“Finally, they came to the Great Apple Tree, in Kulaba, the part of Uruk where Inanna usually lived. There were shepherds playing their flutes. Dumuzi was sitting, motionless. Facing a large stage. Apparently unperturbed. But how could he be unaware of his lover’s predicament? Had he forgotten her? Inanna’s eyes looked daggers. She said: ‘He’s the one, take him!’ The Galla quickly grabbed him by the legs. They tied him up and beat him. Dumuzi called on Utu, the Sun, to save him. He slipped through the Galla’s hands like a snake. And took refuge with his sister, Geshtinanna. But the Galla found him and caught him again. He couldn’t escape. Dumuzi ceased to be Inanna’s lover and became her substitute in the Underworld. Inanna herself had chosen him.

“The one goal of the seven Galla demons was to capture more and more inhabitants for the Underworld. For them the young god Dumuzi was the most precious of prizes. They tormented him, pursued him, laid siege to him, yet were never sated. They wanted him dead. In the end, Dumuzi was trapped and killed in the place where he felt most at home: his shepherd’s hut.

“They covered his lifeless body with a linen cloth, like a basket of dates. Next to it there was a dog, who ate something, then curled up at Dumuzi’s feet. There was a crow in the hut as well. And the crow, too, was eating something. Then it flew off. In the night, Inanna came. She repeated the same words over and over: ‘Oh, you who lie here, you watched over me!’ She left a gift by the body stretched on the ground: a goatskin full of water. ‘Essential in the desert,’ Inanna muttered to herself.”

“Inanna and Dumuzi’s story had begun with a linen sheet. Small or large, it’s something you have to have, Inanna’s brother, Utu, the Sun, told her. Right, said Inanna, but it will have to be spun, woven, whitened. Who is going to do that? I’ll handle it, said Utu. And when I’ve got this wedding sheet, asked Inanna, who’s going to get under it with me? Dumuzi the shepherd, Utu replied. No, said Inanna, I don’t want a shepherd. Their wool is coarse. A farmer would offer a lot more. But Utu talked about the shepherd’s tasty cream. And Dumuzi was Ea’s son. In the end, Inanna rubbed herself with perfumed oil, put on her necklace of lapis lazuli, picked up her seal, and opened the door. Moonlight filtered from the room. Dumuzi came in, bearing a bowl of thick cream. Inanna spread the linen sheet on the bed.”

“Descending to the Underworld, Inanna threw down a challenge no other god had dared to make. But the result was her first and only defeat. Those three days and nights hanging ignominiously from a meat hook in a place crawling with feathered, dust-eating larvae amounted to a last warning. No longer would she be able to proclaim her unlimited capacity for expansion. But for the other gods, too, her descent to the Underworld opened wounds that would never heal. In the past, they had thought to fashion men as their substitutes. It was a strategy that lightened their burden without requiring any great effort. All they had to do was kill a rather obscure god and mix his blood with some clay.