Property of Sekhmet

( Squeezing out the pips )
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Fiore, Silvestro. Voices From the Clay: the development of Assyro-Babylonian Literature. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965.

More snippets.

Most of the Sumerian deities weren't given Akkadian names - only the astral deities were: Nanna/Sin, Utu/Shamash, Inanna/Ishtar. (This puzzles me, though - Fiore refers to Enki/Ea in the very next paragraph.) (p 56-7)

The gods marched beside the king's army, terrifying, blinding, and maddening his enemies. "In the account of Esarhaddon's fight for the throne, Ishtar is said to have broken the bows of the hostile soldiers." (p 70)

On The Epic of Gilgamesh: "Ishtar does not cut a good figure in this episode." Fiore speculates this may reflect "some religious rivalry between Ishtar and Shamash", pointing out Gilgamesh's devotion to Shamash in the poem. (pp 169-70)

In the flood story in Gilgamesh, Ishtar is portrayed as the "creatress" of humanity: "No sooner have I given birth to my dear people than they fill the sea like so many fish!" But Inanna/Ishtar is a goddess of mating, not reproduction, and "is associated with childbirth only in those cases where she usurps the role of the mother-goddess". (p 199)

In the Descent, Ishtar is called she "who stirs up the Apsu before Ea". Fiore footnotes a "popular creed" in which "the silt in the rivers was caused by Ishtar washing her hair in the mountain sources". (p 197)

Fiore suggests that "The sixty diseases which are to be directed against Ishtar" means Mesopotamians thought "the human body consisted of sixty members" - hence also the need to sprinkle her corpse with the water of life sixty times. (p 198)

Perhaps Ereshkigal favours sexless beings because they cannot produce life. (p 199) Her gracious treatment of Tammuz suggests that while he's in the Netherworld, he's her husband. (p 200)

Fiore makes a surprising comparison between Ishtar and the Norse goddess Freya, another patroness of both love and war. (p 237)
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Fiore, Silvestro. Voices From the Clay: the development of Assyro-Babylonian Literature. University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1965.