Talk:Inanna/Archive 3

"In popular culture" section needs major cleanup

The "In popular culture" section for this article has become full of uncited and irrelevant information. I am writing this notification to warn that, unless someone objects to it within the next day or so, I will go through the "In popular culture" section and delete all material I deem irrelevant to the subject of the article. I also think that some basic guidelines must be set in place regarding what content is allowed in this section. My proposal is that all new material added to the section should be required to meet all of the following requirements:

1. The new material must include at least one citation to a reliable source. If it has no citation, it should not be added.

2. The popular culture artifact being discussed must mention Inanna at least five times. If she is only mentioned once or twice in the entire book/movie/song/television show, then it does not have a strong enough connection to her to be worth mentioning in this article.

3. The popular culture artifact must be notable enough in itself to warrant an article of its own. If it is an obscure novel by some author no one has ever heard of, then it is not worth mentioning here.

If you have any objections over any of this, please leave a response explaining your reasons for opposition. I am not doing this because I enjoy deleting material willy-nilly or because I enjoy imposing restrictions on what material can be added, but rather because I earnestly feel that this is a necessary measure in order to ensure the protection and well-being of this article.--Katolophyromai (talk) 04:25, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion, we should just delete the entire section, considering as how these "In popular culture" sections routinely, invariably become the written equivalent of WP:Original research lint traps that quickly become overflowing with trivial garbage and inane "in-name-only" mentions.--Mr Fink (talk) 05:26, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I usually do not like deleting large amounts of material unless it is either factually inaccurate or completely irrelevant to the subject of the article, but, in this particular instance, I would be fine with deleting the entire section since the section has clearly gotten completely out of control. --Katolophyromai (talk) 13:51, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

I have gone ahead and deleted the "In popular culture" section since I do not think that anyone is going to object to it. Now I just hope that the "Modern relevance" section does not end up turning into the same mess that the "In popular culture" section was. I think that, in order to avert such a potential future crisis, the same rules that I proposed for the "In popular culture" section should now be applied to the "Modern relevance" section. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:04, 26 February 2017 (UTC)

Equivalent deities

Is there a historical precedence for making the connection between Inanna and the Greco-Roman Venus/Aphrodite? What I mean is, did any Greeks or the Romans make this connection, or was it only done by later scholars. I'm as syncretic as the next guy, but I'm worried about both latter-day associations being mistaken as historical and unintentionally perpetuating the notion that Inanna was just a love god. --Acjelen (talk) 16:00, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

I understand your apprehension completely. The Greeks and Romans did not know the name "Inanna," but, as is explained in the "Related deities" section, the cult of Aphrodite was heavily influenced by, if not directly derived from, the cult of Astarte, which was derived from the cult of Ishtar, which was largely derived from the cult of Inanna. In very early archaic times, Aphrodite was also worshipped as a warrior goddess (A cult of this sort is mentioned several times by the Greek writer Pausanias as having existed in Laconia and also on Cythera.) The Greeks and Romans did, however, syncretize their respective goddesses with Ishtar, Inanna's Babylonian counterpart. Herodotus and Pausanias both state that the cult of Aphrodite originated among the "Assyrians" and a passage from the Roman writer Hyginus describing an otherwise unattested myth about the goddess Venus being born at the river Euphrates further indicates that the Romans also syncretized Venus with her. I am considering possibly adding some mention of these syncretisms to the "Related deities" section at Ishtar. -- Katolophyromai (talk) 16:47, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your detailed response to my worry. I was mostly concerned with the infobox details as the Related Deities section makes the nature of the relationship clear. On another topic, it looks like the deity infobox needs some expansion so that another pantheons can be listed. --Acjelen (talk) 17:31, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Template Middle eastern deities

If it makes you feel any better, Katolophyromai, only 35 article pages have that Middle Eastern deities template on them, including Adonis for some reason and Ancient Semitic religion, which isn't even on the template. The other template that remains on the page appears on many more pages. --Acjelen (talk) 23:52, 2 May 2017 (UTC)

Bad Sentence

"Inanna was, by far, one of the most widely adored and venerated deities in the ancient Sumerian pantheon, appearing in nearly every story that they told." This sentence doesn't sound right. "By far", and "one of" contradict each other. 70.20.32.216 (talk) 03:09, 30 May 2017 (UTC)John Dee

I think that, when I wrote that sentence, I was originally going to have it say that she was "by far the most widely adored and venerated deity in the ancient Sumerian pantheon," but then changed my mind, realizing that calling her "the most" would be impossible to objectively verify and so I changed it to "one of the most" because this statement would be easier to verify using the sources cited in the article. You make a very good point in indicating that saying "by far" somewhat contradicts saying "one of." I have now removed the words "by far" from the sentence in order to rectify this problem. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:32, 30 May 2017 (UTC)

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The url must have changed, but the original page still exists. I have removed the archive information and simply updated the url to match the current location of the page. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:39, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

Ishtar redirects here

Ishtar redirects here, when previously she had her own page. I know she is closely associated with Inanna, but so is Astarte or Ashtoreth. These two by the way have also been condensed into one page. By this logic, Venus should be condensed down with Aphrodite. Or if Wikipedia is desperate to save space why not file all of them under Goddess... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.40.109.248 (talk) 09:54, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

Ashtoreth has always been a redirect to Astarte because "Ashtoreth" is just the Hebrew spelling of "Astarte". If you check the edit history, it was turned into a redirect on 4 August 2004, just three days after its initial creation.

