Myth
In the beginning, we worked out the back story. Lani still wants it as a prologue but it ain’t happening. Jenny is good with putting it here on the website though, although if you don’t want spoilers to the back story, skip this, please.
THE MYTH
In the beginning, before recorded time, the One became Three. The Youngest saw a glimmer of light and caught it and wrapped it on Her spindle and spun it out, beautiful and strong. The Next, who was older now because She had watched the spinning, stretched the thread of light out across the sky, measuring it until it the world turned bright. Then the Oldest, who had waited the longest of all, cut it and gave the world night, peace, and rest.
And then the Oldest handed the the thread of light to the Youngest who spun it out again, because there can be no Beginning without an End, and no End without a Beginning. And in between there is Life . . .
Thousands of years passed until invaders came and enslaved the people who worshipped the Three and told their story. The invaders brought their own three, this time with names and faces and stories:
The Youngest Ishtar, Goddess of War, fierce and strong.
The Middle Kammani-Gula, Goddess of Life and Love and Healing, bright and warm.
And the Oldest Inanna-Ereshkigal, Goddess of Death and the Afterlife, stern and relentless.
Jealous Ishtar and Ereshkigal sought to obliterate the Three, but Kammani-Gula, bright and loving, took them as her priestesses and protected them from her Sisters. And as the centuries passed, the Three forgot they had once been All, and became only servant-goddesses, the embodiment of passion:
Abi-simti, Lust
Humusi, Chaos
Sharrat-Sippar, Ecstasy
They joined Kammani’s other priestess-goddesses:
Neratum, Fertility
Belessunu, Birth
Iltani, Life
Munawirtum, Death
The Three stayed with Kammani-Gula and tended her temple and her sacred animal, the dog, especially the two Mesopotamian Temple Dogs who accompanied Kammani-Gula wherever she went: Umma-waqrat and Bikka-lum. They helped with the yearly sacrifice of Kammani-Gula’s god-king consort, Sumu-la-el, mourning his death in the fall and celebrating his rebirth in the spring. And most of all they loved and worshipped Kammani-Gula, and Kammani loved them above her other priestesses and kept them safe.
But the wheel of life turns and soon Kammani-Gula, too, was overthrown, this time by her ambitious little sister, Ishtar, who set her wars near Kammani’s temples so that they crumbled and fell and were buried in the storms Ishtar sent to confuse her enemies. And at the very end, when Kammani-Gula’s name was almost forgotten, Ishtar’s priestesses entombed Kammani’s servants and sacred dogs in the last of the temples, and Ishtar took for herself the title Goddess of Love and became the Goddess of Love and War. She so ground her sister’s name into the dust that it was lost for thousands of years.
Until 2009 AD . . .