Inanna in Egypt? Hmmm...
Recently, I discovered that Inanna was "associated with cattle and particularly calves"...Here is a depiction of the Inanna's "nuptial hut" as a calving hut, on a carved stone vase from Khafajah. Pic from "The Three Faces of Inanna: an Approach to her Polysemic Figure in her descent to the Netherworld."
One of Inanna's appellations was "wild cow", and wild cows start calving in Apr/May, the time of the year marked by Taurus, the animal calendar marker which today means Bull, but which originally most likely meant Calf...
Inanna was also associated with grain and grain harvest.
This is Inanna speaking:
"Before my lord, Dumuzi,
I placed grain before him,
I poured out grain before him,
I poured out grain before my womb..."
Mother of grain...Link between female fertility and earth/grain field fertility...
Some posts about the symbol for grain and the Mother of grain in Neolithic Europe, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, Iran, Levant: "Mother of grain", "Altyn Tepe mother of grain", "A person in a little boat", "Sabi Abyad venus", "Hathor grain pendants"...
Apr/May, Taurus, is also the time when the water levels in Tigris and Euphrates peak. The time of the annual flood, and it is this flood that makes the land fertile...
Which is why Mesopotamian sun god Utu/Shamash was depicted as a golden bull (Sun in Taurus) with flowing lapis lazuli (flowing water) beard...
I talked about this in many of my posts. Like: "Lyres of Ur", "Shamash young and old", "When Utu steps up into heaven", "Butt chewing", "Maran"...
This is also the time when Sirius, the true star of Inanna (Elaborated on this in my post "Inanna and Sukaletuda") is last seen in the night sky, just before the sunset. Between Apr/May and Jul/Aug, Sirius is in the sky during the day, with the sun, and therefore invisible...
Sirius reappears in the night sky, just before dawn, in Jul/Aug...This is Ishtar, the destructive form of Inanna...
For those who will say "Ishtar was the morning star", yes she was, in Leo (Jul/Aug), when Sirius rose in the morning before the sun...Which is why Ishtar stands on a lion (with sun above the lion) and is known as "The Lioness of heaven"...
Destructive why? Cause of the Mesopotamian climate and the hydrology of Tigris and Euphrates. Jul/August is not just the hottest and the driest time of the year, but this is also the time when the two great rivers have the lowest water levels...
Sun God Utu/Shamash with sun (heat) rays emanating from his shoulders, standing in in an empty canal, in Leo (between the lions), the hottest, driest time of the year in Mesopotamia, and the time when canals were repaired, holding reed cutting knife...I talked about this in my post "Canals"...
The destructive sun in Leo is also symbolically depicted like this
Nergal, the deified destructive "burning" sun, was depicted as a lion man, because Jul/Aug, Leo, is the hottest and driest part of the year in Mesopotamia...
Talked abut him in my posts "Winged superhuman hero", "Lord of the flies"...
So here we have the same goddess with two faces, life giving (holy cow, Inanna, good) and life taking (holy lioness, Ishtar, bad)...And this switch can be perfectly explained through the Mesopotamian climate and Tigris and Euphrates hydrology...
And interestingly, we find the same thing in Ancient Egypt. A goddess with two faces, life giving (holy cow, Hathor) and life taking (holy lioness, Sekhmet)...I talked about this in my post "Holy cow"...
Except, this switch can't be explained through the Egyptian climate and Nile hydrology...
The holy cow, the life giving Hathor, linked to water, grain, milk (calving), and her symbolism is easy to explain...
I talked a lot about it in "Holy cow" "White calf" "Cow and calf ivory", "Lotus and papyrus"
Hathor marks the "return of waters of the Nile".
The holy lioness, the life taking Sekhmet not so easy...Actually it is impossible to explain this switch in Egypt. Lioness should be a super positive, life giving goddess, because it is Leo, Jul/Aug, when the Nile flood peaks...
I already started wondering about the lion mythology in Egypt, and whether it originated in Mesopotamia in my posts "Sphinx" and "Giza lioness", "Sirius the mother of Venus"...
In there I explained why Atum, the Creator God of Egyptian world, created himself as a lion (Leo, Jul/Aug), after emerging from the primordial (read annual) flood (starts in Leo, Jul/Aug), the flood which makes land fertile without which there would be no Egypt...
I then talked about the Egyptian holy lioness, the precursor of the Sphinx, which again fits into the whole "lion(ness) good in Egypt"...
But for some reason, while writing these articles, I completely forgot about the murderous, destructive, Sekhmet...
"Cow good - Lioness bad" makes a lot of sense in Mesopotamia.
"Cow good - Lioness great" would make a lot of sense in Egypt.
But...
What do you think?
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