Ishtar, also known as Inana and Inanna, is a female ancient Mesopotamian god — indeed, one of their most important.  She features in many myths and songs. There is a great deal of variation in her role in these, and she is recognized as the most complex of the Mesopotamian gods. She is known for her concern for justice and war, for motherhood, fertility, love and sex, and vengeance. She is strong but flawed, and she dies in one myth, to be reborn. In the epic Gilgamesh, she proposes to the human hero that they marry, and he turns her down flat, with a long list of good reasons why it would not work well for him, as it didn’t for any of her past lovers. It is her vengeance that leads to the death of Gilgamesh’s close friend Enkidu.

These stories from a very different ancient culture, sung well before the Iliad, are often puzzling for people today, and they are plundered for stereotypes of weird foreign ideas. It isn’t easy to sort through the different stories and make sense of them or put them in context. If you search for books on Ishtar, you will find several with the name in the title, but they look like they are of questionable.

So the release of an academic book on Ishtar is especially welcome. Its author is Louise Pryke, a Lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney. The book is 239 pages with small print. Figures are in black and white, and are quite small, leaving one with a desire to find online versions that one can see in greater detail. The style is certainly scholarly, but it is not overly technical, and a reader without much background in the area will be able to follow most of the text.

There are six main chapters, with an introduction giving some background to the topic of Ishtar and a final chapter on how the figure of Ishtar has been portrayed in subsequent centuries. The chapters are as follows:

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Love and Intimacy

Chapter 3: Sexuality and Order

Chapter 4: Ishtar and the Pantheon

Chapter 5: Kingship and Battle

Chapter 6: Ishtar and Gilgamesh

Chapter 7: Vengeance and Death

Chapter 8: Ishtar Afterwards

There’s some referencing from one chapter to another, but they don’t need to be read sequentially, and it is possible to dip into the book. Each chapter is divided into fairly short sections, so it is possible to find discussion of specific topics easily. One can read the book in conjunction with using the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL), which has an impressive collection of translations of Sumerian texts. Each chapter has a useful overview at the end.

Pryke argues that Ishtar’s sexuality has received a lot of focus in discussion, which has distorted the understanding of her. Ishtar needs to be seen as more multidimensional. She gives a lot of detail to back up her points, showing a strong knowledge of the literature. She is keen to point out that ideas of sacred or temple prostitution where “priestesses” have sex with men as part of their religious duties have no textual evidence at all. But it is certainly true that Ishtar is a sexual being and she expresses desire. This is linked with themes in Sumerian love poetry. Ishtar is renowned for her tirelessness in lovemaking and her beauty. But she also has strong emotional connections with her partners and she is loving. The different chapters fill out the different sides of Ishtar and the culture around her, in considerable detail.  

Ishtar isn’t a book for the complete novice when it comes to Sumerian epics. Unless you have some orientation among the different epics and genres it can be confusing. Pryke does a lot to help the reader, but it still requires a fair amount of attention to see how the various elements fit together. It will be appropriate for scholars in the field, but also those who have some familiarity with the area and want to know more.