I have already posted an explanation of my reasons for why I merged the article Ishtar into this one at Talk:Ishtar, but I will post it here as well:

1. The Inanna article previously dealt only with Inanna during the Sumerian period; whereas this article dealt with only Ishtar during the post-Sumerian periods. I decided that this was not a good idea because, then, a reader of either article only learns half the story and is left partially uninformed upon completing the article.
2. Inanna and Ishtar are only separate and distinct up until the time of Sargon, when they were syncretized; after that point, they seem to have largely been seen as a single goddess. Incidentally, however, both goddesses were relatively obscure up until this syncretism and it was only after the syncretism that they became wildly popular.
3. A large amount of the material in this article was just a repeat of information from the article Inanna. For instance, the "Iconography," "Worship," and "Character" sections were almost entirely copied and pasted from the corresponding sections in the Inanna article, with minor points added about later changes.
4. Most sources treat the two goddesses as the same. Jeremy Black and Anthony Green's Dictionary of Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia, for instance, has only one entry titled "Inana (Ištar)" and the entry for "Ištar" simply states "see Inana." Louise Pryke's book Ishtar, published last year, talks about both goddesses and uses the two names interchangeably.
5. I have just brought Inanna up to GA status and I am considering potentially trying to bring it up to FA. By merging the two articles, I can bring them both up at once.

I did not combine the articles because I was trying to "save space" or anything of the sort; I did it primarily because I want to make sure that the reader of the article gets the full story and not merely a partial account. I did not delete any material from Ishtar; I just moved it here. In fact, I actually added quite a lot of new information that was not previously in the article Ishtar. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:30, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

As it stands it would seem, noticing both the talk page for Ishtar, as well as the talk page for Inanna, if anything the community consensus currently seem to favor a restoration of Ishtar and Inanna as separate articles. Indeed I can only agree that there should have been a notice of a proposed merger, and a community discussion and consensus prior to merging the two articles of the Sumerian Inanna and Akkadian/ Babylonian Ishtar. What would be the next step in a merge spree? Merging Aphrodite, Venus, Astarte and every goddess associated with planet Venus? Or perhaps a single page for ALL goddesses? Jove (talk) 11:50, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

You are using the slippery slope fallacy. I do not know where on earth everyone is getting this ridiculous notion that I would merge all of the articles about all goddesses from all cultures into one article. I am not going to do that; I would not even consider doing that. I might be willing to potentially consider merging Aphrodite and Venus (mythology) with each other, but I would certainly not merge all of these articles together. You are taking one merge and seeing it as proof that more merges are going to happen. The difference with this merge is that, as I have stated above, from the reign of Sargon onwards, the names "Inanna" and "Ishtar" referred to the same goddess and were used interchangeably. Since the cult of Inanna-Ishtar did not become popular until after the reign of Sargon, distinguishing between the two names is setting up an artificial and arbitrary distinction based on which language a source was written in. In fact, the two names were written with the exact same cuneiform symbol, regardless of which language the text was actually written in, and the symbol was just pronounced differently depending on which language you were speaking. If your problem is that fact that the merged article is titled "Inanna" and not "Ishtar," I would be willing to consider moving the current article to Ishtar, if that would solve the problem. --Katolophyromai (talk) 12:25, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

All the above notwithstanding, however, I must still nevertheless point out the following issues:

1. At present the community evidently favors a separation of the articles for Inanna and Ishtar.
2. Furthermore there is the issue of how the merger was handled (no formal, public notice on the main page of the Ishtar article suggesting a merger, no community consensus ere the merger).

Hence the two articles should once more be separated until a community consensus in favor of a merger has been reached. I must admit I am considering creating a new Ishtar page to restore the previous state and condition that existed pre-merger. However such an action would cause a whole host of new problems and issues. Jove (talk) 10:59, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Your assertion that "the community evidently favors a separation of the articles for Inanna and Ishtar" is not accurate. Only four editors have taken part in this discussion, which are IP user 82.40.109.248, TX55, you, and myself. I initially supported keeping the two articles separate (as evidenced by my comment above from over a year ago in which I defend the separation of the two), but I have now come to believe that having one article would be a far more appropriate way to handle the information. Similarly, IP user 82.40.109.248 initially supported keeping the articles separate, but now seems to have been convinced to support a single article. (His or her unsigned comments below are evidence of this.) That leaves you and TX55 as the only editors supporting the separation, which means we are split 50/50; this is not a consensus for restoration.

