When Sargon succeeded in unifying a number of the city-states of ancient Mesopotamia, he appointed his daughter to the office of High Priestess of E-kish-nu-gal, the great temple of the Moon god Nanna-Suen, and his consort, the Moon goddess Ningal at Ur. She took the title of En-hedu-anna, meaning Chief Priestess of the ornament of heaven, (i.e., the moon.) This appointment turned out to be no petty example of nepotism. Sargon was too strategically pragmatic for that. Enheduanna is the first known writer in human history. She produced a number of temple hymns and other poetry, but when carefully analysed, her three major poems to the Goddess Inanna exhibit a degree of profound gut-ripping honesty and psychological sophistication that mark her as a sheer vertical genius, unparalleled even by Shakespeare.
Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" owes some of its charm and integrity to the general psychological proposition that disruptions in the archetypal dimension must be resolved preparatory to resolution of conflicts in the mundane world. That was brilliant for its time. Enheduanna went much further and was dramatically more precise. She recounted in chilling detail a woman's experience of alienation from the feminine self by animus, resolution of that, followed by ego-inflation leading to possession by what Jung called the Great Mother archetype; the violent psychotic consequences, ending with emergence of the divine dynamic feminine, first in its terrifying form, but when allowed to become civilised and integrated, acquiring its natural stunningly shining numinosity.
In sequence of psychological experience these three poems are:
1. ninmesharra (Lady of all the me: often referred to as The Exaltation of Inanna) [See above for how Inanna acquired the me.]
2. inninmehusha (Lady of the fearsome divine powers, usually called Inanna and Ebih: the definitive account of Inanna's battle with the Dragon of Kur, the dangerous aspect of the collective unconscious contaminated by ego imagining that it has gained some degree of control over it.)
3. inninshagurra (Usually interpreted as Stout-Hearted Lady, but in modern day parlance might best be understood as Little Miss Tough-Guy: on second thoughts, perhaps not so little!)
Excellent scholarly translations of these three poems are available on line from
Oxford University's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
However Oxford University's ETCSL site is sometimes difficult to contact. As an alternative, click on the image of Enheduanna (second from left in the picture opposite) to read English translations of her poems.
What we will now do is to look at these three poems in outline to see what Enheduanna discovered about the final and most difficult phase of the individuation process: coming to terms with the Self.
Nin-me-sharra: Lady of all the Divine Powers
Enheduanna opens this poem with praise for Inanna, but then complains that a male figure named Lugal-an has desecrated the great temple Eana at Uruk and driven Enheduanna from her temple into the wilderness. Her prayers to the old sky-god An and the moon-god Nanna Suen (Ashimbabbar) have produced no results. When she recognises that Inanna is greater than either of them she is apparently restored, not only to her office, but to her charm and beauty.
Most commentators have interpreted this poem as an account of an actual historical event, asserting that Lugal-an was involved in a revolt against Naram-Sin at Uruk, and literally ejected Enheduanna from the temple. There are several reasons to dismiss such arguments as naïve.
For one thing Enheduanna was chief priestess of the temple at Ur. Uruk is sixty kilometres away. If somebody damaged the temple Eanna at Uruk, it would be a source of considerable regret for Enheduanna, but hardly affect her own standing in her own temple in her own city. You can't chuck her out of a temple she doesn't work in.
Then we have to check the chronology carefully. Sargon was not a boy king. He was an adult when he came to power. He ruled from 2334-2279, following which the throne went to two of his sons. Rimush ruled from 2278-2270 and Manishtusu from 2269-2255. Only then did Naram-Sin take over (2254-2218.) [Georges Roux: Ancient Iraq, Table III] Even if Sargon was in his fifties when Enheduanna was born, and even if she was appointed chief priestess in her early twenties, by the time Naram-Sin got to the throne, Enheduanna is not going to be worried about rebels sixty kilometres down the road. She going to be worried about menopause!
Very well, let's assume that this Lugal-an does his dirty deeds during Sargon's reign, or those of his sons, even though we have no historical evidence to that effect. Even if this was the case, we still run into the problem that Enheduanna could not be evicted from a temple she never ruled. Moreover, we must recall that Inanna was Sargon's favourite patron Goddess. If anybody mistreated his daughter and attacked Eanna, the Uruk temple to Inanna as well as An, nobody is going to have to invoke deities. All Enheduanna would have to do is tell daddy, and Lugal-an would meet with a very violent and uncomfortable end indeed. No such outcome rates a mention in Nin-me-sharra.
Let's be more realistic. Enheduanna was a highly sophisticated priestess from an extraordinarily gifted family. She was a spiritual leader at a time when the cult of the old sky-god An was already fading as the Enlil cult advanced. Inanna's power and prestige were moving towards that Goddess being recognised as The Great Goddess. These spontaneous movements in religious sentiment were of immediate personal and professional importance to her, whereas political considerations outside the temple were secondary. She was a prophet, not a politician.
Next we have the name Lugal-an. That name was frequently used by leaders from well before Sargon's time right down to the first millennium. It was one of the epithets for the much later god-king, Marduk. Lugal-an literally means "Great man of Heaven." What better name could a profound introspective thinker have coined for what we now call animus?
Seen as a psychological animus image, Lugal-an's actions make sense. If a spiritual leader becomes animus-possessed, she will lose her appreciation of the physical and spiritual beauty of An's temple. In all conviction can any animus-possessed woman say that in contrast to her earlier feelings of joy,
"...funeral offerings were brought, as if I had never lived there. I approached the light, but the light was scorching hot to me. I approached the shade, but I was covered with a storm. My honeyed mouth became venomous. My ability to soothe moods vanished."
