Introduction
Inanna (Akkadian Ishtar) is the goddess of love, war, fertility, and political power, daughter of Nanna and Ningal and twin sister of Utu — among the most prominent and complex deities in the entire Mesopotamian pantheon.
Family
Descent to the Underworld
In one of Mesopotamian mythology's most famous narratives, Inanna descended to the underworld to challenge her sister Ereshkigal, its queen. Stripped of her garments and royal insignia at each of the underworld's seven gates, she arrived powerless before Ereshkigal, was struck dead, and hung as a corpse. Revived only through Enki's intervention, she was permitted to return to the world of the living on the condition that someone take her place below — a fate that fell on her own husband, the shepherd god Dumuzi, after Inanna found him failing to mourn her disappearance, unlike his sister Geshtinanna, who later agreed to share his underworld sentence.
Mesopotamian religion spans Sumerian, Akkadian, and Babylonian sources composed and recopied across nearly three thousand years, so names, genealogies, and even a deity's role often shift between traditions (Sumerian An/Enki/Inanna alongside their Akkadian/Babylonian forms Anu/Ea/Ishtar); the account above follows the most widely attested version, usually as consolidated in the Babylonian Enuma Elish or the standard Akkadian Epic of Gilgamesh.