I am posting a series of articles on Gaia as a Goddess. This is the first. A rewritten version of a post that appeared on “Cassandra Legacy” in 2019
Nin-me-šara by Enheduanna
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lady of all divine powers!
Lady of the resplendent light!
Righteous Lady adorned in heavenly radiance!
Beloved Lady of An and Uraš!
Hierodule of An, sun-adorned and bejeweled!
Heaven’s Mistress with the holy diadem,
Who loves the beautiful headdress befitting the office of her high priestess!
Powerful Mistress, seizer of the seven divine powers!
My Heavenly Lady, guardian of the seven divine powers!
You have seized the seven divine powers!
You hold the divine powers in your hand!
You have gathered together the seven divine powers!
You have clasped the divine powers to your breast!
The Earth Goddess appears under various names in human history: Inanna, Ishtar, Isis, Gaia, and more. But did a widespread Goddess cult ever exist? The idea that very ancient societies were matriarchal and goddess-oriented is popular, but it is only based on scattered figurines, some of them showing female figures with exaggerated sexual attributes. For some archeologists, such as Marija Gimbutas and James Mellaart, these statuettes are sufficient evidence to conclude that matriarchy was widespread during the Neolithic. The idea may have been expressed first by James Frazer in his “The Golden Bough” of 1890. But, we lack written documents, and we can say very little about the religious habits of the people who lived during those remote ages.
Moving forward in time, Julian Jaynes provides an in-depth interpretation of ancient cults in his “The Origin of Consciousness” (1979). According to him, early religious cults arose from people worshiping their deceased ancestors, whose voices they still heard in their minds. Religion was, then, local: there was no overarching deity, only local ones, locally worshiped. It is only with the development of the Sumerian civilization that we see something that we can call a “religion” in modern terms.
In the tablets found in Uruk, dating mid 3rd millennium BC, we find the sign Mush3 (𒈹),
which is interpreted as the first mention of the goddess Inanna in history. Indeed, with some creativity (a lot of it), you can recognize it as symbolizing the female sex. But these documents only tell us that food offerings were made to statues of the Goddess.
In later images, people are shown in ancient Sumerian tablets as speaking to the Goddess. Did the Goddess speak back? We don’t know, maybe she did, at that time. Below, you see the Goddess in her full regalia, including wings, a mace, thunderbolts (maybe), and her lion steed. A person is speaking to her, as shown by the typical gesture of the hand close to the mouth.
Today, we pray to God all the time, but we don’t expect Him to speak back to us. It is a different world.
We start having something written in a form that we can understand (more or less) with the work of Enheduanna, a priestess who lived around the 23rd century BC and left us a series of cuneiform texts largely dedicated to the Goddess Inanna. Enheduanna is an exceptional character. Among other things, she is the first named author known in history. That is, she is the first person we know to have signed the texts she wrote. The main work by Enheduanna, the “Nin Me Sara” (“Lady of all divine gifts”), is also known as “The Exaltation of Inanna,” and it is not so far from our modern understanding of what “religion” is. Probably, Enheduanna was trying to create a widespread cult of Inanna that would replace the old local deities of her time. So, in addition to being the first named author, Enheduanna was also the first prophet who used writing to try to establish a new religion.
Enheduanna could make this bold attempt because she was the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, another remarkable historical figure, the first known “emperor” who ruled over a large swat of land inhabited by different people. It makes sense that the newly formed empire needed some kind of homogeneous religion to keep it together. Hence, Enheduanna’s attempt.
From what we can read in Nin Me Sara, though, it seems clear that Enheduanna failed. She tells us quite frankly how she was chased out of her temple by a usurper named Lugalanna, who threatened her with a sword. She was reinstated by her nephew, Narām-Sîn, who retook the throne of the Akkadian empire for Sargon’s dynasty. But, despite Enheduanna’s efforts, we find no evidence of a widespread acceptance of the cult of the Goddess in later times. Rather, at the time of the Babylonian kingdom of Hammurabi (ca c. 1792 to c. 1750 BC), the male God Marduk became the most revered deity. In the Marduk myth, the Goddess Inanna is transformed into the dragoness Tiamat, whom Marduk defeats and then destroys in an epic battle.
The rise of male Gods led to the start of the “Axial Age,” which broadly covers the first millennium BC but extends further on. It was an age of male prophets and reformers who tended to sideline the ancient female deities. The ancient deity called Asherah may have been the consort (or maybe the paredra, the associated God/Goddess) of the male God Yahweh. Her cult disappeared with time, and she is mentioned in the Bible only as a deity worshiped by the Canaanite enemies.
In time, the idea of goddesses faded, and until recent times, it was obvious that God is male, has always been, and doesn’t need a paredra helping him. But the idea is being challenged today. We’ll discuss that in a future post.