dr. Kate Lister
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- [28:03]
Podcast Promo Voice
Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoners cup in return. Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by historyhit. There are new episodes every week.
- [28:59]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Before we really explore that evolution of Inanna in Mesopotamian cultures, I like to ask one more question about a particular myth you talked about earlier, which was her descent into the underworld. Can you elaborate a little bit more on this and just how significant this myth was for the Sumerians?
- [29:18]
Dr. Kate Lister
Well, again, we need to be very careful because we have evidence of this myth surviving. That's how we know that they believe this, that they spoke about it. But what we don't have is all the other evidence from all the other myths. So we are extrapolating how important that myth was. Just because it's the only one that we've got left, or one of the only ones, doesn't mean that it was the most important myth to the Sumerians. But it is an important myth to them because it helps them understand the shifting of the seasons. And as you've already said, that was life and death, and that was their world was built around that. But also it helps set up Inanna as a very disobedient goddess. She was told not to go and she went anyway. And the fact that she offers up her husband to take her place, I think. I just think that that's quite an important part of her story because she's not submissive, she's not cowed. This isn't, oh, poor Inanna went and gave herself up. He does. She's. Because she went and did something that she wasn't supposed to do, and she's off. And I think that it's very important when we look at this mythology to see that this behavior doesn't seem to impede her being worshipped. If anything, it adds to it. There's a sort of a certain sense of, oh, Inanna, not again.
- [30:36]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
I've also realized that I haven't asked you yet. One of the questions that I Feel I always normally ask near at the start, which is what she looks like. I mean, do we have any depictions of Inanna from Sumerian times and what symbols she's associated with?
- [30:49]
Dr. Kate Lister
We have got some images of Inanna, but again, I'll tread carefully because there are always scholars that go, that's not Inanna, that's Ereshkigal, that's Lilith, that's somebody else. But in the very early versions of her, she is associated with the morning star. She is associated with the symbol of the lion, which I suppose that might represent her ferociousness. As she develops and the Arcadians come in and they take over Sumeria, she is merged with another goddess, Ishtar. And again, there's some debate around, is Ishtar a completely separate goddess or is this just a rebrand? Did they just arrive and they go, oh, we really like that one, we'll have that one too. But Ishtar and Inanna, basically the same person. It's just a change in name. But Ishtar, she is represented by clearer images and she tends that there are claws and there are wings and you look at these images and you go, oh, wow, that is not a soft, drapey goddess. And one of the most famous images is the Bernie Relief, which is in the British Museum. I don't know if you're familiar with that. Again, there is debate around who this goddess actually is. Some people think that it could be Lilith, but other scholars, including Professor Ronald Hutton. So as far as I'm concerned, you can just put the pot on for that one. He says that that is Ishtar and that she's. There are two owls there as well, which he says are there to represents the morning star, the evening star and her role there. If you go and look that one up, the Bernie Relief, you can get a sense of what this goddess looks like. Not very sexy, it has to be said, but you start to get nude iconography developing around this time as well.
- [32:34]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Wow. Well, you mentioned there Ishtar. So, Kate, talk us through this evolution of Inanna that happens through, you know, Mesopotamian history is vast, it's thousands of years. So what do we know about her revolution?
- [32:49]
Dr. Kate Lister
This is. Again, this is. It's very difficult to join up the dots perfectly to the point where you can go unequivocally, this is what happened. But Inanna and Ishtar, almost all scholars agree that this is basically the same goddess. She's had a rebrand, a slight upgrade. We start to get clearer stories about her. She starts to appear in more Mythologies. One of my favorite stories about her is she was associated with the city of Uruk. She was supposed to be the patron of Uruk. And one of their foundational stories is that the townspeople there asked Ishtar if she would be their patron, and she only agreed if she could have sex with every male adult in the city. So they all duly line up to do this. Sort of a bit of a Bonnie Blue situation before Bonnie Blue was a thing.
- [33:37]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Yeah. Okay.
- [33:39]
Dr. Kate Lister
But the point of the story is that Ishtar, when they've all finished, she's ready to go again. She was like, well, let's. Let's do it again. And all of the men are too tired to possibly carry on, so they beg her, stop, please, please, we can't do this. And the poem that we've got left says, ishtar will not tire. Ishtar never tires. And so she kind of eventually. Oh, for God's sake. And she goes around, all right, fine, I'll be your goddess anyway, even though all of your men were too pathetic to actually satisfy me. And that's one of. That's one of their founding stories.
