Can you explain why Gotou in SMT 1 is a chaos guy when he enforces a police state and all that authoritative jazz, outside of opposing the Americans?
Explaining/Interpreting the traditional alignments in this way is surprisingly complex, as they can sometimes contain many seeming contradictions, like the ones you listed. But also consider for Chaos that the Goetia demons are ordered and ranked by hierarchy (aka the Pseudomonarchia Daemonum, or "False Monarchy of Demons"--essentially a hellish parody of traditional European governance, but ordered nonetheless) and also that typically the most powerful Chaos demons are Tyrants--in Japanese, éç, maou, demon king--in other words, yeah, there are an awful lot of demons of authority overseeing the chaos and ensuring their operation is shipshape. Then there's the idea that the demons' very existence in the "real" world is due to YHVH, as explained in this snippet from the JJCAT article:
Are there any similar paradoxes for Law? Surely, and one that comes to mind is that Law is typically responsible for launching the apocalyptic ICBMs and kickstarting the ensuing chaos. Then again, the Book of Revelation has lots of chaotic imagery, but it's all considered to be part of a "plan."
This is why I think SMT's alignments are best understood as teleological, which I will casually define as the goal being more important than how said goal is achieved. So if a police state, summoning in the name of God, and demon rulers are what it takes to achieve a world of Chaos, then so be it.
And speaking of Gotou and seeming contradictions, it reminds me of Yukio Mishima and this meme, one of my favorites I've seen of late:
This real-life visual inspiration for Gotou had a sexual attraction to artwork of the Christian saint Sebastian, not that the person and the SMT character have too much in common. But if SMT dealt more with saints, it might not be out of the question to have Gotou summon St. Sebastian, who would certainly be Law-aligned.
Also consider @alephskoteinos's article on Chaos:
Every once in a while I think back to that wonderful meme that set the course of my life irrevocably into motion towards the self-identity a
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It's the Karukozaka Class Reunion of 2025, and you're invited to take a look at the alumni demons who graduated and went on to (hopefully) better things!
Who changed the most since they left? Who stayed the same? Who remembers when Goblin had that embarrassing pixel change in 2nd year? We all pretended not to notice but he was SO self-conscious about it- oh shit he's coming act natural.
Hey Goblin, long time no see! How's the family?
The 2nd of a three part series about if...'s designs and sprites. This one has the most obsessive details yet of any video I've made so far!
A brief explanation of the context behind the term "demon" in Megami Tensei and what they represent thematically. I'm trying for a new style of video that's concise and accessible, but still has a lot of depth.
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tsukuyomi finally released and... (kaneko left for this... damn if i had a time machine and being fluent in japanese i would able to talked to him to not pursuit this path, sadly i have neither of those so we stuck in this shitty timeline)
Here's some quality Tsukuyomi nonsense courtesy of @b-reis:
Here are some higher-resolution versions of the Kaneko monster/urban legend columns (compare to decade-old versions) sometimes referred to as his "Creature Features." But that's just a fan-made moniker; Truth is, it's unclear where exactly these columns were originally from. They were reprinted in Digital Devil Apocalypse, where these scans seem to be from, and DDA says they originate in ă˛ăźă ćščŠ (âGame Criticismâ) magazine, which you may remember from an older post giving a rundown of Kaneko's columns in all the issues of it available on archive.org. But not a single one of those uploads contains a "Creature Feature," so I'm puzzled: Either they are in other, unarchived issues of Game Criticism or the editor of DDA was wrong and they have some other provenance. But, either way, what we do have through DDA is fun and fascinating! There's 24 in total.
Soul Hackers' Mizuki-inspired Swiss LĂśtschental masked guy is a funny little critter whose identity is fully solved and easily confirmed online--that is, if you use the shortened "Tschaggatta" spelling of its name. However, The Japanese version calls it the [ăă¤ăă§ăŻăż](roichekuta) and the "Roi" is what I'm really curious about: What exactly is the difference between "Roitschaggatta" and "Tschaggatta"? And why does Japanese seemingly default to only Roitschaggatta?
Curiously, "Roitschaggatta" does bring up results, but only on stock photo sites, like this one.
My best guess would be that the "Roi" in the name might somehow be from the French "roi"--'king', making the Roitschaggatta the "king" Tschaggatta. But that's probably nonsense considering the thing is from an isolated German-speaking region.
@b-reis solved this one lickety-split! Ad where was the answer hiding? The French Wikipedia Tschaggatta page:
On rencontre parfois le terme de Roitschäggätta,  Roi  signifiant  fumÊe  dans le dialecte local, en raison de la couleur foncÊe des masques qui sont suspendus dans une cheminÊe pour les noircir.
The term Roitschäggätta is sometimes used, meaning "smoke" in the local dialect, because of the dark colour of the masks that are hung in a fireplace to blacken them.
Nonconformity, ambiguity, fluidity and misinterpretation: on the gender of Inanna (and a few others)
This article wasnât really planned far in advance. It started as a response to a question I got a few weeks ago:
However, as I kept working on it, it became clear a simple ask response wonât do - the topic is just too extensive to cover this way. It became clear it has to be turned into an article comprehensively discussing all major aspects of the perception of Inannaâs gender, both in antiquity and in modern scholarship. In the process Iâve also incorporated what was originally meant as a pride month special back in 2023 (but never got off the ground) into it, as well as some quick notes on a 2024 pride month special that never came to be in its intended form, as I realized I would just be repeating what I already wrote on wikipedia.
To which degree can we speak of genuine fluidity or ambiguity of Inannaâs gender, and to which of gender non-conforming behavior? Which aspects of Inannaâs character these phenomena may or may not be related to? What is overestimated and what underestimated? What did Neo-Assyrian kings have in common with medieval European purveyors of Malleus Maleficarum? Is a beard always a type of facial hair? Why should you be wary of any source which calls gala âpriests of Inannaâ?Â
Answers to all of these questions - and much, much more (the whole piece is over 19k words long) - await under the cut.
Zeus is basically Tyr: on names and cognates
The meaning of a theonym - the proper name of a deity - can provide quite a lot of information about its bearer. Therefore, I felt obliged to start this article with inquiries pertaining to Inannaâs name - or rather names. I will not repeat how the two names - Inanna and Ishtar - came to be used interchangeably; this was covered on this blog enough times, most recently here. Through the article, I will consistently refer to the main discussed deity as Inanna for the ease of reading, but Iâd appreciate it if you read the linked explanation for the name situation before moving forward with this one.
Sumerian had no grammatical gender, and nouns were divided broadly into two categories, âhumans, deities and adjacent abstract termsâ and âeverything elseâ (Ilona Zsolnay, Analyzing Constructs: A Selection of Perils, Pitfalls, and Progressions in Interrogating Ancient Near Eastern Gender, p. 462; Piotr Michalowski, On Language, Gender, Sex, and Style in the Sumerian Language, p. 211). This doesnât mean deities (let alone humans) were perceived as genderless, though. Furthermore, the lack of grammatical masculine or feminine gender did not mean that specific words could not be coded as masculine or feminine (Analyzing ConstructsâŚ, p. 471; one of my favorite examples are the two etymologically unrelated words for female and male friends, respectively malag and guli).
While occasionally doubts are expressed regarding the meaning of Inannaâs name, most authors today accept that it can be interpreted as derived from the genitive construct nin-an-ak - âlady of heavenâ (Paul-Alain Beaulieu, The Pantheon of Uruk During the Neo-Babylonian Period, p. 104). The title nin is effectively gender neutral (Julia M. Asher-Greve, Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Goddesses in Context: On Divine Powers, Roles, Relationships and Gender in Mesopotamian Textual and Visual Sources, p. 6) - it occurs in names of male deities (Ningirsu, Ninurta, Ninazu, Ninagal, Nindara, Ningublaga...), female ones (Ninisina, Ninkarrak, Ninlil, Nineigara, NinmugâŚ), deities whose gender shifted or varied from place to place or from period to period (Ninsikila, Ninshubur, NinsiannaâŚ) and deities whose gender cannot be established due to scarcity of evidence (mostly Early Dynastic oddities whose names cannot even be properly transcribed).
However, we can be sure that Inannaâs name was regarded as feminine based on its Emesal form, GaĹĄananna (Timothy D. Leonard, IĹĄtar in Ḫatti: The Disambiguation of Ĺ avoĹĄka and Associated Deities in Hittite Scribal Practice, p. 36).
The matter is a bit more complex when it comes to the Akkadian name Ishtar. In contrast with Sumerian, Akkadian, which belongs to the eastern branch of the family of Semitic languages, had two grammatical genders, masculine and feminine, though the gender of nouns wasnât necessarily reflected in verbal forms, suffixes and so on (Analyzing ConstructsâŚ, p. 472-473).
In contrast with the name Inanna, the etymology of the Akkadian moniker is less clear. The root has been identified, ˤᚯtr, but its meaning is a subject of a heated debate (Aren M. Wilson-Wright, Athtart. The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age, p. 22-23; the book is based on the authorâs doctoral dissertation, which can be read here). Based on evidence from the languages from the Ethiopian branch of the Semitic family, which offer (distant) cognates, Wilson-Wright suggests it might have originally been an ordinary feminine (but not marked with an expected suffix) noun meaning âstarâ which then developed into a theonym in multiple languages (AthtartâŚ, p. 21) She tentatively suggests that it might have referred to a specific celestial body (perhaps Venus) due to the existence of a more generic term for âstarâ in most Semitic languages, which must have developed very early (p. 24). Thus the emergence of Ishtar would essentially parallel the emergence of Shamash, whose name is in origin the ordinary noun for the sun (p. 25). This seems like an elegant solution, but as pointed out by other researchers some of the arguments employed might be shaky, so itâs best to remain cautious about quoting Wilson-Wrightâs conclusions as fact, even if they are more sound than some of the older, largely forgotten, proposals (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 40-41).
In addition to uncertainties pertaining to the meaning of the root ˤᚯtr, itâs also unclear why the name Ishtar starts with an i in Akkadian, considering cognate names of deities from other cultures fairly consistently start with an a. The early Akkadian form EĹĄtar isnât a mystery - it reflects a broader pattern of phonetic shifts in this language, and as such requires no separate inquiry, but the subsequent shift from e to i is almost unparalleled. Wilson-Wright suggests that it might have been the result of contamination with Inanna, which seems quite compelling to me given that by the second millennium BCE the names had already been interchangeable for centuries (AthtartâŚ, p. 18).
As for grammatical gender, in Akkadian (as well as in the only other language from the East Semitic branch, Eblaite), the theonym Ishtar lacks a feminine suffix but consistently functions as grammatically feminine nonetheless. I got a somewhat confusing ask recently, which I assume was the result of misinterpretation of this information as applying to the gender of the bearer of the name as opposed to just grammatical gender of the name itself:
Occasional confusion might stem from the fact that in the languages from the West Semitic family (like ex. Ugaritic or Phoenician) thereâs no universal pattern - in some of them the situation looks like in Akkadian, in some cognates without the feminine suffix refer to a male deity, furthermore goddesses with names which are cognate but have a feminine suffix (-t; ex. Ugaritic Ashtart) added are attested (AthtartâŚ, p. 16).Â
In Akkadian a form with a -t suffix (iĹĄtart) doesnât appear as a theonym, only as the generic word, âgoddessâ - and it seems to have a distinct etymology, with the -t as a leftover from plural iĹĄtarÄtu (AthtartâŚ, p. 18). The oldest instances of a derivative of the theonym Ishtar being used as an ordinary noun, dated to the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800 BCE), spell it as iĹĄtarum, without such a suffix (Goddess in ContextâŚ, p. 80). As a side note, itâs worth pointing out that both obsolete vintage translations and dubious sources, chiefly online, are essentially unaware of the existence of any version of this noun, which leads to propagation of incorrect claims about equation of deities (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 82).
It has been argued that a further form with the -t suffix, âIshtaratâ, might appear in Early Dynastic texts from Mari, but this might actually be a misreading. This has been originally suggested by Manfred Krebernik all the way back in 1984. He concluded the name seems to actually be ba-sĂšr-ra-at (BaĹĹurat; something like âannouncer of good newsâ; Zur Lesung einiger frĂźhdynastischer Inschriften aus Mari, p. 165). Other researchers recently resurrected this proposal (Gianni Marchesi and Nicolo Marchetti, Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia, p. 228; accepted by Dominique Charpin in a review of their work as well).
I feel itâs important to point out that nothing really suggested that the alleged âIshtaratâ had much to do with Ishtar (or Ashtart, for that matter) in the first place. The closest thing to any theological information in the two brief inscriptions she appears in is that she is listed alongside the personified river ordeal, Id, in one of them. Marchesi and Marchetti suggest they form a couple (Royal StatuaryâŚ, p. 228); in absence of other evidence I feel caution is necessary. Iâm generally wary of asserting deities who appear together once in an oath, greeting or dedicatory formula are necessarily a couple when there is no supplementary evidence. Steve A. Wiggins illustrated this issue well when he rhetorically asked if we should treat Christian saints the same way, which would lead to quite thrilling conclusions in cases like the numerous churches named jointly after St. Andrew and St. George and so on (A Reassessment of Asherah With Further Considerations of the Goddess, p. 101).
Even without Ishtarat, the Mariote evidence remains quite significant for the current topic, though. Thereâs a handful of third millennium attestations of a deity sometimes referred to as âmale Ishtarâ (logographically INANNA.NITA; thereâs no ambiguity thanks to the second logogram) in modern publications - mostly from Mari. The problem is that this is most likely a forerunner of Ugaritic Attar, as opposed to a male form of the deity of Uruk/Zabalam/Akkad/you get the idea (Mark S. Smith, The God Athtar in the Ancient Near East and His Place in KTU 1.6 I, esp. p. 629; note that the deity with the epithet Sarbat is, as far as I know, generally identified as female though).Â
Ultimately there is no strong evidence for Attar being associated with Inanna (his Mesopotamian counterpart in the trilingual list from Ugarit is Lugal-Marada) or even with Ashtart (Smith tentatively proposes the two were associated - The God Athtar.., p. 631 - but more recently in âAthtart in Late Bronze Age Syrian Texts he ruled it out, p. 36-37) so heâs not relevant at all to this topic. Cognate name =/= related deity, least you want to argue Zeus is actually Tyr; the similarly firmly male South Arabian ˤAᚯtar is even less relevant (Athtart. The Transmission and TransformationâŚ, p. 13). Smith goes as far as speculating the male cognates might have been a secondary development, which would render them even more irrelevant to this discussion (âAthtart in LateâŚ, p. 35).
There are also three Old Akkadian names which might refer to a masculine deity based on the form of the other element (EĹĄtar-damqa, âE. is goodâ, EĹĄtar-muti âE. is my husbandâ, and EĹĄtar-pÄliq, âE. is a harpâ), but theyâre an outlier and according to Wilson-Wright might be irrelevant for the discussion of the gender of Ishtar and instead refer to a deity with a cognate name from outside Mesopotamia (Athtart. The Transmission and TransformationâŚ, p. 22).Â
Thereâs also a possible isolated piece of evidence for a masculine deity with a cognate name in Ebla. Eblaite texts fairly consistently indicate that Inannaâs local counterpart AĹĄdar was a female deity. In addition to the equivalence between them attested in a lexical list, her main epithet, Labutu (âlionessâ) indicates she was a feminine figure. However, Alfonso Archi argues that in a single case the name seems to indicate a god, as they are followed by an otherwise unattested âspouseâ (DAM-sĂš), Datinu (Iťḍara and AĹĄtar at Ebla: Some Definitions, p. 16). The logic behind this is unclear to me and no subsequent publications offer any explanations so far. It might be worth noting that the Eblaite pantheon seemingly was able to accommodate two sun deities, one male and one female, so perhaps this is a similar situation.
