Episode 154 – Love and War – Myths Your Teacher Hated

Episode 154 Show Notes

Source: Mesopotamian Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’re returning to the dawn of time for a tale from the very first city. You’ll learn that you shouldn’t trust a bad gardener, that cities make great hiding places, and that turning the seas to blood is a favorite pastime of pissed off deities. Then, in Gods and Monsters, the god of pestilence is going to risk a zombie apocalypse for a one night stand. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 154, “Love and War”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
We haven’t dived into the ancient tales of Inanna, the Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility, since way, way back in Episode 45. Easter is coming up and with it, the entirely untrue but very popular meme claiming that Easter is derived from a festival in worship of Ishtar AKA Inanna. The actual origin of the word easter is debated, but the most likely explanation is that it comes from an Old High German word eostarum, a translation of the Latin phrase ‘in albis’, or the plural of the word alba, which means dawn. Still, no need to let the truth get in the way of a good story, so let’s get into an actual story of Inanna from 1800 BCE.
As we saw in our previous tale, Inanna is a very young and fickle goddess, her favor in both love and war changing constantly and capriciously. All is fair in love and war, after all. The translation I’ll be using comes from the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature at Oxford University. Our tale begins with the ever-restless Inanna setting out from the known realms of the heavens and the earth to visit the mysterious kur, a word that means either mountain or foreign country (and possibly both). This isn’t just wanderlust though – Inanna is in search of wisdom, specifically the ability to detect lies and deception as well as to search for justice and balance.
The goddess climbed up over the hills of the known and came to the foothills of kur, the mountain of the unknown, the foreign, the strange. It’s worth noting here that Inanna is associated with the planet Venus, the morning star which rises in the east before the sun. As I mentioned, she is a young goddess, relatively speaking within the context of ancient Sumer, and so she still has much to learn. This search benefits her personally of course, since it expands her knowledge and power, but it also benefits the world since she is journeying into the unknown in order to bring that knowledge back into the land of the known, where humanity can benefit from it as well.
She found herself standing amongst the wild bulls who lived at the foot of said mountains. Bulls were an important symbolic animal in Sumer, closely related to Inanna herself (she sends one against the great hero Gilgamesh) and usually associated with power and divinity. She leaves the familiar lowlands with her own divine animal behind and climbs the unknown mountain where the stags dwell. These creatures were often depicted bearing the sun between their great branching horns, an important symbol of the coming of spring and the return of light and warmth.
From here, it seems that she journeys beyond the mountains to the distant and very real city of Eridu, the seat of power for Enki, god of water, knowledge, and creation. We have only fragments of this section, so what exactly transpires between one setting and the next is unknown. Anyway, she’s in Eridu (traditionally considered to be the first city in history). Enki summons a raven to assist him in the task he is currently busily working on. “Raven, listen up cause I’ve got a job for you. First, go and gather up kohl (an ancient eye makeup that you’ve probably seen on pretty much every depiction of ancient Egyptians) and chew it into a paste. Mix that with the oil and water kept in the lapis-lazuli bowl at the back of the shrine of the temple here in Eridu and then plant that in the prepared garden where leeks are planted.”
He’s apparently supposed to wait around until something sprouts out of the earth from that buried mixture, but again the lines are lost so who knows what it was. What we do know is that gardens and orchards were vitally important to the Sumerians, coequal with cultivated fields of crops. The fruits and vegetables grown in the former were an important supplement to the meat and wheat that made up the staple of their diet and helped allow for civilization to take root, pun intended. What’s more, trees were often grown in gardens and groves specifically to provide shade to more delicate plants and allow them to thrive.
Raven listened attentively to Enki and then did as commanded. Again, the exact sequence of events is lost, but it ends with Raven pulling a strange plant that grew tall and stiff like a leek stalk, but larger and studier. The bird was baffled by this development, but Enki was thrilled. His plan had worked exactly as intended and so here was the first ever date palm tree, which is also the first ever fruit-bearing tree. We don’t know exactly what Inanna’s role in the creation of this incredibly important tree was, but we do know that she bears the plant of life, allowing her to create life and send it out into the world to flourish. Given that, it seems likely that she helped out in some way.