I will agree that I should have put up a notification and held a discussion before merging the articles, but I did not think the merge would be controversial since there had been a proposal for a merge before I came along and I was the only one who spoke against it. In retrospect, this was probably a rash assumption, but I will admit that I have never been especially good at keeping track of all Wikipedia's rules and procedures. In any case, the articles have already been merged and un-merging them at this point would create far more problems than it would solve. I will add that I personally think the resulting article is far superior to anything that the two articles ever were separately. I would like to nominate this article for FA, but, obviously, I cannot do that until this dispute is settled. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:45, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

You are forgetting about user 216.80.118.27 on Ishtar's talk page. He or she was also against the merger, if you will recall. In addition to that there is no way to verify that the user with IP 82.40.109.248 is identical to the one without a signature that you referred to. Then of course you are the one that need a community consensus FOR a merger, I am merely champion for the cause of restoration of de facto staus quo pre-merger. On another note though I must admit that studying the history of these articles, as well as all discussions on the talk pages, many of these Sumerian/ Babylonian mythological articles are a bit of a mess. They do generally need a lot of cleaning up, though that is, at least under this heading, a different issue. Jove (talk) 08:32, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Actually, you can verify that IP user 82.40.109.248 is the one that left the unsigned comments below; all you have to do is look at the edit history for this article, which clearly shows that he or she was the one who left them. Regarding the quality of the articles, I completely agree that most of them are a mess. That is because most people have never heard of Mesopotamian mythology and so there are very few editors who are even remotely interested in improving them. One of my goals for my time here at Wikipedia is to improve the quality of the articles about ancient Mesopotamian mythology, at least the ones about the major deities. I have actually been making quite a bit of headway. As you can see, this article is currently GA class and I am hoping to bring it up to FA. The article Anunnaki just became GA yesterday and the article Enlil is currently a GA nominee awaiting review. I have also made significant improvements to the article Anu, although it is still kind of a mess to some extent. --Katolophyromai (talk) 14:52, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Ishtar should be separate. Katolophyromai you just cannot unilaterally smash articles together without asking other members. This is what I mentioned on your talk page, but you never responded. The articles were fine separate and should be restored to that state. The community is built around respect and agreement, not unilateral action. I also disagree on the "slippery slope" fallacy in this case. No other deities' pages are merged together in this fashion. Loknar (talk) 11:46, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Does anyone have any actual explanation for why they think the two articles should not be merged, aside from the fact that I did not follow procedure when I did so? Right now it sounds to me like the only objection is that I did not follow correct procedure. From the reign of Sargon onwards, Inanna and Ishtar are fundamentally the same goddess and they are usually dealt with as such in scholarly writings. --Katolophyromai (talk) 02:46, 5 February 2018 (UTC)

Once more I must point out that even now that several weeks have passed NO community consensus for your unilateral merger has been found. Quite the contrary, the consensus has favored and still favors a separation of the articles for Inanna and Ishtar, regardless of whether you think Aphroodite or Durga or any other similar goddess is ultimately derived from Inanna. I note THEY still have their own articles. What is the apparent obsession lately among many Wikipedia editors to engage in the desecration and defamation of the various articles on Sumerian, Mesopotamian and Babylonian deities? Then too I must wonder, are their simply to many active adherents of so-called Hinduism (Sanatan Dharma), many of which may be presumed to actively partake in Wikipedia, for you to merge goddess Durga's article too? Thus, if the articles can not be separated, then a new Wikipedia article for the Babylonian goddess Ishtar must be created. It is simply what the community consensus demands. Jove (talk) 07:21, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

@Johnoakgrove: I have never once suggested anything about merging Aphrodite or Durga here. I do not know what on earth gives you the idea that I would do that. The reason why I merged Inanna and Ishtar is because they are fundamentally the same goddess with the same myths, same cult, and same symbols. Aphrodite and Durga are just related goddesses; they have their own myths, own cults, and own symbols separate from Inanna. You do not seem to be grasping that there is such a thing as different degrees of separation. Some deities are more closely related than others and, in the case of Inanna and Ishtar, there is very little that distinguishes them apart. It has been over a month since anyone has engaged in this discussion at all and no one has yet to provide me with an adequate reason for why the articles should be separate, aside from the manner in which they were merged. You keep ranting about the manner in which they were merged, but you still have not provided one explanation for why we should have two separate articles to begin with.

