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and he gave me the earth.
I am Inanna!
Which god compares with me?
I recently read the latest Swedish translation of the Sumerian texts about the goddess Inanna, and felt that I just had to try to draw her. I'm not so very pleased with the result, but at least it's something.
Inanna was the goddess of love and war, but she had a very versatile personality and was seldom content with the role she had been given. In the story "Inanna and Enki" she visits Enki, the god of wisdom, and makes him drunk to get him to give her more power and more knowledge. The most famous story, though, (and my personal favourite) is "Inanna's Descent to the Underworld".
I don't understand why Mesopotamian mythology isn't as popular as Greek and Egyptian mythology. Maybe it's partly because we don't know as much about the Sumerian society? There's certainly nothing wrong with their stories.
I'm often confused how the Egyptians steal all the show even though much of cultural traits of today originates not from Egypt but from Mesopotamia. For instance: Circle in 360 degrees. The wheel. Astrology. Channel irrigation as opposed to the basin irrigation in Egypt...
I think that it comes down to something that took place in the 14th century AD, the depredations of the Mongols which in Mesopotamia absolutely ravaged the agriculture, irrigation works extended and kept up with loving care ever since the Sumerians were destroyed in just half a year... Leading to an economic crisis in Mesopotamia that only lifted in our ages when black drops starting emerging from the underground... So the land between the rivers was later on just a battleground between Turkey and Iran, until modern times that is.
And now the clue: The Mamlukes managed to save Egypt from this disaster, also from the next disaster on the same scale unleashed by Timur Lenk. But Egypt still couldn't avert the next and even more devastating disaster to economies in the Middle East: In 1413, just seven years after the death of Timur Lenk, the Portugueses conquered Cadiz, an event often regarded as the starting shot of the great maritime discoveries of Europeans, allowing other sea trade routes to the Orient than through the Middle East, thus short-circuiting this income to coffers from transit trade.
Result was also intellectual ossification rendering the Middle East, India and the Orient weak and unable to defend against European colonialism. In India and the Orient too, they had been undermined by the same commercial forces too.