Inanna[a] is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, beauty, war, and fertility. She is also associated with sex, divine law, and political power.
She was originally worshiped in Sumer under the name "Inanna", and later by the Akkadians, Babylonians, and Assyrians under the name Ishtar[b] (and occasionally the logogram 𒌋𒁯). She was known as "the Queen of Heaven" and was the patron goddess of the Eanna temple at the city of Uruk, which was her early main cult center. She was associated with the planet Venus and her most prominent symbols included the lion and the eight-pointed star. Her husband was the god Dumuzid (later known as Tammuz) and her sukkal, or personal attendant, was the goddess Ninshubur (who later became conflated with the male deities Ilabrat and Papsukkal).
Inanna and the Heavenly Boat
The first sage after the flood in the B t m seri incantations, Nungalpiriggal, who became alternatively associated with Enmerkar just like Adapa, is referred to as the sage who brought the goddess to Anu’s temple Eanna (see above).
A narrative existed in which an Adapa-like figure brought the goddess from heaven to Uruk. The story of how the goddess descended from the mountain Aratta to her temple in Uruk is told in the Sumerian myth, Inanna and An, in a text that is fragmentarily preserved (van Dijk 1998). The descent in this myth is synonymous with ascent because her destination to Anu’s temple in Uruk was named the “House of Heaven”. Inanna and An is not only a visitation myth because Inanna claims the Eanna temple as her own, but Inanna’s journey to Eanna has some remarkable similarities to Adapa’s ascent to heaven (van Dijk 1998: 14). Inanna sails on the barge of the fisherman Adagbir on her journey to the Uruk temple. The fisherman tells Inanna about the dangers of the South Wind, which the sky god uses to protect himself (ETCSL 1.3.5) The fisherman ...... the South Wind. My lady, if you travel on the barge, and he raises the South Wind, that South Wind, and he raises the evil wind, that evil wind, barges and small boats will sink in the marshes (Segment D 8-12).
The boat does not sink and Inanna is finally able to usurp An’s temple for herself. The name of the fisherman dA-dag-kibir may be a variant of the name Adapa/Adaba. Further variant of Adapa’s name occurs in the Mesopotamian god list An = Anum (II 404) in the company of five divine fishermen, written dud.ab.pà.da (van Dijk 1998: 25). These divine fishermen were to certain extent identical with one another because the same ideogram (dšu.ha) could be used for writing any of these gods’ names. Therefore, it can be claimed that Adagbir here is a form of Adapa, a fisherman deity or the sage who brought the goddess down from heaven during the reign of Enmerkar. This provides an explanation for why Adapa was often represented as a deity in the cult of Uruk. Adapa was involved in the cult of Ištar in Uruk when mentioned in administrative documents during the first millennium BCE. Three texts mention jewelry belonging to Adapa that were used in a ritual involving Ištar, Nanaya and other deities in the month of Addaru (Beaulieu 2003: 327). However, the exact nature of the ritual is unknown.
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