Furthermore, I am not "desecrating" articles about Mesopotamian deities; I am improving them by adding more significant information and citations to reliable, scholarly sources, all of this in effort to bring them up to "Good Article" status. My goal is to bring as many of our articles about Mesopotamian deities up to "Good Article" status as possible, because I think we ought to have detailed and reasonable coverage of Mesopotamian religion. I have written the articles Inanna, Enlil, Dumuzid, Anu, and List of Mesopotamian deities almost in their entireties. Notice how detailed and professional the coverage is and how all the information is thoroughly cited to reliable sources. Now compare those to articles about similarly important deities that I have not even touched: Ningal, Ninlil, Nabu, Nintinugga, etc. Notice how these are all extremely short, badly-written, and contain almost no citations whatsoever? I am trying to make genuine improvements to these articles and you seem to be balking at the idea of making any changes to them at all, treating the articles as though they were in some sense "sacred" and any changes made to them are therefore tantamount to "desecration." --Katolophyromai (talk) 13:58, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

First off I must admit that Katolophyromai have made great improvements to the aforementioned articles, especially in regard to tone, style and content. Many of the articles you have re-written now have a much more professional layout, with proper links and references, but also pictures and examples. However, you may have noticed that I did not mention you by name i n regards to what I referred to desecration and defamation, but there HAVE been a lot of new edits and new editors lately you know, and as I have stated before, theses type of articles - ancient deities - especially about Mesopotamian (in the widest sense) deities ARE in dire need of improvement. Specifically many references and attributions seem to need improvement (once again I am NOT referring to yours). According to the History page of the various articles there has been a LOT of edits back and forth for all these pages; Inanna (or Ishtar previously), Anu, Enlil and many others. After all, you must agree that the articles needed improvement, why else attempt to make it so? Some articles seem to have the most obscure references and all sorts of mumbo-jumbo. I wish I had the time to personally improve these articles, but alas my spare-time is too limited, so I applaud your efforts to improve all the articles on Mesopotamian (et al) deities! Ironically though, many scholars DO in fact note that the Greek gods, including Aphrodite, are largely translations and equations of especially Babylonian deities, Erra-Nergal became Ares, Shamash Apollo and so forth, and indeed Aphrodite too is to a great extent based on Ishtar in particular (and Astarte, another derivative). So in a way one could argue that either way Ishtar should have an articles of her own, or Aphrodite be merged with Inanna. Jove (talk) 09:57, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

I can go further into this in the article itself and here, but speaking from my own studies Ishtar/Inanna was understood as the same goddess by the mixed Akkadian/Sumerian population of mesopotamia. Added to this you have the fact that Akkadian was the lingua franca for the entire Sargonic/URIII period and possibly prior to this so Ishtar would also have been used by the common sumerians with Inanna by the preists- Sumerian itself was a liturgical/administrative language by this point. The differing aspects is certainly correct, but drawing from Thorkild Jacobsen's analysis in Towards the Image of Tammuz there were localised incarnations of each god/goddess depending on context that each had differing aspects - local cults that were still understood as broadly the same god/goddess (think similar roman practices eg Jupiter Capitolinus versus the local cults versus Zeus). So you have 'Dumuzi the raging bull of heaven' in pastoral northern mesopotamia where cattle hearding is present and there are storms that herald the arrival of spring, but in the south he's 'Dumuzi-Amaushumgulgana' - the phallic bud of the date palm and rising sap. Similar things happen to Inanna - she's interpreted as 'the lady of the date clusters' in that locality, but as the daughter of the moon god Nanna due to false etymology applied to her name where his cult is prominent (i-nanna). On top of this you have the Sargonic/URIII efforts to unify the pantheon to a cohesive whole, partly to erode the traditional independence of the city states, which encourages these tendencies. This also all applies to Utu/Shamash. VeritasVox (talk) 08:14, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

In and angry! I was looking for Ishtar, found somebody else. Found she was apparently murdered by Inanna? Disgusting and literally Perverse to have merged these two. MacroMyco (talk) 10:26, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@MacroMyco: They are two different names for the same goddess. If you were looking for Ishtar, you found her; she is described right here in this article. Having two separate articles about her was redundant and pointless. Having one article is not "disgusting," nor "perverse," nor is it even remotely unique to Wikipedia; in fact, this is what virtually all encyclopedias have done. As I have mentioned above, Black and Green's 1992 Gods, Demons and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia: An Illustrated Dictionary (a book written by two scholars who are foremost experts on ancient Mesopotamian mythology) has one entry entitled "Inana (Ištar)." The Encyclopedia Britannica has one entry titled "Ishtar." The online Ancient History Encyclopedia has one article titled "Inanna." The Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, which includes a full encyclopedia of the fifty most important deities from ancient Mesopotamia, published by the UK Higher Education Academy, has one article entitled "Inana/Ištar (goddess)." Ishtar was not "murdered" by Inanna; she is merely the Semitic name for Inanna. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:25, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Except that, they're not. It is like any other set of related religions who use different words for what many believe is the "same" God: you still have two different named entities with different history. This argument of similarity is fine as an opinion, but as a neutral matter it should be obvious that in all such situations each named Deity should be listed separately. And if you are going to lump them together, it is obviously inflammatory to choose one of the group's names and apply it to everybody. How would Christians and Jews feel if you deleted most of the pages about their religion and substituted one related group's word for God to replace any reference to the God of Abraham? Isn't that obviously a poor type of decision? It isn't just that you're wrong, it is that it amounts to hate speech.MacroMyco (talk) 20:37, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