It should also be noted that the femininity of Ishtar despite the lack of a feminine suffix in her name is not entirely unparalleled - in addition to Ebla, in areas like the Middle Euphrates deities with cognate names without the -t suffix might not necessarily be masculine, even when they start with a- and not i- like in Akkadian. In some cases the matter cannot be solved at all - there is no evidence regarding the gender of AĹĄtar of the Stars (aĹĄ-tar MUL) from Emar, for instance. Meanwhile AĹĄtar of ḪaĹĄi and AĹĄtar-ᚣarbat (âpoplar AĹĄtarâ) from the same site are evidently feminine (Athtart. The Transmission and TransformationâŚ, p. 106). At least in the last case thatâs because the name actually goes back to the Akkadian form, though (p. 85).
To sum up: despite some minor uncertainties pertaining to the Akkadian name, thereâs no strong reason to suspect that any greater degree of ambiguity is built into either Inanna or Ishtar - at least as far as the names alone go. The latter was even seen as sufficiently feminine coded to serve as the basis for a generic designation of goddesses.Â
Obviously, there is more to a deity than just the sum of the meanings of their names. For this reason, to properly evaluate what was up with Inannaâs gender it will be necessary to look into her three main roles: these of a war deity, personification of Venus and love deity.
Masculinity, heroism and maledictory genderbening: the warlike Inanna
An Old Babylonian plaque depicting armed Inanna (wikimedia commons)
Martial first, marital second?
War and other related affairs will be the first sphere of Inannaâs activity Iâll look into, since it feels like itâs the one least acknowledged online and in various questionable publications. Ilona Zsolnay points out that this even extends to serious scholarship to a degree, and that as a result her military side is arguably understudied (IĹĄtar, Goddess of War, Pacifier of Kings: An Analysis of IĹĄtarâs Martial Role in the Maledictory Sections of the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions, p. 389).
The oldest direct evidence for the warlike role of Inanna are Early Dynastic theophoric names such as Inanna-ursag, âInanna is a warriorâ. Further examples are provided by a variety of both Sumerian and Akkadian sources from across the second half of the third millennium BCE. This means itâs actually slightly older than the first evidence for an association with love and eroticism, which can only be dated with certainty to the Old Akkadian period when it is directly mentioned for the first time, specifically in love incantations (Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Inanna and Ishtar in the Babylonian World, p. 336).
Deities associated with combat were anything but uncommon in Mesopotamia. There was no singular war god - Ninurta, Nergal, Zababa, Ilaba, Tishpak and an entire host of other figures, some recognized all across the region, some limited to one specific area or even just a single city, shared a warlike disposition. Naturally, the details could vary - Ninurta was essentially an avenger restoring order disturbed by supernatural threats, Nergal was a war god because he was associated with just about anything pertaining to inflicting death, and so on.Â
All the examples Iâve listed are male, but similar roles are also attested for multiple goddesses, not just Inanna. Those include closely related deities like Annunitum or Belet-ekallim, most of her foreign counterparts, the astral deity Ninisanna (more on this figure later), but also firmly independent examples like Ninisina and the Middle Euphrates slash Ugaritic Anat (Ilona Zsolnay, Do Divine Structures of Gender Mirror Mortal Structures of Gender?, p. 114).
The god list An = Anum preserves a whole series of epithets affirming Inannaâs warlike character - Ninugnim, âlady of the armyâ; NinĹĄenĹĄena, âlady of battleâ; Ninmea, âlady of combatâ; Ninintena, âlady of warriorhoodâ (tablet IV, lines 20-23; Wilfred G. Lambert and Ryan D. Winters, An = Anum and Related Lists, p.162). It is also well represented in literary texts.
She is a âdestroyer of landsâ (kurgulgul) in Ninmesharra, for instance (Markham J. Geller, The Free Library Inanna Prism Reconsidered, p. 93).
At least some of the terms employed to describe Inanna in other literary compositions were strongly masculine-coded, if not outright masculine. The poem AguĹĄaya characterizes her as possessing âmanlinessâ (zikrĹŤtu) and âheroismâ (eášlĹŤtu; this word can also refer to youthful masculinity, see Analyzing ConstructsâŚ, p. 471) and calls her a âheroâ (qurÄdu). Another example, a hymn dated to the reign of Third Dynasty of Ur or First Dynasty of Isin opens with an incredibly memorable line - âO returning manly hero, Inanna the lady (...)â (or, to follow Thorkild Jacobsenâs older translation, which involves some gap filling - âO you Amazon, queenâfrom days of yore, paladin, hero, soldierâ; The Free Library⌠p. 93).Â
A little bit of context is necessary here: while âheroismâ might seem neutral to at least some modern readers, in ancient Mesopotamia it was seen as a masculine trait (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 392-393). Itâs worth noting that eášlĹŤtum, which youâve seen translated as âheroismâ above can be translated in other context as âyouthful masculinityâ (Analyzing ConstructsâŚ, p. 471). On the other hand, while zikrĹŤtu is derived from zikÄru, âmaleâ, it might refer both straightforwardly to masculinity and more abstractly to heroism (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 397).
However, the same hymn which calls Inanna a âmanly heroâ refers to her with a variety of feminine titles like nugig. Thereâs even an Emesal gaĹĄan (âladyâ) in there, you really canât get much more feminine than that (The Free Library⌠p. 89). On top of that, about a half of the composition is a fairly standard Dumuzi romance routine (The Free Library⌠p. 90-91; more on what that entails later, for now it will suffice to say that not gender nonconformity).Â
This is a recurring pattern, arguably - AguĹĄaya, where masculine traits are attributed to Inanna over and over again, still firmly refers to her as a feminine figure (âdaughterâ, âgoddessâ, âqueenâ, âprincessâ, âmistressâ, âlionessâ and so on; Benjamin R. Foster, Before the Muses: an Anthology of Akkadian Literature, p. 160 and passim). In other words, the assignment of a clearly masculine sphere of activity and titles related to it doesnât really mean Inanna is not presented as feminine in the same compositions.
How to explain this phenomenon? In Mesopotamian thought both femininity and masculinity were understood as me, ie. divinely ordained principles regulating the functioning of the cosmos. In modern terms, these labels as they were used in literary texts arguably had more to do with gender and gender roles than strictly speaking with biological sex (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 391-392). Ilona Zsolnay on this basis concludes that Inanna, while demonstrably regarded as a feminine figure, took on a masculine role in military context (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 401). This is hardly an uncommon view in scholarship (The Free LibraryâŚ, p. 93; On LanguageâŚ, p. 243).Â
In other words, it can be argued that when the lyrical voice in AguĹĄaya declares that âthere is a certain hero, she is uniqueâ (i-ba-aĹĄ-ĹĄi iĹĄ-ta-ta qĂş-ra-du; Before the MusesâŚ, p. 98) the unique quality is, essentially, that Inanna fulfills a strongly masculine coded role - that of a âheroâ, understood as a youthful, aggressive masculine figure - despite being female.
It should be noted that the ideal image of a person characterized by youthful masculinity went beyond just warfare, or abstract heroic adventures, though. The Song of the Hoe indicates that willingness to perform manual work in the fields was yet another aspect of it (Ilona Zsolnay, Gender and Sexuality: Ancient Near East, p. 277). This, as far as I know, was never attributed to Inanna.
Furthermore, the sort of youthful, aggressive masculinity weâre talking about here was regarded as something fleeting and temporary for the most part (at least when it came to humans; deities are obviously a very different story), and a very different image of male gender roles emerges from texts such as Instruction of Shuruppak, which extol a peaceful, reserved demeanor and the ability to provide for oneâs family as masculine virtues instead (Gender and SexualityâŚ, p. 277-278). It might be worth pointing out that Sumerian outright uses two different terms to designate âyouthfulâ (namguruĹĄ) and âseniorâ (namabba) masculinity (Gender and SexualityâŚ, p. 275); the general term for masculinity, namnitah, is incredibly rare in comparison (Gender and SexualityâŚ, p. 276-277).
It needs to be pointed out that a further Sumerian term sometimes translated as âmanlinessâ - ťul, which occurs for example in the hymn mentioned above - might actually be gender neutral; in addition to being used to describe mortal young men and Inanna, it was also applied as an epithet to the goddess Bau, who demonstrably was not regarded as a masculine figure; she didnât even share Inannaâs warlike character (Analyzing ConstructsâŚ, p. 471). Perhaps the original nuance simply escapes us - could it be that ĹĄul was not strictly speaking masculinity, but some more abstract quality which was simply more commonly associated with men?
In any case, itâs hard to argue that Inanna really encompasses the entire concept of masculinity as the Mesopotamians understood it. At the same time, it is impossible to deny that she was portrayed as responsible for - and enthusiastically engaged in - spheres of activity which were seen as firmly masculine, and could accordingly be described with terms associated with them. Therefore, it would be more than suitable to describe her as gender nonconforming - at least when she was specifically portrayed as warlike.Â
Perhaps Dennis Pardee was onto something when he completely sincerely described Anat, who despite being firmly a female figure similarly engaged in masculine pursuits (not only war, but also hunting) as a âtomboy goddessâ (Ritual and Cult at Ugarit, p. 274).Â
These observations only remain firmly correct as long as we assume that gender roles are a concept fully applicable to deities, of course - Iâll explore in more detail later whether this was necessarily true.
Royal curses and legal loopholes
A different side of Inanna as a war deity which nonetheless still has a lot to do with the topic of this article comes to the fore in curse formulas from royal inscriptions. Their contents are not quite as straightforward as imploring her to personally intervene on the battlefield. Rather, she was supposed to make the enemy unable to partake in warfare properly (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 390). Investigating how this process was imagined will shed additional light on how the Mesopotamians viewed masculinity, and especially the intersection between masculinity and military affairs.
The formulas under discussion start to appear in the second half of the second millennium BCE, with the earliest example identified in an inscription of the Middle Assyrian king TukultÄŤ-Ninurta I (Gina Konstantopoulos, My Men Have Become Women, and My Women Men: Gender, Identity, and Cursing in Mesopotamia, p. 363). He implored the goddess to punish his enemies by turning them into women (zikrĹŤssu sinnisÄniĹĄ) - or rather, by turning their masculinity into femininity, or at the very least some sort of non-masculine quality. The first option was the conventional translation for a while, but sinniĹĄtu would be used instead of the much more uncommon sinniĹĄÄnu if it was that straightforward. Interpreting it as âfemininityâ would parallel the use of zikrĹŤti, âmasculinityâ, in place of zikaru, âmanâ.Â
There are two further possible alternatives, which I find less plausible myself, but which nonetheless need to be discussed. One is that sinniĹĄÄnu designated a specific class of women. Furthermore, there is also some evidence - lexical list entry from ḪAR.GUD, to be specific - that sinnisÄnu might have been a synonym of assinnu, a type of undeniably AMAB, but possibly gender nonconforming, cultic performer (in older literature erroneously translated as âeunuchâ despite lack of evidence; the second most beloved vintage baseless translation for any cultic terms after âsacred prostituteâ, an invention of Herodotus), in which case the curse would involve something like âchanging his masculinity in the manner of a sinnisÄnuâ (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 394-396). However, Zsolnay herself subsequently published a detailed study of the assinnu, The Misconstrued Role of the assinnu in Ancient Near Eastern Prophecy, which casts her earlier proposal into doubt, as the perception of the assinnu as a figure lacking conventional masculinity might be erroneous. Iâll return to this point later. For now, it will suffice to say that on grammatical grounds and due to parallels in other similar maledictions, âmasculinity into femininityâ seems to be the most straightforward to me in this case.
The âgenderbendingâ tends to be mentioned alongside the destruction of oneâs weapons (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 363). This is not accidental - martial prowess, âheroismâ and even the ability to bear weapons were quintessential masculine qualities; a man deprived of his masculinity would inevitably be unable to possess them. The masculine coding of weaponry was so strong that an erection could be metaphorically compared to drawing a bow (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 395).
Zsolnay points out the reversal of gender in curses is also coupled with other reversals: Inanna is also supposed to âestablishâ (liĹĄkun) the defeat (abikti) of the target of the curses - a future king who fails to uphold his duties - which constitutes a reversal of an idiom common in royal inscriptions celebrating victory (abikti iĹĄkun). The potential monarch will also be unable to face the enemy as a result of her intervention - yet again a reversal of a mainstay of royal declarations. The majesty and heroism of a king were supposed to scare enemies, who would inevitably prostrate themselves when faced by him on the battlefield (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 396-397).Â
It is safe to say the goal of invoking Inanna in the discussed formulas was to render the target powerless. (IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 396; My Men HaveâŚ, p. 366). Furthermore, they evoke a fear widespread in cuneiform sources, that of the loss of potency, which sometimes took forms akin to Koro syndrome or the infamous penis theft passages from Malleus Maleficarum (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 367). It is worth noting that male impotence could specifically be described as being âlike a womanâ (kÄŤma sinniĹĄti/GIM SAL; IĹĄtar, Goddess of WarâŚ, p. 395).
Gina Konstantopoulos argues that references to Inanna âgenderbeningâ others occur in a different context in a variety of literary texts, for example in the Epic of Erra, where theyâre only meant to highlight the extent of her supernatural ability. She also suggests that more general references to swapping left and right sides around, for example in Enki and the World Order, are further examples, as they âecho(...) the language of birth incantationsâ which ritually assigned the gender role to a child (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 368). She also sees the passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh describing the fates of various individuals who crossed her path and ended up transformed into animals as a result as a more distant parallel of the curse formulas (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 369). However, it needs to be pointed out this sort of shapeshifting is almost unparalleled in Mesopotamian literature (Frans Wiggermann, Hybrid creatures A. Philological. In Mesopotamia, p. 237), and none of the few examples involve a change of gender.
The fact that the "genderbending" passages generally reflect a fear of loss of agency (especially on the battlefield) or potency, and by extension of independence tied to masculine gender roles, explains why they virtually never describe the opposite scenario, a mortal woman being placed in a masculine role through supernatural means as punishment (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 370).
It might be worth pointing out that a long sequence of seemingly contradictory duties involving reversals is also ascribed to Inanna in a particularly complex Old Babylonian hymn (Michael P. Streck, Nathan Wasserman, The Man is Like a Woman, the Maiden is a Young Man. A new edition of IĹĄtar-Louvre (Tab. I-II), p. 2-3). It also contains a rare case of bestowing masculine qualities upon women: âthe man is like a woman, the maiden is like a young manâ (zikrum sinniĹĄteĹĄ ardatu eášel; The Man is LikeâŚ, p. 5). However, the context is not identical to the âgenderbeningâ curses. The text is agreed to describe a performance during a specific festival. Other passages explicitly refer to crossdressing and rituals themed around reversal (ĹĄubalkutma ĹĄipru, "behavior is turned upside down"; The Man is LikeâŚ, p. 6). Furthermore, grammatical forms of verbs do not indicate a full reversal of gender (The Man is LikeâŚ, p. 31). Overall, I agree with Timothy D. Leonardâs cautious remark that in this context only religiously motivated temporary reversal of gender roles occurs, and we cannot use the passage to make far reaching conclusions about the participantsâ identity (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 298).
Itâs important to bear in mind that a performance involving crossdressing wonât necessarily involve people who are otherwise gender nonconforming, and it doesnât necessarily have anything to do with the sexuality of the performer. While I typically avoid bringing up parallels from other cultures and time periods as evidence, I feel like this is illustrated quite well by the case of shirabyĹshi, a type of female performer popular in Japan roughly from the second half of the Heian period to the late Kamakura period.
A 20th century depiction of a shirabyĹshi (wikimedia commons)
They performed essentially in male formal wear, and with swords at their waists; their performance was outright called a âmale danceâ (Roberta Strippoli, Dancer, Nun, Ghost, Goddess. The Legend of GiĹ and Hotoke in Japanese Literature, Theater, Visual Arts, and Cultural Heritage, p. 28). Genpei jĹsuiki nonetheless states that famous shirabyĹshi were essentially the Japanese answer to the most famous historical Chinese beauties like Wang Zhaojun or Yang Guifei (Dancer, NunâŚ, p. 27-28). In other words, while the shirabyĹshi crossdressed, they were simultaneously held to be paragons of femininity.
