An invitation to the wedding of Inanna and Dumuzi:
A contextual paper on the one woman performance.
Raelene Bruinsma
Performance Credits:
Songwriting by Raelene Bruinsma
Spoken text by Raelene Bruinsma and Robin Davidson.
Direction by Robin Davidson
Abstract
This paper contextualises a performance presentation that is a re-working
of a one woman show which appeared in its original form as a “work in progress”
17th September 2011 in Canberra, Australia. It is part of a creative PhD research
project exploring the relevance of the 5000 year old mythic stories and poems of
the Ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna to contemporary women. The main methods
of exploration involve story and a range of storytelling approaches both theatrical
and musical.
Ancient Sumer existed between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, a place
currently known as Iraq. It was a place where writing was invented, and
agriculture, arts and music flourished. Much of the year the land was dry and
barren. But with the ritual marriage and sexual union of Inanna to the king of the
day – considered the earthly embodiment of her heavenly consort Dumuzi –the
floods would come and the land would prosper with abundant fertility.
An examination of the poetry relating to the above story shows there are
other stories embedded within: beautiful stories of love, romance, and sexual
flourishing; and darker stories suggesting cultural control and manipulation.
The performance being presented stands as a form of “autoethnographic”
research output where story is data (what is being studied), method (how it is being
studied) and result (the outcome of the research – alongside a written exegesis).
You will experience personal stories of the performer woven together with the
ancient poems and contextual stories of the sacred marriage. You will hear original
songs, watch a ritual re-enactment and be transported back to Ancient Sumer
through the sensual language of the poetry.
Key Words: Performance, feminism, sexuality, songwriting, singing, ritual,
Sacred Marriage, autoethnography, practice-led research.
*****
2
Title of (e)Book Chapter
__________________________________________________________________
They tell me I am lucky,
And I collude.
My feet are not bound,
I am not covered,
Denied humanity
Nor stoned.
And so my protests wither on their way to my mouth.
Mutely, I bind myself to expectations,
Cover my passion, deny my power,
And stone myself silent.
Still,
Within me lives a Power:
A Passion;
A Joy so strong,
So exultantly wild,
It can find no foothold
In this feminine wasteland.
Demoted to rage
It bubbles and boils within.
Molten mercury
Seeping through cracks and crevices
Like unexpected vapours in unexpected moments.
Saying without saying,
Accusing without sound.
If I could find my voice I would scream:
“Do not bind me to half a life
With false gratitude
To a society which paints me
For a lesser creature than I am.
For there is no more room
Left within me
To be less
Than I am.
I am woman,
And that is enough.” 1
Many feminist scholars have turned to the 5000 year old stories and poems
of the Ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna to attempt to fill the hole they perceive in
Name and Surname of Author(s)
3
__________________________________________________________________
Western culture created by the silencing of women's voices2 and the lack of positive
affirming images of strong womanhood3.
Additionally, I believe, contemporary culture lacks images of healthy
empowered female sexuality to counter what Liz Byrski4 describes as “the
pornographic wallpaper” with which we are bombarded, and which presents an
homogenised unrealistic ideal of how women should look and behave. Here some
scholars turn particularly to the Inanna-Dumuzi love songs.
Nancy Tuana5, for example, in her paper Coming to Understand: Orgasm
and the Epistemology of Ignorance, criticises the epistemological lack of rigour in
investigating a sophisticated knowledge of female sexual biology beyond the
reproductive system. She quotes the following as evidence of ancient knowledge of
women's multi-orgasmic potential:
He caressed me on the… fragrant honey-bed.
My sweet love, lying by my heart,
Tongue playing, one by one,
My fair Dumuzi did so fifty times.
Now my sweet love is stated. 6
I also turned to the stories of Inanna for similar reasons. Struggling to
express a strong energy that I felt was trapped within myself, I hoped to
simultaneously: create an entertaining piece of storytelling performance using
original song and other storytelling methods; bring the stories to a wider audience
to provide alternative images of womanhood; and express the strong self that I find
hard to positively experience when I feel my culture doesn’t value it.
Once I began to scratch the surface I discovered that the stories behind and
within the poems are complex: they represent not only potential empowerment, but
also disempowerment for women.
