Ereškigal
Ereškigal (also Ereschkigal, Irkalla ; Sumerian DINGIR EREŠ.KI.GAL, the goddess of the vastness or the great mistress of the underworld ; Akkadian Allatum ) is the supreme Sumerian snake goddess who later shared her status as a primordial deity in the creation of the world with the underworld Kurnugia changes.
family
Ereškigal is the sister of Ištar . Her son is the plague and death god Namtaru , who is also her vizier. Ereškigal's husband was Gugalanna in Sumerian mythology and Nergal in Babylonian mythology .
Inanna's descent into the underworld
In the epic Inanna's descent into the underworld , Inanna has to surrender her divine insignia before she appears before Ereškigal. After Inanna recognized the power of Ereškigal and was killed by her, Inanna was liberated and resuscitated by Ereškigal himself through Enki's intervention . Inanna started her way back into the realm of the living .
Dumuzi's underworld trip
Dumuzi suffers the same fate as Inanna and is removed from power and killed by Ereškigal.
Pictorial representations
Ereškigal is described as a naked goddess with stone eyes and black hair. Sometimes she wears a lion's head. She travels in a boat across the border river Ḫubur , which flows between the realm of the living and the underworld, to collect the offerings deposited on the other bank. Their palace, which lies in the interior of the earth, is made of lapis lazuli .
See also
literature
- Helmut Freydank u. a .: Lexicon of the Old Orient. Egypt * India * China * Western Asia . VMA-Verlag, Wiesbaden 1997, ISBN 3-928127-40-3 .
- Brigitte Groneberg : The gods of the Mesopotamia. Cults, myths, epics . Artemis & Winkler, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-7608-2306-8 .
- Diane Wolkstein, Samuel Noah Kramer : Inanna. Queen of Heaven and Earth. Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer . Harper & Row, New York NY et al. 1983, ISBN 0-06-090854-8 , (Revised cuneiform texts by Samuel Noah Kramer).