Putting crossdressing aside, itâs worth noting women taking masculine roles are additionally attested in legal context in ancient Mesopotamia, though only in an incredibly specific scenario. A man who lacked male heirs could essentially legally declare his daughter a son, so that she would be able to have the privileges as a man would with regards to inheritance. For example, in a text from Emar a certain mr. Aḍu-ášÄb formally made his daughter AlnaĹĄuwa his heir due to having no other descendants, and explained that as a result she will have to be âboth male and femaleâ (NITA Ăš MUNUS) - effectively both a son and a daughter - to keep the process legitimate. Once AlnaĹĄuwa got married, her newfound status as a son of her father was legally transferred to her husband, though. Evidently no supernatural powers were involved at any stage, only an uncommon, but fully legitimate, legal procedure (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 370-372).
It should be noted that when male by proxy, AlnaĹĄuwa was explicitly not expected to perform any military roles - her father only placed such an exception on potential grandsons (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 370). Therefore, the temporary masculine role she was granted was arguably not the same as the sort of masculinity curses were supposed to take away, or the sort Inanna could claim for herself to a degree.
Luminous beards and genderfluid planets: the astral Inanna (and her peers)
A standard Mesopotamian depiction of the planet Venus (Dilbat) on a late Kassite boundary stone (wikimedia commons)
Male in the morning, female in the evening (or the other way round)?
While the inquiry into Inannaâs military aspect revealed a fair amount of evidence for gender nonconformity, it would be disingenuous on my part to end the article on just that. A slightly different phenomenon is documented with regards to her astral side - or perhaps with regards to the astral side of multiple deities, to be more precise.
To begin with, in Mesopotamian astrology Venus (Dilbat) was one of the two astral bodies which were described as possessing two genders, the other being Mercury (Erica Reiner, Astral Magic in Babylonia, p. 6; interestingly, it doesnât seem any deity associated with Mercury acquired this characteristic unless you want to count a possible late case from outside Mesopotamia). The primary sources indicate that this reflected the fact Venus is both the morning star and the evening star, though there was no agreement between ancient astronomers which one of them was feminine and which masculine (Ulla Koch-Westenholz, Mesopotamian Astrology. An Introduction to Babylonian and Assyrian Celestial Divination, p. 40). We even have a case of a single astrologer, a certain NabĂť-ahhe-eriba, alternating between both options in his personal letters (p. 126).
It needs to be pointed out that while some interest in stars and planets might already be attested in Early Dynastic sources, its scope was evidently quite limited and astrology didnât develop yet (Mesopotamian AstrologyâŚ, p. 32). No astrological texts predate the Old Babylonian period, and most of the early ones are preoccupied with the moon (p. 36-37), though the earliest evidence for astrological interest in Venus are roughly contemporary with them (p. 40). Astronomical observations of this planet were certainly already conducted for divinatory purposes during the reign of Ammisaduqa, and by the seventh century BCE experts were well familiar with its cycle and made predictions on this basis (p. 126).
Inannaâs association with Venus predates the dawn of astrology by well over a millennium. It likely goes back all the way up to the Uruk period - if not earlier, but that sort of speculation is moot because you canât talk about Mesopotamian theology with no textual sources, and these are fundamentally not something available before the advent of writing. The earliest evidence are archaic administrative texts which separately record offerings for Inanna hud, âInanna the morningâ and Inanna sig, âInanna the eveningâ (Inanna and IshtarâŚ, p. 334-335). However, it is impossible to tell if this was already reflected in any sort of ambiguity or fluidity of gender. It also needs to be noted the archaic text records two more epithets, Inanna NUN, possibly âprincely Inannaâ (p. 334; this is actually the single oldest one) and Inanna KUR, possibly a forerunner of later title ninkurkurra, âlady of the landsâ (p. 335). Therefore, Inanna was arguably already more than just a deity associated with Venus.
Itâs up for debate to which degree an astral body was seen as identical with the corresponding deity in later periods (Spencer J. Allen, The Splintered Divine. A Study of IĹĄtar, Baal, and Yahweh Divine Names and Divine Multiplicity in the Ancient Near East, p. 41-42). There is evidence that Inanna and the planet Venus could be viewed as separate, similarly to how the moon observed in the sky could be treated as distinct from the moon god Sin (p. 40). The most commonly cited piece of evidence is that astrological texts fairly consistently employ the name Dilbat to refer to the planet instead of Inannaâs name or one of the logograms used to represent it, like the numeral 15 (p. 42).
Regardless of these concerns, one specific tidbit pertaining to astrological comments on Venus is held as particularly important for possible ambiguity or fluidity of Inannaâs gender, and even lead to arguments that masculine depictions might be out there: the planet can be described as bearded (Astral MagicâŚ, p. 6). Omens attesting this are most notably listed in the compendium Iqqur ÄŤpuĹĄ (Erica Reiner, David Pingree, Babylonian Planetary Omens vol. 3, p. 10-11).
it should be noted that the planet is referred to only as Dilbat in this context (see ex. Babylonian PlanetaryâŚ, p. 105 for an example). Iâm only aware of two texts where this feature is transferred to the corresponding deity: the syncretic hymn to Nanaya and Ashurbanipalâs hymn to Ishtar of Nineveh.
Is the beard really a beard, though? Not necessarily, as it turns out.
The passage from the hymn of Ashurbanipal has been recently discussed by Takayoshi M. Oshima and Alison Acker Gruseke (She Walks in Beauty: an Iconographic Study of the Goddess in a Nimbus, p. 62-63). They point out that ultimately there are no certain iconographic representations of bearded Ishtar. There are a few proposed ones on cylinder seals but this is a minority position relying on doubtful exegesis of every strand of hair in sight; no example has anything resembling the âclassicâ Mesopotamian beard. Iâll return to this problem in a bit.
In any case, the authors of the aforementioned paper argue the key to interpreting the passage is the fact that the reference to the beard (or rather beards in the plural) occurs in an enumeration of strictly astral, luminous characteristics, like being âclothed in brillianceâ (namrÄŤrÄŤ ḍalÄpu). Furthermore, they identify a parallel in the Great Hymn to Shamash: the rays of the sun are described as âbeardsâ (ziqnÄt), and occur in parallel with âsplendorâ (ĹĄalummatu) and âlightsâ (namrÄŤrĹŤ). Therefore, they assume the âbeardâ might be a metaphorical term for a ray of light, rather than facial hair. This would match actually attested depictions - in the first millennium BCE, especially in Assyria, images of a goddess surrounded by rays of light or a large halo of sorts are very common.
A goddess surrounded by a halo on a Neo-Assyrian seal (wikimedia commons)
Perhaps most importantly, this interpretation is also confirmed by the astronomical texts which kickstarted the discussion. The phrase ziqna zaqÄnu, âto have a beardâ, is explained multiple times as reflection of an unusual luminosity when applied to Venus. The authors additionally argue that it is possible the use of the term âbeardâ was originally tied to the triangular portions of the emblems of Inanna and her twin (which indeed represent the luminosity of Venus and the sun) to explain why a plurality of âbeardsâ is relatively common in the discussed descriptions (p. 64).
As I said before, the second example is a hymn to Nanaya. Itâs easily one of my favorite works of Mesopotamian literature, and a few years ago it kickstarted my interest in its âprotagonistâ, but tragically most of it is completely irrelevant to this article. The gist of it is fairly simple: the entire composition is written in first person, and in each strophe Nanaya claims the prerogatives of another deity before reasserting herself: âstill I am Nanayaâ (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 116-117). The âborrowedâ attributes vary from abstract cosmic powers to breast size. The deities they are linked with range from the most major members of the pantheon (Inanna, Gula, Ishara, BauâŚ) through spouses of major deities (Shala, DamkinaâŚ) to obscure oddities (Manzat, the personified rainbow); thereâs even one whoâs otherwise entirely unknown, Ĺ uluḍḍčtum (for a full table see Erica Reinerâs A Sumero-Akkadian Hymn of Nanâ, p. 232).
As expected, the strophe relevant to the current topic is the one focused on Inanna, in which Nanaya proudly exclaims âI have a beard (ziqna zaqÄnu) in Babylonâ, in between claiming to have âheavy breasts in Daduniâ (Reiner notes this is not actually an attested attribute of Inanna, and suggests the line might be a pun on the name of the city mentioned in it, Daduni, and the word dÄdu) and appropriating Inannaâs family tree for herself (A Sumero-AkkadianâŚ, p. 233).
A possible late depiction of Nanaya (wikimedia commons)
It needs to be stressed that Nanayaâs gender shows no signs of ambiguity anywhere; quite the opposite, she was the âquintessence of womanhoodâ (Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz, Mesopotamian Goddess NanÄja, p. 156). I would argue the most notable case of something along the lines of gender nonconformity in a source focused on her occurs in the sole known example of a love poem starring her and her sparsely attested Old Babylonian spouse Muati.Â
Muati is asked to intercede with Nanaya on behalf of a petitioner (Before the MusesâŚ, p. 160), which usually was the role performed of the wife of a major male deity (or by Ninshubur in Inannaâs case; Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 273). Sadly, despite recently surveying most publications mentioning Muati I havenât found any substantial discussion of this unique passage, and Iâm not aware of any parallels involving other couples where the wife was a more important deity than the husband (like Ninisina and Pabilsag).
A further issue for the beard passage is that Nanaya had no connection to Venus to speak of -Â she could be described as luminous, but she was only compared to the sun, the moon, and unspecified stars (Mesopotamian Goddess NanÄja, p. 153-155).
Given that the hymn most likely dates to the early first millennium BCE (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 116), yet another problem for the older interpretation is that the city of Babylon at this point in time is probably the single worst place for seeking any sort of gender ambiguity when it comes to Inanna.
After the end of the Kassite period, Babylon became the epicenter of Marduk-centric theological ventures which famously culminated in the composition of Enuma Elish. What is less well known is that as a part of the same process, attempts were made to essentially fuse BÄlet-BÄbili (âlady of Babylonâ) - the main (but not only) local form of Inanna, regarded as distinct from Inanna of Uruk (the âdefaultâ Inanna) - with Zarpanitu (The PantheonâŚ, p. 75-76). Zarpanitu was effectively the definition of an indistinct spouse of another deity - thereâs not much to say about her character other than that she was Mardukâs wife (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 92-93). Accordingly, it is hard to imagine that the contemporary âlady of Babylonâ would be portrayed as bearded.
During the reign of Nabu-shuma-ishkun in the eighth century BCE an attempt to extend the new dogma to Inanna of Uruk was made, though this was evidently considered too much for contemporary audiences. Multiple sources display varying degrees of opposition to replacement of Inanna in the Eanna by a goddess who didnât belong there, presumably either Zarpanitu or at the very least BÄlet-BÄbili after âZarpanituificationâ so severe she no longer bore a sufficient resemblance to her Urukuean colleague (The PantheonâŚ, p. 76-77). Inanna of Uruk was restored during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, who curiously affirmed that her temple was temporarily turned into the sanctuary of an âinappropriate goddessâ (The PantheonâŚ, p. 131). However, the Marduk-centric ventures left a lasting negative impression in Uruk nonetheless, and in the long run lead to quite extreme reactions, culminating in the establishment of an active cult of Anu for the first time, but thatâs another story (I might consider covering it in detail if thereâs interest).
To go back to the hymn to Nanaya one last time, itâs interesting to note that a single copy seems to substitute ziqna zaqÄnu for zik-ra-[...], possibly a leftover of zikrÄku, âmanlyâ. Takayoshi M. Oshima and Alison Acker Gruseke presume this is only a scribal mistake, since this heavily damaged exemplar is rife with typos in general (She WalksâŚ, p. 63), though Iâm curious if perhaps a reference to the military character of Inanna herself or Annunitum was meant. This would line up with evidence from Babylon to a certain degree, since through the first millennium BCE Annunitum was worshiped there in her own temple (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 105-106). However, in the light of what is known about this unique variant, itâs best to assume that it is indeed a typo and the hymn simply refers to luminosity.Â
While no textual sources earlier (or later, for that matter) than the two hymns discussed above attribute a beard to Inanna (Zainab Bahrani, Women of Babylon. Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia, p. 182), the most commonly cited example of a seal with a supposedly bearded depiction is considerably earlier (Ur III, so roughly 2100 BCE, long before any references to âbearded Venusâ). It comes from the Umma area judging from the name and title of its owner, a certain Lu-Igalima, a lumaḍ priest of Ninibgal (âlady of the [temple] Ibgalâ, ie. Inannaâs temple in Umma).
However, Julia M. Asher-Greve points out that the beard is likely to be a strand of hair, since contemporary parallels supporting this interpretation are available, for example a seal of a priest of Inanna from Nippur, Lugalengardu. Furthermore, she notes that the seal cutter was seemingly inexperienced, since the detail is all around dodgy, for example Inannaâs foot seems to be merged with the head of the lion she stands on (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 208).
Looking at the two images side by side, I think this is a compelling argument, since the beard doesnât really look like, well, a typical Mesopotamian beard, while the hairdo on the Nippur seal is indeed similar:
Both images are screencaps from Goddesses in Context, p. 403; reproduced here for educational purposes only.
While I think the beard-critical arguments are sound, this is not the only possible kind of depiction of Inanna argued to reflect the fluidity of gender attributed to the planet Venus.
Paul-Alain Beaulieu notes that an inscription of Nebuchadnezzar with a dedication to Inanna of Uruk she might be called both the lamassu, ie. âprotective goddessâ, of Uruk and ĹĄÄdu, ie. âprotective geniusâ, of Eanna; the latter is an invariably masculine term. However, it is not entirely clear if the lamassu and ĹĄÄdu invoked here are both really a partially masculine Ishtar, since thereâs a degree of ambiguity involved in the concept of protective deity or deities of a temple - while thereâs evidence for outright identification with the main deity of a given house of worship, they could also be separate, though closely related, and Beaulieu ultimately remains uncertain which option is more plausible here (The PantheonâŚ, p. 137-138). He also points out that thereâs some late evidence for apotropaic figures with two faces, male and female, which were supposed to represent a ĹĄÄdu+lamassu pair, but rules out the possibility that these have anything to do with Ishtar, since two faces are virtually never her attribute (The PantheonâŚ, p. 137).Â
There is a single possible exception from this rule, but itâs an outlier so puzzling itâs hard to count it. A single Neo-Assyrian text from Nineveh (KAR 307) describes Ishtar of Nineveh (there is a reason why I abstain from using the name Inanna here, as youâll see later) as four-eyed, which Beaulieu suggests might mean the deity had a male face and a female face. The same source also states that Ishtar of Nineveh is Tiamat and has âupper parts of Belâ and âlower parts of Ninlilâ, though (The PantheonâŚ, p. 137), so itâs probably best not to think of it too much - Tiamat is demonstrably not a figure of much importance in general, let alone in the context of Inanna-centric considerations.
The same text has been interpreted differently by Wilfred G. Lambert. He concludes that itâs ultimately probably an esoteric Enuma Elish commentary and that it might have been cobbled together by a scribe from snippers of unrelated, contradictory sources (Babylonian Creation Myths, p. 245). If correct, this would disprove Beaulieuâs proposal, since the four eyes would simply reflect the description of Marduk (Bel) in EE (tablet I, line 55: âFour were his eyes, four his earsâ). I lean towards Lambertâs interpretation myself; the reference to Tiamat is the strongest argument, outside EE and derived commentaries she was basically a non-entity. Iâll go back to the topic of Ishtar of Nineveh later, though - there is a slim possibility that two faces might really be meant, though this would take us further away from Inanna, all the way up to ancient Anatolia.
