Another snippet - Ishtar this time
Feb. 10th, 2007 12:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ikhet_sekhmetWell, it's either this or do the washing up. :-)
The lament in the article cited below describes Ishtar lamenting what was probably an invasion. At first she's called "the goddess of Uruk"; then she's identified with several other cities. At first, I thought this was a list of different goddesses, since each Mesopotamian city had its own patron deity; but Lambert explains that it's Ishtar in every case. In other Sumerian literature, Ishtar is identified with other cities as well as her home town of Uruk. 'Larak was a cult centre of Ninisinna,' he comments, 'and Keš of the mother goddess, though in late theological texts these goddesses do merge with Ištar'.
It's a pretty graphic depiction of the fate of women in war: not only has Ishtar lost her husband, but her loincloth has been torn away, and she can't beat to watch "the ripping of the mother's wombs".
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Lambert, W.G. A Neo-Babylonian Tammuz Lament. Journal of the American Oriental Society 103(1) Jan-Mar 1983, pp 211-215.
The lament in the article cited below describes Ishtar lamenting what was probably an invasion. At first she's called "the goddess of Uruk"; then she's identified with several other cities. At first, I thought this was a list of different goddesses, since each Mesopotamian city had its own patron deity; but Lambert explains that it's Ishtar in every case. In other Sumerian literature, Ishtar is identified with other cities as well as her home town of Uruk. 'Larak was a cult centre of Ninisinna,' he comments, 'and Keš of the mother goddess, though in late theological texts these goddesses do merge with Ištar'.
It's a pretty graphic depiction of the fate of women in war: not only has Ishtar lost her husband, but her loincloth has been torn away, and she can't beat to watch "the ripping of the mother's wombs".
__
Lambert, W.G. A Neo-Babylonian Tammuz Lament. Journal of the American Oriental Society 103(1) Jan-Mar 1983, pp 211-215.
