Geštinanna

Summary

Geštinanna is the sister of Dumuzi the shepherd in Sumerian myth, daughter of their mother Durtur. In Dumuzi's Dream her brother calls for her by her gifts: "my scribe proficient in tablets, my singer expert in songs, my perspicacious girl, my wise woman who knows the meanings of dreams".

Her story is the story of her loyalty to her brother. Dumuzi wakes terrified from a dream, calls for her and tells it: rushes growing up around him, a single reed shaking its head at him, twin reeds of which one is separated from him, water poured over his coals, the cover of his churn removed, his cup torn from its peg, his shepherd's stick gone, the churns lying on their sides with no milk, and Dumuzi dead. She reads it piece by piece: the rushes are bandits in ambush, the single reed is his mother shaking her head over him, the twin reeds are "you and I, one will be separated from you", the stick the demons will burn, the goats dragging their beards in the dust are her hair whirling in the wind for him, the rams scratching the ground are her nails tearing her cheeks for him. Then she climbs a mound to watch, and her friend Geštin-dudu tells her that the men who bind necks are coming. Dumuzi hides in the grass and in the ditches of Arali and begs her not to reveal him, and she swears: if I reveal where you are, may your dog devour me.

The demons come, men "who know no food, who know no drink, who accept no pleasant gifts". They catch her at the sheepfold and offer her a river of water, which she refuses, and a field of grain, which she refuses. They say to one another: "Who since the most ancient times has ever known a sister reveal a brother's whereabouts? Let us go to his friend." They offer the river and the field to his friend, who accepts them and gives him away. When Dumuzi is caught he says: "In the city my sister saved my life, my friend caused my death." In another poem, Dumuzi and Geštinanna, they afflict her loins with a skin disease, scratch her face and pour tar into her lap, and she speaks not a word to them. They find him in the sheepfold, raise the axe against him and smash his hut, and she wanders the city like a bird, saying: "My brother, let me take the great misfortune." Dumuzi's Dream, 110–155, Dumuzi and Geštinanna, 33–73.

At the end of Inanna's Descent her wish is granted. After Inanna has handed her husband Dumuzi to the underworld as her substitute, she weeps bitterly for him, then decrees: "You for half the year and your sister for half the year: when you are demanded, on that day you will stay; when your sister is demanded, on that day you will be released." Inanna's Descent, 384–410.

The idea her story turns on is that a sister's loyalty cannot be bought. The river and the field that Enki's envoys refuse in Ereshkigal's house are offered to her here as the price of her brother, and she refuses them, while the friend takes them. And the one who would not hand her brother over shares his absence in the end: half the year below for him and half for her, so that the house of the dead holds only one of them at a time. In both stories she is the one who reads signs: she read death in her brother's dream before it came, and in Babylonian tradition she became Bēlet-ṣēri, the scribe of the underworld who kneels before Ereshkigal and reads the tablet to her.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. It is written ᵈŋeštin-an-na, which in Sumerian means "vine of heaven" or "wine of heaven": ŋeštin is the vine, its grapes and its wine, and an-na is "of heaven" or "of An". The project's Sumerian essay reads it as ʿinab al-samāʾ, "grape of heaven", or karmat al-ʿulā, "vine of the heights". In Lane ʿinab is grapes, the fruit of the karm, and in Lisān al-ʿArab karm is the grape itself; and the Akkadians explained ŋeštin in their word lists with the same word, karānu, wine, vine and grapes, which is Arabic karm and Hebrew kerem. The an is An, read on his page from ʿanā and ʿanān al-samāʾ. Geštinanna is "the vine of heaven", and the name sets her beside her brother: his things in the story are the churn, the milk and the cup, and hers in her name are the vine and its wine.

Linguistic Root

Written forms

Ŋeštin is made of two signs: ŋeš, the sign for trees and wood, and tin, which the Sumerian dictionary gives as "wine". That is why the second sign alone can write the name, and why Emesal puts mu in place of ŋeš, as it does in tree words. In Sumerian the vine is "the wine tree". Akkadian word lists explain both ŋeštin and mu-tin by karānu, and list ama-ŋeštin, "mother of the vine", for the vine stock. BDB compares karānu with Hebrew kerem, vineyard, Aramaic karmā and Arabic karm, vine. The word the scribes used to explain her name is shared across the branches of the tongue.

The essay derives ŋeštin from ʿinab, changing ʿayn into j, and then treats tīn as another form of the end of the word. That route leaves the š and the t unexplained, and no regular ʿayn to j change is known between the branches. So "grape of heaven" reads the name's meaning, which is secure in Sumerian itself, while its sounds still need a reading.

