Mesopotamian dread queen of the land of no return, who kept the dead — and even her sister Ishtar — behind seven gates, and now keeps only silence.
Born
2500 BCE
Died
100 CE
Lived
2,600 years
Dead for
1,926 yrs
Cause of death
Forgotten
Replaced by
Christianity and Islam in the later Near East
The Obituary
Ereshkigal was the Mesopotamian queen of the underworld, ruling the Sumerian land of no return — Kur, also called Irkalla — behind its seven gates. Sister of Inanna (the Akkadian Ishtar), she famously had the love-goddess stripped, killed and hung on a hook when she dared to enter the realm of the dead, and in another myth took the war-god Nergal as her consort. A figure of dread rather than a widely temple-served deity, she lived within the religion of Sumer and Babylonia for over two millennia. When that faith lapsed in the early centuries CE, the queen of the dead was herself forgotten.
Worth remembering
When her sister Inanna invaded the underworld, Ereshkigal stripped her at each of seven gates and struck her dead, hanging the corpse on a hook to rot.
In the myth of Nergal, the war-god offends her, descends to the underworld, and ends as her consort and co-ruler of the dead.
Gallery
The Burney Relief (Queen of the Night), an Old Babylonian terracotta plaque of a winged goddess flanked by owls and lions, 19th-18th century BCECC0Bronze statuette of the Mesopotamian underworld demon Pazuzu, early 1st millennium BCE, Louvre AO 6692Zunkir · CC BY-SA 4.0
Sources
Ereshkigal was the Mesopotamian goddess who ruled Kur (Irkalla), the underworld, sister of Inanna/Ishtar. Wikipedia
In 'Inanna's Descent', Ereshkigal has her sister killed at the seventh gate and hangs her corpse on a hook. World History Encyclopedia
Ereshkigal was the queen of the dead in Mesopotamian belief, sister of Inanna, who ordered her sister killed when she dared to enter the underworld. Encyclopaedia Britannica
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.
Buried nearby — by shared fate or a neighbouring lifespan.