Unlike the wheat of the fields, this strange tree did not grow and die only to grow again in an endless cycle of death and rebirth. Instead, it simply grew and grew and grew, a thing which had never been seen before. This was a game changer for the citizens of Eridu and it required the creation of a whole new profession, one that would go on to become incredibly important for the society – the gardener. It is then that we are introduced to Shukaletuda, who very well may be the first ever gardener in the world. Unfortunately, being the first didn’t mean that he was any good at his job. In fact, he was downright terrible at it.
He was supposed to water the garden and build a well for irrigation of the plants that grew therein. The lines are lost, so we don’t know if he just did a bad job of this or if there was some other reason he failed so very, very hard. What we do know is that every single fucking thing he tried to grow died with the exception of a single poplar tree. Furious at his own incompetence and at the plants for their failure to thrive, he ripped all of them out by the roots, ensuring that they would never even have the chance to come back from his ineptitude. Shukaletuda is not a sympathetic figure and we are absolutely supposed to see his failure here as a reflection on his character as a human being.
Having ripped out all of the vegetation, there was of course nothing to break the wind as it blew across the desert, and so it picked up a growing cloud of gritty, choking dust that got into his eyes. He rubbed furiously at them, blinking away tears as he tried to clear his vision but he couldn’t get all of it, which only irritated him more. He didn’t understand how the weather affected what he was trying to grow or how tearing up his failures made the wind and the dust so much worse. Like I said, he’s a truly terrible gardener.
Frustrated by his incredible failure, he looked up from the barren dust (some of which was still in his eye) to look out over the city, praying for guidance. He saw the gods of the east in the lowlands and the gods of the west in the highlands, watching over their respective domains. He looked between them and there, standing all alone, he saw Inanna. He knew immediately that she was a goddess but, through some innate intuition, he also sensed that she was not yet in full control of her divinity, of her power. Her destiny was still in flux, yet to be decided by the gods.
As he gazed upon the young goddess, Shukaletuda saw the solitary poplar tree that had grown in his miserable excuse for a garden and saw that, like the goddess, its shade stretched out over the dusty earth from sunrise to sunset. Like her divine image remaining visible as his gaze drifted from the eastern lowlands to the western highlands, so too could the shade of the tree he had planted remain constant all day. It was only then that the first gardener in the world finally understood how weather patterns worked and how shade could be used to protect the vulnerable greenery of the worked earth. Only then did his garden begin to grow with a variety of lush greenery.
By this point, Inanna had journeyed far and labored long. The text says that she had journeyed around the heavens and the earth, and visited the regions of Elam and Subir, bringing her fertility to the world as she went. She had also learned much and much from this experience, but she still had not found the full wisdom of justice that she sought. At the end of this, the goddess was understandably quite exhausted. Seeing that single poplar tree growing tall and strong, Inanna decided to rest amongst its roots, beneath its spreading, shady branches.
There is a lot of symbolic imagery going on in the background here. As I mentioned, Inanna has still not learned true wisdom and has not awakened to her true power. Thus, her literal sleep here may also be a metaphorical representation of this ignorance, this lack of full consciousness. Despite being a goddess of war, she is not on guard for any danger. Inside the walls of the ancient city, the young goddess feels perfectly safe and at ease. She still has that sense of invulnerability that the young have, those who have not yet learned caution from the painful lessons of experience. Her choice to sleep within the roots of the only tree around may also have a duality of meaning here, representing both the womb of life and the tomb of death. It is symbolic of the cycle of life, of birth and burial, that Inanna herself embodies as both a goddess of love and war.
Unaware of the bright glow of her own glory and the beauty of the young fertility goddess, Inanna went to sleep. Unfortunately, Shukaletuda was very, very aware of all of this. He watched her fall asleep as the sun set beneath the horizon and, as darkness fell across the land, he gave in to his base nature. Like a thief, the terrible gardener crept across the garden to where Inanna lay. While she dreamed, he stripped her of the girdle of the seven divine powers and of the rest of her clothes, leaving her naked and vulnerable. And then, hidden in the darkness, Shukaletuda raped Inanna.