This paper attempts to not only contextualise the performance I will be
presenting in Prague – which is itself a reworking of an “in progress” performancediscussion forum which first took place as in Canberra, Australia, September 20117
as part of my PhD research – but also to provide another narrative journey through
my creative and scholarly encounter with the Inanna-Dumuzi Love Songs.8
The Courtship: a love story.
My first contact with the love poetry of Inanna and Dumuzi was in the
form of the story presented as if one of four chapters in the life story of a goddess9:
the chapter where she falls in love and gets married.
I had come to the Victorian State Library in Melbourne in search of
translations of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld. This myth had been
suggested10 to me as a possible centre piece for to creating a one woman show
4
Title of (e)Book Chapter
__________________________________________________________________
using song and other performative storytelling methods. My motivating model for
this goal had been a one man show, Orpheus by a singer songwriter named Simon
Oats11. I’d loved it: entertaining, thought provoking, and soulful.
I sat in my chair, hunched forward, elbows on knees with Wolkstein and
Kramer's Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth12 on my lap. I had found my story.
Or should I say “stories.” My performance, I thought, should include all four
stories: they were chapters in a whole. It was as much the beautiful language and
rhythm of the poetry that drew me in, as the overarching story itself.
In the first days,
In the very first days,
In the first nights,
In the very first nights
When everything needed was brought into being13
My project was growing, and it was not long before I decided to apply to
do it as a practice-led, or creative production, PhD: a decision which resulted in my
move to Perth to study at Curtin University with a scholarship about a year later.
I was particularly drawn to the tender, vulnerable poetry of The
Courtship.
Sweet is the sleep of hand to hand,
Sweeter still is the sleep of heart to heart.14
I have always struggled to be vulnerable enough for such intimacy, and I
felt comforted by the simple tenderness of those lines. The sense of two human
beings softly naked together, in the trust of sleep was soothing. I wanted to put
some of this poetry to music and feel those sentiments in my own voice. And I
have, in fact, put those two lines to music in the performance.
The plot is simple: Inanna’s brother tells her it’s her time to marry; she is
courted by Dumuzi; initially resists; their mutual desire; she proclaims that he’s the
“man of her heart”; they marry in a ceremony with lavish preparation, followed by
a tender and erotic consummation; sated, Dumuzi begs Inanna to set him free.
While there were troubling elements about this plot for a feminist like me,
such as the role of Inanna's brother, and the possible implication that Dumuzi was
‘trapped ‘by Inanna's voracious sexual appetite, these were eclipsed by the beauty
of the poetry, and by my knowledge that Inanna did not ‘give up her power’ on
getting married, she remained Queen of Heaven and Earth.
The therapist in me – I am a registered music therapist with some
additional experience of depth psychology – saw Inanna's quests as parallel to
developmental phases of life, and, like Marianne Kimmit15 as a much more
appropriate model for women than traditional Western psychology provides. The
Name and Surname of Author(s)
5
__________________________________________________________________
heroic elements symbolised the challenges we must psychologically face as we
grow first into adulthood, and then grow across the lifespan. Exploring the love
poetry, I hoped, would give some clues as to ways in which I, and others, as
contemporary women, could surrender to the positive elements of romantic love,
without giving up and losing ourselves, as we have historically been required to do,
and often continue to do of our own accord.
I was also struck by Inanna’s uninhibited joy in, and celebration of, her
body and her sexuality.
Plough my vulva, man of my heart
Behold, my breasts have become firm,
Behold, my nakedness has sprouted hair,
Baba, going to the lap of the bridegroom, let us rejoice!
Dance! Dance!
Baba, for my nakedness let us rejoice!16
I found this inspiring, but also confronting. My own experience of
entering physical and sexual maturity was somewhat less celebratory. It made me
feel self-conscious, unsafe in the face of predatory men, and somehow that I was
always not living up to some standard I didn’t understand. To publicly allow my
sexuality to be seen was to invite trouble. In an early research journal entry I
wrote:
How can a contemporary woman who has had such
an assault on her sexuality (through cultural
“splitting” of women into mothers or whores;
through actual sexual assaults; through the negative
connotations associated with words that describe
female genitalia; through the lack of words, or
failure to use words to describe female genital;
through conflicting expectations and judgements of
how we do or don’t express our sexuality), how could
we relate to a goddess who upon entering adulthood
leans against a tree and praises her genitalia? Can I
imagine myself leaning against a tree and praising
my vulva? Even just in performance?17
The breakdown of the overarching story concept
In the early stages of my research, despite having evidence of at least one
other Inanna story18, I did not seriously question my ‘developmental lifespan
6
Title of (e)Book Chapter
__________________________________________________________________
model.’ I also believed Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth19 to be the definite
most up to date translation available.