- [34:11]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
And does Inanna, in the guise of Ishtar, does she remain important for many different Mesopotamian civilizations as time goes on?
- [34:18]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yes, she does. She. We know there are temples devoted to her. She starts turning up in. In the early story. So she's in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the earliest story that we have written down. And again, being her usual awful self, there's a story where she really fancies Gilgamesh. You're getting a theme developing here about Ishtar. She really fancies him. And she basically goes up to him and she goes, look, I'll give you the best sex you've ever had, and I'll give you a chariot like that. Come on, what do you reckon to that? And Gilgamesh knows the story of Dumuzi, who's presumably still in the underworld at this point, not to mention all of the other lovers that she's been through, and says, no. He says, no, not in your life. This is. This is awful. At one point, he calls her the shoe that bites the wearer's foot. So he's like. He's just like, no, I value. I'm not. I'm not gonna be your lover. And Ishtar is furious with this. She is so angry, she goes to her father to basically say, I need you to kill Gilgamesh right now. And we're gonna do it by releasing this mythological creature called the Bull. Of heaven, which will kill everybody, basically. And her dad gently points out that, well, I know you're angry, but Gilgamesh might have had a point. And she. She's so cross and she's so angry, she goes. And her argument back from that is like, look, it doesn't matter if he's right. He's a horrible, stupid little mortal, and they don't get to talk to the gods like that. Right. And then she goes even further, says, if you don't give me this bull, I'm gonna go and release all of the dead back into the world of the living and basically undo creation as we know it. So the goes, fine, fine, have the bull. And then there's a whole thing about how Gilgamesh kills the bull, and then Ishtar's even angrier, but that's how she appears in that story. So you really do get a sense of how volatile she is, how violent she is, how capricious and how horny she is as well. That's a running theme throughout Inanna. She is the goddess of sex, after all. But it doesn't seem to have diminished her popularity at all. She was a really popular goddess.
- [36:31]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Well, I mean, absolutely. I must admit, when someone says Ishtar, I would think initially, immediately of Babylon. Now I know, yeah. So I. It sounds like, you know, that kind of legacy of Inanna or Mesopotamian cultures endures. And she's so popular that she even becomes incredibly prominent in the great cities like Babylon.
- [36:50]
Dr. Kate Lister
She does. And also she keeps moving from Iraq and from Palestine, and she's moving west towards Cyprus, basically. And she gets picked up in Semitic religions as well, where she's worshipped as Astarte, and there's actually a reference to her in the Hebrew Bible. I think they've changed name Astarte to Ashtarath. But King Solomon shouts all the Israelites for their worship of this culture, of this woman. And scholars believe that that is Astarte, who is Ishtar, who has been upgraded. And then she appears in Cyprus. And who else comes from Cyprus?
- [37:28]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Oh, Aphrodite.
- [37:29]
Dr. Kate Lister
Aphrodite, right. And all scholars understand that Aphrodite was quite a late arrival to the Greek pantheon. And remember when I said about Herodotus was worshiping with his idea about sacred prostitution, he's talking about Babylon. He talks about Aphrodite. So you've got this merging of. He understands it's Babylon, but he's put the goddess Aphrodite in there. And the earlier sources as well, show us that Aphrodite is Ishtar and Anastas, that they're all the same goddess that has moved and who has developed and retaining that emphasis on sex and war. And you can see it in the iconography as well, because the morning star is consistent throughout that Venus is associated with the morning star. So is Aphrodite. Doves seem to be fairly consistent as well, and so do lions, so their imagery remains the same. As she's moving west to Europe, her cult.
- [38:33]
Jonathan Fields
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- [40:44]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
So Kate, how far does Ishtar does Inanna go? Westwards. So we've reached the Eastern Mediterranean already. And how much further?
- [40:54]
Dr. Kate Lister
Well, this is where we're slightly into the realms of speculation, but I quite like this story. So she's clearly an influence on Aphrodite who in her earliest incarnations is also a war goddess, not just a sex goddess, who in turn inspires Venus. And again, we've already alluded that she was a war goddess, was Venus. Well, so eventually Christianity comes in and kind of steamrolls all of the old gods. We have to let them go. But that was obviously not an overnight process. It wasn't that everyone got a memo of. Right now we're Christian. It's an eventual process, and quite a violent one at times. But it has been suggested that perhaps the cult of Mary was influenced by. By Ishtar, by Inanna, by Aphrodite, by Venus. Because if you look at the cult of Mary, she's not quite a goddess, but people pray to her. She's not quite a saint, but she occupies that position within the Christian mythology. She certainly isn't the petulant, horny teenager that we see in Inanna and Ishtar, but she is someone who's defined by sex, or at least her absence to it. And she is also symbolized by the morning star and by Darth.