That is precisely what animus possession does to a woman:she is at home neither in conscious light, nor unconscious shade. It destroys her power to soothe, and makes her speech venomous. It strips her of her rightful crown of femininity, instead giving her a knife and dagger, classic animus weapons, saying "These are appropriate ornaments for you." Enheduanna even identifies this animus figure. The great man of heaven is no ordinary mortal, but her own Nanna, the moon-god himself.
"My Nanna has paid no heed to me. He has destroyed me utterly in renegade territory. ... He stood there in triumph and drove me out of the temple. He made me fly like a swallow from the window; I have exhausted my life-strength. He made me walk through the thorn bushes of the mountains."
And should anyone doubt that Lugal-an represented an internal conflict:
"...a hostile verdict encloses me as if it were my own verdict." And "That Nanna ... has said "He is yours!" (twice!)
It is then that Enheduanna recognises, as Jung did four and a half thousand years later, that animus cannot be defeated by anything masculine. Jung said:
"No matter how friendly and obliging a woman's Eros may be, no logic on earth can shake her if she is ridden by the animus... this highly dramatic situation would instantly come to a banal and unexciting end, if he [the male protagonist] were to quit the field and let a second woman carry on the battle..." [CW 9 (II) p 15]
Enheduanna went one step better. It was not just another woman, and certainly not a mother who could help. Ningal's pronouncements were never spoken. Her lost charm, tact, beauty and power would be restored by turning to the divine dynamic feminine. In the dead of night she realised that it was too much for her. "Since it was full, too full for me, great exalted lady, I have recited this song for you," so she invoked a higher power, and the poem ends with Inanna's triumph, and Enheduanna's restoration.
Remains of Enheduanna's Office. The Ur Temple Today.
In-nin-me-hush-a: Lady of the Fearsome Divine Powers.
Having relativised "the animus" by looking to her dynamic feminine Self, Enheduanna succeeded in her first encounter with what we would call the collective unconscious. Understandably she feels relieved and elated, but her tendancy to perhaps identify with Inanna in the final lines of Nin-me-shara suggests a degree of inflation which is corrected in In-nin-me-hush-a, the next step in the individuation process.
We start with anima and animus material being assimilated into the conscious mind, first as personal, but then from the impersonal, following preordained rules, like an initiation, in logically constructed, purposive sequences. Conscious participation makes for a new image at a higher level, in this case a victorious Goddess. For Enheduanna, Nin-me-shara illustrates the personal assimilation; In-nin-me-hush-a, the collective phase of integration.
This poem, also known as "Inanna and Ebih," gives an account of Inanna's overwhelming defeat of a force or entity represented by the mountainous area northeast of Sumer, called Ebih, (modern Jebel Hamrin) [Jacobsen: Treasures p 137] [Kramer, 1972] but also called "Kur," the underworld.[Kramer, 1972] It is thus identified with the power that raped Ereshkigal and drove off Enki with stones when he attacked it, so represents a very real danger even to a deity. Significantly, it invoked the wrath of the two deities that represent dynamic masculine and feminine.
"...the Sumerian word kur. That one of its primary meanings is "mountain" is attested by the fact that the sign used for it is actually a pictograph representing a mountain. [and]"the monstrous creature that lived at the bottom of the "great below" immediately over the primeval waters is also called Kur; if so, this monster Kur would correspond to a certain extent to the Babylonian Tiamat." [Kramer, 1972]Tiamat was very explicitly described as a Great Mother symbol.
In "Answer to Job" we saw how a man who believed he had overcome anima, had next to face another archetype, the mana-personality, which Jung called the Magician. As he pointed out, this inflation, this adulteration by identification with a powerful archetype of the same sex, occurs in both genders.
"...in women: a sublime, matriarchal figure, the Great Mother, the All-Merciful, who understands everything, forgives everything, who acts for the best, living only for others, and never seeking her own interests, the discoverer of the great love, just as the magician is the mouthpiece of the ultimate truth. And just as the great love is never appreciated, so the great wisdom is never understood." [CW 7, p 228 ]
This occurs because the ego has not mastered the unconscious; instead a new balance of power was established. If ego attempts to wield power over the unconscious, the latter retaliates by producing a mana-personality spellbinding the ego. That Enheduanna intuited this fact is indicated by her use of the expression "... on your giving birth to the bright mountain, the mountain, the holy place..." (Line 16-17) We have no account of Inanna having any daughters, certainly no mountainous ones, and decidedly not Ebih, so the mountain-Great Mother metaphor seems an apt image of this response from the unconscious.
"Against this [mana-personality] the only defence is full confession of one's weakness in the face of the powers of the unconscious. By opposing no force to the unconscious we do not provoke it to attack." [CW 7, p 234 ] If ego gets realistic, possession ceases, and the mana goes to the mid-point, which unites it with the unconscious, leading to birth of personality, the next stage.
Apparently by now Enheduanna understood this well enough to differentiate herself from her Goddess, for (in Lines 1-24) she prefaces her poem with a suitably respectful paean of praise to Inanna, first in her terrifying, then her light-bringing (i.e., consciousness-raising) aspects, prior to stepping back and letting this archetypal drama be played out by its two protagonists.
Lines 25-48 describe Inanna's assessment of the problem; that Ebih was disrespectful to her, and her determination therefore to destroy it. But if it is destroyed, an enigma arises. She says in lines 49-52,
"...may it never again lift its neck up. May the mountain tremble when I approach. May Ebih give me honour and praise me."
Mountains don't have necks, and they don't tremble or praise archetypes, and if Inanna has destroyed the mountain, it can't do any of those things, even if previously it could. We are again led to accept that Ebih symbolises something abstract, subordinate to Inanna as feminine Self.