In 2011 I went on a research field trip to view archaeological artefacts US
museums. A caution from archaeologist Richard Zettler20, curator of the Near East
Section of the Pennsylvania University Museum21, via an email from William
Hafford22 to not perceive stories as unified, cemented my growing realisation that
the overarching story concept was a construct of folklorist Diane Wolkstein.23
Zsolnay, a tablet expert at the same museum, alerted me to the existence
of the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature or ETCSL.24 This an online
collection of more recent translations of Ancient Sumerian literature, created to
“meet the need for a coherently and systematically published, universally available
textual corpus.”
Zsolnay also recommended I read Sefati’s Love Songs in Sumerian
Literature25, a book which not only includes all of the love poems that have been
catalogued and translated, it provides a commentary and analysis of the problems,
in some cases discusses some of the alternative analyses that have been made, and
gives a comprehensive summary of the contextual information and debates relating
to the love poetry.
From perusing the ETCSL and the Sefati texts, the three facts became
evident.
Firstly, The Courtship as a story was, like the overarching story idea, a
construct of Wolkstein’s, created by linking several songs together. In fact there
were many more songs than Wolkstein had included, and much of the material I
have included in my performance comes from some of these others. This
knowledge was affirming: I had never fully comprehended the chronology of the
poems. Inanna and Dumuzi always seemed to be just about to have sex, and then to
have had sex, and then be preparing to have sex for the first time. Additionally, I
had always imagined creating love songs from pieces of the text, and had already
begun. The first three lines of the following are taken from Wolkstein and Kramer
(1983) and the next two lines are mine, added to carry forward my perception of
the intent and to create a workable musical form.
What I tell you let the singer weave into song
What I tell you let it flow from ear to mouth
What I tell you let it pass from old to young
I am Inanna and I’m ready for Love,
I am Inanna and I’m ready for love26
Secondly, The niggling discomforts I had about some of the seemingly
sexist connotations in some of the love poetry grew as I encountered more
Name and Surname of Author(s)
7
__________________________________________________________________
examples of an apparently patriarchal frame of reference within the poetry. An
example would be the poem that was to become in my performance the song
Usumgalana27. In this song I use my ‘loop station’, a piece of equipment on which
I can create musical loops in real time, to create a backing track. Over the top of
this I sing text, sometimes in character as Inanna, and sometimes as Dumuzi. The
poem tells the story of Usumgalana sexually pursuing a seemingly unwilling
Inanna before they are married. It is difficult to tell whether her resistance is
genuine lack of interest, coy flirtation, or genuine fear of moral recrimination, but
she responds by indicating she would not know how to explain her absence to her
mother. The following lyrics are Dumuzi's response to this adapted from the
Sefati28 version:
“Let me teach you, let me teach you, let me teach you the lies of
women,
This you could tell your mother
This is what you could tell your mother for a lie and stay with me”
Although I have found no way of dating the songs relative to each other, I
hypothesised to myself that some had been written at an earlier time when
women’s status had been higher, and others during its decline. Kenton Sparks29, in
analysing the Hebrew Song of Songs, which is often considered to be derived from
the Inanna-Dumuzi love songs postulates that the collection was created by
someone using existing poems but changing them to promote the moral political
agenda for women at the time. I wondered if perhaps some of the Inanna-Dumuzi
songs had already undergone a similar transformation once patriarchy had begun to
set in.
And thirdly, the love poetry actually pertained to an ancient Sacred
Marriage or kinship ritual. This became in my mind the overarching story within
which the love poetry sat.
