The Passion of Erishkigal

Erishkigal, Queen of the Dead, is our primitive Persephone. She is Inanna’s sister, but the nature of this sisterhood is less than joyous. She is morning the death of her husband, the Bull of Heaven, and we are told that when she hears Inanna, more than dressed to the nines, is coming for the funeral she slaps her thigh and stops to think. She commands the price for the visit is that Inanna strip her finery and power at each gate until she arrives in Erishkigal’s presence naked, and there, judged by the lords of the dead unworthy, she is struck dead by her sister and hung, like dead cattle, on a meat hook.

Something has gone wrong in this meeting to say the least.

After the traditional passage of three days and nights, Erishkigal’s friend and priestess Ninshubar goes seeking out the three gods whom Inanna called to help her, her three fathers. Ninshubar runs to the temple of Enlil and to the temple of Inanna. Both gods turn their backs on Inanna saying that since she went to the world of the dead, she is dead to them. Only Enki, the lord of craft, the lord of wisdom and compassion reacts with great sorrow and makes from the dirt under his fingernails two creatures neither male nor female who are sent with instructions to the world of the dead to bring back Inanna.

These creatures have the power of smallness. They buzz like insects through the gates of the underworld and, at last, come to the chamber of Erishkigal finding her. as Enki had told them they would, lying half naked on her bed, her “hair swirling about her like leeks,” as she weeps. She announces the pain in her body, “Oh, oh, oh my head. Oh, oh, oh, my insides,” and they say , “Oh, oh, oh, your head. Oh, oh, oh, your insides.” As she cries out, they cry out for her until at last they cry out when she says, “Oh, oh, oh, my heart.”

Finally she has noticed these who are mourning with her, acknowledging her sorrow, and she promises to reward them. They only wish for Inanna, which they receive.

One journey to the underworld works and other does not. Much has been made of Inanna’s journey, the symbolism of dropping one symbol of power after the other in order to reach Erishkigal. But in all of this symbolism we forget two things. First, we never actually understand the nature of Inanna’s journey and, unless Inanna planned to be murdered, we forget that her journey actually fails. The journey which succeeds is the journey of the galla, the little creatures made by Enki. They have not come into the world of the dead for curiosity or to display their might. They do not even have names! They have come in compassion to bring back Inanna, but also in compassion for Erishkigal. It is their compassion which she rewards, and their compassion which takes her out of weakened state of pain. It is their smallness and their humility, their dedication to their mission which brings them through the world of the dead without the harrowing rituals of undressing which Inanna, in her determination to storm into the underworld, faces.

Inanna has told Ninshubur to call on Enki last, after Enlil and after Nanna, the great father gods, but is in Enki, her grandfather and the primal and often forgotten deity, who remembers and loves her. It is Enki who brings forth the creatures neither male nor female who come down to the land below and rescue her. This says something because the debate between patriarchy and matriarchy, between the masculine and the feminine has been a very real thing, but what Enki is doing is bringing into being something beyond binary. The creatures of compassion he creates are beyond male and female, beyond roles, beyond binary, their two characteristics being compassion, and dedication to their mission. Unlike Enlil, or Nanna who only know heaven and have no time for the underworld, and unlike Inanna who would storm the underworld, Enki and his creatures embrace the above and the below and eschew nothing. This is the way of entering the deeper country.