She then dresses appropriately and with due respect to visit An, the old sky-god, politely crediting him with all the powers she now wielded. What is important in In-nin-me-hush-a is that An, the deity addressed had, by Enheduanna's time, already been substantially displaced as a sky god by Enlil. One might reasonably deduce then that An's insistence that Inanna cannot tackle Ebih reflects an outdated notion of the power of this newly revealed Goddess. As a remote figure, his "world-view" would not include an ability to tackle an entity which only appears when a fairly advanced degree of relationship exists between ego and unconscious. We must note Inanna's apparently ingratiating manner, crediting An with all the powers she possesses. Quite correctly did she say to him:
"You have made me terrifying among the deities in heaven. Owing to you my word has no rival in heaven or earth."
Certainly her powers came from An, but not by An's generosity.
"...a persistent tradition linked her with the god of heaven, An, as his spouse, even to the point of identifying her with Antum; for, as we have seen earlier, An (Akkadian Antum) was the sky seen as female and referred to the overcast sky, the clouds of which were "breasts of the sky" from which flowed the rain. Antum and Inanna represent the same phenomenon of nature, the power in the rain clouds." And "The same view of her also informs the late myth called the "Elevation of Inanna." Here the gods propose to An that he marry Inanna "with whom you have fallen in love," and this he readily does. He also confers on her his name and all his powers, then Enlil gives her his powers, and lastly Enki gives his to her. As queen of the universe she thus comes to unite in her person all its highest powers." [Jacobsen, Treasures p 137 ]
In one paragraph, Jacobsen has succinctly described the precise mythological parallel to the four phases of psychological development involved in the individuation process. Inanna has assumed, in sequence, the undifferentiated powers of static feminine (An,) then the more differentiated static masculine (Enlil,) and finally the sophisticated dynamic masculine (Enki.)
Consistent with this evolution in consciousness, Inanna first invites An to "establish control over this mountain," this representation of something defying her ultimate authority; but without waiting for An's reply, she immediately reiterates her own ritualised intention to destroy it herself. Lines 89-111 repeat almost exactly, in good Sumerian tradition, lines 25-52 but with a notable exception:
"When I, the goddess, was walking around in heaven, walking around on earth, [repeated five times, ending with] when I turned towards the centre of the mountains..." (Lines 25-30)
This account of heaven and earth, of Inanna's circumambulation of both realms, unconscious and consciousness, was deleted from her address to An. He, the remote sky-god, represents what Jung spoke of, saying,
"One may then concretise the mana-personality as an extramundane "Father in Heaven," complete with the attribute of absolutenes." and "Such a God would be of no consequence at all." [Jung, 1977 @235]
An's abstract non-involved nature was consistent with the earlier belief that the deities/archetypes were remote from humanity, in contrast to Inanna's constant insistence upon interaction between the two realms, clearly exhibited in the Epic of Gilgamesh and the story of the Huluppu-tree. Psychologically, She represents a world-view in which humanity (ego) may and must take a stand and be active in its relationship with "the unconscious" however that term was understood.
It is fair to compare Inanna's politeness towards An in contrast to Her witheringly savage attack on Ebih. Why would a personification of dynamic feminine be so solicitous towards An as one aspect of static feminine, yet so destructive towards Ebih as another? The answer would appear to be in An's increasing irrelevance. His representation of that outmoded form of relationship between ego and unconscious denoted humanity as having no genuine communication with the gods as archetypes of the unconscious. Enlil displaced An because a new relationship involving interaction was evolving. Passive acceptance of the will of the gods was dying out, and, in the world-view personified by Inanna, An's eventual disappearance was so inevitable that no violence or rudeness was necessary. In stark contrast, then as now, the romantic delusion that we can automatically and passively return to Atlantis, Eden, the Golden Age, or whatever other Utopian New-Age tiptoe-through-the-tulips mother-world we desire, can and must be dealt with forthwith. This is a Goddess of love and war. This is reality. This is true archetypal harlotry. Love is available, but at a price. If you don't pay,...you'll pay! Unconditional maternal-style love from an all-bountiful mother nature was beginning to be seen for what it was - a delusion. Love was available, but you earned it: it was not a birthright. The people of Sumer had an over-riding strong competitive work ethic, and were coming to understand that they served a stern Goddess of justice, not a sweet little old all-giving and forgiving mum. Woe betides anyone who thought otherwise. In a hymn to Inanna called "Lady of the Morning"
"When they sing your praises, bringing their concerns to you,
You study their words.
You render a cruel judgement against the evildoer;
You destroy the wicked.
You look with kindly eyes on the straightforward;
You give that one your blessing" [Wolkstein and Kramer p 103 ]
Inanna acts in both worlds, representing a link between them, a link An never effected, so became subordinated to her in human consciousness. Then An, in a form characteristic of the old attitudes whose influence Enheduanna's writing was about to surpass, told Inanna she could not overcome this "mountain" because it was too terrifying, too beautiful, and again, too terrifying. (Lines 112-130.)
An's response to Inanna describes Ebih in terms precisely symbolic of the Great Mother. That it is a mountain with luxuriant fruit, vegetation and abundant animal life are all consistent with Neumann's description of symbols of the Great Mother. [Neumann, The Great Mother pp 45,51,60-61,260-262,272 ] At first sight, it seems beautiful and luxuriant, but as An said:
"It has poured fearsome terror on the abodes of the gods. It has spread fear among the holy dwellings of the Anuna deities. It has poured its terror and ferocity over this land. It has poured the mountain range's radiance and fear over all the lands. Its arrogance extends grandly to the centre of heaven." [Lines 116-120.]