The Sacred Marriage
According to Sefati30 the Sacred Marriage was a ceremony in which the
goddess Inanna was ritually married to the King of the time. The King was
considered to be the earthly stand-in for Dumuzi. Whether or not there was a standin for Inanna, or whether the sex rites were purely ritualised, is debated. Joanna
Stuckey31 presents evidence to suggest that an ‘En-priestess’, who was considered
an incarnation of Inanna, performed the rights. One of the songs in my
performance poses the question from Inanna's point of view “Who is the girl who
stands in for me?”
Stuckey32 also postulates that the kingship ritual grew out of an earlier
“goddess making” ritual designed to bring the earth to fertility, which would be
8
Title of (e)Book Chapter
__________________________________________________________________
consistent with my sense that some of the poems and stories had been recast to suit
patriarchal political ends.
There were four phases to the ritual: the courtship, which involved bride
and groom dowries, flirtatious episodes, and seemingly a declaration of love; the
marriage ceremony; the sex rites; and a large celebratory banquet. The ceremony is
believed to have lasted two days. Instrumental music, singing - including a chorus,
and feasting were all part of this. As a result, I sometimes ask my audience to sing
along.
Another debate relates to whether the purpose of the ritual was to actually
confer the validity of the new king’s reign, or just to assure the success of it in the
form of prosperity, abundance and success in battle.33 It seems that there were
times in history when all three major deities: Inanna; An, the sky god; and Enlil,
the air god and ruler of the deities, were required to confirm the validity of the
kings reign.34 Either way, this meant that Inanna could be seen as having been used
as a tool in establishing male sovereignty. No longer was she the empowering, selfactualised, model of my fantasy.
Conclusion
During my stay in Philadelphia, the place where my knowledge and
access to contextual material suddenly expanded beyond my wildest dreams thanks
to the encouragement and support of a number of staff at the Pennsylvania
University Museum, I had a sudden insight that my research was less about finding
out whose perception of Inanna and her stories was historically accurate, and much
more about the various ways in which people – including the Sumer experts and
myself - make meaning from them. After all, my research question is:
How do the stories and poems of Inanna continue to speak to contemporary
women?
The archaeological evidence was important in this for me, but it was not
the only factor. In autoethnographic research we are encouraged to realise and
acknowledge the biases and personal experiences that we bring to, and thus shape
the way we view, our material.35 Even archaeologists, despite the rigourous
evidence-based nature of their research, are viewing that evidence through the lens
of their own life experiences. And those experiences, even for female
archaeologists, have been had in a culture which has been patriarchal for thousands
of years. And even if some of the meaning that some people make of the stories
and poems is not consistent with historic evidence, it does not change the fact that
the stories have had profoundly positive influences on the lives of many women.
In the end perhaps the important thing is how we engage with mythic
stories, rather than trying to find an absolute truth within them. It is, I believe,
Name and Surname of Author(s)
9
__________________________________________________________________
unwise to expect to find an absolute role model for how to live life from any
source. This is, after all, the road of fundamentalism. There is also much criticism
of the trend in some spheres to attempt to universalise stories that are clearly
culturally specific36. Having said that, I have myself been immersed in the world of
dreams and imagery as a form of personal growth, I believe there is incredible
personal enrichment to be found from engaging with the concept of archetypes and
universal grand stories, so long as one remains wary of cultural appropriation,
something that is perhaps not so large an issue with the culture long gone, but from
which echoes can be found in contemporary culture.
Effectively, for me, the Inanna stories have provided, and continue to do
so, an opportunity for critical thinking about these issues, as well as a vehicle for
creatively exploring them. It also offers a mirror for some of the challenges I – and
most women – face. It seems that Inanna, if I can claim that name as representing
something approximating an identity, has at times succumbed to and participated in
her own disempowerment. This can be seen in some of the love poetry, as well as
in some of the other stories. At other times the stories and poems demonstrate her
refusal to submit to patriarchy, her struggle to fight and overcome it, and her
determination to become everything that it was in her power in destiny to be.
Notes
1
Raelene Bruinsma, They tell me I’m lucky: unpublished poem performed as part of one woman show, Venus Envy
(Melbourne, 2003, Gundagai, 2005).
2
For example Anne Lickus Cravens, Elephant Dreams: An exploration into the importance of re-storying. Thesis. (Santa
Barbara: Pacifica Graduate Institute, 1999).