@MacroMyco: Inanna and Ishtar were syncretized very early, during the reign of Sargon, which is the same time period when her/their cult first became popular. Our coverage here at Wikipedia is supposed to be based on reliable sources, which all treat Inanna and Ishtar as the same goddess. I have presented sufficient evidence above that "Inanna" and "Ishtar" are commonly treated in one article in academic works and other encyclopedias. I have not removed any information. All the material that was in the article Ishtar is still here; it has just been moved. The reason I chose the name "Inanna" for the title of the article rather than "Ishtar" is because (1) Inanna is the earlier attested name, (2) even in later times, native speakers of Akkadian often used the Sumerian language when writing about religion and used the Sumerian names for the gods, and (3) recent specialist writings on ancient Mesopotamia by scholars tend to favor the Sumerian names over the Akkadian ones. Notice that all the works mentioned in my comment above, except the Encyclopedia Britannica, make the primary title of the article "Inanna." Even in the book I have just been reading, for instance, Charles Penglase's Greek Myths and Mesopotamia: Parallels and Influence in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod (1994), which discusses parallels between ancient Mesopotamian and Greek mythologies, the author has one chapter titled "Inanna," which is the primary name he uses for the goddess, and no chapter titled "Ishtar."

Syncretized by some, and not by others, so those others' religious beliefs have not been altered in any way. And I grew up with Encyclopedia Britannica, I would hope wikipedia would aspire to have higher quality information. Isn't that why we're here?!MacroMyco (talk) 21:12, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Your analogy with the Abrahamic religions does not hold up for several reasons: (1) As I have already stated above, I did not "delete" anything; I just moved it. (2) There are no ancient Akkadians around today who could possibly be offended by the article using the Sumerian name. (3) Even if the Akkadians were around today, they would not object to the use of the name "Inanna," since, as I have also stated above, they used that name themselves, interchangeably, in fact, with their own name "Ishtar." (4) There are many substantial differences between how the different Abrahamic religions view "God"; whereas, there are few, if any, substantial differences between how the Sumerians and Akkadians viewed Inanna after the reign of Sargon. Your accusations of "hate speech" are entirely unfounded because (1) merging two articles on the basis of how the subjects are treated in academic publications and in other encyclopedias is not even remotely hateful, and (2) it is not "speech" either, because it does not actually involve speaking or writing. Essentially your whole argument right now amounts to WP:IDONTLIKEIT. Falsely accusing me of "hate speech" is not a reasonable argument and it is far more likely to get you indefinitely blocked for incivility than it is to get people to think there is merit to what you are saying. I recommend you either drop this conversation immediately or calmly and civilly present sources and evidence for why we should have two separate articles titled "Inanna" and "Ishtar" instead of one entitled "Inanna." --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:22, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

No, that is nonsense. This is about religion, and renaming somebody's Deity is exactly the same as deleting it. When you continue pressing forwards even after that is pointed out, then it becomes a type of hate-based attack, not even just a disagreement about the history.MacroMyco (talk) 21:12, 28 June 2018 (UTC)

Would changing the article to Inanna / Ishtar be a good compromise?

I appreciate the explanations given as to why the article for Ishtar was merged with Inanna, if indeed the names are meant to refer to the same goddess but with different languages, could the article be more appropriately renamed as 'Inanna / Ishtar'? Obviously Wikipedia articles such as these are written from a historical and mythological viewpoint, however in the goddess communitity the two (whilst similar in character) are often regarded as separate entities.

I appreciate the suggestion, but I do not think it will work. No other articles have slashes in their titles and I think that a slash would probably be more confusing than anything else. I did see that the French version of this article actually has two titles, with "Ishtar" as the main title and "Inanna" underneath it as a subtitle, but I do not think it is possible to do that here on English Wikipedia. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:51, 24 January 2018 (UTC)

I for one would indeed be more comfortable with Inanna being merged into Ishtar. Speaking of merging, how about merging the articles for Utu and Shamash? Aren't they even more identical mythological entities? Jove (talk) 08:07, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

I would rather not move the article, since Inanna is the earlier Sumerian name and East Semitic peoples often wrote in Sumerian, using the Sumerian names, even when talking about their own gods. Even the cuneiform sign that was used to write the name "Ishtar" in East Semitic languages was originally used to write "Inanna" in Sumerian. Furthermore, all the other major Mesopotamian deities articles that are not separated are titled after the deity's Sumerian name: (e.g. Enlil, not Elil; Enki, not Ea). It would not make much sense to make an exception to this trend for this article only.