As a final curiosity itâs worth pointing out that while this is entirely unrelated to the discussed matter, KAR 307 is also the same text which (in)famously states Tiamat has the form of a dromedary. As odd as that sounds, itâs much easier to explain when you realize that the Akkadian term for this animal, when broken down to individual logograms, could be interpreted as âdonkey of the seaâ - and Tiamatâs name was derived from the ordinary Akkadian word âseaâ (Babylonian CreationâŚ, p. 246).
The Red Lady of Heaven, my king
While both the bearded and two faced Inannas are likely to be mirages, this doesnât mean the dual gender of Venus was not reflected in the world of gods. The result was a bit more complex than the existence of a male Inanna, though.
In addition to being Inannaâs astral attribute, Venus simultaneously could be personified under the name Ninsianna. Ninsianna could be treated as a title of Inanna - this is attested for example in a hymn from the reign of Iddin-Dagan of Isin - but unless explicitly stated, should be treated as a separate deity. This is evident especially in sources from Larsa, where the two were worshiped entirely separately from each other (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 92).
Ninsiannaâs name can be literally translated as âred lady of heavenâ (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 86), though as I already explained earlier, nin is actually gender neutral - âred lord of heavenâ is theoretically equally valid. And, as a matter of fact, it is necessary to employ the latter translation in some cases - an inscription of Rim-Sin I refers to Ninsianna with the firmly masculine title lugal, âkingâ (Wolfgang Heimpel, Ninsiana, p. 488).Â
It seems safe to say that in Ninsiannaâs case weâre essentially dealing with a deity who truly was like Venus. Timothy D. Leonard stresses that while frequently employed in past scholarship, the labels âhermaphroditicâ and âandrogynousâ do not describe the phenomenon accurately. What the sources actually present is a deity who switches between a male form and a female one (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 226). In other words, if we are to apply a contemporary label, it seems optimal to say Ninsianna was perceived as genderfluid.
Interestingly, though, it seems that Ninsiannaâs gender varied by location as well (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 92). The worship of feminine Ninsianna is attested for example in Nippur (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 101) and Uruk (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 126), masculine - in Sippar-Amnanum, Girsu and Ur (Ninsiana, p. 488-489). No study I went through speculated what the reasons behind this situation might have been. Was Ninsiannaâs gender locally viewed as less flexible than the discussed theological texts indicate? Were specific sanctuaries dedicated only to a specific aspect of this deity - only the âmorningâ Ninsianna or âeveningâ Ninsianna? For the time being these questions must remain unanswered in most cases.Â
Thereâs a single case where the preference for feminine Ninsianna was probably influenced by an unparalleled haphazard theological innovation, though - in Isin in the early second millennium BCE the local dynasty lost control over Uruk, and as a result access to royal legitimacy granted symbolically by Inanna. To remedy that, the tutelary goddess of their capital was furnished with similar qualifications through a leap of logic relying on one hand on the close association between Inanna and Ninsianna, and on the other on the phonetic (but not etymological) similarity between the names of Ninisina and Ninsianna (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 86). As far as I know, this did not influence the perception of Ninisinaâs gender in any shape or form, though.
An interesting extension of the phenomenon of Ninsiannaâs gender is this deityâs association with an even more enigmatic figure, Kabta. Only two things can be established about Kabta with certainty: that they were an astral deity, and that they were associated in some way with Ninsianna; even their gender is uncertain (Wilfred G. Lambert, Kabta, p. 284).
It might be worth pointing out that as a result Kabta and Ninsianna seem to constitute the first case of a Mesopotamian deity of variable (Ninsianna) or uncertain (Kabta) gender being referred to with a neutral pronoun in an Assyriological publication - Ryan D. Wintersâ commentary on their entries in a variety of god lists employs a singular they (An = AnumâŚ, p. 34):
Wilfred G. Lambert argued that the two were spouses (Kabta, p. 284). More recently the same point has been made by Winters based on Kabtaâs placement after Ninsianna in An = Anum, and directly before Dumuzi in an Old Babylonian forerunner of this list (An = AnumâŚ, p. 22). However, I feel obliged to point out that An = Anum, which fairly consistently identifies spouses as such, does not actually specify the nature of the connection between the two. Once the enumeration of Ninsiannaâs names finishes, the list simply switches to Kabtaâs (An = AnumâŚ, p. 170).Â
In another god list, which is rather uncreatively referred to as âshorter An = Anumâ due to sharing the first line with its more famous ârelativeâ but lacking its sheer scope, names of Kabta are listed among designations for Inannaâs astral forms, which would have interesting implications for the nature of the supposed relationship between them and Ninsianna (An = AnumâŚ, p. 34). Furthermore, as noted by Jeremiah Peterson, both of them, as well as Kabtaâs alternate name Maḍdianna and a further astral deity, Timua, are also glossed as IĹĄtar kakkabi - in this case according to him likely a generic moniker âgoddess of the starâ as opposed to âIshtar of the starâ - in a variety of lexical lists (God Lists from Old Babylonian Nippur, p. 58).Â
In the light of the somewhat confusing evidence summarized above, further inquiries into both Kabtaâs character and the nature of the connection between them and Ninsianna are definitely necessary. Assuming that they were spouses, how did theologians who adhered to this view deal with them also being treated as two manifestations of one being instead (I suppose you could easily put a romantic spin on that, to be fair)? Did Kabtaâs gender change alongside Ninsiannaâs, or perhaps following a different scheme, or was this a characteristic they lacked? Unless new sources emerge, this sadly must remain the domain of speculation.
Ninsiannaâs fluid gender also has to be taken into account while discussing one further deity, Pinikir. The discovery of a fragmentary god list in Emar made it possible to establish the latter was regarded as the Hurrian equivalent of the former (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 224; note that there seems to be a typo here, the list is identified as An = Anum but itâs actually the Weidner god list). This deity similarly was understood as a personification of Venus (Piotr Taracha, Religions of Second Millennium Anatolia, p. 99) and was in a certain capacity associated with Inanna - however, as it will become evident pretty quickly these werenât the only analogies with Ninsianna.
Despite appearing in Emar in Hurrian context, Pinikir actually originated to the east of Mesopotamia, in Elam (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 223). Her name cannot yet be fully explained due to imperfect understanding of Elamite, but it is clear that the suffix -kir is feminine and means âgoddessâ (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 237; cf. the not particularly creatively named Kiririsha, âgreat goddessâ). Sources from Anatolia recognize Pinikir as an Elamite deity, though direct transfer from one end of the âcuneiform worldâ to the other is unlikely (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 236). Most likely, Hurrians received Pinikir through Mesopotamian intermediaries in the late third or early second millennium BCE, and later introduced this deity further west (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 237). We know Mesopotamians were aware of her thanks to the god list AnĹĄar = Anum, where the name occurs among what may or may not be an enumeration of deities regarded as Inannaâs foreign counterparts (An = AnumâŚ, p. 36). For the time being it is not possible to track this process directly, though - itâs all educated guesswork.
While as far as I am aware none of the few Elamite sources dealing with Pinikir provide much theological information about her, and none hint at her gender being anything but feminine, Hurro-Hittite texts from Anatolia indicate that at least in this context, like Ninsianna in Mesopotamia, she came to be seen as a genderfluid deity, sometimes counted among gods, sometimes among goddesses (Gary Beckman, The Goddess Pirinkir and her Ritual from Ḫattuťa (CTH 644), p. 25).
Firmly feminine Pinikir occurs in a ritual text (KUB 34.102) which refers to her in Hurrian as Allai-Pinikir, âlady Pinikirâ; interestingly this is the only case where she is provided with an epithet in any Anatolian source (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 211). However, there are examples of ritual texts where Pinikir is listed among male deities (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 229). He is also depicted in the procession of gods in the famous Yazilikaya sanctuary in a rather striking attire:
I know, I know, the state of preservation leaves much to be desired (wikimedia commons)
This isnât just any masculine clothing - the outfit is only shared with two other figures depicted in this sanctuary, the sun god Shimige and the Hittite king (The Goddess PirinkirâŚ, p. 25-26):
Shimige (left; wikimedia commons) and the king (right; also wikimedia commons)
Piotr Taracha argues that it reflects the attire worn by the Hittite king when he fulfilled his religious duties (Religions ofâŚ, p. 89); Pinikirâs isnât identical - itâs only knee length, like the more standard masculine garments - but the skullcap is pretty clearly the same. He is also winged, which is a trait only shared with the moon god and one more figure (more on them in a bit), and likely reflects celestial associations (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 211). All the same traits are also preserved on a small figurine of Pinikir from the collection of the MET:
A much better preserved masculine Pinikir (MET)
Itâs therefore probably safe to say that the male form had a fairly consistent iconography, which furthermore was patterned on what probably was an archetypal image of masculinity to Hurro-Hittite audiences. The king, whose appearance is reflected in Pinikirâs iconography, was, after all, supposed to be not just any man, but rather the foremost example of idealized masculinity (Mary R. Bachvarova, Wisdom of Former Days: The Manly Hittite King and Foolish Kumarbi, Father of the Gods, p. 83-84).
Since we started this section with beards, we may as well end with them - I feel obliged to point out that no matter how clearly described as masculine, neither Ninsianna nor Pinikir were ever described (let alone depicted) as bearded.Â
It is difficult for me to estimate to which degree the information about the genderfluidity of Ninsianna and Pinikir can be used to elucidate in which way the association with Venus influenced the perception of Inannaâs gender. However, it seems safe to say the focus on secondary physical characteristics made some authors miss the forest for the trees. Iâll leave it as an open question whether Inanna could be interpreted similarly to her even more Venusian peers, but Iâm fairly sure that a metaphorical beard is unlikely to have anything to do with the answer.
Excursus: âthe masculinity and femininity of Shaushkaâ, or when an Ishtar is not Ishtar
Bringing up the masculine Pinikir, and the matter of possible genderfluidity of deities in Mesopotamia and nearby areas, makes it necessary to also discuss Shaushka. The two of them appear mere two lines apart in AnĹĄar = Anum (An = AnumâŚ, p. 36), though they were not closely associated with each other - rather, they were both deities associated with Inanna who happened to belong to the same cultural milieu.
Mx. Worldwide: the transmission of Shaushka across the cuneiform world
Shaushka was originally the tutelary deity of Nineveh, but the attestations span almost the entire âcuneiform worldâ - from Nineveh in the north to Lagash in the south, from Hattusa in the west, through Ugarit and various inland Syrian cities all the way up to Arrapha in the east. There are simply too many of them to cover everything here.
The oldest known reference to Shaushka (which doubles as the first reference to the city of Nineveh) occurs in a text from the Ur III period. Itâs not very thrilling - itâs only an administrative text mentioning the offering of a sheep made on behalf of the king of the Ur III state (Gary Beckman, IĹĄtar of Nineveh Reconsidered, p. 1). The earliest sources render the name as Shausha; the infix -k- which only starts to appear consistently later on is presumed to be an honorific, or less plausibly a diminutive (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 55-56). Either way, it is agreed it can be translated simply as âthe great oneâ (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 56) - a pretty apt description of its bearer.
Ur III attestations of Shaushka are sparse otherwise: a textile offering in Umma (possibly a garment for a statue), a handful of theophoric names like Ur-Shausha and Geme-Shausha in Lagash, and thatâs basically it (Tonia Sharlach, Foreign Influences on the Religion of the Ur III Court, p. 106). Still, itâs probably safe to say itâs one of the examples of a broader pattern of interest in Hurrian religion evident in the courtly documents from this period, and in the appointment of a number of Hurrian diviners to relatively prestigious positions. Whether such experts might have influenced the introduction of Shaushka and other Hurrian deities who entered lower Mesopotamia roughly at the same time (for example Allani from Zimudar or Shuwala from Mardaman) remains an open question (Foreign InfluencesâŚ, p. 111-114).
A degree of equivalence between Shaushka and Inanna was already recognized in the early second millennium BCE, as evidenced by a tablet from the northern site of Shusharra dated to the reign of Shamshi-Adad which records an offering made to âIshtar of Ninevehâ (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 58). However, it might have happened as early as half a millennium earlier, during the Sargonic period - Gary Beckman suggests the identification between the two might have initially occurred simply due to the importance assigned to Inanna by rulers of the Akkadian Empire (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 2).Â
Furthermore, a number of later Mesopotamian lexical lists label Shaushka as âIshtar of Subartuâ - a common designation for the core Hurrian areas (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 2). Meanwhile, Hurrians and cultures influenced by them used the name Ishtar as a logogram to represent Shaushka (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 46). Furthermore, they placed Shaushka in Uruk in an adaptation of the Epic of Gilgamesh (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 125). One is forced to wonder if perhaps from the Hurrian interpreterâs perspective Inanna was some sort of foreign Shaushka ersatz, not the other way around.
Despite Shaushkaâs origin in the Hurrien milieu of northernmost part of Mesopotamia, the bulk of attestations actually come from Hittite Anatolia (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 2). Kizzuwatna, a kingdom in southeastern Anatolia, was the middleman in this transmission (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 95).
The earliest evidence for Hittite reception of Shaushka is an oracle text from either the late fifteenth or early fourteenth century BCE (IĹĄtar in Ḫatti, p. 84). However, save for the capital, Hattusa, no major cities were ever identified as cult centers of this deity, and they were seemingly worshiped largely within the southern and eastern periphery of the Hittite empire (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 94). Most of the ritual texts Shaushka appears in accordingly appear to have Kizzuwatnean, or at least broadly Hurrian, background (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 87).
Is non-astral genderfluidity possible, or whatâs up with Shaushkaâs gender?
Probably the most fascinating aspect of Shaushkaâs character is the apparent coexistence of a female and a male form of this deity. The best known example of this phenomenon are the Yazilikaya reliefs, where a masculine form, with unique attributes including a robe leaving one leg exposed and wings, marches with the gods (with the handmaidens Ninatta and Kulitta - more on them later - in tow) while a caption accompanying a damaged relief indicates a feminine one was originally depicted in the procession of identically depicted goddesses (The Splintered DivineâŚ, p. 75).
Masculine Shaushka (right) accompanied by Ninatta and Kulitta (wikimedia commons)
A restoration of the procession of goddesses, including feminine Shaushka (wikimedia commons)
A number of epithets applied to Shaushka were similarly explicitly feminine, for instance Hurrian âlady of Ninevehâ (allai Ninuwawa) and Hittite âwoman of that which is repeatedly spokenâ (tarĹĄikantaĹĄ MUNUS-aĹĄ), implicity something like âwoman of incantationsâ (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 5); magic was apparently understood as a particular competence of this deity (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 6). There is even a singular case of an incantation being explicitly attributed to Shaushka (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 98).Â
Literary texts, chiefly myths from the so-called Kumarbi cycle, generally portray Shaushka as feminine too, and more as a love deity (to be precise, as something along the lines of a heroic equivalent of a femme fatale) rather than as a warlike one (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 85). Mary R. Bachvarova tentatively suggests that a reference to possibly masculine Shaushka might be present in the first of its parts, Song of Going Forth (also known as Song of Kumarbi), which mentions a deity of uncertain gender designated by the logogram KA.ZAL, âpowerfulâ, which she argues has the same meaning as Shaushkaâs name (Wisdom of FormerâŚ; p. 95 for the text itself, p. 106 for commentary). However, Iâm not aware of any subsequent studies adopting this view.
Regardless of the contents of the literary texts available to us presently, Shaushka is explicitly counted among male deities in CTH 712. The enumeration in this ritual text also includes the âfemininity and masculinityâ of this deity. The male form of Pinikir is there too, though without a separate entry dedicated to any of his attributes or characteristics (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 219). Another example might be less direct: two descriptions of depictions of Shaushka use the terms âhelmetedâ (kurutawant), which referred to headwear worn by gods, as opposed to âveiledâ (ḍupitawant), which referred to the typical headwear of goddesses. This lines up with the relief of masculine Shaushka from Yazilikaya (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 300).