3
Marianne Sturges, ‘Beyond the feminine stereotype: A more holistic self concept for women and men through the
discovery of female mythology.’ In Advanced Development, (1993), 5, 59-71.
4
Liz, Byrski, Claiming the Future – why we still need feminism unpublished address for International Women’s Day, (8th
March 2012).
5
Nancy Tuana ‘Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance.’ In Hypatia,(2004) 19(1), 194-232.
6
Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer (New
York: Harper and Row, 1983).
7
Raelene Bruinsma, An invitation to the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi. Canberra (‘in progress’ performance and
discussion forum, Canberra: 2011).
8
Ancient text. My sources included: Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her
Stories and Hymns from Sumer (New York: Harper and Row, 1983); Yitschak Sefati, Love songs in Sumerian literature :
critical edition of the Dumuzi Inanna songs (Ramat Gan: BarIlan University Press, 1998); and the Electronic Text Corpus of
Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/general.php Various contributors published translations of Ancient
Sumerian texts to this website. 2003-2006).
9
Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Ibid.
10
By Robin Davidson, the theatrical director for the project. (http://www.robindavidson.co-operista.com)
11
Simon Oats. Orpheus [Live one man show]. (Melbourne: 2008, 2010).
12
Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Ibid.
13
Ibid.
14
Ibid.
15
Marianne Kimmitt, Female midlife transitions: Dreaming the myth on. Thesis. (Santa Barbara: Pacifica Graduate Inst,
2000).
16
Although I had not yet discovered this source at the time I am writing about, I felt this was a particularly good example of
the concept I am expressing: Yitschak Sefati, Love songs in Sumerian literature : critical edition of the Dumuzi Inanna
songs (Ramat Gan: BarIlan University Press, 1998), 137.
17
This quote is from my unpublished research journal (Melbourne, 2009). The moment I am describing in which Inanna
leans against a tree and praises her vulva comes from the story Inanna and the God of Wisdom (In Wolkstein & Kramer
Ibid) but follows the same theme.
18
Samuel Noah Kramer, The Sumerians: their history, culture, and character (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1963).
19
Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Ibid.
20
Richard Zettler was an archaeologist involved in excavating the Inanna temple at Nippur, and kindly showed me around
the museum storeroom as there was not a relevant display open to the public at the time of my visit.
21
According to Kramer, Pennsylvania University Museum was one of the three main museums that artefacts of the early
excavations were taken to. The others were the Oriental Institute in Chicago, which I also visited, and the Istanbul
Archaeological Museum. Translating the clay tablets on which the stories are written involved reassembling fragments held
in different parts of the world.
22
William Hafford is a consulting scholar at the Unniversity of Pennsylvania Museum, in the Near East Section. He is also a
writer and mutual acquaintance of a friend in Melbourne who introduced us by email, giving me the opportunity to meet
specialists in the field. This information was sent to me by email before we met in 2011.
23
Diana Wolkstein in Diane Wolkstein & Samuel Noah Kramer, Ibid.
24
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/, began in 2003 and provides a collection
of the most up to date translations of Sumerian literature until the funding stopped in 2006. There are many contributors,
sometimes even to eavh individual story or poem translation.
25
Yitschak Sefati, Ibid.
26
Raelene Bruinsma, Ready for Love, unpublished song (Melbourne, 2009).
27
Raelene Bruinsma, Usumgalana, unpublished song (Perth, 2011).
28
Yitschak Sefati, Ibid.
29
Kenton Sparks, Wisdom for Young Jewish Women.’ In The Catholic biblical quarterly (2008), 70(2) 277-299.
30
Yitschak Sefati, Ibid.
31
Joanna Stuckey, ‘Inanna and the "Sacred Marriage"’ In Matrifocus, 4(2), (2005).
32
Ibid.
33
Yitschak Sefati, Ibid.
34
Yitschak Sefati, Love songs in Sumerian literature : critical edition of the Dumuzi Inanna songs (Ramat Gan: BarIlan
University Press, 1998); Ilona Zsolnay, The Function of Istar in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: A Contextual Analysis of
the Actions Attributed to Istar in the Inscriptions of Ititi through Salmaneser III. Thesis. (Boston: Brandeis University,
2009).