Nonetheless, if everyone else agrees and insists that it would be better for the article to be titled "Ishtar," I would be willing to move the article. It is worth noting that the most recent scholarly book published on Inanna-Ishtar (by Louise Pryke) is simply titled Ishtar (though, before that, the most recent major book was Diane Wolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer's popular translation of Inanna's hymns entitled Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer). Since the articles have already been merged here, if we did decide to move the article, we would have to actually move the article by putting through a move request, because copying everything from this article and pasting it into Ishtar would break the article history.

Regarding Utu and Shamash, I have been planning to merge them for a while now, but I have not really had time. I am planning on doing it eventually. --Katolophyromai (talk) 21:24, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

As a student coming to this page looking for Ishtar I was a little confused when I was redirected to 'Inanna'. I'm aware that there are different varying stories between the two goddesses (often recognized as one due to becoming synonymous via syncretism ). However, I think there should be another page for Ishtar if the title cannot be comprised. It is rather dejecting in the sense that in Mesopotamian mythology textbooks the stories are broken into categories between Ishtar and Inanna such as: 'The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld' and 'The Descent of Inanna'. This form of categorization from scholarly published sources leads me to believe this page ought to be separated or cleaned up to be better understood. I'd be willing to take time to work on this if anyone has any suggestions. Sleepvertical (talk) 01:53, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I have already explained my reasons for merging the articles multiple times above, but I will recapitulate the main points:

1. For almost all of recorded Mesopotamian history, Inanna and Ishtar were just two names for the same goddess. From the reign of Sargon onwards, the names are used synonymously and interchangeably. Whatever distinction there originally was between the two becomes practically nonexistent after that point. The two names were even represented by the exact same sign in cuneiform and it was just pronounced differently depending on whether you were reading it in Sumerian or Akkadian. The "Descent of Ishtar" is just a shortened and less complete version of the "Descent of Inanna" in Akkadian with some minor variations. The differences between them are differences between two versions of the same story about the same goddess, not two different stories about two different goddesses.
2. Splitting the article in two would result in one of two outcomes: either both articles would end up being incomplete and misrepresentative because they would only include information about the goddess from sources in one language, or both articles would end up covering almost the exact same information and we would have essentially just two different versions of the same article.

Seeing as most of the complaining here seems to be coming from people who searched for "Ishtar" and who are angry or perturbed that they are being redirected to an article titled "Inanna," I would be willing to have the current article moved to the title "Ishtar" if that is what everyone else would prefer, even though I think the earlier Sumerian name is the more appropriate title for the article. I still think that one article is the best approach to dealing with the subject matter, though, and, as I have explained multiple times above, that is how nearly all other encyclopedias and even specialist works have chosen to deal with the subject.

As for "clean up," this article is currently a "Good Article" and I think it covers the subject matter more than well enough, although I may be biased, since I am the one who wrote almost this entire article. If there are any specific problems you have sighted, though, I am certainly open to further discussion. –Katolophyromai (talk) 06:37, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

I was simply offering my opinion. My view of this is that it is confusing due to modern day scholarship and interpretations of the goddess are divided. As per example, I was traversing databases and libraries for information on Ishtar and more often than not documentation was only coming up pertaining to ‘her’. Modern identification is skewed. I understand That Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and Harry Potter and the Soceror’s Stone are the same novel but known by different names, so it’d be stupid to have 2 different pages on the subject. However, this is far more complex than that. Is ‘Inanna-Ishar’ a viable option for the title? That aside, I don’t mean to insult your personal work on the article, I enjoy the article and think the work you have contributed is great. However, I’m sure you’d agree that good can be better. One suggestion I think that would improve connections in the article is adding a passage on how the descent stories impact later myths such as those of Persophone and Psyche. Perhaps adding a section on how the myth has perpetuated/transformed over time would be valuable. I’d like to work with you on this if possible. Either in deciding to create a section/sub-section on it. Please let me know. Sleepvertical (talk) 15:51, 1 February 2019 (UTC)

French article

Yes, the French article is nicely balanced between the two names. Perhaps a similar layout would be possible in the English version someday. I appreciate the research and consideration that has gone into this issue...

I am glad that you appreciate it. I worked really hard on this article and I am pleased with how it has turned out. --Katolophyromai (talk) 00:26, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

Etymology, Uruk

Thorkild Jacobsen in Towards the Image of Tammuz holds that the original etymology is from 'The Lady of the Date Clusters' hence her association with the rolled reed screen door of the storage hut as a symbol (the odd single symbol used for her name), and that later this moved into a more celestial origin as part of the general pattern of cthonic to celestial deities, and that the link to. This would also suggest her lack of a distinct aetiological sphere as others have suggested. Would anyone object to additions to the etymological section with the above (once I've sourced it)?