When he was spent, the vile gardener redressed the violated goddess and slipped away to his plot of land to pretend like nothing had happened. The young goddess may have slept through the whole terrible ordeal, but that doesn’t mean she was oblivious. As soon as Utu the sun brought his light to the world again, she knew that something had happened to her. Inspecting herself closely, she soon realized exactly what had been done to her and how she had been violated.
It is important to point out here that the rape occurred while she was asleep and vulnerable, thinking herself protected by the sheltering womb of the earth. Gardens in ancient Sumer were a kind of lover’s lane, a place where couples would sneak off to get some consensual private time together. As a goddess of love and fertility then, the garden is doubly a sanctuary for Inanna, a place that should be safest of all for her. Shukaletuda has stolen that security from her like the thief he is, thinking himself hidden by darkness. It is common in mythology (and in life, unfortunately) for victims of rape to be blamed for the crime against them, to be accused of asking for it or of having deserved it in some way and to be punished for their own suffering.
Sumer did not have this same tradition. There was no word that denoted virginity in the culture, only a lack of sexual experience, and likewise no suggestion that sex in some way devalued a woman or brought shame on her or her family though the law also made it clear that taking a woman’s sexual inexperience without marrying her was a serious offense and a man found guilty of doing so consensually would often be forced to marry her. Rape was a different thing entirely and considered to be a terrible crime (as it is and should be). Sex and desire were considered gifts from the gods and often initiated by the women. Sumerian love songs and poetry emphasized that the sensual pleasure of women was highly valued. It’s worth noting that Inanna is also a war goddess, and she wasn’t about to fucking take this shit from some cruel asshole. She was the avenging angel, vengeance incarnate and she would make sure all hell broke loose until she learned who had done this to her and brought them to justice.
Drawing forth her power, the fertility goddess called forth a plague. After all, what is a plague but fecund fertility run amok until it begins to choke out all other life? This was no ordinary plague either, but a symbolic one: a plague of blood. It’s a move that would later be mirrored in the 10 plagues of Egypt sent by Moses and Yahweh in the Torah. Inanna turned the waters of the land to blood. The wells and rivers ran thick and hot and red with the corrupted force of life and vitality. Like Inanna herself, the land bleeds.
One interpretation of this is that the world runs with the goddess’ symbolic menstrual blood, a divine sign that she is not and will not be pregnant with her rapist’s baby (since, as fertility goddess, this is actually something she can indeed control). Since gardens are, as I mentioned, a place deeply associated with love and sex, they are also associated with the vagina and the womb, so blood being called forth from this central garden to drown the world is a clear message that she will not allow this violation to go unpunished. This was righteous fury launched at the city with enormous power but without any control. The bleeding waters turned the land barren and left both the rich and the poor with nothing to drink. All were suffering for the crimes of one man.
Realizing that this is getting her nowhere, Inanna decides to step it up. “Where is he? Where is the man who has raped me? I will search everywhere, I will leave no fucking stone unturned, until I find him!” She roamed through the lands in search of her attacker but could find no sign of him. No one seemed to know anything about what had happened to her, except of course for Shukaletuda himself. He alone knew exactly who she was looking for with such fury and it terrified him. He knew that the wrath of the war goddess would be terrible and merciless and he was not anxious to face it. To try and avoid responsibility for his crime, he snuck over to the home of his father to confess his sins and ask for advice.
“Okay dad, listen up. I fucked up and I need you to be quiet and not say anything until I’m finished. I was supposed to water the garden and build a well to irrigate the soil, but I didn’t do a great job and everything died. I destroyed them all; I pulled them out by the roots for failing to grow. Then the stormwinds came and blew the dust of mountains across the earth and into my eyes. I tried to wipe it out but couldn’t get it all. While I was trying though, I saw this incredibly gorgeous young goddess standing out all by herself. I watched as she went and lay down beneath a tree I had planted, the only thing I had managed to actually grow, and fell asleep. When it was dark, I snuck over to where she lay and I had sex with her there without waking her up. Then I snuck away again before the dawn to return to my garden. Now she’s looking for me. She’s turned the water into blood and says she will not rest until she finds me. What am I supposed to do?”
