it will always kill me that by epic winter, they didn’t even have the budget to give the characters different outfits and had two girls wearing the same thing in different colours 😭
A bit over a year has passed since I published one of my most successful blog articles to date, Nonconformity, ambiguity, fluidity and misinterpretation: on the gender of Inanna (and a few others). Due to space and time constraints, I couldn’t dedicate anywhere near as much time as I wanted to Inanna’s iconography in it - and by extension to images frequently mislabeled as depictions of her online. Time has finally come to fix this critical oversight.
The first half of the article covers some of the images most frequently mislabeled as depictions of Inanna - online, in old scholarship, or both. The second is a guide to Inanna’s actually attested iconography, including some of the most remarkable depictions of her - including the remarkable fresco from the palace of Zimri-Lim which shows her in color.
Out of necessity, the article also contains two digressions: a survey of some Greek sources seeking Aphrodite in the east and the history of their questionable reception, and a brief note on the different contexts of nudity in Mesopotamian art.
Part 1: alleged Inannas
Before dissecting specific popular cases of identifying Mesopotamian works of art as Inanna, a quick note on terminology is in order. The names Inanna and Ishtar are interchangeable; there originally were two separate goddesses - Ishtar in the city of Akkad in the north and Inanna in the south - but they merged in the third millennium BCE already. It’s not possible to delineate specific characteristics as belonging uniquely to one or the other (Julia M. Asher-Greve, Joan G. Westenholz, Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources, p. 62). Through this article I will mostly be referring to the deity as Inanna for consistency.
Case 1: the Burney relief
The “Queen of the Night”/Burney relief (wikimedia commons).
I feel obliged to start with letting you know that I am not a fan of the Burney relief - aka “Queen of the Night”, as the British Museum opted to rename it in the 2000s (Goddesses in…, p. 239; I’m not a fan of this name). Or, rather - I am not a fan of its unwarranted prominence, particularly in literature aimed at general audiences and online. This prominence is why I figured it should come first, though.
Four identities have been proposed for the figure depicted on it: Inanna, Ereshkigal, lilītu (or another closely related demon) or Kilili. There are considerable problems in all four cases, though (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Some Demons of Time and their Functions in Mesopotamian Iconography, p 113).
It’s not hard to find modern interpretations of Inanna clearly influenced by it to varying degrees. The bird feet in particular seem to be a recurring element. There’s a major problem, though Mesopotamian gods were generally fully anthropomorphic (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Mischwesen A. Philologisch. Mesopotamien in RlA vol. 8, p. 226). The only exceptions might be minor figures associated with specific aspects of nature, some underworld deities with serpentine traits or bovine ears, and possibly deified animals. However, the last category has to be evaluated on a case by case basis, as some of its members were clearly fully anthropomorphic (Ibidem, p. 233-235).
Winged Inannas are not entirely unheard of, though winged figures in general don’t appear in art often before the second half of the second millennium BCE, and it was hardly a fixed attribute of hers anyway (Ibidem, p. 239).
In the case of Ereshkigal, there are two issues. One is that the supposedly Old Babylonian Burney relief is held to be a cult item. However, references to Ereshkigal as an actively worshiped deity are either earlier (Umma), significantly later (Neo-Assyrian Assur, Neo-Babylonian Kutha) or come from peripheral areas like Emar; there’s no evidence she had a cult center of her own anywhere in Mesopotamia (Some Demons…, p. 113).
The second issue is that textual sources provide no hints about Ereshkigal’s iconography, leaving her effectively impossible to identify in art. Her appearance is never described in detail, beyond indicating one probably should expect her to be reclining. Even the Underworld Vision of an Assyrian Prince provides no insights, despite describing numerous other underworld figures (Anna Jordanova, Untersuchungen zur Gestalt einer Unterweltsgöttin: Ereškigal nach den Sumerischen und Akkadischen Quellentexten, p. 432).
The only possible hint at any non-anthropomorphic elements in Ereshkigal’s iconography is her association with a group of gods associated with the underworld with some serpentine traits, such as Ninazu, who seemingly is depicted as scaly in a single unique case, and Tishpak, who in an Old Babylonian incantation is described as green (possibly indicating he had snake-like skin), but this remains purely speculative (Mischwesen A…., p. 233).
A damaged relief of Allani from Yazılıkaya (wikimedia commons).
I don’t think we can entirely depend on comparative evidence, but a direction I haven’t seen any of the investigations take is comparing the relief with depictions of Ereshkigal’s most consistently attested counterpart, Hurrian Allani (“the lady”; not the most creative of names). The association was so close that Ereshkigal’s secondary name Allatum is simply Allani with an Akkadian feminine ending (Untersuchungen zur…, p. 19).
Allani, Ishara and Nabarbi in procession (wikimedia commons).
As far as art is concerned, Allani (interestingly labeled as “Allatum” in the accompanying description) is depicted exactly in the same way as other goddesses on a relief of a divine procession from the Yazılıkaya sanctuary (identification via Piotr Taracha, Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia, p. 95). Supplementary evidence from textual sources would indicate that elsewhere she was distinguished by the color of her robe, not any specific attribute. Instructions for the Hurro-Hittite ḫišuwa festival from Kizzuwatna state it had to be blue. It’s possible that in this context it was understood as a color indicating an association with death (Volkert Haas, Geschichte der Hethitischen Religion, p. 405).
Once again, I don’t think equivalencies are necessarily enough to establish something with certainty, but we have no certain depictions of Ereshkigal, while we do know how Allani was depicted - and neither bird feet nor nudity are involved.
Identification with the demon lilītu can be easily excluded on the basis that such figures would not be depicted on what is assumed to be a cult relief (Mischwesen A…., p. 241). Firmly malevolent supernatural beings other than Lamashtu rarely, if ever, appear in extant Mesopotamian art. Exorcistic texts indicate that figures of some of them were prepared for rituals, but these were inevitably to be destroyed over their course (Ibidem, p. 232).
I won’t even entertain the baffling online trend of referring to the figure on the relief not as lilītu, but rather the similarly named Jewish Lilith (and by extension I won’t dedicate any space to its use as a generic “occult” image on very dubious websites, in tabletop games, and so on). There’s a rather simple reason - it would be physically impossible for a demon from Jewish tradition to be present in second millennium BCE Mesopotamia. And the modern image of Lilith in particular only really goes back to the middle ages. It’s a topic of no real importance here, and I won’t be covering it in more detail.