Few more things -

• She also seems to have held a role as an exemplar for young brides in the Marriage of Dumuzi and similar, and likely the Dumuzi/inanna pairing is an influence on the later heiros gamos.
• She's in the role of the leader of Uruk who is consulted by Lugalbanda (literally 'The young warleader/king') which seems almost to suggest some sort of oracle - or equally it could be the lugal king (at this time subordinate to the en) seeking the counsel of the goddess (the preisthood), which could use inclusion.
• Inanna's descent to the Underworld is, as far as I'm aware, the first incarnation of what would later become the Persephone myth, and I think this should be included.

If people are happy for me to source and include all this, I'll do my best. Thanks. VeritasVox (talk) 22:10, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

@VeritasVox: The alternative etymology sounds interesting, but Jacobsen died over thirty years ago, so we need to make sure that his theory is still supported by at least a few current scholars; if you can provide sources showing it is still current, it might be a worthy inclusion. Inanna being an exemplar of how brides were supposed to act could be interesting also, but be careful about using sources written before around the year 2000. The idea of a literal "sacred marriage" ceremony was widely accepted in up until the early 1990s, but support for it as an actual ritual has since collapsed. Black & Green 1992 expresses a highly skeptical attitude while discussing it, but does not reject it completely. Pryke 2017 states (on several different occasions actually) that it was probably nothing more than a literary motif, and insinuates that the idea of it as an actual ritual is just the result of sex-obsessed scholars with overactive imaginations reading literary texts uncritically and trying to find ritual significance in everything. The oracle part could also be interesting, but, once again, it needs to be well-sourced.

The idea that the myth of Persephone is related to the descent of Inanna has been brought up before, but, as of yet, I have not found any scholarly sources supporting it. If we do find any sources on the issue, we have to be very careful because I do not think there is likely to be a direct connection; despite superficial similarities, the two myths are actually drastically different. Inanna goes to the Underworld of her own free will, presumably with the intention of conquering it; whereas Persephone is abducted and taken there by force. Though people most often see resemblances between the conclusion of the Inanna myth and the myth of Persephone, it actually bears much closer resemblance to the Greek myth of Adonis, or even in some ways to the myth of the Dioscuri, because Dumuzid and Geshtinanna alternate, each spending half the year in the Underworld with Ereshkigal and half the year in Heaven with Inanna. The Persephone myth, in my view, is probably related to the Inanna myth in some way, but not directly. My own speculation is that there may be one or several lost intermediary stories, perhaps of Anatolian origin. Also, see Samuel Noah Kramer's comparison between the myth of Ereshkigal and Persephone. I have not checked up on more recent sources relating to that myth, so it is possible that Kramer is just overinterpreting here, but, if he is right, this myth seems a lot more Persephone-esque than the Inanna one. --Katolophyromai (talk) 04:20, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Good points. On Jacobsen in general I can say that I personally used him for my main source in my undergraduate dissertation in 2011, and was encouraged to do so by the ANE department of the university who regarded his work as seminal, but certainly I'll try to find recent citations to endorse that. The general view of the department when I was there on the Hieros Gamos is that Sumerian myth generally had a performative action attached to it - a good example is the 'strip tease' element of Inanna in the Underworld - which would invite a more literal interpretation, although certainly it's debatable whether it was actual sexual congress - I'm reminded of the roman fertility rite where a husband and wife had to enact coitus in the middle of a field. In terms of Persephone, it's the fact that Dumuzi is taken by force rather than Inanna (who is not associated with the seasons) that leads me to this - Inanna's descent isn't the aetiological function of the myth, Dumuzi is. Also Inanna's actual reasoning in the myth is 'angal-ta ki-gal-se gestu-ga-ni ba-an-gub' - literally 'from the heavens to the underworld she set her understanding' which I'm suspicious of being defined as 'conquest,' as it seems more like curiosity - a search for hidden mysteries therein, particularly when she strips herself of her powers (me) as she enters, and that her entrance has the feel of a cultic initiation rite.

These are the major works I'll likely be using;-

• Algaze, G. 1993. The Uruk World System. Chicago.
• Cooper, J. 1983b. Reconstructing History from Ancient Sources: The Lagash-Umma Border Conflict. Malibu.
• Jacobsen, T. 1970. Towards the Image of Tammuz and Other Essays on Mesopotamian History and Culture. Cambridge.
• Jacobsen, T. 1987. The Harps that Once-: Sumerian Poetry in Translation. London.
• Leick, G. 2002. Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City. London.
• Matthews, R. 1993. Cities, Seals and Writing: Archaic Seal Inscriptions from Jemdat Nasr and Ur. Berlin.
• Poo, M. 2005. Enemies of Civilisation: Attitudes towards foreigners in Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. Albany.
• Van De Mieroop, M. 1997. The Ancient Mesopotamian City, Oxford.
• Van De Mieroop, M. 1999. Cuneiform Texts and the Writing of History. Padstow.
• Weiss, H. (ed) 1986. The Origins of Cities in Dry-farming Syria and Mesopotamia in the Third Millenium B.C. Guilford.

