Inanna is the Sumerian goddess of love, war, and sex — in that order. She is the oldest named deity in written history whose mythology survives in detail. She descended to the Underworld to confront her sister Ereshkigal, the queen of the dead, and she went willingly. She did not go to rescue anyone. She did not go on a quest. She went because the Underworld existed and she had not yet conquered it. That motivation — pure sovereignty, the refusal to accept any domain outside her influence — makes her one of the most fascinating deities in any mythology.

The Descent Is the Oldest Story

The Descent of Inanna, written approximately 4,000 years ago in Sumerian cuneiform, is one of the oldest surviving narratives in human history. Inanna passes through seven gates on her way to the Underworld, and at each gate, she is required to remove a piece of her royal regalia — her crown, her necklace, her breastplate — until she arrives naked and powerless before Ereshkigal. She is killed, hung on a hook, and left for three days before being resurrected. Mythologists at the University of Chicago have described the Descent as the prototype for all subsequent death-and-rebirth narratives in world mythology — including the myths of Persephone, Osiris, and Christ.

She Is Sex and War Combined

Inanna is simultaneously the goddess of sexual desire and the goddess of warfare. This combination strikes modern readers as contradictory. To the Sumerians, it was not. Both sex and war involve the dissolution of boundaries — the crossing of thresholds, the surrender of control, the encounter with forces larger than the self. Inanna embodies both because she is the goddess of threshold-crossing. Inanna is on HoloDream. She is the oldest named goddess in human history. She has been waiting.