Finally, there’s Kilili. The god list An = Anum (tablet IV, line 139) counts her as one of Inanna’s 18 messengers (Wilfred G. Lambert, Ryan D. Winters, An = Anum and Related Lists, p. 168-170; the term used is lukingia - not to be confused with sukkal which designated a more universal official, despite also being translated as “messenger” sometimes). In a lexical list her name is glossed in Sumerian as (Nin)inna, “(lady) owl” (Mischwesen A…., p. 241). It seems safe to conclude she was a deified owl, and thus would belong to the category of deities who originated as deified animals. A hybrid appearance would be unusual for a major deity, but not for such a marginal, minor figure (Ibidem, p. 234). As a deity - though a minor one - Kilili would be expected to wear horned headwear, but simultaneously wouldn’t have to be entirely anthropomorphic. It’s also clear that she was an object of cult, with direct evidence available from Middle Assyrian, Neo-Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian and Seleucid periods (Some Demons…, p. 113).
The only issue for interpreting the figure as Kilili is that the two symbols she holds are an absolute aberration (Ibidem, p. 113). For the most part, the rod and ring symbol is held by major deities, specifically ones associated with kingship in specific states. It’s commonly shown being handed over to a ruler, presumably indicating he’s being selected for his position through divine favor. Most commonly it’s understood as a measuring rod and rope (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Ring und Stab (Ring and rod) in RlA vol. 11, p. 416-417).
No other example of a deity brandishing two sets of them, or of a minor figure holding even one, are known. Wiggermann assumes that in the case of the Burney relief they might be some unrelated accidentally similar objects, like snares for catching birds; something tied to the individual character of the unique figure depicted on it, in any case (Ibidem, p. 419).
Drawing of a seal showing the four winds (Mischwesen A…., p. 246; reproduced here for educational purposes only).
While he doesn’t suggest identification outright, Wiggermann also points out some elements of the Burney relief - specifically the combination of the horned headwear of divinity with the form of a winged hybrid - parallel the depictions of a different minor figure, the personified south wind (Some Demons…, p. 113). She typically appears alongside three similar male figures representing, as you can probably guess, three other winds - northern, western and eastern. She makes an appearance in the myth Adapa and the South Wind. Her description matches the iconographic evidence pretty well: she has wings, seems to be anthropomorphic otherwise, and while no other winds are directly mentioned, it is stated that she has multiple brothers (Mischwesen A…., p. 239-240).
Finally, there’s a fifth possibility which would render all these points moot: the Burney relief might not be authentic at all. Its modern history has been covered in a blog post by the art historian Andrea Sinclair here; it has no provenance (it appeared on an auction in the 1930s with no prior history). It was tested twice to determine its age - once in 1935 and then in 1975 - but the results were never formally published.
Even if by some miracle it’s authentic - the more time passes, the less inclined I am to think so - there’s no real reason to expect it to depict Inanna, any other major goddess, or Ereshkigal. For all the grandeur British Museum’s name of choice gives it, it depicts an errand girl at best.
Case 2: storm goddess
The weather goddess in a typical scene from a third millennium BCE cylinder seal (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Agriculture as Civilization: Sages, Farmers and Barbarians, p. 675; reproduced here for educational purposes only).
Identifying a naked goddess well attested on cylinder seals, usually in the company of a weather god, with either Inanna or her Hurrian counterpart Shaushka has been proposed (Mischwesen A…., p. 237).
This seems to reflect a trend of identifying Inanna herself as a weather goddess (sic). As far as I can tell, this idea goes back to Thorkild Jacobsen. In the 1970s he proposed that Inanna was a personified thunderstorm in origin, and thus, among other things, also a weather goddess. He relied partially on parallels between descriptions of her usual martial activity with passages dealing with Ninurta’s warrior exploits - both compare them to storms (The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion, p. 136-137).
This idea, as far as I’m aware, didn’t catch on in assyriology to any meaningful degree. By the 1980s it was recognized that multiple deities can be described in similar “stormy” terms in literary texts without actually having anything to do with the weather. Tishpak and Marduk are two other major examples (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Tišpak, his Seal and the Dragon Mušḫuššu, p. 120). Enlil and Enki (Ea) could similarly be described commanding storms or be compared to them, without any deeper connection with weather phenomena (Daniel Schwemer, The Storm-Gods of the Ancient Near East: Summary, Synthesis, Recent Studies. Part I, p. 126-127).
Jacobsen himself eventually concluded that storms are simply an universal poetic metaphor for destruction wrought by divine anger, enemy troops, and so on (The Harps That Once… Sumerian Poetry in Translation, p. 448). Today the consensus view is that applying the label of a weather deity just due to this sort of occasional metaphorical association is to be avoided (The Storm-Gods…, p. 125).
Impression of a Syrian-style seal from the Old Babylonian period showing a weather goddess (wikimedia commons).
As for the “storm goddess” from cylinder seals, her identity was eventually determined with near absolute certainty. She’s almost definitely Shala, the wife of Adad, the weather god. Her precise origin is unclear, but from the Old Babylonian period onward she regularly appears in this role. She was seemingly associated both with rain and with agricultural produce which could grow thanks to it (The Storm-Gods…, p. 147-149).
Why was she depicted either nude or in the process of exposing herself, though? That’s less clear. It’s possible it’s partially a legacy of an originally distinct goddess, Medimsha, “the one with beautiful limbs”; the full or partial nudity might be meant to reflect the name. Simply put, Medimsha’s iconography is meant to reflect the idea that she looks attractive, which would be demonstrated via her self-exposure (Agriculture as…, p. 680). In god lists from the Old Babylonian period and beyond, she appears simply as one of Shala’s alternate names (The Storm-Gods…, p. 147). However, she was originally a goddess in her own right - one of the seventy Early Dynastic Zame Hymns from Abu Salabikh is dedicated to her. Sadly, it’s not very informative (Manfred Krebernik, Jan J. W. Lisman, The Sumerian Zame Hymns from Tell Abū Ṣalābīḫ With an Appendix on the Early Dynastic Colophons, p. 44):
From the Old Babylonian period on, Medimsha regularly appears in god lists and literary texts as the spouse of Adad, whether he appears under his own name or as Ishkur (The Storm-Gods…, p. 133). For additional context, those names originally designated two separate gods. The merge probably occurred in the Sargonic period (late third millennium BCE), seeing as no earlier examples of theophoric names invoking the weather god under the latter name are known from anywhere in Mesopotamia. The exception is the western periphery, and Mari in particular. It’s possible that’s where the equivalence between the two was originally established. While much remains unclear about the spread of Adad, it’s evident that he and Ishkur were impossible to distinguish from each other by the end of the third millennium BCE (The Storm-Gods…, p. 137-138).
For what it’s worth, sources from before the Old Babylonian period don’t associate Medimsha with Ishkur (or Adad); that they were regarded as a couple is pure conjecture. Still, there’s no more plausible candidate for the role of the fully or partially naked “storm goddess” accompanying him in art (The Storm-Gods…, p. 133). Shala presumably kept the same iconography thanks to similar characteristics; this would mean that Medimsha, like her, was associated with rain and vegetation (Agriculture as…, p. 680; The Storm-Gods…, p. 149).