35
E.g. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur Bochner, ‘Autoethnography, personal narrative, reflexivity: researcher as subject’ in
Handbook of Qualatative Research. Edited by N.K. Denzin, & Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 2000).
36
Michael Wilson, Storytelling and Theatre: contemporary storytellers and their art (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006).
Bibliography
Bruinsma, Raelene. (Artist). They tell me I'm lucky. Melbourne: unpublished poem from one woman show ‘Venus Envy’,
2003.
Bruinsma, Raelene. (Artist). Unpublished research journal. Melbourne, 2009.
Bruinsma, Raelene. (Artist). Tell you a story. Perth: unpublished song, 2011.
Bruinsma, Raelene. (Artist). Usumgalana. Perth: unpublished song, 2011a.
Bruinsma, Raelene., & Davidson, Robin. (Artists). An invitation to the sacred marriage of Inanna and Dumuzi. Canberra
and Perth: unpublished performance text, 2011.
Byrski, Liz. Claiming the Future – why we still need feminism. Curtin University: unpublished
address for International Women's Day, 8th March 2012.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/edition2/general.php Various contributors
published translations of Ancient Sumerian texts to this website. 2003-2006.
Grijalva, Karen. Reclaiming the Erotic Self: Goddess Spirituality and Recovery from Rape. Thesis. (2010).
Hafford, William. Personal communication. (Consulting scholar, Unniversity of Pennsylvania Museum, Near East Section),
Philadelphia: 2011.
Jones, Phillip. ‘Embracing Inana: Legitimation and Mediation in the Ancient Mesopotamian Sacred Marriage Hymn IddinDagan.’ In Journal of the American Oriental Society, 123(2), 291-302. 2003.
Kimmitt, Marianne. Female midlife transitions: Dreaming the myth on. Thesis. Santa Barbara: Pacifica Graduate Inst, US,
2000.
Kramer, Samuel. From the tablets of Sumer. Colorado: Falcon's Wing Press, 1956.
Kramer, Samuel. The Sumerians: their history, culture, and character. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963.
Lickus Cravens, Anne. Elephant Dreams: An exploration into the importance of re-storying. Thesis. Santa Barbara: Pacifica
Graduate Inst, US, 1999.
Oats, Simon. (Artist). Orpheus [Live one man show]. Melbourne: 2008, 2010.
Perera, Silvia. Descent to the Goddess: a Way of Initiation for Women. Toronto: Inner City Books, 1981.
Rohrlich, Ruby. ‘State Formation in Sumer and the Subjugation of Women.’ In Feminist Studies, 6(1), 76-102, 1980.
Sefati, Yitshak. Love songs in Sumerian literature : critical edition of the Dumuzi Inanna songs. Ramat Gan: BarIlan
University Press, 1998.
Sparks, Kenton. ‘The Song of Songs: Wisdom for Young Jewish Women.’ The Catholic biblical quarterly, 70(2), 277-299,
2008.
Starhawk. Truth or Dare. New York: Harper and Row, 1987.
Starhawk. http://www.starhawk.org/: Terrapin. Retrieved 1st October. 2010, 2002 - 2010.
Stuckey, Joanna. ‘Inanna and the "Sacred Marriage"’. In Matrifocus, 4(2), 2005.
Sturges, Marianne. ‘Beyond the feminine stereotype: A more holistic self concept for women and men through the
discovery of female mythology.’ In Advanced Development, 5, 59-71, 1993.
Tuana, Nancy. ‘Coming to Understand: Orgasm and the Epistemology of Ignorance.’ In Hypatia, 19(1), 194 – 232, 2004.
Wilson, Micheal. Storytelling and Theatre: contemporary storytellers and their art. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2006.
Wolkstein, Diane., & Kramer, Samuel. Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns from Sumer. New
York: Harper and Row, 1983.
Zsolnay, Ilona. The Function of Istar in the Assyrian Royal Inscriptions: A Contextual Analysis of the Actions Attributed to
Istar in the Inscriptions of Ititi through Salmaneser III. Thesis. Boston: Brandeis University, 2009.
Zsolnay, Ilona. personal communication, 2011.