A detail I havenât seen brought up in any discussion of Shaushkaâs gender which I personally think might be relevant to this topic is that their name occurs as a theophoric element both in feminine and masculine Hurrian theophoric names, which is otherwise entirely unheard of. Hurrians evidently were more rigid than Mesopotamians when it comes to theophoric elements in given names, as goddesses occur only in names of women and gods in names of men (Gernot Wilhelm, Name, Namengebung D. Bei den Hurritern, p. 125).Â
Interestingly, Hittite sources pertaining to Shaushka offer a parallel to the âgenderbendingâ curse formulas as well (My Men HaveâŚ, p. 363-364; note they are actually slightly earlier than the Assyrian examples). In a few cases, including a prayer and military oaths, this deity is implored to deprive foreign adversaries of the Hittite empire of their masculinity and courage, to take away their weapons, and to make them dress like women (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 90).
How did this aspect of Shaushkaâs character develop? Iâd assume that in contrast with Ninsianna and Pinikir, the influence of astronomical ideas about Venus can probably be ruled out. Beckman stresses that at least in Anatolian context Shaushka was evidently not an astral deity (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 7). Timothy D. Leonard argues that the wings, which only the male form possesses, likely reflect a celestial role, but he doesnât explore the point further (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 211). However, he notes that only Pinikir is explicitly identified with Venus in Hurro-Hittite sources, and presumably fulfilled the role of personification of this astral body alone (p. 225).Â
Leonard argues that it cannot be established with certainty whether Shaushka was perceived as capable of taking both male and female forms, as existing simultaneously as a male and female deity (with two bodies, presumably), or if they should be regarded as androgynous. However, he notes that there is no evidence for the recognition of any sort of nonbinary identity in known Hittite sources - so at least implicitly, he assumes the gender of both of the forms would need to be binary (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 298).Â
It needs to be noted that the validity of applying the label âandrogynousâ to Shaushka has already been questioned all the way back in 1980(!) - in the first detailed study of Shaushkaâs character and cult ever published, Ilse Wegner argued that in both visual arts and literary texts they are presented either as feminine or masculine, but never is their gender ambiguous (Gestalt und Kult der IĹĄtar-Ĺ awuĹĄka in Kleinasien, p. 47). Frans Wiggermann argues that KAR 307, which I already discussed and which describes a single figure with both masculine and feminine traits, might be related to depictions of Shaushka (Mischwesen AâŚ, p. 237; thus I suppose the text would deal with an Ishtar, not with Inanna slash Ishtar herself) but this would quit obviously at best constitute a late exception which could be attributed to very vague familiarity with the deity.Â
In addition to the options discussed by Leonard, a further interpretation present in scholarship is possibility is that Shaushka might have been seen primarily as a goddess, but performed a male role in specific context, to be precise when portrayed as a warlike deity (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 301) - in other words, that we are dealing with a similar phenomenon as in the case of Inanna. For instance, Wegner assumed Shaushka was essentially female, and the masculine portrayals merely reflect adoption of masculine-coded character traits and attributes as opposed to actual transformation into a male figure (p. 47-48). Gary Beckman similarly suggests that Shaushka was a goddess, and that the male form, which he likewise considers to be a military aspect, was interpreted as crossdressing, as opposed to an actual shift in gender (Shawushka, p. 1).
Leonard accepts the possibility that the male form might reflect the fact that warfare was seen as an exclusively masculine pursuit in Anatolia, though since there are multiple sources where goddesses whose gender never shifted in any way appear on the battlefield he stresses itâs not impossible such gender norms did not necessarily apply to deities (IĹĄtar in Ḫatti, p. 299-300).
Out of all the possible interpretations I personally find the possibility that Shaushka was imagined to shift between a male and a female deity to be the most convincing - in other words, that they were viewed as genderfluid, similarly to Ninsianna, though almost definitely for different, presently impossible to determine, reasons. However, since the matter is far from settled, I opted to generally use neutral forms across this section of the article - I hope this doesnât make it too confusing.
Can any of the information pertaining to Shaushka be applied to Inanna as well? I donât really think so. For starters, no source goes out of its way to depict a feminine and a masculine form of Inanna in the same location, so I would argue that it is significant this is something attested for her counterpart - a sign that the latterâs masculine identity was more pronounced. Note that this is only my personal impression, though, and it might not fully hold to academic scrutiny, not to mention that the emergence of new sources might invalidate it.
Beyond Inanna: Shaushkaâs other connections
While I focused on the connection between Shaushka and Inanna, itâs necessary to point out that the former was more than just a âforeign counterpartâ. As a deity worshiped for well over a millennium, they amassed their own complex network of deities - often completely distinct from Inanna. For instance, itâs hard to find a parallel to Shaushkaâs position as the sibling (and, in myths, main ally) of the head of the Hurrian pantheon, Teshub (not least because he represented a somewhat different model of a head god than Mesopotamian Enlil and Anu).
However, to do this matter justice Iâd basically need a separate article. Due to the scope of this treatment of Shaushka, I will limit myself only to a small number of figures they were associated with - either because they have something to do with their gender, or because they are additionally in one way or another connected to Inanna.
In Hittite context, Shaushka came to be closely associated with an Anatolian deity, Anzili (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 112). Since the latterâs character is poorly known (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 113), the reasoning behind the equivalence between them is opaque (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 119). Timothy D. Leonard tentatively proposes that Anziliâs name might be grammatically masculine and that it originally designated a god who later came to be seen as a goddess (as reflected in available sources), or that similarly as in the case of Shaushka both a male and a female form could be attributed to them (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 117).Â
Untangling this problem is complicated further by the fact that Anziliâs name is used simply as a Hittite translation of Shaushka in both ritual and literary texts in which the deity of Nineveh is undeniably meant, down to being explicitly referred to with titles pertaining to this city - where Anzili obviously wasnât actually worshiped (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p.120-121). Through the association with Shaushka, Anziliâs name even got to be used to translate the name of their Mesopotamian counterpart a few times - the Hittite translation of King of Battle, the most famous epic about Sargon of Akkad, refers to his divine backer as⌠âAnzili of Akkadâ (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 125). Ultimately the translation was not entirely consistent, though, and texts written in Hittite where Shaushkaâs name is nonetheless rendered phonetically, leaving no possibility that it was translated as Anzili, are also known (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 126).
Next to Inanna and Anzili, the deities probably the most commonly associated with Shaushka were their handmaidens Ninatta and Kulitta (IĹĄtar of NinevehâŚ, p. 6). They could be portrayed as divine musicians (Gestalt und KultâŚ, p. 78), but also as warlike deities (John MacGinnis, The Gods of Arbail, p. 109). Ilse Wegner went as far as suggesting the phrase âright weapon of Shaushkaâ was an apposition of the pair, though thatâs obviously speculative (Gestalt und KultâŚ, p. 79).Â
Further information about their role is provided in a hymn to Shaushka (CTH 717). They are grouped in it with two other handmaidens, Ĺ intal-irti (âseven-tonguesâ) and Ḫamra-zunna. The four of them are supposed to look after households which Shaushka views favorably, so that their inhabitants can live in harmony. Meanwhile, four other handmaidens, Ali, Ḫalzari, Taruwi and Ĺ inanda-dukarni, are entrusted with making people in households which Shaushka resents quarrel with each other (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 120-122). It has been argued that this reflects the two aspects of Shaushkaâs character - as a love deity in the case of the first four handmaidens, and as a warlike one in the case of the second group (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 123) - but I am skeptical if this can be easily reconciled with the fact Ninatta and Kulitta appear with them no matter which side of them is in the spotlight.Â
Ninatta and Kulitta also represent probably the strongest case of Shaushka leaving a mark on their Mesopotamian counterpart. In the Neo-Assyrian period, they appear as members of the entourage of the latter not only in Nineveh, but also in Arbela and Assur under âAkkadianizedâ forms of their names, Ninittu and Kulittu (The Gods of Arbail, p. 109)
While Inanna had an extensive court - something that for mysterious reasons is not acknowledged online or even in publications aimed at general audiences (to use a recent example - even an a-list example like Nanaya comes up less times in Louise Prykeâs Ishtar than Buffy the Vampire Slayer, who, as far as I am aware, is not attested in any cuneiform texts) - Iâm not aware of any instance of Ninatta and Kulitta being explicitly identified as counterparts of any of its members, though. Perhaps the fact that some of the cities in which they are attested were originally Hurrian has something to do with it - they werenât introduced there as new additions, it was the Mesopotamian goddess who was superimposed over their original superior (The Gods of Arbail, p. 112).
Madonna-whore complex and beyond: (the modern reception of) Inanna as a love deity
After the brief detour focused on Shaushka, it is time to go back to Inanna - specifically to the most major aspect of her character I largely left out before, her association with love and all that entails.
As I already said, the oldest available texts affirming this was one of her prerogatives are younger than these linking her with war, let alone these hinting at her astral role. Regardless of when this aspect of her character first developed, it took until the Ur III period for it to take the center stage (Inanna and IshtarâŚ, p. 338). Simultaneously, it is by far the most well known today, to the point you often get the impression people barely know thereâs more to her. Tonia M. Sharlach notes that even in scholarship there is discussion over whether this aspect of her character isnât perhaps overestimated to a degree (An Ox of Oneâs Own. Royal Wives and Religion at the Court of the Third Dynasty of Ur, p. 268).Â
At least when it comes to the spread of this misconception online, one is tempted to ask to which degree pretending this is the only thing about Inanna that matters amounts to the need to present her as some sort of demo version of Aphrodite, with limited, if any, concern for Mesopotamia.
None of these phenomena is why I kept it for last, though - even if I do agree that viewing Inanna simply as a âlove goddessâ is misguided at best. My decision simply reflects the fact that the relevant sources portray Inanna probably at her least gender nonconforming . As argued by Bendt Alster, in some cases in love poetry it would essentially be possible to substitute her and Dumuzi for an average young human couple without the need to make any adjustments (Sumerian Love Songs, p. 78).Â
Ultimately, these works reflect fairly normative ideas of courtship, romance and sex, though with a clear female focus (Frans Wiggermann, Sexuality A. In Mesopotamia, p. 412). The portrayal of love and eroticism in them has been described as âplayfulâ, in contrast with the more blunt genres like potency incantations, or even with portrayal of sex in myths like Enki and Ninhursag (Jerrold S. Cooper, Gendered Sexuality in Sumerian Love Poetry, p. 92-94). Many of them are honestly an enjoyable read, as long as you are willing to engage with heavy use of assorted metaphors in descriptions of sex (date syrup, lettuce and agricultural activities are particularly abundant). Here is a fairly representative example:
The Song of the Lettuce (ETCSL)
There isnât really much to say beyond that - theyâre a fascinating topic in their own right, but they are largely irrelevant for the matter this article investigates.
Frans Wiggermann, an author whose work I generally value highly, made the peculiar argument that erotic poetry in which Inanna is the more active side and her goal is sexual gratification might reflect attribution of masculine traits to her and proceeded to argue every depiction of sex where the woman tops is ought to be related to this phenomenon (Sexuality AâŚ, p. 417-418). He simultaneously raises an interesting point that these representations of Inanna might have been supposed to justify sex without the aim of reproduction. It is unclear to me how it would âallow minorities a place under the sunâ, though (p. 418), as the sex scenes in relevant compositions are invariably straight.
While I am unsure about some aspects of Wiggermannâs argument, I should stress that I think it was made in good faith. Sadly this canât be said about much of the other scholarship pertaining to Inanna and sexuality, and especially the intersection of the topic of sexuality and gender.Â
This matter has been investigated in depth by Zainab Bahrani in the early 2000s already. She argues that publications which overestimate the ambiguity of Inannaâs gender (which typically employ hardly applicable labels like âhermaphroditeâ; she singles out Rivkah Harrisâ Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites and Brigitte Groenbergâs Die sumerisch-akkadische Inanna/IĹĄtar: Hermaphroditos? as relatively recent examples), in particular while emphasizing her erotic character, are essentially a leftover a fear of nefarious seductresses common in popular culture of fin-de-siècle Europe, for example in symbolist paintings (Women of BabylonâŚ, p. 146).
Jen Delville's The Idol of Perversity, a fairly standard example of the sort of symbolist painting Bahrani meant, a representation of the fear of "unquenched bestial desires of a woman" (wikimedia commons)
I think itâs also a valid point that traits like assertiveness or a quick temper could very well be assigned to a femme fatale, and are not necessarily an indication of any ambiguity of gender (Women of BabylonâŚ, p. 144), though I donât think every aspect of Inannaâs characters needs to be subsumed under the erotic, and recent publications focused on her military role and its intersection with gender are much more nuanced, as you could see for yourself earlier.
Bahrani also highlights that publications she criticizes - both historical and modern - treat transsexuality, crossdressing and various adjacent phenomena and (male) homosexuality as basically one and the same (Women of BabylonâŚ, p. 145; I will come back to this). However, I feel she falls into this trap herself to a small degree when it comes to women, as she appears to link the dubious Inanna scholarship overestimating the ambiguity of her gender and the phenomenon of various femme fatale figures being portrayed as bisexual for voyeuristic purposes, and to Orientalist art at the very least implying lesbian activities (Women of BabylonâŚ, p. 146). I am not aware of any actual publication dealing with Inanna or relevant phenomena (of any quality) which would go into this direction, though.
I also disagree with treating Inanna as unique compared to other goddesses just because she is not primarily portrayed as a wife or mother (Women of BabylonâŚ, p. 149) - the median Mesopotamian goddess was a personification of a profession or the interests of a city or both, arguably; major members of the pantheon like Nanshe, Nisaba, Ninmug, Nungal or numerous medicine goddesses were hardly defined by either of these two roles, even if they could be, indeed, portrayed as wives or mothers in a capacity Inanna was not.
Most importantly, I disagree with invoking Freud and his disciples (positively, for clarity) to bolster arguments (Women of BabylonâŚ, p. 153-154).
Still, I do think the core concerns raised by Bahrani are more than sound. The next section will sadly make that painfully clear.
Sexualization of lamenting
The validity of some of Bahraniâs criticism is pretty evident just based on the survey of past literature on the matter of the assinnu (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 83-84), a type of religious specialist or performer who you already met earlier in the subsection of this article dedicated to military curses. It would appear that the authors most keen on far reaching speculations about their gender identity and sexuality are probably some of the least qualified to deal with this matter, and lo and lo and behold, typically blur together being gay, nonbinary and any form of gender nonconformity.Â
Furthermore, even though texts from Mari explicitly link the assinnu with Annunitu (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 94) - the single most straightforwardly warlike Inanna-ish deity of them all, whose very name, âthe skirmisherâ, refers to combat - a peculiar obsession with rendering their role into something innately sexual (or rather lascivious) just because of their association with Inanna, appears to be a distinct trend. It intersects with the former issue; after all, it is known that anything but being a cis straight person who is a paragon of gender conformity is innately inappropriately (or even âabnormallyâ, as one of the past evaluations cited by Zsolnay critically put it) sexual.
For what itâs worth, there is some evidence that the assinnu were men who - at least in certain situations - crossdressed and played lyres (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 86). In an Old Babylonian hymn Iâve already mentioned, this is said to take place during a festival which also involved female performers who for this occasion dressed up in a masculine way and carried weapons, who are not described with any specific technical term (The Man is LikeâŚ, p. 6). Given the context of this mention, I feel the jury's out on whether this was universal, or merely a specific local festival, especially in the light of other evidence for the activities of the assinnu, though.
The participation in a celebration which involved crossdressing could explain why late lexical lists - first examples only come from the Neo-Assyrian period, some 1000 years after the Mariote and Old Babylonian attestations - sometimes offer UR.SAL as the logographic writing of assinnu. This combination of signs can be interpreted in different ways - some probably can be ruled out since they refer to female animals (canines and big cats), not to people; this led to the common interpretation as âfeminine manâ or âwoman-manâ based on other sign values. Zsolnay disagrees with it, and tentatively proposes something like âservant of womenâ (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 85)., though this might be an overabundance of skepticism.