- [42:09]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Oh, interesting.
- [42:10]
Dr. Kate Lister
So it has been suggested that perhaps what we see in the veneration of Mary is the fact that ancient civilizations weren't quite ready to let go of their goddess just yet, that the idea of a powerful goddess to pray to was important. Even if she was completely unsexed, she's still there in some guise or another. And I don't know if that's true, but I want that to be true. I want that to be true so badly.
- [42:39]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Do you think there could be hints of Inanna, Ishtar in quite a few of the great goddesses of the Eastern Mediterranean? I might think immediately of Aphrodite of Ephesus or from ancient Egypt. You've got Isis as well.
- [42:52]
Dr. Kate Lister
Yes, you do. And there are some discussions that link that up, that Isis and Ishtar are one and the same. But it's not really surprising because these cultures emerging all of the time through conquest and through colonization, and not. Not only through violent means, but through opening up trade routes. And as you said, this is thousands of years of history. This isn't like one week in ancient Mesopotamia that this all happened. So you do get these cultures bleeding into one another. And it has been suggested that there is a link between Isis, the veneration of Isis and Ishtar. And you can again, we don't have the smoking gun, we don't have the cuneiform tablet where somebody says, that's definitely what's happening here, but it's that same presiding over sex, death, violence, the strong veneration, the cult that emerges. All of those things do seem to be tangled up as this mythology develops. It's not neat and it's very messy and a lot of it is open to speculation. But there's no denying that there were very formidable cults of female goddesses at this time that seemed to be drawing on one another.
- [44:03]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
It's an amazing story. And if we go to the present day, so more than 5,000 years after Inanna emerged, can we still see the memory of Inanna of Ishtar today, the legacy?
- [44:16]
Dr. Kate Lister
She's having something a bit of a resurgence. Scholars have been working very diligently on Ishtar for a number of years. But what's interesting about that is that a lot of that has been scholars, perhaps they have to work on their own assumptions. Like the 19th century scholars, when they were looking at it, were quite clear, oh, it's a fertility goddess. Stop asking us questions. And then you kind of like. As you explore her more and people are more and more prepared to talk about this powerful sexual nature to this goddess can be quite challenging. But there's some amazing scholars who are doing work on this now and bringing her verses and her songs and her stories to us today. And I think that she's having a bit of a resurgence, and I think that that's partly because of where we are. Personally, we find it quite comforting that once upon a time there was this great sex goddess who misbehaved and challenged all the men in Urek to a shagging competition. But we need to be careful as well that we're not projecting back onto her and turning her into something that perhaps we need her to be. But, yeah, she's certainly. She's as popular as ever with scholars, and I think that her story is becoming more and more widely known because she is one of the oldest and the most powerful goddesses that we have.
- [45:34]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Kate, this has been absolutely fantastic. Before we completely wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to mention about Inanna before we finish?
- [45:43]
Dr. Kate Lister
Oh, there's one poem. I think it's Ishtar's. It's a little bit later on where there's a reference to something called a dub dub bird, which scholars suggested that that's the clitoris, which I quite like. I just want to drop that in there, that one of her songs mentions a dub dub bird and they think that. That she might be referring to her clitoris.
- [46:01]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Well, on that note, Kate, this has been wonderful. Always a pleasure getting you on the podcast. Tell us a bit about where people can find you and your work.
- [46:09]
Dr. Kate Lister
Well, you can find me on the sister podcast to this particular podcast, which is fabulous, but you can find me on Betwixt the Sheets where we look at the more scandalous side of history. And you can find me on social media as well if you really want to, but find me mostly on Betwixt the sheets.
- [46:25]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Kate, it just goes to me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come back on the podcast.
- [46:29]
Dr. Kate Lister
My pleasure. Thank you for asking me.
- [46:37]
Podcast Host (History Hit)
Well, there you go. There was Dr. Kate Lister, host of our history hit sister podcast Betwixt the Sheets, explaining the story, the fascinating story of Inanna and how it evolved over the centuries and millennia. I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thank you for listening. Please follow the Ancients on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us and you'll be doing us a big favour if you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well. Well, we'd really appreciate that. Don't forget you can also listen to us and all of Historyhit's podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe that's enough from me. I'll see you in the next episode.
- [47:27]
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- [47:56]
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