Shukaletuda’s father is not explicitly identified in the text, but some interpretations say that he is the god Enki himself. As the patron deity of the sweet fertilizing waters of the deep and of arts and crafts, it certainly makes sense for his son to be the first gardener. Whoever the father is, his advice was simple: “My son, go and hide amongst your brothers in the city. She’s looking for you in the mountains and the lowlands, so you shouldn’t be there if you don’t want her to find you.”
Assuming that this mysterious father is Enki, the spirit of civilization, wisdom, and resourcefulness, why is he helping hide someone who has committed a truly heinous crime? There are two possible answers, and both might be true at the same time. One, Inanna is, as I mentioned, indiscriminate in her vengeance. The plague of blood is devastating the entire country and harming all of the people therein, all but one of whom are innocent. Being the god of wisdom and civilization, he might be trying to force Inanna to learn restraint and control, to hone her anger into a scalpel instead of a bomb. She needs to learn wisdom before she can confront her attacker as a divine judge. Two, a core factor of Enki’s character is that he never refuses to help anyone, no matter what. His son has committed a terrible crime, but he’s asked for help and anyone who asks Enki for aid receives it. Anyone.
I’m presuming that Shukaletuda took this advice because, as hard as she looked, Inanna couldn’t find him. Seething, she decided to up the stakes with another plague. Calling down a cloud, the goddess formed it into a seat and rode it up into the heavens. From her airy throne, she summoned the south wind, stirring up a fearsome storm that drowned the land in a terrible flash flood. In her wake trailed the dust devils and the pilipili (worshippers of the goddess and cultic members of her retinue) as the storm raged before her. Its crashing water closed the roads of the city to prevent anyone from fleeing her wrath but still she could not find her assaulter. Shukaletuda was apparently better at hide and seek than he was at gardening. Or at not being a shit person.
This storm and flood are likely symbolic of the fury and hurt and fear still swirling inside the young goddess as she grapples with her violation. She still has not learned to control her emotions enough to direct her fury at the appropriate party, which is especially important in a powerful goddess who can devastate entire cities if she’s not careful. Like now, for instance. Still, she’s learning. The chill waters of the storm are at least natural disasters as opposed to the waters turning to blood in a clear and unmistakable sign of divine rage.
Although the floodwaters had blocked off most of the roads in the city, Shukaletuda apparently was still able to go and see his father. Maybe he waited until the worst of it receded, or maybe he never went all that far from his father’s house in the hopes that the elder’s presence might shelter him from Inanna’s totally justified anger. Again he asked his father what he should do. “Things are getting bad out there, dad. That woman, you remember – the one I raped? Yeah, of course you do. Anyway, she’s apparently behind this flood too. She rode a cloud up into the heavens to summon the storm scourging Eridu and she keeps screaming that she’ll find the man who raped her. Which is me. Just so we’re clear. What do I do?” Again, maybe-Enki recommended that Shukaletuda hide out in the city to avoid the enraged war goddess.
Inanna is learning from her failures here. A plague of blood and wild floods across the city have not forced the rapist to reveal himself, nor has anyone else in the city identified him to her (because only he and his father know his identity). The nature of what exactly the weapon she took up next is lost, but it was clearly much more focused and concentrated than her last two attempts. Taking her whatever it was in hand, she drove it into the dust and blocked all the highways of the city completely but still she could not find her rapist. Again, Shukaletuda somehow manages to find his way to his father’s house and ask for advice, and his father gives him the same speech as the first two times – go and hide in the city. It’s clearly working out for the gardener so far (even though it very much is not working out for everyone else impacted by it), so he can hide as long as he remains utterly selfish.
Another day passed and, at dawn, Utu rose once more above the horizon. Inanna inspected herself again, focusing not only on the harm done to her, but also on the harm she has been doing to innocent people in her totally justified quest for vengeance. After a little self-reflection, she realizes that she’s been going at this the wrong way. Rather than punishing everyone for the sins of a single man, she needs to forge her fury into a blade that can cut only what needs cutting. “Someone needs to pay for what was done to me, but how do I make that actually happen? Maybe I need to go talk to my father Enki for advice. If anyone should be concerned about the violence against me and want to bring the perpetrator to justice, it is he. Plus, he has good advice and may be able to help me do what I haven’t been able to do on my own – catch the rapist.”
