So...Why Mesopotamia?
In my blog post “Hello World”, I mentioned some of the things I intended to share here; one of which is “Mesopotamian Mythology/Legend”. It’s a bit out of left field, or at least quite niche. Certainly quite a feat to stumble into, especially on accident!
Which, honestly, is how it started out.
I had grown up adoring Greek mythology, which only cemented itself further after getting access to the Percy Jackson series. It eventually became more dormant once I hit high school, though I am still quite fond of it. When I started college the first time, I joined a D&D group with some others. The Game Master was a history minor, and had gone VERY in depth on historically accurate mechanics, weapons, and worldbuilding. I wanted to play a cleric of life, and ended up playing a changeling cleric of Inanna, the Mesopotamian goddess of love, sex, and war. She was intended to be a bad bitch, but quickly got traumatized so….not so much lol. I eventually dropped that game, and set the character aside to reclaim some later date. (if you want to learn more about her, meet Shuren Prysa)
Flash forward a few years, I am researching for an essay at my second attempt at university. I have an incredible professor, and I use the open-ended research paper to look into LGBTQIA+ history.
How far back does it go? What knowledge do we already have?
I wasn’t sure, so wanted to learn!
For part of the assignment process, we had to interview someone about our essay topic and progress. It could have been anyone, and I did interview my mom as well, but I decided to cold open email a journalist I had been following for some time to stay up-to-date about LGBTQIA+ legislation in the USA: Erin Reed. And she responded!! And agreed to let me interview her!!
Fangirling aside, the conversation with her was incredibly enlightening, informational, and inspirational. I asked her for some jumping points to start researching from, and she mentioned Enheduanna as one of the earliest mentioned. When I looked Enheduanna up later, I saw how right she was.
Enheduanna is the FIRST author in HUMAN HISTORY attributed to ANY written work. She was a high priestess in the Akkadian empire, when it first unified into what we commonly refer to as Mesopotamia. But she is recognized for her poetry exalting the goddess Inanna (known in different periods as Ishtar…I think), and it is….quite queer, not just for Enheduanna’s devout and sensual words but for referencing Innana’s power "turn a man into a woman and a woman into a man" (line 121 of Hymn to Inanna) and her clergy’s affinity for blurring gender roles in pursuit of divinity.
If you want to read more, a great place to learn more in depth is World History Encyclopedia’s page about her! It’s where I started as well.
Obviously, this piqued my interest, so I began researching Inanna/Ishtar more intently. I utilized my university’s library to discover different academic books on Inanna specifically, but more commonly Mesopotamian religion/mythology as a whole. I have also made a list of YouTube video essays from what appear to be reputable sources, or at least ones with sources to jump from.
I am still only just beginning, as with sources this old and this diverse, there is a lot of misconstrued and misidentified perspectives on such a widely worshipped goddess. Especially with the Western world’s centralization on itself, and demeaning of cultures other than them…especially the Middle East, which has led to the loss of culture and resources as well. Again, to my base level understanding.
I hope this gives you the taste of HOW I ended up researching such a niche and interesting concept, and that you’re at least a portion as excited as I am to dive deeper.