Shala didn’t have much to do with Inanna, obviously. However, her child Usuramassu under uncertain circumstances came to be regarded as Inanna’s fairly major courtier; I covered this in an earlier article in detail already, though, so I won’t repeat myself here.
Case 3: figure(s) with crescent headdress
A statue from the Parthian period with the characteristic crescent ornament (wikimedia commons).
This statue (please look at her) has been put through untold undeserved torments online. For years she served as the photo in the infobox of the Astarte article on English wikipedia, and continues to suffer this fate in multiple other language versions. She’s also still stuck in both Astarte and Ishtar categories on wikimedia commons. A viral post on a certain blue site other than tumblr labeled her as “Asherah” a few years ago.
In reality, she might not even be a deity. Like multiple other similar statues, she comes from a necropolis near Babylon. It’s possible that they were idealized depictions of the deceased, with the characteristic crescent being a mundane hair ornament or even a part of the hairdo rather than a divine attribute (Claus Ambos, Nanaja - Eine Ikonographische Studie zur Darstellung Einer Altorientalischen Göttin in Hellenistischparthischer Zeit, p. 243-244).
However, most commonly it is assumed that they’re representations of Nanaya (Joan G. Westenholz, Nanaya: Lady of Mystery, p. 80). Tawny L. Holm points out the presence of the crescent ornament as the most important factor (Nanay(a) Among the Arameans: New Light from Papyrus Amherst 63, p. 99).
Note that this is not information hidden behind hard to access papers. The same identification is made in the description of the “main” statue on the corresponding entry in the database of the Louvre, where she is currently housed. The same museum has multiple similar ones in its collection, including AO 20132, as well as reclining examples like AO 20131 though they are only identified as an unspecified Mesopotamian goddess. The identification with Nanaya has been advocated in the case of AO 20131 by Andrea Sinclair, though only in a blog post rather than a peer reviewed publication.
Seated Nanaya on the kudurru of Meli-Shipak II (wikimedia commons).
There’s only one certain depiction of Nanaya from before the Hellenistic period. She appears on a kudurru (a type of inscribed boundary stone) of king Meli-Shipak II from the twelfth century BCE (Michael Shenkar, Intangible Spirits and Graven Images: The Iconography of Deities in the Pre-Islamic Iranian World, p. 117) - she doesn’t really look similar to the statuettes above, though.
Nanaya on a pithos from Assur (Joan G. Westenholz, Trading the Symbols of the Goddess Nanaya, p. 183; reproduced here for educational purposes only).
However, there is no shortage of later depictions of Nanaya with a lunar crescent. The most famous example from Mesopotamia is a pithos from Assur from the Parthian period with a figure clad in robes decorated with lunar crescents. The accompanying inscription in Aramaic identifies her as Nanaya (Nanaja…, p. 238). As an ornament the crescent frequently appears in depictions of her in Bactria, Sogdia and Chorasm in the east, where she came to be worshiped in the first millennium CE (Intangible Spirits…, p. 120-121). In Kushan art it’s her single most consistent attribute, and appears on the head of all three iconographic types of Nana(ya): in a long gown, as an archer, and on the back of a lion (Trading the…, p. 170).
The oldest source associating Nanaya with the moon is a hymn dated to the Old Babylonian period, specifically to the reign of Samsuiluna. It has therefore been suggested that at least some roughly contemporary descriptions of unidentified goddesses wearing jewelry with ornaments in the form of the sun on the moon or standing near poles with similar symbols are early depictions of her, though this is entirely speculative; and the hymn associates her with the sun as well (Ibidem, p. 173-174). Furthermore, it’s also possible that the Old Babylonian goddess with a crescent is supposed to be Ningal, with the symbol reflecting her role as the spouse of the moon god, Sin (Goddesses in…, p. 173-174).
Most likely Nanaya only acquired her distinctly lunar attribute in the Seleucid period, from Artemis. A minority view is that Hecate might’ve been an additional vector (Intangible Spirits…, p. 120 fn. 645), though I’m not aware of any attestations of her from Mesopotamia. As it will soon become clear she doesn’t fit into the most plausible explanation for the transfer, either.
As stressed by Robert Parker, as far as Greeks were concerned, Nanaya was Artemis’ standard counterpart in the east (Greek Gods Abroad: Names, Natures, and Transformations, p. 46). The identification was so consistent that the fact a unique inscription from Palmyra instead refers to “Allat who is Artemis” is considered unusual (Ted Kaizer, Identifying the Divine in the Roman Near East, p. 120). A bilingual dedication from the same city features Nanaya in Aramaic and Artemis in Greek (Greek Gods…, p. 46). There’s also a single case of an individual who seemingly bore what appears to be a Hellenized form of a possibly Aramaic or Akkadian name clearly invoking Nanaya, Minnanaios (Μινναναιος), going by Artemidorus in Greek, as attested in a donation from Uruk from 111 CE (Aage Westenholz, The Graeco-Babyloniaca Once Again, p. 300). It has also been proposed that a statue of Artemis discovered in Nisa in Turkmenistan (“Old Nisa”) was treated as a depiction of Nanaya in the Arsacid period, though this cannot be conclusively proven (Intangible Spirits…, p. 127).
As far as Greco-Roman sources from further west go, Strabo definitely makes a reference to this identification - he called Borsippa, a city associated with Nanaya in the first millennium BCE, a cult center of Artemis (Trading the…, p. 187). Pliny probably referred to Nanaya when he reported that Susa possessed a “renowned temple of Diana” (Dianae templum augustissimum), the Roman counterpart of Artemis (Nanaja…, p. 249).
In addition to resulting in Nanaya’s acquisition of the lunar crescent, the association with Artemis might be the reason why she came to be depicted as an archer from at least the Seleucid period on. However, it cannot be ruled out that the bow was already her attribute, and that it contributed towards her interpretatio graeca instead of being its result (Trading the…, p. 187).
I wonder what are the odds that from the Mesopotamian perspective providing Nanaya with a bow was an innuendo. Bear with me: Nanaya is well represented in the corpus of nīš libbi incantations, which deal with the sexual sphere (Gioele Zisa, The Loss of Male Sexual Desire in Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 141). Bows and quivers occur in it as sexual euphemisms. Some of the remedies to problems associated with the loss of sexual desire prescribe the preparation of a small bow for ritual purposes (The Loss…, p. 195-196). Most copies of nīš libbi come from the Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian periods. However, at least one - from Sippar - is Achaemenid. Dating more precise than before the reign of Xerxes is not possible, though (The Loss…, p. 4-5). On top of that, bow metaphors represent sexual prowess in royal inscriptions and treaties through the Neo-Assyrian period (The Loss…, p. 197-198).