As I mentioned, Enki helps all those who ask him for aid, and that most certainly includes the daughter who has been wronged as well as the maybe-son who was the assaulter. And yeah, that would also mean that they are half siblings if Enki is Shulaketuda’s father as well, so we can add incest to the fun mix of terrible crimes on the gardenener’s head. She headed for the abzu of Erdu, the underground aquifer providing fresh water to the city. Given Enki’s position as god of the sweet waters of irrigation, these springs were seen as holy places akin to temples.
Inanna went to her father in his temple and knelt before him. She told him what had been done to her and how she had tried and failed to find the one who had attacked her. “I should be compensated for this! Someone needs to pay for this crime, and I’m not returning to my shrine in Uruk until they do. You are a clever god, father, and so if anyone can give the man who wronged me into my hands for vengeance, it’s you. Will you help me?” Enki nodded. “Of course. So shall it be done!”
With this, the plagues passed and the storm died. Inanna passed across the sky like a rainbow from the abzu down to the city of Erdu. Shukaletuda tried desperately to hide, curling himself into a tight ball to make himself as tiny as possible, but it was no use. Now that Enki was supporting Inanna’s search, there was no way for the gardener to hide. Plus, if Enki is in fact the unnamed father, then he already knew where to tell his daughter to look. She let the south wind pass across the city and then the north wind. She could feel his presence in the air and she hurried to where he cowered. The good advice of his father to lose himself in the city had now become a dead end. There was nowhere to go. Inanna had found her rapist at last.
What she says when she finally confronts her assaulter have unfortunately been lost but the few words that survive paint a surprisingly vivid picture of her cursing him out. All we have are “How? Dog! Ass! Pig!” Terrified but still unwilling to own up to his shit, Shukaletuda tries to explain things away. He uses the exact same excuse, word for word, that he used with his father to try and justify his rape. It basically boils down to “She was there and asking for it; I was frustrated and horny, so you know, boys will be boys and all that.” Inanna listened to his ramblings with a cold clarity. Gone where the hot flashes of rage or the wild bursts of emotion. She has now fully come into her divinity as wise judge of right and wrong.
Don’t get me wrong, she’s not any less justifiably furious with Shulaketuda for his terrible crime. No, she’s just learned that her immense divine power requires her to use it judiciously, to ensure that her rage is wielded with precision to cut away the cancer without damaging the healthy body of the city. Inanna listens to his version of events, letting him talk until he runs out of things to say, excuses to make. “I have listened to your argument and found it unworthy. You are guilty of rape, Shukaletuda, and the punishment for that crime shall be death. There shall be no mercy for a monster such as you. Your name shall be remembered in song forever, your crime writ in bloody letters across the ages. You shall live forever in infamy, but here, today, you shall die.” The exact method of his execution is unclear as most of the end is missing, but it’s clear that Inanna carries through on her judgment. Shukaletuda was finally brought to justice and the city of Erdu ceased to be punished for his crime.
It’s rare that we get a satisfying end to the sexual crimes committed by the men in mythology, especially against women (even goddesses), so it’s refreshing to see Inanna get justice. There’s a reason that she is both a god of love and a god of war, encapsulating the duality of both ends of the spectrum of passion. It can be frustrating at times trying to make sense of these most ancient of stories since so much of the text has been lost to the ravages of time. You can get inscrutable moments like the first ever joke in recorded history from a 4,000 year old Sumerian tablet. “A dog walks into a bar and says ‘I cannot see a thing. I’ll open this one.’” There’s no way to know what it means, possibly involving puns on subtle pronunciation or cultural context that we simply don’t have, but it has the cadence of a joke, tantalizingly just out of reach.
It’s similar with this story with moments like Inanna giving Shukaletuda a much-deserved tongue lashing when she finally finds him, or so it seems at least. There’s no way to know for sure. Even with that uncertainty, it’s fascinating to get a glimpse into the very first civilization and the very first city to ever exist on earth. But now, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s god is Nergal.