However, Zsolnayâs position might not be entirely unwarranted. She correctly points out lexical lists are not necessarily reliable when it comes to synonyms of technical terms, such as religious titles (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 86). Furthermore, the assinnu seemingly were famous for performing a song titled âBattle is my game, warfare is my gameâ (mÄlilÄŤ qablu mÄlilÄŤ tÄḍÄzu; presumably purposely a nod to terms often used to describe Inannaâs warlike characteristics). They also danced the âwhirl danceâ (gĹŤĹĄtu) - which likely also had belligerent connotations, and which quite importantly is the main topic of the poem AguĹĄaya, which entirely focuses on Inanna as a warlike deity (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 93).Â
Yet more important is the fact that UR.SAL is not the only combination of logograms which could be used to render the term assinnu. The other option, SAG.UR.SAÄ, literally means âforemost heroâ - in other words, it does appears to point at some sort of âwarlikeâ or, to be more precise, âheroicâ role (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 85). Zsolnay accordingly concludes that the ordinary role of the assinnu was most likely that of an exaggerated âheroic strongmanâ performing war dances, and that with time an association between these specialists and festivals associated with the military aspect of Inanna (and similar deities like Annunitum) developed due to obvious similarities (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 98).
Nonetheless, just due to the association with Inanna combined with possibly vaguely gender nonconforming behavior (I will not attempt to evaluate whether it was a staple of their activities or only one of the celebrations they took part with), they came to be described in questionable scholarship as âtemple prostitutesâ (not an actually attested insitution, though it is evident we are dealing with a multi level conflation of crossdressing, being gay or trans, and sex work based on quotes from previous studies provided) whose very existence simultaneously must have terrified the general populace (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 85).Â
I feel obliged to point out in a footnote Zsolnay states that after finishing her article she was informed by a reviewer similar conclusions about assinnu have been independently reached by Julia Assante in Bad Girls and Kinky Boys? The Modern Prostituting of Ishtar, Her Clergy and Her Cults. Sadly, while I am quite sympathetic to the latter authorâs valiant struggle against the myth of âsacred prostitutionâ and related problems, her methodology is much more flawed than Zsolnayâs, and at times it feels like she herself falls into some of the pitfalls she correctly points out in other studies. I also feel obliged to warn you that for reasons uncertain to me, Assante at some point in the 2010s abandoned academic work and became a medium. Therefore, I would engage with her publications cautiously, to put it very lightly.
Thereâs at least one point Assante raises which warrants further consideration, though (even if she phrases it very differently than I would). She notes it is peculiar that any individuals whose gender might have been perceived as non-normative or ambiguous, or whose gender is unclear, are automatically presumed to be AMAB, and the possibility that women might have been gender non-conforming, or that people whose gender identity might have differed from Mesopotamian norms were AFAB, is not considered seriously. As an example, she points out that a passage according to which an enigmatic cultic official, the pilipili, received a weapon âas if she were maleâ sparked little, if any discussion (Bad GirlsâŚ, p. 36). This is definitely agreeable, and if nothing else a good start for further inquiries, considering no detailed studies of the pilipili alone have been conducted, as far as I am aware.
It might be worth noting that in the satirical Old Babylonian literary text The Old Man and the Young Girl the second of the eponymous character tricks her way into temporarily reversing gender norms through a royal court verdict, which prompts her to encourage other women to âbehave like the pilipiliâ to celebrate her victory (Jana Matuszak, A Complete Reconstruction, New Edition and Interpretation of the Sumerian Morality Tale âThe Old Man and the Young Girlâ, p.192-193). While more evidence would be necessary to make a genuinely strong case, the possibility that the pilipili were women perceived as gender non-conforming does seem compelling to me on this basis - so, I suppose, credit to Assante in that regard, even if her treatment of the matter leaves a bit to be desired. Itâs worth noting a similar proposal about the identity of the pilipili has recently been advanced by Sophus Helle based on the same passage Assante cited (Enheduana. The Complete Poems of the World's First Author, p. 158).
On a further related note, as a pure curiosity itâs worth mentioning that a single lexical list, Malku, lists the feminine form of assinnu - assinnatum - who never sparked the sort of discussion her counterpart did. It should be noted that this label is explained in this context as a synonym of ugbabtum, a fairly widespread type of priestesses (attestations are spread virtually everywhere from Terqa to Susa) involved in the cults of various deities (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 86). As far as I am aware, this is an isolated example, so for the time being itâs impossible to determine if assinnatum ever designated a distinct class of performers or cultic personnel or if it was a scribal invention. Iâll refrain from any speculation about whether it might have anything to do with the women who appear alongside assinnu in the Old Babylonian hymn discussed earlier.
To go back to the assinnu themselves one last time, a further thing to note is that sometimes far reaching dubious conclusions are drawn based not even on information pertaining to these performers themselves, but rather the gala and an enigmatic class of cultic officials presumably involved in mourning, the kurgarrĂť. However, while the latter two occur together quite often in literary texts (recall that the two clay beings in Inannaâs Descent bear the names Kurgarra - an obvious variant of kurgarrĂť - and Galatura, ie. âlittle galaâ; however, note as well that gala also commonly occur alongside aĹĄipu), there is very little evidence for any actual close association between them and assinnu - they only occur side by side in a single literary text, the lament Uru-Amirabi (The Misconstructed RoleâŚ, p. 91).
The gala (Akkadian kalĂť; not to be confused with galla, either literally a âgendarmeâ or town guard, or a type of demon fulfilling an analogous role in the underworld) themselves warrant some further discussion, as they are probably the most egregious example of the phenomenon discussed in this section of the article.
The primary role of the gala was performing various types of hymns, prayers and laments in emesal, a dialect of Sumerian (Paul Delnero, How To Do Things With Tears. Ritual Lamenting in Ancient Mesopotamia, p. 41). Through the third and second millennia BCE, gala most commonly occur alongside temple singers (nÄru), for reasons which should be self explanatory, while in the first millennium BCE - alongside ÄĹĄipu, a type of exorcist, which reflected the involvement of both groups in scholarship (Uri Gabbay, The kalĂť Priest and kalĂťtu Literature in Assyria, p. 116).
The gender identity of the gala is a subject of much debate. It might have been unique to them (in other words, they were nonbinary, with gala being both a professional designation and gender identity) or alternatively they might have been men who engaged in broadly speaking gender nonconforming behavior (How To DoâŚ, p. 109). I am not going to attempt to convince you one option or the other is more plausible, I personally donât think the matter will ever be possible to fully settle unless texts written by gala themselves going in depth into how they perceived themselves ever emerge. Obviously, we also have to take into account what exactly being a gala entailed varied between time periods and locations.
The only thing that can be said for sure is that the gala were not regarded as women. This seems to be an entirely online misconception, though one with an enormous reach - a post making similar claims garnered some 40k notes on this site recently. Said post also stated that they underwent âgender affirming surgeryâ; it needs to be noted that the status of the gala - or any other type of clergy - was in fact not attributed to any medical procedure (and I donât think Magnus Hirschfeld, who pioneered gender affirming surgery and deserves more credit than he gets for it, lived in Early Dynastic MesopotamiaâŚ). Obviously, this is not a denial of the possibility the gala werenât cis (to put in in modern terms) - but it seems beyond credulous to both claim their identity depended on a medical procedure alone, and to project a fairly recent accomplishment for which a genuinely heroic maverick should be credited into incredibly distant past. I donât think we need a trans version of âancient matriarchyâ mirages, personally.
However, ultimately the main misconception about gala is that they were âpriests of Inannaâ - and various mortifying hot takes emerge specifically from that. Especially online, more or less haphazard attempts are made to prove that, despite the plentiful evidence for what being a gala entailed, their role - and the roles of any even just tangentially related religious personnel - was innately sexual, since it was tied to Inanna (we have such choice tidbits as âmales who engage in transgendered or prostitute behaviorâ, courtesy of Patrick Taylor, The Gala and the Gallos, p. 176; unclear to me how these labels are in any shape or form interchangeable).Â
To put it bluntly: it seems like to some the fact the gala might have been, broadly speaking, lgbt (or just gender non-conforming) is in itself something sexual, much like the possibly gender nonconforming performance of the assinnu.Â
What differentiates this view of the gala from similar faulty opinions about the assinnu is that I think at least online the intent often isnât malicious - it is not wrong to hope someone in the past was similar (as I understand, the underlying assumption behind many misguided post is that the gala were trans women). However, sadly the underlying motivation of the authors whose takes end up laundered to teenagers online this way is ultimately an example of the same phenomenon which, in a more extreme form, leads to various suspicious groups calling for removal of the tamest possible literature for teenagers from libraries because a gay or trans character appears.
A further problem is that while the assinnu indeed occur chiefly in association with Inanna, the gala were not innately associated with her (and especially not with her sexual side) - referring to them as âpriests of Inannaâ is a misconception at best, and outright malevolent at worst (in bad faith cases, the logic follows what Bahrani described pretty closely). They were actually present in the cults of numerous deities, most of whom were paragons of gender conformity and had no sexual aspect to speak of - in other words, whatever the identity of the gala was, it was disconnected from the identity of the deity they performed for. Every single major temple dedicated to a city deity had a âchief galaâ among its staff. Such an official oversaw the activities of other gala employed by it, but also took part in day to day economic activities of the temple, like managing prebends (How To DoâŚ, p. 110). To go through all of the available evidence would take too much space, so I will only list a handful of particularly notable examples.
There was a âchief galaâ among the staff of Ninurtaâs main temple Eshumesha in Nippur, as attested in a list of provisions where this official appears next to a âchief singerâ (Wolfgang Heimpel, Balang Gods, p. 583). In Old Babylonian Kish another âchief galaâ was the second most important religious official in service of Zababa, with only the temple administrator ranking higher (Walther Sallaberger, Zababa, p. 165). A further âchief galaâ resided in the temple of Sin in Harran, as attested in sources from the Neo-Assyrian period; the holders of this office were tasked with sending astronomical reports to the kings of Assyria (Steven W. Holloway, AĹĄĹĄur is king! AĹĄĹĄur is king! Religion in the exercise of power in the Neo-Assyrian Empire, p. 409). A âchief galaâ, as well as a number of regular gala, were also part of the staff of the temple of Nanshe in NINA (reading uncertain; Tell Zurghul) in the Early Dynastic state of Lagash (Gebhard J. Selz, Untersuchungen zur GĂśtterwelt des altsumerischen Stadtstaates von LagaĹĄ, p. 205-206).
Itâs important to note that the arts of the gala and the knowledge transferred among members of this profession - kalĂťtu - were associated with Ea, not with Inanna; the closest parallel are, once again, the arts of the ÄĹĄipu (The kalĂť PriestâŚ, p. 116). However, it would be disingenuous to call them âclergy of Eaâ - Iâm just highlighting they had no specific connection with Inanna. Stressing the lack of any unique degree of connection between her and the gala is not supposed to be an argument against inquiries into their gender identity, either - though I do advise to be cautious which authors are consulted.Â
Maternal obsessions: do deities even follow gender roles?
While I dedicated a lot of space to warnings about questionable motivation behind some arguments pertaining to the gender of Inanna and especially clergy with varying degrees of association with her, it needs to be stressed that thereâs a need to be cautious about the exact opposite attitudes too sometimes. While skepticism is generally a virtue in scholarship, it is hard to deny that some of the opposition to inquiries into Inannaâs gender and related matters also has highly questionable motivations behind it.Â
For instance, my reservations towards Julia Assanteâs article discussed earlier come from the fact that at least some of her criticism is rooted not in valid reasoning, but in what appears to be a degree of homophobia - for instance, part of her opposition to interpreting cultic officials like the assinnu or gala as gay men (for which the evidence is indeed hardly sufficient - we have evidence for crossdressing in one case, and for either gender nonconformity or a unique gender identity in the other) stems from her conviction that this is an example of âabnormal male sexualityâ (Bad GirlsâŚ, p. 37).Â
Interestingly this is a selective case of homophobia, though, since she simultaneously voices a perfectly valid complaint that earlier scholarship has ânot allowed discussion on lesbianism other than to dismiss itâ (p. 36; it needs to be noted that in contrast with gay men, direct evidence for lesbians is lacking altogether in cuneiform - see Sexuality AâŚ, p. 414 for reference to a MLM love incantation and absence of a WLW equivalent - but youâd at least expect some serious inquiry into Ninshuburâs portrayal in literary texts by now).
Some examples are even more blunt. For instance, Wolfhang Heimpel, after concluding that references to âbeardedâ Inanna reflect the perception of the planet Venus as opposed to the deity (which is not too dissimilar from the interpretation I highlighted as plausible earlier) reassures the reader that Inanna was therefore not an âandrogynous monsterâ (A Catalog of Near Eastern Venus Deities, p. 15) - I am somewhat puzzled what exactly would be âmonstrousâ about facial hair. Itâs hard to escape the conclusion that in contrast with the newer study of the same passages which I discussed in detail and have no objections to, itâs not the weakness of the evidence that bothers the author, but the slightest possibility of androgyny.
Not everyone is so direct, though. There are also more insidious cases - and these invariably focus on Inanna herself, as opposed to any religious officials. What Iâm talking about are sources which refer to Inanna as a âmotherâ or âfertilityâ goddess or some nondescript âdivine feminineâ entity entirely detached from historical context. As a result Inanna is essentially forced into an incredibly rigid feminine role she never actually fulfilled.
I wonât dwell upon the abstract maternal obsession itself much here. I already wrote a separate article a few years ago about its impact, exemplified by the recent portrayal of Inanna as a grotesque pregnancy monster in a certain videogame (this is not an exaggeration) and I think that was enough. It will suffice to say that these visions belong not in Mesopotamia at the dawn of recorded history, but rather in the most feverish depths of Victorian imagination (I wonât explore this topic here; Cynthia Ellerâs publications are a good start if you are interested, though).
Interestingly, simultaneously sources of this sort basically never investigate Mesopotamian texts which actually focus on motherhood - which is a shame, because compositions such as Ninisina A are filled with genuine warmth. However, they donât deal with some sort of overwhelming Frazerian ur-mother reduced to bare biological essentials.
To go back to the main topic of this section, the true crown jewel of the discussed subgenre of Inanna literature has to be this paragraph courtesy of Tzvi Abusch (Ishtar in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, p. 453):
One is tempted to ask why Abusch argues Inanna is âincompleteâ or exhibits âpsychic woundsâ due to her character not revolving around being a wife or mother. How about her roles as a war deity, love deity, personified astral body or representation of political interest of one city or another? Roles which are, quite obviously, fully realized? As a war deity, she was believed to assist kings, deprive their enemies of the ability to fight, and to confront various supernatural adversaries like rebellious mountains; as a love deity, she was invoked through love incantations and acted as the archetypal lover in erotic poetry; as Venus, she shone in the sky.Â
Should we also question why, for example Tishpakâs roles as a husband and father are not fully realized considering he primarily plays the role of a warrior and divine sovereign of Eshnunna (the human ruler was merely acting as a governor on his behalf, a fairly unique situation otherwise only attested for two other gods)? Very few male gods actually match the image of masculinity presented in Instruction of Shuruppak as an ideal to strive for - just as very few goddesses fit the image of the ideal wife preserved in proverbs.
This is not the first time this comes up in this article, but while the world of gods, and the character of its individual inhabitants, obviously arose in specific historical context, it was not a perfect mirror of the world of humans and its mores (Do Divine Structures âŚ, p. 105-106).
Ilona Zsolnay outright argues that even if some (but not all) of the Mesopotamian deities were at least in part characterized based on normative patterns of behavior tied to them - there are, after all, deities defined at least to a degree by, for example, fatherhood (like Enlil) or marital status (like Aya) - ultimately they were not bound by the same gender norms as humans. Furthermore, religious and political factors, as well as natural phenomena deities could be linked with, influenced their character considerably more (Do Divine Structures âŚ, p. 116).