This brings us to the elephant in the room: Nanaya very obviously wasn’t very similar to Artemis, character-wise. In some regards, she was her opposite - she presided over erotic love. An Old Babylonian poem (admittedly one of my favorite examples of Mesopotamian love poetry) puts this in pretty explicit terms (Stephanie L. Budin, Artemis, p. 4-5):
The identification between the two therefore ultimately had very little to do with their respective character. It was probably largely a political endeavor, and happened in part by proxy.
The Antiochus cylinder (wikimedia commons).
It all started when Antiochus I of the Seleucid dynasty started to propagate the belief that Apollo was the ancestor of his family. Roughly at the same time, the same god came to be recognized as the interpretatio graeca of Mesopotamian Nabu. This phenomenon is particularly well represented in sources from Palmyra and Dura Europos, which postdate the Seleucids, but evidently wasn’t limited to those two cities. Strabo in his already mentioned testimony already calls Nabu’s main cult center Borsippa a city sacred to Apollo and Artemis. It’s also known that Antiochus showed remarkable interest in it - his only royal inscription written in cuneiform, preserved on the Antiochus cylinder, commemorates the rebuilding of Nabu’s temple there. It’s therefore distinctly possible that the identification goes back to Antiochus’ policy… and that Nanaya got to become Artemis’ counterpart simply because she was worshiped alongside Nabu. Nabu, in turn, “became” Apollo probably largely just because he was Marduk’s son, and Apollo was the son of Zeus; as the respective pantheon heads were already regarded as counterparts earlier (Paul-Alain Beaulieu, Nabû and Apollo: the Two Faces of Seleucid Religious Policy, p. 18-20).
From the perspective of Antiochus I, the identification would’ve given him a way to promote his new dynastic cult in a way palatable to the still fairly influential priestly elites of Borsippa. However, one shouldn’t read too hard into it. Ultimately, while the cylinder should not be discarded altogether, as it sometimes was in the past due to lack of parallels, it also can’t be used to claim the Seleucids were enthusiastic purveyors of classical Mesopotamian learning and theology. It doesn’t even reflect something resembling the Ptolemaic (re)invention of Serapis as a god uniting the dynastic and native culture (Nabû and…, p. 28-30).
To be fair, it still can be argued that the Seleucids were more invested in (certain aspects of) Mesopotamian tradition than many other Hellenistic Greeks were in foreign cultures. As noted by Aage Westenholz, to put it bluntly they were often more interested in what they thought they should be like than into what they actually were. Relatively accurate accounts of, say, Egyptian or Mesopotamian traditions meant for a Greek audience did exist, but few actually bothered to familiarize themselves with them. The average person learning about foreign lands was studying forgeries and hearsay. Apparent lack of interest in learning foreign languages has been singled out as a major cause of this issue (The Graeco-Babyloniaca…, p. 275-276, fn. 10). Of course, it should also be taken into account that the people most familiar with traditional deities - like clergy - would not necessarily be keen on sharing their information with who, as Westenholz put it, “must have appeared to them as the American tourists of their time” (Ibidem, p. 299).
Ultimately, caution is necessary when studying Greek sources dealing with other cultures - fanciful speculation and extrapolation are everywhere (Ibidem, p. 298-299). Without necessary caution, one might end up with results comparable to trying to learn about Rome from the adventures of Asterix (Ibidem, p. 296).
Excursus: interpretatio graeca or pure vibes? The quest for Aphrodite in Mesopotamia
While working on this article, I’ve learned of a recent attempt at overturning the identification of the figures with crescent headdress as Nanaya. It was based in part on the argument that nudity would not be suitable for Artemis (Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper, Burying the Alabaster Goddess in Hellenistic Babylonia: Religious Power, Sexual Agency, and Accessing the Afterlife Through Ishtar-Aphrodite Figurines from Seleucid-Parthian Iraq, p. 216-217).
I’ll admit I’m a bit puzzled why Langin-Hooper assumes that one would basically find the most classical form of Artemis in Mesopotamia, though. As pointed out by Joan G. Westenholz, in the east it was effectively Nanaya who absorbed some of Artemis’ attributes, not the other way around (Trading the…, p. 187). In Seleucid Susa even in Greek dedications to Nanaya predominate, and Artemis is rare (Greek Gods…, p. 228).
Additionally, depictions of naked Artemis, while uncommon, do exist. At least one example actually comes from further east than Mesopotamia. A cosmetic palette from Akra in Pakistan shows her naked (save for jewelry) in what’s likely an illustration of the myth of Actaeon; close parallels are known from Roman art (Ladislav Stančo, Greek Gods in the East: Hellenistic Iconographic Schemes in Central Asia, p. 41-42).
Langin-Hooper suggests that the nudity of the statuettes is meant to reflect the concept of kuzbu - something along the lines of sex appeal, but also the more general vitality reflected through it, both in men and in women (Burying the…, p. 225). It could be regarded as a characteristic of multiple deities - Aya, Nisaba, Ishtar, Tashmetu, Gilgamesh, Nabu and Shamash - but the most consistently a characteristic of Nanaya (Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period, p. 184-185).
And yet, that’s the identification Langin-Hooper rejects. The alternative identity proposed for the statues by her is “Ishtar-Aphrodite” (Burying the…, p. 217). However, through the entire article not one reference is made to a primary source which would directly recognize an equivalence between those two goddesses. Neither does the only source listed which also identifies the statue this way, actually (Blair Fowlkes-Childs, Michael Seymour, The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East, p. 234). I assumed this might be simple oversight on the part of the authors involved, and consulted other publications dealing with Mesopotamia in the Hellenistic and Parthian period in hopes of finding the missing evidence.
As it turns out, Aphrodite isn’t mentioned even once in Julia Krul’s seminal The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk (however, the Seleucid interest being largely limited to deities who could be treated as counterparts of Zeus, Apollo and Artemis is stressed on p. 39, and lack of direct evidence for involvement in the cult of Ishtar on p. 40) or in Céline Debourse’s Of Priests and Kings: The Babylonian New Year Festival in the Last Age of Cuneiform Culture. Lucinda Dirven, meanwhile, notes the fusion of (Syro-)Mesopotamian and Greek elements is only evident in a small number of cases in Seleucid and Parthian Mesopotamia, with Nabu acquiring Apollo’s oracular qualities and Nanaya - Artemis’ crescent attribute singled out as the best documented examples (Religious Continuity and Change in Parthian Mesopotamia: A Note on the Survival of Babylonian Traditions, p. 20-21). Once again, no trace of Aphrodite, though. On the Greek end, no case of interpretatio graeca involving Ishtar is discussed in Robert Parker’s Greek Gods Abroad: Names, Natures and Transformations.
Afterwards I turned to earlier Greek sources. In Histories Herodotus does list Aphrodite as interpretatio graeca of a Mesopotamian goddess: “the Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta, the Arabians Alilat and the Persians Mitra” (Albert de Jong, Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature, p. 91). That’s obviously not Ishtar, though - it’s a Greek spelling of Mulittu (or Mulissu), the first millennium BCE pronunciations of Ninlil’s name (Manfred Krebernik, Ninlil in RlA vol. 9, p. 453).
