Dumuzi- Mesopotamian GodDeity"The Shepherd"

The Courtship of Inanna

Inanna's mother urged her to choose Enkimdu the farmer, but Inanna wanted the shepherd. In the Sumerian courtship poems, Dumuzi and Enkimdu debate their respective merits before Inanna. Enkimdu offers grain and bread; Dumuzi counters with wool and milk. Inanna chooses Dumuzi.

Their courtship unfolds in poetry that celebrates erotic desire without shame. "My vulva, the horn, the Boat of Heaven, is full of eagerness like the young moon," Inanna declares. "My untilled land lies fallow. As for me, Inanna, who will plow my vulva?" Dumuzi answers: "Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva. I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva." The poems move between agricultural metaphor and frank sexuality, never separating the two.

The Sacred Marriage

The union of Inanna and Dumuzi was enacted in ritual. During the New Year festival, the reigning king took the identity of Dumuzi and joined a priestess of Inanna in ceremonial union. Royal hymns from the Ur III period give the details. Iddin-Dagan of Isin describes preparing Inanna's bedchamber with fragrant cedar and fine linens, the goddess greeting her bridegroom with songs of desire. Shulgi of Ur boasted of his prowess in the role. His legitimacy as king rested on his performance as sacred bridegroom.

The morning after, the king distributed gifts and feasted with his court. For generations of Sumerian kings, their right to rule was renewed in the bed of the goddess.

Inanna's Descent and Dumuzi's Fate

In "Inanna's Descent to the Underworld," Inanna goes down to visit her sister Ereshkigal in the realm of the dead. She is killed and hung on a hook for three days. Through Enki's intervention and the creatures he fashions, she is brought back to life, but no one returns from the underworld without providing a substitute.

The galla demons who escort Inanna back seek her replacement. They first seize Ninshubur, Inanna's faithful minister, but Inanna refuses: Ninshubur had mourned her and sought her rescue. They seize other loyal servants, and Inanna protects them too. Then they come to where Dumuzi sits on a magnificent throne, dressed in splendid garments, unmourning.

Inanna fixes the eye of death upon him. "Take him! Take Dumuzi away!" The galla seize her husband. Dumuzi appeals to Utu, the sun god, begging to be transformed into a gazelle so he can outrun the demons. Utu grants it. Dumuzi bounds across the steppe, but the galla track him to his sister Geshtinanna's sheepfold, where he hides among the flocks. He is captured, escapes, is captured again. Geshtinanna offers to take his place for half the year. Dumuzi spends six months in the underworld, six months above, and the seasons turn.

Dumuzi's Dream

The composition "Dumuzi's Dream" tells of the shepherd god's premonition of his own capture. Dumuzi falls asleep in the steppe and sees a terrifying vision: rushes rise around him, a single reed trembles, paired reeds are stripped one by one. Water is poured on his holy hearth, and his shepherd's crook vanishes.

He wakes in terror and calls for Geshtinanna, known for her skill in dream interpretation. She reads the omens: the rushes are bandits closing in, the trembling reed is their mother bowing in grief, the paired reeds are brother and sister torn apart. The galla demons are coming.

Dumuzi flees. He begs Utu to transform him into a gazelle and runs from shelter to shelter. Each time, the galla find him. In the end, as prophesied, they seize him and drag him below.

The Mourning

Laments for Dumuzi formed their own genre of Sumerian poetry. "The wild bull who was lying down lives no more! The shepherd, lord Dumuzi, who was lying down, lives no more!" The poems gave voice to his mother Duttur and his sister Geshtinanna, each mourning from her own loss. Public rites were performed during the hottest months of the Mesopotamian summer, when the scorched land itself seemed to grieve. When the rains returned and green came back to the steppe, Dumuzi was understood to have risen.

As Sumerian civilization gave way to Akkadian and Babylonian rule, Dumuzi endured under the name Tammuz. The fourth month of the Babylonian calendar bore his name, falling in June and July when the summer reached its killing heat. The mourning rites spread far. The Book of Ezekiel, composed during the Babylonian exile of the sixth century BCE, records women sitting at the north gate of the Jerusalem temple, weeping for Tammuz. Lucian described similar mourning at Byblos in the second century CE, where women shaved their heads in grief. Two thousand years after the first Sumerian poets composed their laments, people were still weeping for the shepherd who lies among the dead.