If you’re familiar with the lore of Warhammer 40K, then this name is already familiar to you. There’s a reason that Games Workshop straight up borrowed this Sumerian god of war, death, and disease as their chaos god of plague and decay. He was often considered to be one of the rulers of the Mesopotamian underworld, usually on behalf of his parents Enlil and Ninlil or of his wife Ereshkigal (who we met back in Episode 45). Like his father Enlil, chief deity of the pantheon, does for the living, Nergal decides the fates of the dead.
There are two major epics that discuss the plague god: Nergal and Ereshkigal, which deals with their meeting and marriage, and the Epic of Erra, which describes a bored Nergal deciding to go to war for shits and giggles. We’ll cover each in turn very briefly.
In the former, the celestial deities decided to hold a banquet for the gods. By the laws of the divine, the gods of the heavens cannot descend into the Underworld, and vice versa. Ereshkigal, the Mistress of the Underworld, was therefore invited to attend even though everyone knew that it was literally impossible for her to do so. To get around this restriction, the death goddess was invited to send a messenger in her stead to receive her portion of the banquet in her honor. It is important to her father Anu, the skyfather, that his daughter receive her due respect.
Ereshkigal chooses Namtar, her faithful minister, to go as her proxy. His name means ‘fate’ and so whoever attempts to go against Namtar in essence goes against their own fate in the process, which is an extremely difficult thing to do. When the minister arrives after climbing the stairway to heaven (no really), all kneel in respect to the messenger of the great goddess except for Nergal. Why isn’t mentioned. Maybe he’s just an asshole. Whatever the reason, this was a grave insult and one that Ereshkigal demanded be rectified. She insisted that the disease god be sent to see her in the underworld in person to apologize. In one version, it is said that she plans to have him executed when he arrives, but this detail isn’t present in the other two surviving versions.
Before he goes, he seeks out the advice of Ea, also known as Enki. Like I mentioned in the main tale, the clever god of the sweet water never denies anyone who comes to him for help and so he gives the disease god seven demons, all personifications of plagues, to act as bodyguards; he also gives pointers on how to avoid the snares of the underworld. Specifically, he warns Nergal not to break the rules of Irkalla, the underworld: he must not sit on a chair, he must not eat any of the food of the underworld (a common requirement in many pantheons), he must not drink its beer (which I would admittedly be tempted to do), he must not wash his feet in the waters of that dread land and, most importantly, he must absolutely not have sex with Ereshkigal. All but the last rule are related to the usual types of hospitality that would be afforded to a visitor and would be a warning given to anyone visiting the underworld to avoid becoming bound to it. However, in no other story is anyone warned not to fuck the death goddess – maybe Nergal is a slut in addition to being a dick. I bet you can guess what happens next.
In one version, Nergal actually heads down twice though it’s not entirely clear why. The major difference with this version is that, on his second descent, he brings with him a throne made by Enki of many different woods. This gift may be an attempt to appease Ereshkigal for his insult or it may be an attempt to bribe her into letting him escape death. However, such a gift could also be seen as a challenge to her right to rule.
He spends several days in Inkala and studiously abides by all of the rules. All of that goes out the window though when he walks in on Ereshkigal stripping naked to take a bath. Seeing her vulnerable this way, he gives in to his impulsive desires and breaks the last rule – do not fuck the death goddess. They spend six days together having lots and lots of wild god sex, but on the seventh, Nergal is ready to return to the world above. He waits until Ereshkigal is sleeping and then slips out of the underworld without saying goodbye. To be fair, sneaking out is probably the only way to escape the underworld alive for most entities. The goddess of death is notoriously jealous of her domain and doesn’t like to let anyone leave. And he did break one of the rules after all, so she’d be very much in her right to refuse his request to leave.
Naturally, Ereshkigal, who we just said was very jealous, didn’t take his morning after vanishing act well. She is completely smitten with the god of plagues and isn’t done jumping his bones by a long shot. Besides – it’s lonely being the god of the underworld and she doesn’t want to go back to that after Nergal effectively promised not to leave her. He was warned very explicitly not to sleep with her, after all. Upon his return, Nergal asked Enki to ritually purity him in the hopes that she wouldn’t be able to locate him, which kind of works. She may not know where her vanished lover is exactly, but she very much does know how to find him – she sends Namtar to the heavens as her emissary again. With him, she sends a warning – if they do not return Nergal to her, then she will open the gates of death and allow the dead to return to the world of the living. And yes, this would totally be a Night of the Living Dead situation, one the gods are very anxious to avoid.
