The Sacred Marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi [on the "Warka Vase"]


Date
Late Uruk or Jamdat Nasr Period (ca. 3300-2900 B.C.)

Artist
Unknown

Origin
The Ancient World : The Middle East : Proto-Literate Period

Summary
This ritual vessel depicts the sacred marriage between Inanna and Dumuzi, celebrates the fecundity of plant and animal life secured by their union, and illustrates the hierarchy of the ancient Sumerian cosmos, which was based on the watery deep and rose through plants, animals, and mankind to the gods above.

Description
Top register of line drawing, right: at the center and facing Left is a crowned female figure -- either the goddess Inanna herself or a priestess acting in her stead -- wearing an ankle-length garment and holding her left hand in a ritual gesture, with her fist before her face and with the thumb extending upward towards her mouth. Behind her to the right is a symbolic doorway composed of reed bundles ("gatepost" emblems) with loops and pendant streamers at the top. Immediately on the other side of the doorway, and thus within the temple or communal storehouse, stands an elaborate piece of sacred furniture supported by a pair of rams and surmounted by two anthropomorphic figures with long hair and ankle-length kilts. The first of these carries the pictographic sign for "lord"; the second makes a ritual gesture with his left hand held palm-outward before his face, his left wrist being grasped by his right hand. Behind the ram are two containers heaped with fruit and surrounded by animal parts which probably represent meat offerings; above these containers are a pair of narrow vessels that are similar or identical to the Warka Vase itself, as well as theriomorphic vessels in the shape of a goat and a feline.

Top register, left: In front of Inanna is a nude male figure (partially destroyed) who presents the goddess with a container of fruit, probably dates. Behind him is what little remains of a second male figure, the god Dumuzi or a priest-substitute, dressed in an ankle-length, cross-hatched and fringed garment with a tasseled belt or train. The train is supported by a long-haired attendant in a knee-length kilt. Second resister: a leftward-facing procession of nine nude male figures bearing baskets and other containers with offerings. Third resister: a rightward-facing procession of rams and ewes in alternation. Fourth register: ears of barley alternating with, possibly, flax plants, above an undulating stream of water.

Cultural Context

Such ritual vases were kept in Mesopotamian temples to commemorate and to capture perpetually the benefits to the community accruing from the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi. Religious response in Mesopotamia in the fourth millenium B.C. was characterized by simple fear of starvation. The precarious nature of an agricultural economy -- based on artificial irrigation and subject to the vagaries of nature and man alike -- drove the Mesopotamians to ensure the presence within their community of those essential powers of fertility. Communal storage was a practical means of counteracting this threat and of solidifying the community in the face of natural disasters or warfare, and it is this strategy which underlies the early temple economy. The temple was often designated as a storehouse, the place where yields were divided into shares. But beyond this, temples, called "houses" and conceived of as dwelling places, were built for those divinities who personified the powers of fertility. It was believed that these deities could be enticed to live in the temple-houses, and hence guarantee the success of agriculture and animal husbandry, as well as promote human fertility.

Central to religious efforts to ensure divine aid was the "sacred marriage," which culminated in the depositing of the god's semen within the body of the goddess; this marriage was the ritual enactment of harvesting fruits of the field and storing them in the temple storehouse. On the Warka Vase these two actions -- the symbolic and the actual -- are combined in a single narrative. Inanna or a priestess acting for her (we do not know) stands before the reed bundles that symbolize the entrance to the storehouse. Appearing usually in pairs, they represent not only the jambs of the doorway to the storehouse, cattle byre, and temple, which in earliest times were built only of reeds, but also the Mother Goddess herself. Some gifts of fruit and meat have already been deposited within this structure; others are being carried toward it by a procession of offering-bearers, near the head of which is the god Dumuzi or a priest-king acting as, or for, him. The offerings which he brings are his own awesome powers, which are to be combined with those of the goddess by means of the sacred marriage. The physical union between the power of fecundity and of the crops, represented in Dumuzi, and the power of the temple storehouse, represented in Inanna, will bind the forces of fecundity to the community and ward off the ever-present threat of starvation, just as will the stockpiling of goods within the storehouse. The imminence of the union of god and goddess is signaled here by Inanna's having opened the door of the storehouse -- this would have recalled a central moment in the Sumerian wedding, namely, the opening of the door to the bridegroom, which occurred immediately before the consummation of the marriage. The alternating elements on the lower registers of the vase, rams and ewes in one and barley (associated with Dumuzi) and flax(?) (associated with Inanna) in the other, symbolize god and goddess, male and female, and the fecundity of animal and plant life that will result from their union. These emblems may also be a reminder that even if the most prominent aspect of Dumuzi in these reliefs is that of Amaushumgalanna ("the one great source of the date clusters"), his other aspects as the shepherd, wild bull, and sprouting grain are also taken into account and are to be secured by this ritual.