These lines depict precisely the danger of identification with the mana-persoanlity. Contact with the gods is blocked and broken by this stultifying aspect of Mother, whose presence arrogantly prevents any other unconscious forces from being appropriately expressed, whose dominance results in a personality whose, "...Eros is passive like a child's; he hopes to be caught, sucked in, enveloped, and devoured. He seeks, as it were, the protecting, nourishing, charmed circle of the mother, the condition of the infant released from every care, in which the outside world bends over him and even forces happiness upon him. No wonder the real world vanishes from sight!" [CW 9 (II) p11 ]
An Egyptian myth parallels this story of an old deity losing his potency. The old god Ra was bitten by a snake set in his path by Isis, and was forced to utter his true name, following which he was partially cured, but lost his power, and "finally had to retire on the back of the heavenly cow." i.e., returned to a symbol of the Great Mother; left to fade back into the undifferentiated depths of the psyche.
Analysing this myth, Jung showed it to be a conflict between forward striving libido countered by fear of separation from the mother. The fear sets up a vicious circle, with fear of life causing more shrinking back.
"The fear seems to come from the mother, but actually it is the deadly fear of the instinctive, unconscious, inner man who is cut off from life by the continual shrinking back from reality. If the mother is felt as the obstacle, she then becomes the vengeful pursuer. Naturally it is not the real mother ...It is rather the mother-imago that has turned into a lamia. The mother-imago, however, represents the unconscious, and it is as much a vital necessity for the unconscious to be joined to the conscious as it is for the latter not to lose contact with the unconscious." [Jung, 1990 @298]
The Sumerians certainly did have concepts of paradise, though not the false paradise of the unpeopled mountain.
"...the most significant feature of man's golden age, according to Sumerian thinkers, was freedom from fear, or as the poet puts it:
Once upon a time, there was no snake, there was no scorpion,
There was no hyena, there was no lion,
There was no wild dog, no wolf,
There was no fear, no terror,
Man had no rival." [Kramer, The Sumerians p 262]
But Ebih gives us quite the opposite to this vision of paradise. There was one gross omission from this luxuriant and quite unrealistic picture of perfection: no humanity, no people! How often do we see this in women stuck in the Great Mother possession: all the love in the world, but an abstract intellectual love, with no genuine warmth, no orientation. It is a bestial and vegetative world: lovely to look at, but a fools' paradise. Fear was dominant, a fear to which Inanna would put a violent decisive end. Treating An's warning with such contempt that she did not even grant it the dignity of a reply, she turned on the mountain with devastating archetypal fury, redolent of a major psychotic attack. Floods, hurricanes, thunder, earthquake, fire drought and damnation; every aspect of the ego, all four functions; air, earth, fire and water were turned to devastation, even defying the serpentine primordial symbol of the destructive mother.
"From its sides and crevices great serpents spat venom." (Line145)
"Holy Inanna did as she wished." (Line 151)
This is not to suggest that Inanna was in any way hostile to the mother archetype itself. It would make no psychological sense for one part of the Self to be at war with another. Inanna's relationship with her own mother, Ningal and grandmother Ningikuga was described as obedient and joyful. [Jacobsen, Harps pp 4,11 ] She was never depicted as antagonistic to the differentiated mother goddess, Ninhursag. But as Self she is implacably antipathetic to any retrogressive tendency to the mana-personality. Given that Enheduanna was witness to revelations of her new Goddess, a new state of consciousness, it would be vital to discriminate between this emerging dynamic and the old static (maternal) feminine, but particularly if then (as now) a pathological blockage in human development had to be corrected. Specifically in Ebih we are describing a dangerous state of possession inimical to individuation, a state which the Self will never tolerate.
Then with a dispassionate coolness of which only a Goddess could be capable, she told this mangled corpse of a mana-personality why she had done it, and with equal clinical objectivity, again ignoring An, she now made Enlil her agent, as would be expected from Jacobsen's quotation. (v.s.)
Next she speaks of four ritual matters she has ordained, the first three possibly, but the last one certainly suggesting that her actions had consequences for men as much as for women.
And finally, again using a metaphor for psychosis, but very precisely, using the symbol for the triumph of feeling over intellect, at lines 180-181,
"I went forward like a surging flood, and like rising water I overflowed the dam....I imposed my victory on Ebih."
Only then does a chastened Enheduanna return to thank this cosmic Self-image for overcoming the mana-personality.
Dissolution of mana-personality through conscious assimilation leads us back to ourselves as an actual living something, poised between inner and outer worlds, "...something is strange to us and yet so near, wholly ourselves and yet unknowable, a virtual centre of so mysterious a constitution that it can claim anything - kinship with beasts and gods, with crystals and with stars - without moving us to wonder, without even exciting our disapprobation. "The individuated ego senses itself as the object of an unknown and supraordinate subject." This is the Self. Its workings can described in intellectual terms, but "By using the concept of a divine being we give apt expression to the peculiar way in which we experience the workings of these autonomous contents ...admitting their relatively superior force ...a force as real as hunger and the fear of death." [CW 7 p 237-240 ]
"For destroying Ebih, great child of Suen, maiden Inanna, be praised."
"Nisaba be praised."
In-nin-sha-gurra: Great-hearted Lady.
Having traversed the difficult problem of transforming the animus, then allowing the archetypal battle to be fought between the regressive Mana-personality and the emerging dynamic feminine, Enheduanna now approaches that state wherein the true self constellates - what the alchemists called the albedo.
In-nin-sha-gurra is a recognition that the great gods, An and Enlil, have been supplanted by a force which, while it is of them, is greater than both of them. We learn of it as an historical fact.