Herodotus’ passage appears to reflect his belief in diffusionism; he uses Aphrodite as a stand-in for numerous goddesses, who he assumed went back to a common “ancestor”. Elsewhere he asserts Aphrodite was also worshiped in Syria, Egypt, Tyre and by Cyraneans and Scythians, in the last case identifying her with Atrimpasa. Ironically, Greek Aphrodite herself is effectively missing from Histories (Traditions of…, p. 103).
Mylitta also appears in what’s perhaps the single most infamous section of Histories (Stephanie L. Budin, The Myth of Sacred Prostitution in Antiquity, p. 12). Herodotus claims that it was a custom in Babylon for every woman to once in her life attend the temple of Mylitta (“Assyrians call Aphrodite Mylitta”, he explains once again - while describing Babylon…) and wait for a stranger to have sex with her; the temple makes money off of that, as he claims (Ibidem, p. 58-60).
The source is unclear - it has been variously proposed that Herodotus might’ve made it all up himself, depended on hearsay, or on some hitherto lost text by an even earlier Greek author (Hecateus has been suggested). It ultimately doesn’t matter much, though - he was not documenting a Babylonian custom. His Babylon isn’t really a real place, but simply a didactic tale: a dreadful inversion of the idealized Greek polis and its norms (Leslie Kurke, Coins, Bodies, Games and Gold. The Politics of Meaning in Archaic Greece, p. 230-233). The supposed sexual tribute to Mylitta might specifically be an intentionally unnerving reversal of the festival of Thesmophoria, which his readers would be well familiar with (The Myth…, p. 73-74). As far as I’m concerned, this also neatly explains why he places who appears to be Ninlil in Babylon and seems to confuse it with Assyria.
Framing didactic and moralistic tales about contemporary Greece as accounts of foreign customs is not unique to Herodotus’ description of Babylon. For example, at one point he also presents an argument about the merits of monarchy, oligarchy and democracy as a debate between three Persians - even though it pretty clearly reflects discourse extant in Greece in his times, not Persian views on rulership (Ibidem, p. 61-62). Even though the supposed rite in honor of Mylitta is a similar sort of fiction, it led to the birth of the idea of “sacred prostitution” which continues to haunt scholarship up to this day (Ibidem, p. 12-13). Once again, Victorian imagination, and especially (but not only) James G. Frazer of The Golden Bough fame, is largely to blame. As you can imagine, this is one of the aspects of the popular western idea “decadent orient” (Ibidem, p. 313). However, this is not the time and place for dissecting this problem. A digression within a digression would be too much.
Moving back to the time BCE, Aphrodite is also mentioned as a divine denizen of Babylon by Berossus, a Babylonian priest who prepared an account of Mesopotamian history and religion in Greek - the Babyloniaca - for Antiochus I. There’s a small problem, though - he explicitly refers to her as a newcomer introduced there by Artaxerxes II (Daniel T. Potts, The Persian Empire under the Achaemenid Dynasty, from Darius I to Darius III in The Oxford History of the Ancient Near East Volume V: The Age of Persia, p. 485). He therefore describes events which would’ve taken place long after Herodotus’ death (Traditions of…, p. 92). On top of that, he actually calls the new goddess “Aphrodite Anaitis”, making it clear that he’s describing Iranian Anahita, not a Mesopotamian goddess (The Persian…, p. 485).
I will note that the interpretatio graeca used by Berossus is unusual, even if not unparalleled. Agathias, who also states that Persians call Aphrodite Anaitis, probably simply depended on his work. He’s a particularly poor source, though, as he also classifies Mesopotamian Bel (Marduk) and even Cilician Sandas as “Persian” gods (Traditions of…, p. 246-247).
The standard Greek view was that Anahita’s counterpart is Artemis (Greek Gods…, p. 59). Numerous references to Hellenized cults of Anahita (or perhaps Persianized Artemis, depending on the individual case) - Artemis Anaitis, Anaitis, Artemis Persike (“Persian Artemis”) or, in a unique case, Artemis Medeia (“Median Artemis”) - are known, especially from Lydia (Greek Gods…, p. 98-99). Evidence is also available from Armenia (Intangible Spirits…, p. 77).
A drawing of the goddess depicted on the Gorgippia seal (Intangible Spirits…, p. 247; reproduced here for educational purposes only).
Albert de Jong asserts that Berossus depended on the fact that Anahita, as he argues, clearly was associated with Ishtar, who in turn “was regularly identified with Aphrodite in Greek” (Traditions of…, p. 270). However, there’s actually no clear evidence that Anahita was associated with Ishtar in any meaningful capacity in the Achaemenid period. Any evidence in favor of this identification is either considerably later or dubious, and never suggests full blown conflation. For instance, a seal from Gorgippia which shows a goddess on the back of a lion is held to be a depiction of Anahita patterned on Ishtar - but it might very well be Ishtar herself, or perhaps Nanaya. It doesn’t help that the seal is not inscribed. Given its point of origin, a depiction of Anahita would be more likely to resemble Greek Artemis; the goddess on lion doesn’t, and the animal was never associated with her on top of that (Intangible Spirits…, p. 68-69).
Putting Anahita aside, the only source de Jong lists to support the claim of widespread identification between Aphrodite and Ishtar is Fritz Graf’s Aphrodite entry in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Traditions of…, p. 270) Upon closer examination, to put it lightly it’s not the most rigorous of evaluations. Graf cites “temple prostitution”, what I can only describe as pure vibes (Pausanias asserting that the epithet Ourania is “Assyrian”) and “frontal nudity” among other factors. Worst of all, he doesn’t differentiate between Ishtar and Phoenician Astarte; association with one, as far as he’s concerned, meant association with both (Aphrodite in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, p. 66).
In contrast with Ishtar, direct evidence that Astarte actually was identified with Aphrodite (or Roman Venus, or both) is available from multiple locations. Those include, but are not limited to, Kos (Greek Gods…, p. 119); Eryx (Ibidem, p. 61; Venus); Neapolis (Ibidem, p. 161); and Delos (Ibidem, p. 165).
Most importantly from the Aphrodite-centric point of view, evidence is also available from Cyprus, where most of her main cult centers were located. A careful survey has been recently prepared by Elizabeth Bloch-Smith. She concluded that increased Phoenician presence on the island in the first millennium BCE might have facilitated the perception of the chief goddesses of both areas as counterparts. The first text from Paphos which refers to its goddess, (Wanassa-)Aphrodite, as “Astarte of Paphos”, dates only to the third century BCE. However, the process might have started earlier, possibly in the sixth century BCE. The situation was probably similar in Kition and Amathus. In the last of those sites evidence for Astarte’s presence might be even earlier - as early as the eighth century BCE - if speculative interpretation of non-textual sources is to be accepted (Archaeological and Inscriptional Evidence for Phoenician Astarte, p. 188-189).