This vase is the only evidence we have concerning the celebration of the sacred marriage at this very early time. Undoubtedly, the exact form which the ritual would have taken varied with the place where it was enacted, according to those aspects of Inanna and Dumuzi which were emphasized in various parts of Mesopotamia. Where Dumuzi as shepherd was stressed, the death of the god in the searing, decimating heat of summer and the goddess's lament which brings him back to life would have had as much importance in ritual as would the sacred marriage. Nevertheless, the essential meaning of the marriage would have remained the same. In later texts from the early second millenium B.C. the king acts the part of the god, and a priestess that of the goddess; in these sources, the symbolic marriage, the physical act of coupling, and a triumphal, bounteous feast at the conclusion are all essential to the rite. In the first millenium B.C. the sacred marriage was celebrated at the culmination of the New Year's Festival during Nissan, the month of the spring equinox (20 March). Earlier texts do not give the calendrical dates of the sacred marriage ritual, but we know that it must have occurred in late spring -- probably in April or May. Whether a New Year's Festival was also celebrated at the same time is not known. Combining the two would be typical of a later period, when a smaller portion of the population was dependent solely upon agriculture and animal husbandry, and when greater emphasis was placed upon the study of astronomy and astrology. At this time, events would probably have been fixed as a result of calendrical calculations rather than depend upon the vicissitudes of nature.

In addition to the sacred marriage, conveyed in the reliefs as a narrative, the Warka Vase also symbolizes, in the strict arrangement of its registers, the hierarchical structure of the cosmos as perceived by the ancient Sumerians. At the bottom of the vessel is water, representing the primeval sea from which plant life takes its existence. Above the plants are the animals that feed off them. Man, who occupies the next highest register, ranks above both plants and animals, while the gods are situated yet higher. But during religious rituals such as the one shown here, the divine and human spheres came into contact. Thus the two human figures -- they are undoubtedly priests -- are depicted together with the gods in the same, uppermost register.

Special Qualities

The Warka Vase is unique in several respects. Its reliefs are of exceptional quality, and depict a ritual for which there is no evidence for at least the next thousand years. Also unusual for so early a period in Mesopotamian history is the elaborateness of the symbolism of the reliefs, as well as the relative sophistication with which it is expressed.

Story
A text that is at Least a thousand years younger than this vase, but which seems to come originally from Uruk, deals with the wedding of Dumuzi-Amaushumgalanna and Inanna as it was then celebrated in that city. In a sort of running commentary it describes a series of cult acts, beginning with an account of a date-gatherer scaling a date palm to bring down fresh dates for Inanna. He piles the clusters in a heap which is called "the gem-revealing heap," from which a complete array of jewelry-Like ornaments are then plucked and used ceremonially to dress the goddess for her wedding. After the ritual dressing, Inanna opens the door and goes forth to meet Dumuzi:

The Lord has met her of the Lapis Lazuli [gems] gathered on the heap!
Dumuzi has met Inanna, her of the lapis lazuli gems gathered on the heap!
The shepherd of An, the groom of Enlil has met her!
In Eanna the herdsman of An, Dumuzi has met her,
at the lapis lazuli [ornamented] door that stands in the Giparu, the lord has met her!
at the narrow door that stands in the storehouse of Eanna, Dumuzi has met her!
Him, whom she will lead back to the surface of the heap,
him, whom Inanna will Lead back to the surface of the heap,
[him] may she, caressing and amid her croonings, take (?) into (?) its clay plaster [covering].

Inanna then speaks:
When they have set up my pure bed for him,
...O that they have my Amaushumgalanna come in to me,
O that they put his hand in my hand for me,
O that they put his heart next to my heart for me.
Not only is it sweet to sleep hand in hand with him,
sweetest of sweet is too the loveliness of joining heart to heart with him.
(Jacobsen, Treasures, 33-36)

Material or Technique

Relief: alabaster

Measurement
Height, 41 3/8 in. (105 cm.)

Provenance
Iraq: Warka (ancient Uruk), Eanna precinct, level IIIa/II

Repository or Site

Iraq: Baghdad, Iraq Museum

Image Sources

(a) Amiet, Pierre, Art of the Ancient Near East (trans. John Shepley amd Claude Choquet; Abrams, New York, 1960), pl.27
(b) Parrot, Andre, Sumer: the Dawn of Art (Arts of Mankind series, ed. Andre Malraux and Georges Salles, trans. Stuart Gilbert and James Emmons; Golden Press, New York, 1961), pl.89

References

Jacobsen, T., The Treasures of Darkness (New Haven and London, 1976)
Jacobsen, T., Toward the Image of Tammuz (Cambridge, MA, 1970)
Kramer, S.N., The Sumerians (London and Chicago, 1963)

Glossary
ANU - Sumero/Babylonian ancient sky-god, considered as the Father or as King of the Gods. Descended from Apsu (abysmal deep) and Tiamat (primeval waters of chaos). He either carried off heaven or retired from earthly affairs after his son Enlil split heaven and earth. Anu, Enlil, and Enki (Ea) make a powerful triad.

DUMUZI - (Sumerian, "Quickener of the Young"). The ancient divine shepherd, his cult centered around his sacred marriage to the goddess of fertility, Inanna, in spring or autumn, and his death and sojourn in the netherworld during the hot, dry, barren summer months. His Akkadian name is Tammuz.

ENLIL - Sumero/Babylonian air-god born of Anu (Heaven) and Ki (Earth). He separated heaven and earth and created day. As god of abundance and prosperity he created seeds, the pick-ax and plow plus the gods of farming. As a hostile deity he caused the great Flood. Enlil, Anu and Enki (Ea) form a powerful triad. With his consort Ningil he is the father of Nannar (Sin).

INANNA - The ancient Sumerian mother-goddess of the cattle byre and sheepfold. Goddess of love and fertility, she journeyed each year to the netherworld to rescue Dumuzi, after which their sacred marriage was celebrated, restoring fertility to the land. Inanna merged with the later Akkadian goddess Ishtar.