"The relationship (called love) between Ishtar and Sargon and the rest of the dynasty, is remembered throughout the Mesopotamian historical literature: this dynasty was so closely Ishtar-related that Assyrian chronicles called the much earlier Akkadian period ina palê Ishtar, "the reign of Ishtar."" [Frymer-Kensky, p 64] Roux gives that period as extending from 2334 to 2004 BCE. [Roux, Ancient Iraq p 504]
For Enheduanna, writing at the beginning of that three hundred year phase, it was a very real, immediate and personal crisis. This is not politics: it is a passionate account of anihalation of her patriarchal assumptions, followed by a dawning realisation of a new spirituality, a new world-view, i.e., a new Goddess. The very foundations of her psyche were shaken, but a new construct came to consciousness, to civilisation, as it constellated. This is not some academic concept. Anyone who treats people at this level must have at least a rough idea of how difficult it is for such patients to allow these old static ways of viewing the world to be supplanted by something higher and yet more immediate. For women, it is a need to connect to the feminine self: for men, it is a need to relate to anima at a more realistic level: in both cases, to see the dynamic feminine without projection.
At 274 lines, this is the longest of the three poems. Unfortunately it has several blocks missing, including 20 lines after Enheduanna mentions herself, so her full reaction is uncertain. However, the lines immediately following this lacuna reiterate some of the themes of personal suffering mentioned in Nin-me-sharra, reiterating alienation from, and reuniting with Inanna as the dynamic feminine Self. However, this time Enheduanna seems to know that something new has happened and has differentiated herself from Inanna. The underlying theme throughout seems to be to assert Inanna's pre-eminence above all other deities, and particularly An and Enlil, so it accentuates the phases of archetypal and psychological development noted in In-nin-me-hush-a, and commented upon by Jacobsen. [Jacobsen, Treasures p 137] (already cited.)
There are three sections.
1. Invocation of Inanna as a supreme but terrifyingly destructive Goddess. (Lines 1-114)
2. Recitation of Inanna's manifold paradoxical characteristics. (Lines 115-173)
3. Recognition of Inanna's dazzling power and glory, and Enheduanna's abject submission. (Lines 174-274)
To show how this poem reveals the phases of eruption of the divine dynamic feminine Self into consciousness, and to elucidate the alchemical and other themes inherent in that process, we will examine each section individually.
Lines 1-114 describe Inanna's supremacy over all heavenly powers, especially An, of whom Jacobsen said, "To him belong the insignia in which the essence of royalty was embodied - the scepter, the crown, the headband, and the shepherd's staff..." [Frankfort, 1977 @139] Enheduanna accentuates of Inanna that "she holds a shepherd's crook." (Line 8) That this poem is a deliberate and specific recitation of Inanna's acquisition of An's powers, is indicated by comparing its statements line by line with those in a hymn to An, quoted by Jacobsen.
"Wielder of the scepter, the ring, and the palu who callest to kingship,
Sovereign of the gods, whose word prevails in the ordained assembly of the great gods,
Lord of the glorious crown, astounding through thine enchantment,*
Rider of great storms, who occupies the dais of sovereignty, wondrously regal -
To the pronouncements of thy holy mouth are the Igigi attentive;
In fear before thee move the Anunnaki,
Like storm-swept reeds bow to thy orders all the gods." [Frankfort, 140]
To give the crown, the throne and the royal sceptre is yours, Inanna. (Line 154)
Exalted in the assembly, she occupies the seat of honour. (Line 59)
Foremost among the Great Princes (the Igigi) ...wherever she casts her venom.* (Lines27-28)
Clothed in a furious storm, a whirlwind (Line 22) august dais (Line 99)
When you raise your eyes they pay heed to you, they wait for your word (Lines 186-188)
The Anuna gods crawl before her august word (Line 5)
Her roaring makes the Anuna gods tremble like a solitary reed. (Line 12)
* (The word for venom and that for enchantment are identical in Sumerian. ush 11)
The destructive danger of Inanna's wrath is as terrible for the gods as for humanity. "...cities become ruin mounds and haunted places, and shrines become waste land." (Line 15) "Inanna rips to pieces the spacious cattle-pens." (Line 34)
"Like gate, enclosure, and cattle pen, the collective of village and city is a symbol of the Feminine." [Neumann, 1991 @283]
This is a strong hint that this newly emerging Goddess is not only opposed to the old masculine deities, but angrily demands differentiation from the old matriarchal feminine as well. Igigi (the Great Princes) were the gods of heaven, whereas Anunaki was a term for those of earth and the underworld. [Black, p 34] If not permitted to come to consciousness, this force can destroy people's whole universe or psyche, including their pre-existing ways of working with it (the gods.)
"...something new must not be peacefully inserted into the old habits. There are certain new things that one must have the honesty to call new and to stand up for, because otherwise the new energy is lost....The past is like an enormous sucking wind that sucks one back all the time. If you don't go forward you regress...So the overcoming of the old...means to be absolutely inexorable, ruthless about what is different and new." [von Franz, 1999 p 119]
Enheduanna then details Inanna's destructiveness in the form of all four earthly elements, (air, lines 18-24; water, lines 29-36; fire, lines 36-38, and earth, lines 60-72.) The repeated references to flooding, and mountains humbled, stones turned to sheep's fat, pulverising. (Lines 60-72) suggest something more "philosophical" than ordinary water.
"This account makes one thing very evident: the philosophical water is the stone or the prima materia itself; but at the same time, it is also its solvent, as is proved by the prescription immediately following:
Grind the stone to a very fine powder and put it into the sharpest celestial [coelestino] vinegar, and it will at once be dissolved into the philosophical water." [Jung, 1993 @235] Dissolve and coagulate, soften the hard, transcend all forms: Inanna.
