Property of Sekhmet

 

The Sacred Marriage Drama, writes Jacobsen, "is patterned after the normal Ancient Mesopotamian wedding ritual". The bridegroom goes to the door of the bride's father's house, bringing gifts of food, seeking entrance. The bride, "bathed and dressed in all her finery", opened the door. The couple were separately escorted to the bridal chamber; the next morning they oversaw a feast.

 

The earliest evidence of the ritual is preserved on the Warka Vase, which depicts the god Dumuzi at the door of Eanna, Inanna's temple, with Inanna ready to open it and welcome him. An Old Babylonian text "is styled as a blow-by-blow account of a well-placed observer keeping worshipers farther back informed about what is going on." Inanna prepares by taking jewels from a pile of dates, then goes to the door of the giparu (the temple storehouse) to let Dumuzi in. She dispatches messengers to her father, asking to have the bridal bed prepared and Dumuzi escorted to it. The hymn Iddin-Dagan A also details the ritual.

 

Jacobsen writes that there are three further fertility dramas, which he calls the Mourning Drama, the Road of No Return Drama, and the Search and Fetching Drama.

 

The Mourning Drama was "a procession into the desert to Dumuzi's raided camp to mourn the slain god", with his widow (Inanna), mother (Ninsun), and sister (Geshtinanna). One such drama may have involved "Nin-gipar 'The Lady of the Giparu' (ie Inanna), and Nin-ibgal, another form of Inanna... and the goddess Igi-zi-bar-ra, known to be the personified harp of Inanna". (p 85)

 

The Road of No Return Drama was similar, with the god Damu's mother and sister searching for him after his death. Their search takes them to the netherworld, where Damu's sister eventually stays, to be both sister and "mother" to him. (I'll save notes on this for a separate posting.)

 

The Search and Fetching Drama has the god's mother seeking to find the nurse she left her son with - a tree. A procession returns him to his father Enki. In this drama "the god is identified with a variety of other fertility figures" and with deceased kings.

 

Jacobsen discusses the changes in Mesopotamian religion and religious drama. IIUC originally the whole community would have participated in ritual; in time, as natural forces became anthropomorphised as deities, those deities were represented in ritual and drama, reflecting the community's own practices, while the community looked on. There also seems to have been a shift from considering Dumuzi as the source of plenty to Inanna as the one who provided the king, and thus the community, with plenty - responding to the king's sexual allure and prowess.

 

The Battle Dramas appear in the First Millennium BCE. They included a footrace which recreated Ninurta's pursuit of Anzu. Fertility dramas, including the sacred marriage of Nabu and Nana at Borsippa, were still performed. Some fertility dramas may have changed their meaning to become understood as battle: as Jacobsen notes, "the fact that a rite survives does not guarantee that it preserves its original meaning".

 

Which observation led to this interesting remark:

 

"The death and lament drama of Dumuzi seems very likely to have retained its purpose of strengthening emotional ties with the god - especially in the case of Dumuzi of the grain where the death of the god has been brought about by his worshipers and where the rite of lament is therefore one of great ambivalence and covert guilt." (p 75)

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Jacobson, Thorkild. "Religious Drama in Ancient Mesopotamia". in Hans Goedicke and J. J. M. Roberts (eds). Unity and Diversity: essays in the history, literature, and religion of the ancient Near East. Papers presented at a symposium held at Johns Hopkins University, Jan. 9-12, 1973. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1975.