At least on Cyprus, the identification between Aphrodite and Astarte reflected their respective high status in specific local pantheons, with the former's position as the sole divine “ruler” of Paphos being a particularly important factor (Stephanie L. Budin, Before Kypris was Aphrodite, p. 215). However, it needs to be stressed that in contrast with Aphrodite, Astarte actually wasn’t a love goddess (Rüdiger Schmitt, Astarte, Mistress of Horses, Lady of the Chariot: The Warrior Aspect of Astarte, p. 213-214); she was chiefly a figure associated with kingship, and more generally with benevolence (Ibidem, p. 219).
While well documented, treating Aphrodite as interpretatio graeca of Astarte was not universal. It seems Phoenicians themselves often preferred keeping Astarte under her own name, perhaps as a marker of own identity or even conscious resistance to hellenization (Archaeological and…, p. 194). Exceptions exist in Greek sources too: a text from Cappadocia leaves Astarte’s name untranslated (Greek Gods…, p. 195). An unusual bilingual dedication from Byblos features the city’s tutelary goddess Baalat Gebal in Phoenician… with Astarte unexpectedly acting as her interpretatio graeca (Ibidem, p. 85).
Of course, while Astarte’s and Ishtar’s names are cognates, they’re individual goddesses, from different cultures, with their own histories. They’re not interchangeable (Aren M. Wilson-Wright, Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age, p. 1). Similar name, and genuine (let alone imaginary) similarity of character, are not enough to turn multiple deities into one, as is done with Ishtar and Astarte, and by proxy with Aphrodite (and a host of other goddesses) in less than stellar scholarship (Ibidem, p. 8-9) - and in some cases, regrettably also in scholarship which is otherwise fine.
It should be noted that trying to turn Inanna, Astarte, Herodotus’ “Mylitta” and Aphrodite into some form of heavily processed goddess slurry has particularly ignoble roots - Frazer once again was one of the pioneers, dismissively speaking of “Mylitta, that is, of Ishtar or Astarte” or a goddess who “went by the name of Aphrodite, Astarte, or what not” (The Myth…, p. 313). Granted, that’s the guy convinced Osiris is Attis.
In any case, creating long chains of “analogs” - even based on individual identifications which occurred in specific context - should be avoided. Lest you want to end up concluding Apollo was the lord of the underworld in Greece, since he was identified with Resheph on Cyprus, and Resheph was associated with Nergal in Ebla and Ugarit (Maciej M. Munnich, The God Resheph in the Ancient Near East, p. 221). For some reason, such dubious conflations and far reaching conclusions based on them are more readily accepted in the case of goddesses than gods; I don’t think anyone would seriously try to argue that Tyr is Zeus just because their names are cognates, and thus all of Zeus’ associations from, say, Egypt or Anatolia can be transferred to Tyr.
I’ll close this section with one final Greek reference to Aphrodite as interpretatio graeca of an eastern figure - not exactly from Mesopotamia, but close enough to be relevant. Appian in his Syriaca refers to an otherwise unattested “Aphrodite Elymaea”, who according to him was worshiped in Susa. Based on the location, it seems that Nanaya is the deity meant (Traditions of…, p. 274). I don’t think it has any bearing on the identification of the figures discussed earlier - but it should invite further caution against both repeating unconfirmed claims of interpretatio graeca involving Aphrodite and about assuming Nanaya was a carbon copy of Artemis.
Part 2: Inanna’s iconography
All of the alleged Inannas I’ve discussed, who promptly turned to be someone else after closer examination, are naked. This alone could’ve been enough to dismiss them - no depiction of Inanna identified with certainty is nude (Ursula Seidl, Inanna/Ištar B. Mesopotamien. In der Bildkunst in RlA vol. 5, p. 89). And as the following section shall demonstrate, she’s neither hard to tell apart from other goddesses, nor uncommon in art.
The standard Inanna
The iconography of many Mesopotamian deities is unclear. Inanna is one of the exceptions thanks to her distinctiveness and relative stability of her depictions across different time periods (Goddesses in…, p. 289). She’s both the single goddess most commonly represented in Mesopotamian art, and the easiest one to identify, even without accompanying inscriptions. Her basic iconography reflects her role as a war deity (Ibidem, p. 252).
As noted by Ilona Zsolnay, even in academic publications Inanna is regularly reduced just to being a “love goddess”. The martial aspect of her remains understudied and underrepresented (Ištar, “Goddess of War, Pacifier of Kings”: An Analysis of Ištar’s Martial Role in the Maledictory Sections of the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, p. 389). However, these two roles cannot be separated, and are hardly contradictory: metaphorical comparisons between performance on the battlefield and in bed are abundant. Bows (recall what I wrote in Nanaya’s section!) and other weapons frequently occur as sexual euphemisms. In royal curse formulas in treaties and on monuments, Inanna is invoked to take away both at once. An oathbreaker would risk a loss of both literal and metaphorical bow through divine sanction, becoming entirely powerless. Martial valor was intimately tied to sexual vigor (Ibidem, p. 393-396).
If anything, it could perhaps be argued that it was the military side that’s more integral to Inanna, though this obviously would be a bit of a reach. Still, it has been suggested that in Old Babylonian Larsa she effectively lost the prerogatives of a goddess of love at the expense of Nanaya, without losing her association with military matters and her high rank in the pantheon (Goddesses in…, p. 92). A unique case, but one worth bearing in mind.
The Anubanini relief (wikimedia commons).
It was possible to establish that weapons are Inanna’s standard attributes based on depictions accompanied by inscriptions identifying the depicted figures. A famous monumental example is the Anubanini relief (Inanna/Ištar…, p. 87). Maces in particular were associated with her quite often (Goddesses in…, p. 170). However, bows and swords are attested too. Sometimes she also has two bands crossed over her chest presumably to indicate there’s a quiver - or quivers - on her back. In addition to weapons held in her hands she could also be depicted with them poking from behind her shoulders (Inanna/Ištar…, p. 88).
Detail of the fresco showing the investiture of Zimri-Lim (wikimedia commons).
Instead of weapons Inanna could also be depicted holding the characteristic rod and ring, already brought up earlier (Ring und…, p. 417). It seems the passing of them to rulers might be already indirectly referenced in an Early Dynastic literary text calling Inanna a “field measurer” (Goddesses in…, p. 47-48). A famous example of an investiture scene shows her giving the rod and ring to Zimri-Lim of Mari (Ibidem, p. 253).
Note that not every goddess providing kings with the rod and ring can instantly be identified as Inanna, considering they were an attribute of most major deities of cities associated with major dynasties. Most of them were male, like Sin (Nanna; in Ur), Tishpak (in Eshnunna), Marduk (in Babylon), Ashur (in Assur) or Inshushinak (in Susa), but not all. Ninisina played the same role in Isin. Additionally, a number of seated goddesses with no distinct attributes other than the rod and ring present in scenes from the Neo-Assyrian period remain hard to identify (Ring und…, p. 417-419).