Lines 39-54 appear to accentuate her manifestation as a very blood-thirsty Goddess of war, so bloody that it was a bit over the top, even for Inanna. It is one thing to say "...She washes their weapons with blood and (sic) gore..." (Line 45) but why "...On their first offerings she pours blood, filling them with blood." (Line 48) Surely these sacrifices are sanguinary enough already. Then there is no mention of bows and arrows, Inanna's favourite weapon; because this is not war: this is chaos, a point made explicit in line 18. There are three reasons for this. First, Chaos is characteristic of Inanna. As Queen of Heaven, she ruled that area outside the seven planetary archons, later known to the Hebrews as Achamoth. This is the collective unconscious perceived in cosmic projection, and explains in part why she is described as riding seven great beasts (Line 104) or having seven lions harnessed. (Line 25) "Seven in Akkadian means wholeness." [Wolkstein, 1983 @158] The seven lions as planetary archons were discussed in the Inanna Chapter, but the Hebrew name for the lion-like god was Ialdabaoth, meaning "child of chaos." [Jung, 1989 @402]
We have already seen that Inanna's theriomorphic beast was Imdugud, the Anzu bird, with the body of an eagle and head of a lion, consistent with her role as Queen of Heaven and Earth. In direct apposition to her mention of lions, Enheduanna portrays Inanna as a leopard, twice, a link noted by Jung in CW 14 431n. "As far as the Sumerians were concerned, the lion was grouped together with dogs and wolves as a 'canine', rather than as a feline." [Black, p 119] Pythagoras called the planets dogs. (CW 14 p 32 24) See also p 146. Apart from the leopard's characteristics of "A pard-like Spirit, beautiful and swift-" (Shelley; Adonais XXXII), which correspond to the me of speeding and allure; in a culture which considered dogs to be canine, something specifically feline intruded as an essential aspect of the Goddess. Like the leopard, she inhabited wild places, and was ever watchful. That the leopard much later became Aphrodite's and Dionysos' animal, indicates that its pure feline instinctual power persisted in human imagination irrespective of culture. Moreover, Enheduanna also described Inanna as an eagle, (urin means eagle in Sumerian) but then as a falcon. Little seems to have been written about the falcon in Sumeria, but contemporaneously in Egypt, the falcon was seen as "...fecundating the thought of the pharoah, who is the earthly agent of this divinity [Horus] The divine nature is thus infused into him and animates his intelligence."
"In spite of the falcon's violent habits, the relation which the Egyptians found between it and the heart of God and of humanity connected it with the symbolism of love." [Charbonneau-Lassay, p 196]
Given that Inanna's relationship to the lion is always depicted as one of dominance, it seems Enheduanna's experience of her new goddess involved new symbolism related to the ancient ones but with the speed, beauty, ferocity and animation of the psyche so characteristic of this goddess of love, this personification of our two major instincts.
Secondly, any major archetype will generate chaos before it is integrated into consciousness. Enheduanna was aware of Inanna's existence and nature from the outset. Given her father's affection for the Goddess she had probably been brought up with it; but this final phase of her recognition of Inanna far surpassed any intellectual exercise. This was a real, intimate and immediate experience of the full might, terror and wonder of the final of the four components of the self; and the most important. The alchemical nature of this poem is further developed by the references to Inanna as "a devastating flood which no one can withstand. A great watercourse,?" (Line 29) What more succinct description could there be for the chaotic uprising of unconscious material involved in the constellation of the self?
"Unperturbed by the identity of the arcane substance with Venus, which he himself asserts, Khunrath calls the mother of the lapis a virgin and a "generatio casta" (chaste generation). Or again, he speaks of the "virgin womb of Chaos" inspired less by Christian tradition than by the insistence of the archetype, which had already prompted the same statements about Ishtar." [Jung, 1989 @302 n182]
Third, Inanna's binding role in organising chaos into cosmos is contrasted in lines 17 and 18. "...like an ulu demon ensnaring a man." (The ulu-demon was a binder.) This theme is reintroduced at lines 60, and 66-69 then again more personally at lines 84-85, referring to her net.
"Those who do not respect her suspended net do not escape...when she suspends the meshes of her net."
Citing the Tao Te Ching, Cirlot notes that: "The net of heaven, that is, the network of stars and constellations, is wide-meshed but lets nothing through. The symbolism here strikingly illustrates the idea that it is not possible for the individual , by his own efforts (nor, of course, by suicide), to escape from the universe." [Cirlot, 1990 @228]
"Binding and loosing is also the transmuting of chaos into cosmos, of conflict into law and order... Nets, knots, etc., like the powers of the divinities of binding and loosing, are ambivalent, being symbolic of either preventing illness or causing it, bringing death or saving from it;...they bind man to his fate, his existential situation, yet provide a line of communication with the creator and the divine, binding him to his past but giving him a link with the weaver of destiny, restricting but also uniting." [Cooper, 1987 @22] Network is symbolic of a complex relationship beyond a mere time-space sequence, unlimited relationship; a structure formed of the visible and invisible; it is also unity...Ishtar is a goddess of the net." [Cooper, p 111]
"He gave me the loosening of the hair.
He gave me the binding of the hair." [Wolkstein and Kramer, p 16]
A related account of the net as a metaphor for organisation of chaos into cosmos appears in the much later Babylonian Epic of Creation, wherein Marduk destroyed Tiamat with net, wind and arrow.
