galla – Disrupt & Repair

I really love diasporas. It was probably the African diasporas in the Americas that first drew my attention to the importance of the phenomenon, but once you adjust to seeing the world in movement, they show up everywhere. Stable borders dissolve in the churning of peoples.

I don’t often pay much attention to the influence of diasporic movements on Europe much beyond the vital Jewish and Islamic ones, but they are there, of course. I’ve been thinking about that more lately as I look at the diasporas centered in the Near East. Especially if I keep running with Gobekli Tepe as a key node in a very ancient diaspora, it makes sense to look not just at the diaspora southward, but also northward.

Continue reading “[NB] A Northerly Movement: Hittites” →

I want to make a note of one excerpt from Inanna’s Descent that Dina Katz retranslates. At this point, Inanna has been stripped and stands before Ereshkigal:

“She (Inanna) raised her sister from her throne
And took a seat in her (Ereshkigal’s) throne.
The Anunna, the seven judges, rendered a decision against her.
They looked at her (Inanna), the look of death.
They spoke against her, a speech of wrath.
They shout at her, a shout of guilt.
The ailing woman (Inanna) turned into a corpse.
The corpse was hung on a nail.”
—The Image of the Netherworld in Sumerian Sources (261)

Katz admits that it is ambiguous as to whether Inanna forces Ereshkigal from her seat, but that the grammar of the original text makes it a possible interpretation, and gives to us a sense of why Inanna is punished. Up to this point in her descent, Inanna has followed the rules of the netherworld, but here she violates them and is punished by the highest gods for it.

Continue reading “[NB] Inanna, Ereshkigal, and the Land Under the Mountain” →