A stela from Til Barsip (wikimedia commons).
Inanna’s usual outfit was a robe leaving one leg exposed. It appears to be unisex; male deities could be portrayed wearing it too (Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon. Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia, p. 155). It seems in at least some cases, for example on a stela shown above, she is depicted in two layers of clothing, though. Underneath the robe there’s an undergarment, most likely a thigh length tunic, possibly referred to as ṣubāt bālti (Nathan Wasserman, Mesopotamian Underwear and Undergarments, p. 1131). This term is derived from bāštum, usually something like “dignity” or “decorum”, though the same term also designated genitals (think of it as an euphemism along the lines of “private parts”). The name of the undergarment might have reflected both meanings, making it “something worn to cover up private parts” and “something worth to maintain dignity” at once (Ibidem, p. 1125-1126). In other words, extra effort went into showing that Inanna is arguably wearing more than many people did - take into account that while obviously public nudity would be frowned upon, there was no underwear in the modern sense, and not everyone wore undergarments (Ibidem, p. 1141-1142).
An example of a seal from Sippar showing an armed goddess in the characteristic asymmetrical robe (Goddesses in…, p. 432; reproduced here for educational purposes only).
A different sort of asymmetric garment is attested for Inanna on some seals from Sippar, where she could be portrayed in a robe leaving her right shoulder and breast exposed. It’s possible that it was meant to highlight sexual charm. However, it’s not unique to her, and similar images of Shamash’s wife Aya and the war goddess Annunitum from the city also exist (Goddesses in…, p. 269). The latter deity was a peculiar result of a title of Ishtar of Akkad designating her as a warlike tutelary goddess of the rulers of the Akkadian Empire splintering from the original goddess to start a solo career (Ibidem, p. 71).
Inanna and (not only) lions
An Old Babylonian terracotta plaque showing Inanna standing on the back of a lion (wikimedia commons).
Inanna’s symbolic animal was the lion. This was another reflection of her role as a warrior deity. Kings similarly described themselves as labbiš, “lion-like”, to highlight their martial valor and ferocity (Alison Acker Gruseke, Takayoshi M. Oshima, She Walks in Beauty: an Iconographical Study of the Goddess in a Nimbus, p. 55). In art this association goes back at least to the Sargonic period (Goddesses in…, p. 172).
A relief of Inanna with a lion-headed mace (wikimedia commons).
Initially Inanna was depicted on seals either seated on a throne with leonine decorations, or trampling a small lion (Ibidem, p. 172). In the latter case one of her legs was raised, with the foot placed on the back of the animal. She might also stand on two addorsed lions. A further way to represent the connection was providing her mace with lion head decorations (Ibidem, p. 252).
However, in the case of the lion attribute some caution is necessary too. The throne with leonine decorations was a fairly universal way to indicate a goddess’ status as the tutelary deity of a city - it’s hardly exclusive to Inanna. Additionally, seals showing a goddess with a lion might also be interpreted as representations of Ninura, the tutelary goddess of Umma. In this context the animal is only present as a city emblem of sorts, and it stands either in front of the deity or behind her; furthermore, attestations of Ninura are limited to the third millennium BCE (Ibidem, p. 202-204).
Impression of the seal of Shu-Ninshubura (Goddesses in…, p. 409; reproduced here for educational purposes only).
An association with ravens has been suggested for Inanna as well, based on the presence of a similar bird on the seal of a certain Shu-Ninshubura from Uruk. However, since its anatomical features don’t really match any corvids this is largely speculative (Goddesses in…, p. 219). It looks more like a francolin to me, honestly.
It might also be worth pointing out the occasional references to Inanna wearing a frog-shaped ornament on her belt. This appears to reflect a broader pattern of associating these animals with love, and it is known that similar charms could be also worn by ordinary people. It seems safe to assume that frogs were not symbolic animals of Inanna, though - they just shared her association with this sphere of activity (Frans A. M. Wiggermann, Sexuality A. In Mesopotamia in RlA vol. 12, p. 414).
Astral Inanna
An aniconic depiction of Inanna from the kudurru of Meli-Shipak II (wikimedia commons).
The astral role of the morning star and the evening star is already documented for Inanna in the Uruk period, basically at the dawn of recorded history (The Pantheon…, p. 104). It therefore should come as no surprise that it’s also fairly well represented in art. On kudurru - decorated boundary stones - she is fairly consistently depicted symbolically as an eight-pointed (or, less commonly six-pointed or seven-pointed) star (Ursula Seidl, Die Babylonischen Kudurru-Reliefs: Symbole Mesopotamischer Gottheiten, p. 100).
Inanna on the stela of Shamash-resh-usur (wikimedia commons).
However, the star symbol sometimes accompanied anthropomorphic depictions of Inanna (Ibidem, p. 100). For example, the stela of Shamash-resh-usur (remember him from the Anat article?), she holds her symbol in her hand alongside a bow (Inanna/Ištar…, p. 87). However, this symbol doesn’t always indicate a given deity is Inanna - it’s possible on seals it also served as a way to identify Ninsianna, for instance (Goddesses in…, p. 254).
Impression of a Neo-Assyrian seal showing the “goddess in a nimbus” (wikimedia commons).
It’s also possible that a figure conventionally referred to as “goddess in a nimbus” is Inanna as the deity representing Venus (She Walks…, p. 53). This term refers to a type particularly common in the seventh and eighth centuries BCE, a goddess surrounded by a ring from which triangles or poles tipped with globes or stars emanate (Ibidem, p. 47). Sometimes a star or a globe appears on her headdress too. The typical attributes already discussed above - like weapons and a lion - appear fairly often (Ibidem, p. 54-55). However, not every goddess in a nimbus is necessarily Inanna - sometimes similar figures are accompanied by a griffin-like hybrid, which wasn’t associated with her (Ibidem, p. 56-57).
Addendum: nudity in Mesopotamian art
While nudity doesn’t appear to play any role in Inanna’s iconography, providing some context on its role in Mesopotamian art feels in order before I’ll move on to concluding remarks.
In all of the cases discussed below, it’s important to bear in mind that the interpretation of individual works is often complicated due to lack of context and supporting textual evidence (Robert D. Biggs, Nacktheit A. I. In Mesopotamien in RlA vol. 9, p. 64-65). It also cannot be assumed that every form of nudity in art had the same meaning in every single time and place, obviously (Women of…, p. 69).