"The Lord spread his net and made it encircle her,
To her face he dispatched the imhullu-wind He shot an arrow which pierced her belly,
Split her down the middle and slit her heart
The Lord trampled the lower part of Tiamat,
With his unsparing mace smashed her skull,
Severed the arteries of her blood..." [Dalley, p 253]
Lines 73-90 have a number of important words missing, which might tempt the unwary into filling the spaces with material that suits their own ends, and thus projecting their own preconceptions onto either Enheduanna or Inanna. Subject to that, it appears Lines 74-82 refer to Inanna causing an individual woman's suffering then redemption. This interpretation would be consistent with Enheduanna's own experience portrayed in Nin-me-sharra. However, in this case the woman's redeemed body does not return to feminine beauty, but becomes a pilipili, apparently a type of priest or priestess, possibly symbolising an hermaphrodite. She then "...broke the spear and as if she were a man...gave her a weapon." But a few lines later, "Having approached the woman, she breaks the weapon and gives her a spear." Such paired opposites are characteristic of the self as containing all opposites, including feminine and masculine. That an interchange of weapon (or mace) with spear may reflect the fact that one of the categories of lamentation priests next mentioned was a kurjara (alternatively kurgaru) of whom Jacobsen says,"Originally an armed guardsman, he seems to have become a general performer... His flute playing is mentioned as soothing grief..." [Jacobsen, Harps p 218]
Parallels between lamentation and abbaisement de niveau mentale (subordination of the ego) as a pre-condition for invoking the self would seem evident; particularly when the classic comparison is made humanity's pathetic misery and Inanna's pre-eminence and majesty in heaven and earth. (Lines 90-98.) This disparity between ego and unconscious repeats the motif in line 47; "Axes smash heads, spears penetrate and maces are covered in blood." The theme was frequently used in alchemical writing, because the type of awareness necessary is inconsistent with pure reason.
"The veiled woman uncovers her face. It shines like the sun. The solificatio is consummated on the person of the anima. The process would seem to correspond to the illuminatio, or enlightenment. [which] contrasts strongly with the rational attitude of the conscious mind, which recognizes only intellectual enlightenment as the highest form of understanding and insight. Naturally this attitude never reckons with the fact that scientific knowledge only satisfies the little tip of personality that is contemporaneous with ourselves, not the collective psyche that reaches back into the grey mists of antiquity and always requires a special rite if it is to be united with present-day consciousness. "The solificatio is infinitely far removed from the conscious mind and seems to it almost chimerical." [Jung, 1993 @57]
Suddenly Enheduanna refers to elevation of Ashnan, the grain goddess, sister of cattle-goddess, Lahar. [Kramer, The Sumerians p 220] and names Ishkur the storm god, sometimes given as Inanna's brother.
Kramer showed that Ashnan and Lahar were created in Dulkug (or Duku,) the creation chamber of the gods, to provide the Anunnaki with bread and clothing. Prior to this, the Anunnaki did not behave in a civilised manner.
"They knew not the eating of bread,
Knew not the dressing of garments,
Ate plants with their mouths like sheep,
Drank water from the ditch."
But the Anunnaki still did not know how to use grain and animal products, so mankind was created. However Ashnan received the plough and yoke. Despite being described as, "A maid kindly and bountiful..." she and Lahar had a drunken argument, each abusing the other and extolling themselves, until Enlil and Enki had to intervene. [Kramer, Sumerian Mythology p 53] To understand Enheduanna's mention of Ashnan in the context of becoming conscious of Self as Inanna, three points require mention:
1. The Sumerian criteria of civilisation (i.e., consciousness) were the making of bread, the wearing of clothes, and the preparation of alcoholic beverages.
2. Having told (in Line 83) how Inanna revealed wisdom, she found in Ashnan an accurate metaphor to describe new consciousness, new growth.
3. The elevation of Ashnan couples with precipitation from Ishkur's storm-clouds suggests a cyclical relationship between consciousness (earth) and unconsciousness (heaven.)
Again, parallel alchemical imagery for emergence of the Self is shown in Ripley's Cantilena, from which Jung cites "God gave thee the glorious, glittering armoury of the four elements, and the Crowned Maid [Virgo redimita] was in their midst. A wonderful balsam flowed from her and she shone with a radiant face, adorned with the precious stone. But in her lap lay the green lion, with blood flowing from his side. She was crowned with a diadem and was set as a star in the highest heaven. The king [i.e., the individuating person] became a supreme victor triumphant, a great healer of the sick and a redeemer [reformator] of all sins." [Jung, 1993 @409] Ripley's original text is in Fabricius p 187. But why a green lion?
"And the "green-lion" of alchemy is the youthful form of the corn god, as also of the sun, the light." [Neumann, 1991 p 323] Jung equates the blood of the green lion with the aqua permanens, and, citing Ripley, with spirit. [Jung, 1989 @293]
Quite apparently, Enheduanna intuited the increase or elevation of civilisation (consciousness) to be represented as an upsurge in fertility (spirit), presumably in response to Ishkur's life-giving rain from the unconscious. The archetypal integrity is preserved, even with the insertion of the extra sybolic step involving the green lion.
There is an irony about red and green lions. The Processional Way, leading from the north to the Ishtar Gate [in Babylon] was bordered with high defensive walls, ornamented with some 120 lions in glazed-brick relief [one of which is on the front page of this thesis.] The lions appear on a blue ground in white with yellow manes or yellow with red manes, now weathered to green. [Oates, Babylon p 152]
Section one ends with a reminder of the fate of Ebih for its arrogance, but not before a reminder from In-nin-me-hush-a, that Inanna now had much of An's power. The dynamic is supplanting the static feminine.