The essay offers a second reading that keeps every sound: jashsh + tīn. Arabic j was originally close to g and answers ŋ, š is sh, and tin is tīn letter for letter. In Lane jashsh is grinding or bruising grain coarsely, and tīn is the fig tree and its fruit. But Sumerian tin is wine, and Arabic tīn is the fruit of another tree. This reading keeps the letters and changes the fruit; the first keeps the fruit and leaves the letters.

Bēlet-ṣēri

Her Babylonian name bēlet ṣēri means "lady of the open country". Bēlet is the feminine of bēlu, which is Arabic baʿl with the ʿayn dropped, as on the Enlil page, so she is baʿla. Akkadian ṣēru is the back, then the open land outside the town, and it is Arabic ẓahr, back. BDB is the witness: it compares Hebrew ṣōhar, the roof of Noah's ark, with the Arabic and Assyrian words for the back. Arabic ẓ is ṣ in Hebrew and Akkadian, and the h kept in Arabic and Hebrew fell in Akkadian, as gutturals do there, leaving a long vowel in its place. Bēlet-ṣēri is "lady of the ẓahr", mistress of the open land where the shepherd goes out, the steppe to which her brother fled.

Historical Context

Geštinanna's earliest witnesses go back to the late Early Dynastic period. She was worshipped in southern Mesopotamia, at Nippur, Isin and Uruk in the Old Babylonian period, and no image of her is known. Hymns of King Šulgi praise her for music and the scribal art. Her cult seems not to have outlived the Old Babylonian period, but her name stayed in god lists and in Akkadian literature down to the Seleucid period, both as Geštinanna and as Bēlet-ṣēri.

Family and connections

Key Mythic Narratives

The scribe in the house of the dead

In the dream Enkidu has before his death, in Tablet VII of the Epic of Gilgamesh, he sees "the House of Dust", where the dead drink dust and eat clay, and in it Ereshkigal, queen of the underworld, with Bēlet-ṣēri, "the scribe of the underworld", kneeling before her, holding the tablet and reading it to her. She raises her head when she sees him and says: "Who has taken this man?" The sister who wrote and read for her brother in Sumer now reads out, below, the names of those who enter.

The fly and the sister

At the end of Inanna's Descent Inanna looks for her husband, who has escaped the demons in the shape of a snake, and a fly says to her: if I show you where your man is, what will be my reward? She promises it, and decrees that the fly shall live in the beer-house and the tavern. Then she comes to "the sister", takes her by the hand and divides the year. The surviving text does not name the sister, but the one whose time is divided is Dumuzi, and his sister in every other story is Geštinanna.

Symbolic Reading

The project's rereading of the Sumerian myths takes the half year Dumuzi spends below as the six dry months of ancient Iraq, from May to October. On this reading the sister's half is the rest of the year, so that one of the two is always absent and the other present.

The texts themselves carry a clear social point. The sister and the friend are offered the same price, a river and a field, the water and grain on which life depends; the sister refuses it and the friend takes it. Kinship holds in the poem where friendship fails, and Dumuzi's words, "my sister saved my life, my friend caused my death", sum up that judgment. When Dumuzi reaches her sheepfold she cries out to heaven and to earth and tears her eyes, her face and her ears, the same mourning acts that Ninshubur performs for Inanna in Inanna's Descent: she laments on the ruin mounds, beats the drum, and tears her eyes and nose.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

Persephone spends a third of the year under the earth because she ate a pomegranate seed; Geštinanna spends half the year below because she refused to hand over her brother. The project's Sumerian essay sets the two side by side explicitly and makes Geštinanna the pattern of the turning seasons a thousand years before Persephone. But Persephone is held by food she ate, while Geštinanna goes down of her own will, through a loyalty she would not sell to the demons.

Anat goes out to search for her brother Baal when Mot has swallowed him and mourns him, and Nephthys weeps with her sister for their brother Osiris and guards his body. The sister who laments a brother taken by death and goes after him recurs in Sumer, Ugarit and Egypt, and what she does differs: Anat kills Death, Nephthys guards the body, and Geštinanna shares her brother's term.

She is the clearest witness of the price paid for leaving in the descent to the underworld, and the sister who shares the absence in death and return.

In the North Hermóðr rides to the house of Hel to ask for his brother Baldr and wins from its queen a condition for his return that fails, while Geštinanna stays loyal to her brother Dumuzi and shares his absence half the year: both ask the house of the dead for a brother; his story is under Hermóðr.