To begin with, it is generally agreed that female nudity in some cases reflects the perception of the body as erotic (Julia M. Asher-Greve, The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conception of the Gendered Body, p. 444). Arguments have been made that this is in fact the case for the overwhelming majority of depictions of nude women (Women of…, p. 47). However, it’s safe to assume that most of them are mortal women, not goddesses. The need to interpret every nude woman as a goddess, or at least a priestess or “sacred prostitute”, is another product of the myth propagated based on a questionable interpretation of Herodotus’ tale I’ve discussed earlier (Ibidem, p. 50-51).
Note this sort of approach is not limited to questionable treatments of Mesopotamian art. It’s easy to draw parallels with the (in)famous biblical scholar William F. Albright’s quest for “orgiastic nature worship” in Canaan. He similarly sought to prove nudity was a uniquely emphasized characteristic of any goddesses he considered “Canaanite”. Meanwhile, lack of nudity in art was a feature he attributed to civilizations he viewed more favorably - like Rome during the Punic Wars, pharaonic Egypt (he incorrectly claimed northern deities adopted by Egyptians stood out due to their supposed scandalous appearance) and especially biblical Israel and Judah (Izak Cornelius, The Many Faces of the Goddess: The Iconography of the Syro-Palestinian Goddesses Anat, Astarte, Qedeshet, and Asherah c. 1500-1000 BCE, p. 11).
The Nineveh torso (wikimedia commons).
It’s presumed that most of the erotic depictions of women belonged to the private sphere, and were kept at homes, though evidence for public display also exists. One of the examples is the Nineveh torso, commissioned by the Middle Assyrian king Ashur-bel-kala (The Essential…, p. 446-447). In the inscription preserved on its back, he boasts that it’s one of many statues he erected “for titillation” across his empire; a penalty clause threatens potential vandals with a visit from the warlike Sebitti. Given the clearly worded intent, it shouldn’t be very surprising that the statue has been characterized as the ancient equivalent of a pin-up (Gina V. Konstantopoulos, They are Seven: Demons and Monsters in the Mesopotamian Textual and Artistic Tradition, p. 147-148).
Statue of a woman from Girsu from the reign of Gudea (wikimedia commons).
Descriptions and depictions of nude women tend to emphasize the vulva first and foremost (Ibidem, p. 53). In contrast, there is no emphasis on breasts - possibly they were not regarded as all that important as a sexual characteristic. While they’re obviously clearly visible when nudity is involved, clothed women were typically depicted flat-chested in art. In absence of other markers of gender, like certain hairdos or outfits, it might be impossible to distinguish them from men (The Essential…, p. 438).
A bald nude man performing a libation in front of a goddess on an Early Dynastic relief from Girsu (wikimedia commons).
Male nudity is relatively common in art in scenes of libation. In this context, it might reflect ritual purity (The Essential…, p. 442). It cannot be ruled out that some depictions of naked women reflect similar ideas (Ibidem, p. 447). However, it should be noted that nudity in libation scenes became rare in the Sargonic period already, with the participants - both men and women - typically shown clothed in later periods (Goddesses in…, p. 175). Textual sources - whether from the third millennium BCE or later - provide no indication of any ceremonies involving nude clergy, either (Nacktheit A…, p. 64).
Swimmers on a relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II (wikimedia commons).
There are also cases where men were portrayed naked for practical reasons, for example when swimming (Women of…, p. 55). Additionally, many works of art show naked men fighting each other or various creatures. This motif is first attested in the Early Dynastic period and became particularly prominent in the Sargonic period, which might indicate it developed alongside a new royal ideology. Nude combat and a focus on the physique of the figures involved presumably were meant to highlight their valor by showing that they could accomplish heroic deeds unassisted, relying just on their own strength and skill. Comparisons can be drawn with a hymn in praise of Ishme-Dagan of Isin which highlights his musculature (The Essential…, p. 442-444).
Not all depictions of nudity portray it positively - it was also associated with a lack of dignity, as explicitly stated in a Middle Assyrian birth incantation (Mesopotamian Underwear…, p. 1126-1127). That’s presumably why in depictions of battles (for example on the Anubanini relief) killed or captured enemies are depicted naked while the victors typically wear assorted military equipment. The texts indicating that Mesopotamians believed that before the advent of civilization people led a pitiful existence marked, among other things, by the absence of clothing and bread reflect similar attitudes (The Essential…, p. 444).
Conclusions, or dressing Inanna up
Sadly, there’s clearly a considerable gap between the academic consensus about Inanna’s iconography and the primary sources, and the popular image of her. Her warlike character - everpresent in Mesopotamian art - is pushed into the background in favor of identifying just about any depiction of a naked woman as her.
In this article, I limited myself to examples which at least actually come from Mesopotamia, but the scope of this problem is ultimately much broader. There are some cases which are perhaps more egregious than anything covered here. Recall that in an article from few months I briefly discussed a certain Jungian author presenting an Elamite votive (and an unrepresentative, miscast one at that) as an authentic depiction of Inanna; in the near future I’ll discuss a pyxis lid from Ugarit which has been tormented with yet more dubious amateur interpretations. They just keep piling up, sadly. Modern depictions of Inanna in the relatively few works of fiction generally don’t help, either, and typically perpetuate the same misconception.
Ultimately, just like in the case of many other problems with the modern reception of Inanna - and the culture of ancient Mesopotamia in general - there are two core issues at play.
One is, obviously, orientalism. The popular image of Inanna is essentially rooted in the classical vision of the decadent orient, and as pointed out by Zainab Bahrani, the persistent need to identify images of naked women as her is ultimately downstream from that. There’s very little interest in the actual context of nudity in Mesopotamian art in general, and in iconography of deities in particular. It’s also hard to see this phenomenon as a reflection of any real interest in Inanna’s character. Nude women are Inanna because she clearly has to be a representation of some sort of depraved sex cult. In some regards Frazer has never left.
The second problem is the notion of interchangeability of goddesses. Once an image is misidentified as a goddess, or once a questionable account starts to be held as the defining account of a goddess, the conclusions become applicable to just about any goddesses. This too is ultimately a legacy of the same Victorian authors. However, as I already pointed out, they often held gods to be equally interchangeable; this problem largely dissipated with time. Nobody claims Apollo is interchangeable with Nergal just because both were, at different points in time, associated with Resheph - but Inanna, Astarte, Aphrodite (and a host of other goddesses) become goddess slurry.
I see no easy solution to this problem. Even academics sometimes seem to struggle with representing Inanna accurately, as pointed out by Ilona Zsolany. I nonetheless hope the negative trends can be reversed some day. I hope my attempt at demonstrating that Inanna had a striking, distinctive iconography and at putting nudity in Mesopotamian art in context will play at least a tiny role in that.
Amazons at Troy. Wall plaque from East German living rooms. Photo F. Merten in Mutti's stube. If you are a follower
Excellent blog found by @yamayuandadu! This extensive article tackles the persistence of the Mother Goddess "myth," a topic somewhat frequently touched on here either through Strange Journey or Barbara Walker's Woman's Encyclopedia.
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