In the second section (Lines 115-173) Enheduanna recites a long list of Inanna's paradoxical attributes. Many of these are in the list of me which Inanna brought back from Enki. That Enheduanna recited them at all indicates first, that she understood the self figure of her Goddess for what it was, with all its opposites. Secondly it appears to be an attempt to 'civilise' the Goddess herself, or at least Enheduanna's perception of her, by recognising that her awesome destructive power coexists with a multitude of constructive, useful and gentle characteristics. In psychological terms, as Inanna, the Self becomes more clearly defined in Enheduanna's consciousness, the savagery evident in the first section gives way to exquisite radiant beauty. Whether this process was theophany or theurgy depends on how actively one imagines Enheduanna's enumeration of the me would have been.
Inanna's ability to "turn midday into darkness" (Lines 50 and 176) and "what is bright darkens" (Line 176) probably represent consciousness and unconsciousness rather than a literalistic reference to eclipses. There is no reference anywhere to antipathy between Inanna and Utu (Shamash) her brother, the sun-god. Furthermore, Enheduanna makes several references to "turning darkness into light" (Line 211 and 253) Certainly Inanna transcends both, celestially and terrestrially.
The last section (Lines 174-274) offers unstinting praise for Inanna's power, magnificence and shining divinity, with, as mentioned, some reference to Enheduanna's personal suffering. This motif from Nin-me-sharra is made more explicit here. "My body has experienced your great punishment" indicates some illness, and "Lament, bitterness, sleeplessness, distress, separation" provides as good a description of depression as one can ask for. But she now seems to understand that suffering to have been a consequence of her alienation from Inanna presumably by an earlier obstinacy or failure to see her as more powerful than An and Enlil, or indeed Nanna Suen.
"The mistress, a breaking plough opening hard ground." (Line 58) and
"...to cause flooding, to open hard ground and to turn darkness into light." (Line 253) The several similar references to Inanna breaking up hard ground and flooding or moistening suggest the dismantling of old hard dried-out attitudes by a new influx of wisdom from the unconscious. "The water signifies...Sapientia [and] the love-goddess Ishtar..." [Jung, 1989 @272n]
In short, the descriptions are of an enormously powerful, chaotic destructive force in section one, becoming beautifully divine in the third section after the civilising powers represented by the me were related to her in the middle section, which also revealed in her paradoxes, the state of consciousness we know as the transcendent function.
"This anima figure, as we can still see in the psychology of modern man, is in large part formed by the woman as young priestess, as Sophia, or as young witch. The more unconscious a man is, the more the anima figure remains fused or connected with the mana figure or of the old woman...On this world of the animus, which has its focus in the figure of the moon as "Lord of Women," depends the magical-spiritual reality of the female group." [Neumann, 1991 @295]
But Inanna is more than "the anima." She represents the divine dynamic feminine, whose recognition and acceptance into consciousness is at least as important for women as for men, so Neumann's quote applies to everyone. Enheduanna's meticulous and brutally honest reporting of her experiences gives us a clear and intimate portrait of a very heroic woman coming to terms with the limitations of quasi-parental powers in the psyche, and being jolted into the realisation that femininity depends, not on Nanna Suen as Lord of Women, but on a newer and greater deity, a new consciousness.
"She opens(?) the door of the house of wisdom, she makes known its interior." (Line 83)
"Your great deeds are unparallelled, your magnificence is praised!
Young woman, Inanna, your praise is sweet!"
Because In-nin-sha-gurra illustrates the apotheosis of Enheduanna's conception of her Goddess and herself, we should perhaps review her individuation from this final stage of what Jung and the alchemists called solificatio. In CW 14 p 97, Jung cites three alchemical authorities discussing the sun and its shadow, i.e., consciousness and unconsciousness.
"The sun and its shadow bring the work to perfection" Michael Maier.
"But he who hath tinged the poison of the sages with the sun and its shadow, hath attained to the greatest secret." The Turba.
"In the shadow of the sun is the heat of the moon." Mylius.
These three sources all illustrate the difficulty of equating the moon directly with feminine and the sun with masculine. Jung attracted sharp criticism for describing feminine consciousness as vague and lunar, but Neumann's quote v.s. resolves the issue. Nanna-Suen's animus-oriented thinking is vague, and it occurs in men as often as in women. Moreover, as the father of Utu-Shamash, he is truly the moon as shadow of the sun. But as Goddess of morning and evening star, Inanna transcends both their worlds. "Your divinity shines in the pure heavens like Nanna or Utu. Your torch lights up the corners of heaven, turning darkness into light...with fire.Your... refining...walks like Utu in front of you." (Lines 210-212) Intuition (fire) partakes of solar and lunar worlds; the brain is one unified organ. Only in our deluded pride do we dissociate it into a controlling ego and a hostile unconscious, to our own detriment.
As to solificatio, Jung looked at the phases from a man's viewpoint, and a Christian one at that. But two thousand years before Adam, Eve, Adan Kadmon and the Shulamite, Enheduanna had it all sussed out, and in much clearer terms. Adapting Jung's outline [Jung, 1989 @452ff] we have these stages:
The shadow changes to a dark contrasexual entity, Lugal-an.
The person is reborn from this process, by transformation of the archetypal contrasexual. Inanna supplants Suen, An and Enlil
Conscious differentiation of the ipsisexual, shown in In-nin-me-hush-a.
The great illumination, an archetypal totality, transcending the sexes; the finale of In-nin-sha-gurra.
Enheduanna does not repeat her mistake of identifying with the Inanna archetype. This time her Goddess is definitely "Thou!" And with a touching illustration of her new-found wisdom, Princess Enheduanna says:
"Being fitted for ladyship, you determine the destiny of noble ladies." (Line 268)
Now she's got it.
|