Granted, it should be noted that Abush is basically writing about an Inanna he made up. As youâve seen earlier, the first attestations of Inanna already sound fairly similar to her most famous portrayals from later periods. However, he instead argues that the original Inanna lost to time was one of âprimitive earth of mother goddessesâ and that from the fourth millennium BCE onwards (coincidentally when the first actual attestations of Inanna emerge thanks to the advent of writing) Mesopotamians simply couldnât grasp her true character (Ishtar, p. 454). The need to portray Inanna as she actually was imagined as some sort of aberration, coupled with a desire to uncover an âoriginalâ version which just so happens to conform to an incredibly rigid vision of femininity is quite something. Rarely do you see someone basically recreating the Madonna-whore complex so literally.
Absent parents, ever present children
While as I said I wonât engage in depth with the peculiar obsession with making Inanna into a maternal figure evident in Abuschâs treatment of her, I do feel obliged to cover a related phenomenon: the obsessive focus on the quite rare cases where some minor deities are identified as her children. This is a particularly big problem online, though vintage scholarship and publications aimed at general audiences (even very recent ones) are equally, if not more, guilty of it.Â
The nominal assignment of largely irrelevant deities as children to Inanna was ultimately inconsequential, and in particular it had nothing to do with her erotic role - or with Dumuzi, for that matter, as he is never identified as their father (Inanna and IshtarâŚ, p. 339). Pregnancy, childbirth and maternity are not topics dealt with in compositions focused on the two of them (Gendered SexualityâŚ, p. 95).Â
Only three deities have ever been described as Inannaâs children in primary sources: Shara, Lulal and Nanaya. In every single case caveats apply.
Sharaâs connection to Inanna was geographically limited. It wasnât a pan-Mesopotamian convention to regard them as related, but rather a local tradition restricted to Zabalam (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 202). Julia M. Asher-Greve suggests that it might have originally been little more than a way to give Inanna access to the epithet ama, literally âmotherâ (but metaphorically, as a divine epithet, something like âvenerable womanâ; Jeremy Black, Songs of the Goddess Aruru, p. 48), which was however primarily used not to indicate motherhood but rather a position of authority in the pantheon (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 140).
Itâs also important to note that Inanna of Zabalam didnât really start as (an) Inanna, since the earliest literary text she appears in, the Early Dynastic Zame Hymns from Abu Salabikh, refers to her with the enigmatic name Nin-UM. Joan Goodnick Westenholz assumed that Nin-UM was the original name of the goddess of Zabalam, with the name Inanna (and many of Inannaâs traits) effectively imposed upon her due to the theological and political influence of nearby Uruk (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 42-43). Whether this was the case or not, the two are treated as functionally separate deities in god lists (Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 79-80).Â
While this is far from certain, Douglas Frayne proposed that this phenomenon might also be the motif of conflict between Inanna and Gilgamesh, first attested in the standalone poem Gilgamesh and the Bull of Heaven from the Ur III period, and fully developed in the considerably later standard edition of the Epic of Gilgamesh (which might reflect what Paul-Alain Beaulieu described as âanti-IĹĄtar sentimentâ; The Pantheon..., p. 108). He assumes that it reflected hostilities between Uruk and Zabalam, with the antagonist actually being Inanna of Zabalam and not Inanna of Uruk (The Struggle for Hegemony in "Early Dynastic II" Sumer, p. 63-64). In any case, the connection with Shara cannot be taken out of context and applied where it is not explicitly mentioned.
The other most frequently cited case, that of Lulal, is even weaker than Sharaâs. He is addressed as Inannaâs son exactly once, in a fragmentary hymn published in the 1960s (Anna Glen, Jeremiah Peterson, The Lulal ĹĄirgida Composition CBS 12590 (HAV 5, pl. 7, VIII), p. 169) - so he has an equally firm claim to being her son as the personified Styx has to being Persephoneâs mother. In Inannaâs Descent, the composition most often âenrichedâ today with forcible assertions of familial bonds between Inanna and miscellaneous side characters, the connection between them is merely âclose, but unspecifiedâ (Wilfred G. Lambert, Lulal/LÄtarÄk, p. 163). Anna Glen and Jeremiah Peterson assume he is an attendant, not a family member, and point out elsewhere (Inanna D, line 32) he is portrayed only as a minor warrior god acting on her behalf (The Lulal ĹĄirgidaâŚ, p. 169).
An annotated edition of the Weidner god list equates Lulal with Sin (Klaus Wagensonner, CCP 6.7.A - Weidnerâs God List A) which, as it will become clear very soon, creates some issues for claims of widespread acceptance of his status as Inannaâs son.
The third deity sporadically addressed as Inannaâs child was Nanaya. In contrast with both Shara and Lulal, she was actually a major figure in her own right, and her connection with Inanna is attested in various cities and time periods. Ironically enough I donât think Iâve ever seen her described as her daughter online, though. I suspect the explanation is fairly straightforward: she doesnât appear in the âcanonâ of shoddy vintage translations of a small handful of texts on which the online image of Inanna often seems to be built.
However, the fact Nanaya had a firm connection to Inanna doesnât mean undue importance should be assigned to the cases where they are presented specifically as mother and daughter. Only three sources actually refer to them this way: an inscription of king Lipit-Ishtar, a first millennium recension of an older balag song, and a unique oath formula. Olga Drewnowska-Rymarz assumes the relation described in them might very well be metaphorical (Mesopotamian Goddess NanÄja, p. 30).It would not be hard to find parallels proving this is a distinct possibility: Ninshubur was demonstrably not Inannaâs mother, and yet she addresses her as such as a sign of respect in at least one composition. Ninshubur herself has no known parentage, and yet refers to every high ranking god as âfatherâ in Inannaâs Descent. The examples of using terms of kinship as an indication of respect or closeness are numerous.
Furthermore, multiple genealogies could be assigned to Nanaya. In laments, she is consistently the daughter of Urash, the tutelary god of Dilbat, for instance (Mesopotamian Goddess NanÄja, p. 31). Obviously, the fact that Nanaya could also be at least partially identified with Inanna (though this is a late phenomenon; Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 131) poses some problems for viewing them as child and parent. In most cases itâs probably best to agree with the description of the relationship between the two as âdefinite, but unspecifiedâ (Joan Goodnick Westenholz, Nanaya: Lady of Mystery, p. 68).Â
On a side note which is not directly related to the main topic of this article, it is quite peculiar that preoccupation with Inanna existing as a part of a family never seems to extend to highlighting her connection with her parents. Ironically, the family connections people downplay online are the ones which actually mattered the most theologically.
The tradition making Nanna (Sin) and Ningal Inannaâs parents was by far the most widespread one, and it is reflected in various genres of texts across history (Aino Hätinen, The Moon God Sin in Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian Times, p. 309-310; Goddesses in ContextâŚ, p. 230; The PantheonâŚ, p. 111; even Abuschâs Ishtar, p. 452). References to this connection are frequent in literary texts, even ones which donât focus on Inanna, let alone on her family ties. For instance, Ka Hulu-a, which isnât even a composition dealing with deities on the most part, casually refers to Inanna as âwise daughter of Sinâ (dumu galzu Suenna; Jana Matuszak, Donât Insult Inana! Divine Retribution for Offense against Common Decency in the Light of New Textual Sources, p. 361).Â
The connection between Inanna and her parents was so strong it could be transferred to other deities by proxy. Both Shaushka (Marie-Claude TrĂŠmouille, Ĺ auĹĄka, Ĺ awuĹĄka A. Philologisch, p. 102) and Pinikir (The Goddess PirinkirâŚ, p. 27) - not to mention an entire host of major and minor Mesopotamian goddesses, ranging from Annunitum (The Moon GodâŚ, p. 313), though Belet-ekallim (IĹĄtar in ḪattiâŚ, p. 160) to Nanaya (The Moon GodâŚ, p. 312) - could be addressed as the moon godâs offspring (or, at the very least, as the offspring of a moon god since at least in Shaushkaâs case the name is in all due likeness used as a logogram).
Perhaps even more importantly, the connection between Inanna and her father was also responsible for her well attested association with the number 15, best reflected in the use of this numeral to represent her name from the Old Babylonian period onwards. Since Sinâs number was 30 (a reflection of the number of days in the lunar month), a half of that was deemed a suitable number to represent his daughter by ancient theologians (Wolfgang RĂśllig, GĂśtterzahlen, p. 499).
Conclusions
I was initially reluctant to cover the topic of the gender of Inanna and related deities in depth, Iâm frankly not sure why. It is not my intent to boast, but much of my online activity has consistently revolved around assyriology since 2020 (technically it has been my interest for much longer, but my methodology required refining). I wrote 200+ wiki articles about Mesopotamian deities, including multiple which specifically required dealing with the matter of gender; in contrast with the overwhelming majority of hobbyists I keep up with academic publications.
To go back to the question which originally inspired this article, I donât think itâs possible to give a straightforward answer.
Iâd say at least some of the current mainstream Assyriological scholarship (by which I mean roughly from the mid to late 1980s to now) offers a fairly accurate evaluation of what can be said about Inannaâs gender, and about the gender of related figures - Ninsianna, Shaushka, Pinikir etc.; I hope spotlighting sources which can be described this way through the article makes this clear enough.
Some specific details are definitely overemphasized (the eerie quest for a beard is the prime example but Iâd be lying if I said Wiggermannâs puzzling views on femdom didnât make me laugh).
What is definitely overestimated is to what degree the supposed ambiguity of Inannaâs gender was tied to her sexual aspects. The general lack of any such characteristics among deities even more firmly associated with sexuality than Inanna was - I highlighted it in the case of Nanaya, but it holds equally (if not more) true for Ishara, Gazbaba, Kanisurra, Bizilla, the list goes on - also doesnât seem to ever be highlighted. While obviously each of them was a deity with own unique character and not just a carbon copy of Inanna (for example, Ishara was associated with weddings in a capacity no other love goddess was, while Nanaya persistently appears in texts dealing with unrequited love or rejection), convergence of traits was a fairly common phenomenon in Mesopotamian religion. For example, numerous couples consisting of a medicine goddess and a war god emerged over the course of the late third and second millennia BCE - so surely it would eventually reemerge in one of these cases?
A further problem is of course the questionable scholarship based on these misconceptions which focuses less on Inanna herself and more on clergy associated with her, or even just vaguely adjacent to her. While a lot has changed since the early 2000s, let alone the 1980s, it is still arguably a major weakness of assyriology as a discipline that often gender, sexual orientation and presentation are often treated as entirely overlapping phenomena. There are numerous authors who write about relevant matters thoughtfully, but this is hardly the rule; especially when assyriology intersects with Bible studies or classics, the problem remains strong (meanwhile, in depth studies of, say, transmission of laments will often be quite cautious; itâs also not as easy as just blaming the age of some researchers and calling it a day).
However, there are also matters related to the gender of Inanna and related deities which definitely receive too little attention. To which degree what we know about Ninsianna can be applied to Inanna? Why the planet Mercury, despite also being regarded as switching between two genders, seemingly never came to be personified the same way as Venus? Why Shaushka and especially Pinikir appear in firmly masculine attire, while Inanna basically never does? All of these questions require further in depth inquiries.
Much as I canât give an unambiguous response to the initial question, I honestly donât think itâs possible to give a straightforward answer on the matter of Inannaâs gender in the first place. Obviously, itâs impossible to disagree that fundamentally she was primarily a feminine figure. However, itâs also important to remember she essentially took a masculine role in the military context. I still stand by my joke chart from a few months ago:
While as I demonstrated things get much more murky when it comes to outright ambiguity or fluidity of gender, I would not rule it out entirely either, at least in an astral context - though I also doubt itâs fair to speak of anything directly comparable to the cases of Ninsianna, Pinikir or Shaushka.Â
Perhaps in the end we have to simply accept how Inannaâs character is summarized in an Old Babylonian composition I brought up much earlier:
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Blaze's Compendium Entry #10: The Khyah (Cyak, Kack, Khya)
Warning:Â Faith and religion are important real life topics, that tackles the culture and way of life of millions of real life people. It is a cultural expression, and must be respected by all means. Here, we use a video-game ( some times) and other media series only to ignite the flame of learning about the matter, using its art when well depicted, but we do this with all due respect to the cultures we talk here, grounded by real life sources, cultures and people. And i mean this with respect. Hope you all enjoy.
Also, please note that the Sources for this one will be a bit tricky, since we are talking about a regional and always developing urban legend and cosmology, which is not very well documented in traditional books. In this case we have to turn our attention to personal stories and every day people who lives in this culture.
The Khyah (ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤Żŕ¤ž) is a mythical creature that is part of the greater Nepali folklore and cosmology. Specifically from the Newar people from the Kathmandu Valley.
Some sources will say that its name means literally ''Ghost'' or ''Haunt'', ''Phantasm'', etc... However i was not able to confirm this. The language spoken by Newar people is the Nepal Bhasa, which is also written in the Devanagari script, just like Hindi. I do not speak this language, so please if you do, reach me out! But in any case, it seems that the word for ''Ghost'' in Newar is ''ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤Ťŕ¤ž'' or ''gupha''. It may be the case that the name: ''Kyah'' got so used to general supernatural occurrences, that it got mixed up. Just like we talked about the Saci in my other post. -This is not uncommon to happen- I used regular online translators to reach this conclusion, but feel free to correct me if i am wrong because i could not consult any native to talk about this matter during my research.
For a bit of context, The Newar are people that historically inhabited the Kathmandu Valley, and the regions around Nepal. As we said before, they speak Newari (Nepal Bhasa). They have 3 major cities, those being Kathmandu, Patan and Bhatgaon. [1] The academic research on the Newar people just started at the early 20th century, the french anthropologist Sylvain, wrote a very famous and complete work called Le Nepal, that was one of the first western written works about the region, and its people. Their religion are mostly Hinduism, Buddhism and there are minorities from other beliefs.
The Newar live in this region since ancient times, way longer before Nepal even existed as a Estate. According to most history books, the Newar would live alone in the region, being sovereigns of the Kathmandu valley up until the Gorgkha Kingdom in 1769. It is very hard to know much about the Newar before that in details, since they are in the region for so long, and mixed so much with other people from around the Nepal, that even their history ends up blending with mythology.
For example: according to the sacred Swayambhu Purana, a Buddhist scripture, the Kathmandu Valley was once a huge lake, Inhabited by Nagas*. That is, until one day the Bodhisattva Manjusri with the help of a powerful sacred sword, sliced the surrounding hills, which in turn made the water flow away. This information is even on Kathmandu government official site!
This myth was later confirmed to have a basis, since NASA themselves found out clues that Kathmandu was in fact, once a huge lake. NASA did not reply me about the Naga thought. Bummer...
*The Swayambhu Purana is a Buddhist text essential to Newar Buddhism. However i sadly could not find a copy online, but there are some summarized versions translated to English, which i am using as guide. For instance the US Wikipedia article, sources books that i also could not find, but i could verify the authors! So... That's something, i guess.
This goes to show how the Newar people are rooted in their mythology, and how this is completely absorbed by even their space and surroundings. Even something as the very foundation of their lands is a hierophany.
This brings us to the Kyah, that we will see can show us a lot about this society.
About the Khyah
The Khyah are supernatural creatures that are hairy, looks like apes, sometimes extremely chubby and have their bodies are totally covered in hair. This description is corroborated my multiple sources, like ''Dietrich, Angela (1998). Tantric healing in the Kathmandu Valley: A comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist spiritual healing traditions in urban Nepalese society. Book Faith India.'' But not only that, the Khyah are also represented in multitudes of paintings and also in costumes for the Yenya Festival. The only thing that can sometimes be different, is that if it will be treated like a Ghost or a more physical creature.
The wealth goddess Lakshmi and two Khyah serving her, in a painting on a Kathmandu temple.
