For this Women’s day I decided to revisit an ancient myth about the Goddess Inanna and an “incel” Shu-kale-tuda (or Shukaletuda, or Šukaletuda). This 4000 years old myth shows one way of how gender power relationships can function – this time, a myth provides an important insight about the woman’s body autonomy as it was understood in the Mesopotamian ancient society, or modern-day Iraq.
This myth is not interesting just as a window into the past of women’s autonomy over their bodies. It serves to connect mysticism, beauty and romanticism with dynamics of social discipline and natural order. What’s more important, the dynamics of this myth are relevant even today.
About Inanna
Goddess Inanna has received a lot of attention in the last few decades as the ancient history of the Mesopotamian people started to get uncovered.
Inanna was an adored Goddess of love, beauty, sex, fertility, war, and political power, embodying both creation and destruction in society in the ancient Mesopotamian society. This tradition was later continued as the Goddess Astarte and Goddess Ishtar, whose names some connect as the namesake of Easter, the Christian most important holiday.
after Inanna had gone around the heavens, after she had gone around the earth,
after she had gone around Elam and Subir,
after she had gone around the intertwined horizon of heaven,
the mistress became so tired that when she arrived there she lay down by its roots.
And a huge part of Inanna’s existing appeal is preserved through the writings of priestess Enheduanna. Her writings thread between adoration, erotic, obedience, worship and friendship – through centuries, Inanna was seen as a powerful feminine ideal in myths, stories or poems.
One of those stories is the myth about Inanna and Shu-kale-tuda.
Inanna and the story about Shukaletuda
While the story can be found fully readable here, we’ll provide a quick summary with emphasis on today’s theme of the International Women’s day.
Shu-kale-tudu is a gardener who sees Inanna while she is resting beneath a tree. He violates her in her sleep, committing a grave offense.
- The violation in question, although not named, for a human being, is rape.
- The image might be euphemized not just to make it less difficult to process, but also because the rules of human order do not apply to Gods. This is confirmed by Inanna’s reaction.
- It also serves as an emphasis of Inanna’s grandiosity and personal power as she starts to reclaim the offense in her own narrative.
When Inanna wakes up, she realizes the crime and searches for the perpetrator.
The first step in seeking justice was filling all the water wells of the ancient Sumer with her own blood, so that blood is “irrigating the orchard crops, and they are producing blood. All the Sumerian people are drinking blood”.
- Inanna, at this point, is one with nature.
so it was blood that the irrigated orchards of the Land yielded,
it was blood that the slave who went to collect firewood drank,
it was blood that the slave girl who went out to draw water drew,
and it was blood that the black-headed people drank.
She said: “I will search everywhere for the man who had sex with me”. But nowhere could she find the man who had had sex with her.
Šu-kale-tuda tries to hide from her. He goes to see his father, who suggests he hides into the city among the other Sumerians.
- This is where the story gets even more complex on several levels:
- It’s about social responsibility: we can see a tangible fear of Nature’s wrath in a case when a rapist could hide among the population. What is the responsibility of a society towards Nature, in this case, Inanna?
- It’s about upbringing and compliance – what kind of society does staying in silence create? What is the punishment for a society that perpetuates violence against a woman?
- And the most nuanced question of all: father recognizes the grave sin his son made and who he made it against. He still decides to protect his son. He is redeemed, as he’s not individually punished, by the pity Inanna has towards blind love of a parent towards their children.
Inanna fills the wells up for the second time, but the criminal hides. Inanna then blocks the roads and land in order to find the culprit – yet he still hides.
To resolve the situation, Inanna went to the elder wisdom god, Enki. She asks for justice and the perpetrator to be found. Enki obliges immediately and searches through the cosmic waters for Shukaletuda.
- This implies, in my opinion, two things.
- Justice is no longer just personal: it’s institutionalized. Inanna seeks assistance based on her own authority but also because her cause is just.
- Secondly, and going beyond the human world: the perpetrator will be found, at any time, at any place, as the offense was a violation of the Sacred. This adds a transcendental, spiritual dimension to the rather profane crime of the rapist.
Holy Inanna directed her steps to the abzu of Eridu and, because of this, prostrated herself on the ground before him and stretched out her hands to him:
“Father Enki, I should be compensated! What’s more, someone should pay for what happened to me! I shall only re-enter my shrine E-ana satisfied after you have handed over that man to me from the abzu.”
Ultimately, Inanna finds Shu-kale-tuda and punishes him. This is done after listening to his testimony. He was a failed gardener and an incompetent man that knowingly transgressed the boundary of Inanna.
- This is confirmed by the following words: “but not a single plant remained there, not even one, I had pulled them all out by their roots and destroyed them”.
Inanna emphasizes that his death is irrelevant to her. His death is only a part of the punishment, reflective only in the human world.
- The real punishment is that this event is transferred to a story, with his name echoing the shame such transgression holds. This is something comprehensible intellectually and by us, but its duration makes it more the realm of the Gods.
Woman’s body, woman’s power, woman’s justice – women’s spirituality
There are several points worth considering more in this myth.
If Inanna represents the womanhood – the body, the erotic and yes – sex – rape is considered not just as a horrible physical act, but something unnatural, unholy and sub-human.
This representation is done on several instances: the whole land objects when Inanna is defiled as a woman. As Judy Graham points out, blood seeping through the wells evokes a lot of menstrual imagery. For the Sumerians, the land was the body of a woman; that’s why being a good farmer was as important as being a good lover.
Inanna, in many stories, cherishes the sexual aspects of her being and the fertile land is successful due to the efforts of the farmer. Dumuzi, her mythological lover, was a shepherd god, linked to pastoral life, abundance, and the cycle of seasons. All this considered, we can see why rape is seen as unnatural and an unholy act.
Sub-human might be a bit more difficult to explain, especially from what we learned from the future of the history that unfolded since that time. Rape is a human thing, by all aspects.
Still, we can notice a lot about its perception in that time. Being a good farmer and a good lover is equivalized.
As a perverse mirror image, Shukaletuda is an example of this, especially because we do have an insight in his personal psychology.
By his own words, he could not make the land flourish, and he knowingly violated the Goddess. This ineptness is highlighted by the fact that Enki learned a raven how to grow seeds, yet this ability is beyond Shukaletuda’s reach. In that aspect, he is below the human level – sub-human.
I don’t think this theme of an inept man violating a woman is just an interpretation – it’s archetypal. There’s plenty of nuances here worth discussing – what makes a man (or a woman) inept is relative to the society – but a parallel with incels is hopefully more than clear.
The part with the raven learning how to sow seeds, and the social responsibility in the myth also goes to show that a human’s value is always something to be thought. No one is intrinsically worthless – not even the incels, and the cultivation of the land can be seen as the cultivation of the society. You do know we got the word “culture” from the word “cultivation” right?
Finally, despite all, the ultimate decision came down to the man itself, Shukaletuda. He proceeded to the deed knowing what he will do. Even if the society does not make enough to cultivate inept man to able man, the decision ultimately falls on the individual.
Women’s day and the ancient myth
I think the myth is fitting for this year’s theme of #AccelerateAction of the International Women’s Day, mostly because the resolution was sped up and fostered by the God of wisdom, Enki.
In the story, we have Inanna – the womanhood, Shukaletuda – the inept, and the parent and the society which suffers because of an action Shukaletuda made.
But one more person needs an examination, and that is Enki. Enki, God of wisdom, an institution to which Inanna trusts and who can assist her and us in bringing the unjust to justice.
Where is Enki today? Is there such an institution in contemporary Mesopotamia? In your country? In your surroundings?
And why it seams that Enki is often so silent before the powerful?
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