Nergal and Ereshkigal

notes

Nergal and Ereshkigal is the only ancient Mesopotamian text that can be described as a love story set in the underworld. It survives in two main recensions: an Old Babylonian version found at Amarna in Egypt (the Amarna letters, fourteenth century BCE), which is shorter and written in an archaic style, and a longer Neo-Assyrian version from the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh (seventh century BCE). The two versions differ significantly in plot and tone, and the text presented here is a composite of the major narrative elements from both. Nergal is the Mesopotamian god of the underworld, plague, and war — a deity of destruction who in some traditions is closely associated with the planet Mars. Ereshkigal is the queen of the underworld, Inanna's older sister in the Descent of Inanna, who rules the land of the dead from her lapis lazuli palace. The concept of them as a divine couple ruling the underworld together is not attested in the earliest Sumerian sources; this text appears to be the narrative that explains and justifies their pairing. The text is notable for several features unusual in Mesopotamian literature. First, Ereshkigal's desire for Nergal is expressed in explicit terms rarely found outside certain hymnic contexts: "the lover who seized my heart — I did not get enough of him." Second, her threat — to raise the dead to eat the living if Nergal is not returned to her — echoes Ishtar's threat at the gate of the underworld in the Descent of Ishtar and demonstrates the immense power of the queen of the dead. Third, the resolution (Nergal forcibly returns and takes the throne beside her) is narratively ambiguous: is this love, conquest, or both? The Amarna version was discovered among the diplomatic correspondence of the Egyptian pharaoh Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), suggesting that Babylonian mythological literature circulated widely across the ancient Near East in the fourteenth century BCE and was read and copied in Egypt by scribes who had learned Akkadian as the international diplomatic language of the period. The translation presented here draws primarily on E.A. Wallis Budge's rendering in Babylonian Religion and Mythology (1899) and W.G. Lambert's composite edition, both public domain works.