About this painting and sourcing the Khyah appearance:
I have made tireless efforts to pin down the origin of this painting. And many others! This one is present in most of the articles about the Khyah in the internet, even local articles from Nepal itself. However i was not able to pinpoint where it came from. All the sources i found either say this is from a ''temple'' or that it was taken by an individual named: Karrattul. This is not the photographer's name, but instead the name of the profile who uploaded it on the Wikipedia, where it was uploaded in 2012! I tried to reach to Nepali communities and other enthusiasts of History and Mythology, but no one could help me. If you know anything about this painting, please contact me!
For the same reason, it is almost impossible to find sourced materials about the khyah appearance. We know that there are traits like the hair, that keep intact from place to place, but i could not find a central work detailing the creature. We have those paintings from so called temples to trust, and the ceremonial suits used in the Khyah dance.
I will link here a video of a Khyah Dance performance, so you can see the physical traits of this creature are well agreed between the locals.
The Khyah is popular among children, or at least were at one point.
This can be seen in a popular children song sang in Nepal. It depicts the Khyah as a cute and hungry little critter, as the kid in the song is encouraged to give food to it. The Kyah seems never to be satisfied sadly...
A banger...
The Khyah is indeed often treated like a type of ghost. In my personal opinion they are simmilar to Djinn, some kinds of yokai and can be classified generically as a type of monster or apparition, in my view at least. (This means a supernatural creature, that is in between a human and a god like being.) The Newar believe that the Khyah has active participation in events of their daily lives. But they also are not all bad or good, they are multiple entities, some good and some bad. Usually there are white colored Khyah who are good, and black colored Khyah who are bad.
They have their own lives, families, and friends. There are a lot of tales and works related to this creature, not counting personal tales of every day people and their encouters with this little devil. That's how ingrained in the Newar culture the Khyah is.
I was able to track the writings of a Kathmandu Valley denizen, which happened to write about the Kyahk! [3] This person was kind enough to provide a lot of personal information about the regional culture, in their personal website. According to the locals, the Khyah would often live in houses, squares, public spaces, and would regularly interfere with their existence. Not all Khyah are bad, some can protect the households they inhabit, they can bring fortune and good luck. Although, the Khyah fears light, so they have to live in dark corners of the house, like the attic or some empty room.
The Unitedstatian Wikipedia page for Khyah shares some unusual information, that we can not trace to any sources. For instance, they mention that this creature supposedly fears electricity. As interesting as it may seen, the source from this particular information goes to a book called: '' Asian folklore studies, Volume 55. Nanzan University Institute of Anthropology'' Which i was unable to find to read online, and was also unable to find it by its ISBN trackers: 9057890984, 9789057890987. Those took me to another book, called: ''CaturmÄsa. Celebrations of Death in Kathmandu, Nepalâ'
This one seems to exist, but i also could not find it anywhere online. Google Books has some samples, and it guarantees that the word ''Khyak'' or any variations of sorts, are not on it, which means this is a misinformation. Someone probably interpreted that the fact that Khyah fear light, can also apply to electricity as an energy source. I think you won't be letting your homie Khyah uncomfortable having electricity at your house, don't worry.
Again, according to locals [3] There are two variable Khyah: Black and White. The white are the ones who bring luck, and the Black ones gives you trouble. No matter what kind of this creature you have in your house, you should respect it. They are often revered and well treated. They have their own cozy dark place to hide, like the bhandar and dhkuti. Those are places of the house used to store grains and valuables.
There are other variations according to other local sources sources [3] [4] Those Khyah are usually described as:
-BÄrÄy KhyÄh (एञरञय༠ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤Żŕ¤žŕ¤) appears in rooms where girls are kept in seclusion during their rite of passage to adulthood (first period). [5] (Very documented, and easy to track on western sources)
-Bhakun GwÄrÄ KhyÄh (ŕ¤ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤ ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤ľŕ¤žŕ¤°ŕ¤ž ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤Żŕ¤žŕ¤), literally football, rolls on the ground to move around. (Most common Khyah, probably the one Kaneko tried to draw! Most commonly seen in regional urban legends. Not very documented in translated to English literature)
-DhÄpalÄn KhyÄh (धञपलञठŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤Żŕ¤žŕ¤) is a very hairy Khyah.
(Very popular because of that children's song, still sang to this day.)
-Lanpan KhyÄh (लŕ¤ŕ¤Şŕ¤ ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤Żŕ¤žŕ¤) blocks peopleâs way on dark streets.
(Not much about this one, really. At least not in western sources. It seems that, along with Bhakun Khyah is probably more of a word of mouth thing)
The relationship with Kawancha
The origin legend for the Khyah goes that, in the distant past, two gods had a baby. They fought to see who had the right to hold the baby, but ended up tearing the child apart. The skin peeled off, revealing just flesh and bones that would separate. The flesh became Khyak, and the bones Kawancha, a skeleton that would be the Anthitesis to the Khyak. This relationship is portrayed in paintings and regional dance festivals. [3]
Also known as Kavam, the skeleton monster seems to be the other half of the Khyah. It is extremely hard to find sources about this, not only because it is a very specific regional folk belief passed down orally, but also because the language barriers. One could in theory go there in person to collect sources about this part of the lore, but it is not an option for me. Someone at Reddit pointed out to me that in some regions, they are not related at all, being just monsters from the same sources. So, their lore seem to vary from place to place.
Painting depicting Kwancha/Kavam and Khyah in Kathmandu. Origin Unknown.
As much as I tried for months, I could not come with a source for this information besides literal oral tradition. But for sure these two are indeed connected in some places. You can see them in several paintings at Kathmandu, and they also have their own dance performance telling their story and painting their relationship. As the Reddit user mentioned, their connection will vary from place to place. Being more of a localized and oral tradition.
In the performance you can see Khyah and Kwancha performing together, as they show their relationship. Still according to [3], the instrument played in these performances is the Dhimay. Its made from tree bark, and the legend says the gods later created this tool to help control the beings, and communicate with them. In the author's perspective, this was meant to showcase the duality of our universe. This being the real nature of those beings.
Again, I lack written and traceable sources. While the Dhimay is indeed a real instrument, used on those performances, there are almost no mentions of it being related to Khyah or Kwancha in the western internet. This also falls in the category of facts I could not check because of being probably too of a localized oral tradition.
I could at least find some sourced paintings. Like this one, shared by the Twitter user Sanjib Chaudhary Who is an author himself on Nepalese culture.
Kwancha and Khyah are shown in this painting on Jaya Bageshwori temple, in Gaushala.
Also, while Khyah is very well documented in the west, the same can not be said about Kwancha. It is easy to find dances, masks, his Megami Tennsei design (being the most easy result) and paintings about the skeleton monster, but almost nothing on its nature and lore. This means I highly doubt everything the Megaten games say about it to be factual, although they do in fact exist in Nepalese culture.
One thing i noticed is that Kaneko himself could have watched a dance performance of Kwancha and Khyah, or at least seen pictures. Because his Kwancha design for Devil Summoner has the clothing in colors and shapes very similar to some Kwancha performers:
This specific clothing can be seen here: Kawancha (Skeleton) Dance of Bhaktapur ŕ¤ŕ¤ľŕ¤žŕ¤ŕ¤ŕ¤ž पŕĽŕ¤Żŕ¤žŕ¤ŕ¤ , तŕĽŕ¤˛ŕ¤žŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤, ŕ¤ŕ¤ŕĽŕ¤¤ŕ¤ŞŕĽŕ¤° ll Part of Bharab Dance ll
The final point on this part is their origin: Which gods crated them? This rent a space in my brain for free for the last year or so. While I could not find it for sure, this does not mean it is wrong or not factually a belief in their tradition. Buddhism has many gods and entities, and i suspect the ones who created the Khyah accidentally, are just regular Devas.
Modern mentions?
Khyah tales are in the heart of Kathmandu people, and many other Nepal regions. For centuries they dominated the children's tales and late night scare stories of that region. In 1992, Jim Goodman published a book called ''Tales of Old Bhaktapur'' Which complied some folk tales from Nepal.
Sure enough, Khyah makes an appearance in it. At page 28, there is a story about a Khyah haunting a house, and how a boy deals with it. Sadly the book is not openly available on the internet, but google books have some parts readable:
There is also the book: Tales of Kathmandu: folktales from the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal (1980). This book was published by the authors Karna Sakya, Linda Griffith. This book seems to put together many popular folk tales from Nepal, and in the page 105 we have a story called ''The Khya of Marusata.''
Now, as this seems to be the case with every freaking material in this search, this book is not available online, but google books has many parts available. Sadly, we can only see the title of the story. What we can know by a quick google search, is that Marusata is some kind of square in central Kathmandu. I tried to search this tale online, but I could not find. Will try to keep searching for it eventually.
Also, in the books first pages, around 20 or so, Khyah are mentioned too:
It seems to classify Khyah as demons, just like their neighbors Rakshasas. Which is not exactly on the point here, but its interesting nonetheless.
The Khyah are still recognized today, and are well known in the community. But even if the western internet made a good job of preserving its lore and some of their character, their presence is very scarce. By going on Eirikr Kaneko Crib's notes I found that one of the most recent official appearances of the creature online was on the site Local Nepal Today. This seems to be a site dedicated to portray and preserve Nepalese culture and report on situations at the region. It is however, done by foreigners that went to Nepal afterwards. The site seems to be dead, but they do mention their hearings about the Khyah! Here they call it Kack.
The authors compare it to European elves and trolls, which is not exactly a good match. They are more akin to Brownies, Silkies and some kind of Kikimora.
In any way, their description matches most sources, and oral sources alike: They are shy, prefer dark and isolated places, and hate the light. They also comment on the duality between the white Khyah and the black Khyahk.
Most important thought, they mentions talking to an elderly woman in Kathmandu, who shared her own stories about meeting the creature:
''An elderly woman in Kathmandu who saw several kacks â all white ones. The closest encounter was with a quiet, furry fellow who came and sat on her lap! Many of those whoâve seen a kack will tell you how these âlittle peopleâ would come and sit on the edge of their bed for a while, keeping them half amazed, half in shock the rest of the night. A white kack is friendly â but it can still be a bit scary.''
They also gathered information from old Kathmandu citizens on why the Khyahk tales are vanishing nowadays:
'''Well, old people who grew up in the heart of kack territory â Kathmandu â will usually tell you a simpler reason: kacks are shy creatures and so, since the capital has become crowded and noisy, many have left. Sure kacks can hide and move about by stealth, but thereâs a limit. Either way, now itâs no-longer in Kathmandu but in the villages youâll hear about kacks the most.''
In my personal view, its interesting to connect the vast and accelerated growth of Kathmandu, to the losing of traditions and oral folk tales, which ended up making the Khyah tales vanish bit by bit, becoming isolated to small nearby villages.
This makes me a bit sad, because if there is no one trying to preserve those traditions, it may very well disappear as the times goes on. The internet has this amazing tool to preserve culture, but we do not seem to be using it enough.
In this regard, I am glad that Kazuma Kaneko imortalized Kyahk in the Shin Megami Tensei series, even if they are not regular monsters on the newer games, many people probably had their first encounter with this critter through that.
And that is it! Everything I could gather! Hope you guys enjoyed!
Beware the Kyhak at the feet of your bed!
Thank you for reading through it all. I actually started this research more than 1 year ago, but postponed it multiple times, since I started doing scientific research at college, and other monsters looked way more easy to research.
Stick with me for more deep dives on critters from around the world.
Sources:
[1]- "Elements of Newar Social Structure". Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland.ââ - Christoph Von Furer- Haimendorf, 1956.
[2]- Dietrich, Angela (1998). Tantric healing in the Kathmandu Valley: A comparative study of Hindu and Buddhist spiritual healing traditions in urban Nepalese society. Book Faith India.
[3]- Himalayancultures.com -Personal blog of a Kathmandu citzen that shares a bit about regional folklore and culture. Extremely interesting to see stuff from a personal point of view.
[4]-Archive My Sansar - Regional website about Nepali culture.
[5]- Growing Up: Hindu and Buddhist Initiation Rituals Among Newar Children in Bhaktapur, Nepal, 2008, Otto Harrassowitz Verlag. (Pag 174)
[6]- Tales of Old Bhaktapur'' - Jim Goodman (1992)
[7]- Tales of Kathmandu: folktales from the Himalayan kingdom of Nepal (1980)
Okiku-Mushi's art has her hanging from the ceiling, which some games references by having her drop down. It is somewhat well known that she does this in games like SMTIV - however, her entry animation in Raidou also has her fall down, albeit in a way that implies the rope holding her has snapped entirely.
Kititum, a prophetic mini-Inanna (or perhaps mini-Shaushka) from the Diyala area. New page. It also covers Amgalnuna from the Zame Hymns because there's not enough info about him for a separate article and she may or may not have replaced him.
The Ninshubur article received a sizable update; it's a hodgepodge of just about everything (including a shiny new name section like in the Nergal and Gula articles!).
Smalller updates promised before: Aya (new translation of the Zame Hymn which allegedly mentions the closely related Ninkar, the UD.GAL.NUN Utu myth involving her), Inanna of Zabalam (more about Nin-UM, the possibility that the original standalone Bull of Heaven myth involves I. of Zabalam and not I. of Uruk), Epithets of Inanna (two minor additions - Kititum under geographic, Mummu under misc.), Gibil (not much of note, just some Zame Hymns talk plus another recent publication questioning if there ever was a god named Gibil as opposed to Girra), Nanshe (possible identification with Ninkiki, Gudea's self insert myth). More similar updates might still happen, Nisaba, Nergal and Ningublaga potentially come to mind. Maybe Zababa but that's a lot of work.
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Marsyas and the Vampyr is out now! This is the Twine game that I've been chipping away at since December. Here's the official summary from the Itch.io page:
Marsyas and the Vampyr is a comedy-horror-pastiche of the 'haunted mansion' subgenre. Explore EIGHT ROOMS and brave THREE TRIALS of occult substance in the most earth-shattering ludic experiment since Maximo: Ghosts to Glory.Â
If you like reading, Halloween, and things that are fucking stupid, then please consider checking it out at the link below!
The most earth-shattering ludic experiment since Maximo: Ghosts to Glory
KANEKO'S CRIB NOTES LXVI: A RACIST (?) METAPHOR FOR VENGEANCE
I'll be honest with you all, we're running out of cribs. Who knows what the landscape will look like next year. Only one thing is for sure: Kaneko's bare, spooky carcass will be on full display at least once more by our fine friends at Colopl.
LEPRECHAUN: An often controversial design because "why is an Irish fairy clad in a Union Jack boot, isn't that a bit insensitive to Ireland? "; however, Eirikr puts that argument to rest with an exhaustive look into the design's context. And yeah, Leprechaun's "scandalous" boot is clearly cribbed from the one used by the Spice Girls' Geri Halliwell.
HOMO GORLEO: There are two things to say about Metaphor's human designs. The first is that most seem to be inspired by the works of Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch, like Gorleo here, which iterates on a figure found on the center panel of Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights triptych.
HOMO AVADES: The second thing we can say about the Metaphor humans is that we're frustrated by the lack of transparency regarding who designed them. One would assume that would be Shigenori Soejima, but Atlus has been less than forthright about something so apparently obvious. For the time being, we'll just have to credit them to "Studio Zero Art Team." Avades itself is at least more clearly adapted from the central figure of the the right panel of Bosch's Garden.
NYAMI NYAMI: We've made light of Doi in the past for over-relying on Wikipedia as a source for things, and, hey, it happened again for Vengeance's Nyami Nyami, this time an image of a wood carving of the deity used on the JP Wikipedia page that Doi clearly saw while researching and used as a reference, not that we're faulting him for it!
AMABIE: A design actually borne out of Atlus piggybacking on a Japanese Amabie meme during the Covid-19 pandemic, Doi's Amabie is based on a 19th century woodblock print that's the genesis for virtually all modern depictions of her.