When he arrives, the emissary does not recognize Nergal partly in thanks to the ritualistic washing but also because the young god has removed his horned helm of office to hide. Enki generously offers to let Namtar search the heavens for Nergal, but of course the clever god’s magic works and Namtar is forced to return to his mistress empty-handed. Enki has technically acceded to his daughter’s demand while still also helping out the young god who had asked for help. Enki is clever like that.
The next bit of the tablet is missing, which leaves us completely unsure why exactly we soon find Nergal storming the gates of the underworld in a fury. Coming into his own as a war god, he fights his way single-handedly through the entire realm of Inkala until he reaches Ereshkigal on her throne. Laughing mockingly, he strides up to her, seizes her by the hair, and drags her bodily off her pedestal. It’s looking a lot like a coup right about now but instead, he embraces the death goddess and kisses her passionately. They then retreat to the bedchamber for another seven days of furious fucking. The last bit is again missing but it seems clear that Anu names Nergal the king of the underworld, a coequal ruler to his queen. His whole storming of hell thing seemed to be mostly a show of power to prove that he was worthy to rule by her side.
In the Epic of Erra, Nergal finds himself very bored and decides to throw a war to spice things up. It’s not clear if this is before or after he becomes king of the underworld, but it seems likely that this is before. He is called Erra here, the god of mayhem and pestilence who is responsible for political upheaval but that god was later rolled into Nergal so this is also his story. His weapons, seven minor war gods known as the Sibitti, urge him on to bloodshed and chaos while his adviser Ishum, the divine watchman, counsels against it. Nergal listens to the Sibitti and sets his sights on Babylon as his first prize. He tricks the patron god of the city Marduk (who we met in Episode 25), here depicted as a doddering ruler who should have been replaced long ago, to leave the temple that is his seat of power.
Unfortunately, Nergal isn’t quick enough to capitalize on Marduk’s absence, and the ruler returns to Babylon before the attack can begin. Pissed off, he gives a long speech to the other gods, vowing to give them a reason to remember him and plunging the world into chaos. Ishum again tries to talk him down, but has no more luck the second time. Nergal’s attacks keep getting bigger and bolder until Marduk is forced to leave his temple again, leaving the world at the war god’s mercy. Countless innocents suffer under his bloody heel but still Nergal is not satisfied and he vows to step things up even farther by eliminating all remaining voices of peace and to shatter the cosmic order completely.
Ishum realizes that Nergal is never going to listen to reason, so he instead decides to throw his own war. The watchman targets Mount Sharshar, a site mystically associated with this period of chaos and warfare, attacking the inhabitants. His war is described very differently from the war god’s – instead of senseless, chaotic bloodshed that sees the just and the unjust alike torn open on the blade of battle, his strike is surgical. He achieves victory and in doing so brings this period of chaos to an end. Nergal is content with his own achievements as well as those won by his attendant and so he agrees to let the violence end. The other gods have noticed him and taken heed of his rage, so he has no further need to fight. For a time anyway, although it sure feels like Nergal is on the rampage again lately.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Instagram as MythsYourTeacherHatedPod, on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated, on Bluesky as MythsPodcast, and on Mastodon as MythsYourTeacherHated. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
I recently guested on an episode of Wait, You Haven’t Seen with TV’s Travis where we talked about one of my favorite movies RRR – Rise Roar Revolt, which Travis had never seen before. It’s an incredible Telugu film that mixes historical revolutionaries with epic Indian mythology in a visually stunning way. If you’ve also never seen it, I highly recommend checking it out. Either way, you should listen to the RRR episode of Wait, You Haven’t See to hear Travis and I discuss the film and the mythology behind it.
Next time, we’re coincidentally headed to the ancient kingdom of Maripur in what is now modern-day India for a story of thievery and raining pastries. You’ll see that you should pick your friends better, that not everyone can pull off royal fashion, and that mother knows best. Then, in Gods and Monsters, you probably shouldn’t drink from the fountain of tigers. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.