Whereas generally I'd agree with you about 2000 onwards sources, I found in my university days that particularly Sumerology itself is a relatively small field with quite a minor output overall (I'm sure you've found the same). So I'll try my best. VeritasVox (talk) 16:20, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

@VeritasVox: These all seem like good sources. Do not worry that some of them are older. I was not saying you should not use older sources; I was just saying to be careful when using them. I have actually used both of the sources from Jacobsen that you have listed here in other articles. You seem to have more formal education in this area than I do; everything I currently know about ancient history is self-taught, but I am planning on majoring in classical and Near Eastern studies when I go to college later this year. The part about "conquest" was mostly an assumption on my part based on Inanna's behavior in other myths. I wrote this article almost entirely myself, so, if you see anything you know is inaccurate, make sure to either let me know so I can fix it or fix it yourself. I tried to do my best to make it as accurate and comprehensive as possible based on the sources available to me. --Katolophyromai (talk) 16:49, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Certainly. I should also remark on my deep admiration for the work you've done here, looking at your contributions - this is all the more impressive as you're self-taught.Bravo. VeritasVox (talk) 16:55, 26 May 2018 (UTC)

Etymology of peristerá

@Thanatos666: I do not have access to any of the sources you mention. Is there any particular reason why the peraḥ Ištar etymology is implausible? Do your sources offer up any better, alternative etymologies? The source cited to support the etymology given here is an academic source and at least one of the authors (G. Johannes Botterweck) is an expert on Biblical languages, which definitely includes both Greek and Hebrew, and probably other Semitic languages as well. I do not see any reason why the proposed etymology is inherently implausible and, in my view, I think this whole issue could simply be resolved by inserting to the word "possibly" to the sentence in question to indicate that this is only one of several proposed etymologies for the word. --Katolophyromai (talk) 23:49, 13 June 2018 (UTC)

Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch, Hjalmar Frisk

Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, Pierre Chantraine

Etymological Dictionary of Greek (screenshot of lemma), Robert S. P. Beekes

Thanatos|talk|contributions 00:17, 14 June 2018 (UTC)

Connection to Durga

@Hnaluru: I just thought I would note that, in your edit summary to an edit you made on 20 July 2019 in which you removed the part from the article talking about the possible connection between Inanna and the Hindu goddess Durga, you stated, "The qualities of Inanna cannot be attributed to Durga in Hinduism just by the common symbols of Lion and a helmet. Durga is considered chaste in HInduism unlike Inanna and the aspect of incest cannot be attributed to her. Parpola might be an expert in Sumerian mythology but his knowledge of the Hinduism is superficial and debated." The "Parpola" who is cited in the passage in question, however, is Asko Parpola, who is a Finnish Indologist and Sindhologist. In other words, the study of ancient India and Hinduism is his area of expertise. When you wrote this edit summary, you may have been thinking of his brother Simo Parpola, who is an Assyriologist. Simo Parpola is also cited in this article, but in a different passage and a different context. —Katolophyromai (talk) 12:39, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Katolophyromai: Thank you for opening this thread on the connection of Inanna to Durga. I am aware of both Asko and Simo Parpolas. My contention is that the research done on Durga is debatable. Asko has referenced the Devi Mahatmya part of Markandeya Purana in his work, The Roots of Hinduism: The Early Aryans and the Indus Civilization. However, there is no evidence that can categorically link Inanna to Durga. I have extensive knowledge of the Vedas and Durga is attested in Vedas as a protector but the description of Inanna cannot be attributed to Durga based on a few physical characteristics. Asko has been critical about a few Indian scholars but couldn't contest his statements either. He tends to take a view of comparing and contrasting the Tamil links to the Indus script which is not a very scientific approach to be taken. these two cultures are way apart and no historian has seen any substantial exchange between these two at times dating back to 2600 BCE. - Hnaluru (talk) 18:47, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Hnaluru: that's all very interesting but a bit irrelevant as we can't use our own knowledge/experience etc. in articles. I'm now wondering though which Parpola you intended to insult. As I said on your talk page, that was unacceptable. The issue here though is do the sources meet our criteria at WP:VERIFY and WP:RS, not do we think them right or wrong. Doug Weller talk 19:08, 20 July 2019 (UTC)

@Doug Weller: Not just interesting. I will substantiate this with facts and give me some time. I am not sure how much of information you have about the Indian culture but I am definitely qualified. Also, Doug, I fail to understand how I insulted any of the above two Parpolas there. With some superficial knowledge of Indian literature, you cannot claim yourself to be the master of it. Like all ancient languages, Sanskrit also is a very cryptic language and one can infer many things from the same word. I will reply to your comment on my talk page once I am done with gathering the 'usable' references and not my 'original research' as we call it on Wiki. -Hnaluru (talk) 19:31, 20 July 2019 (UTC)