Ishtar Rejected: Reading A Mesopotamian Goddess in The Homeric Hymn To Aphrodite

Hanne Eisenfeld
Ishtar Rejected: Reading a Mesopotamian

Goddess in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite ¹
Abstract: This paper argues that the poet of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite crafted
his mythical narrative in conscious conversation with contemporary traditions sur-
rounding the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar. The poetic representation of Aphrodite
in her encounter with Anchises flirts with characteristics appropriate to Ishtar—per-
sonal sexuality, high status within the pantheon, a role as divine patron to mortal
kings—only to reject their relevance to Aphrodite. By recognizing that the Greek
poet could exert agency in his adaption of Mesopotamian motifs, using them to de-
limit Aphrodite’s nature within the Greek pantheon, we can perceive the serious con-
ceptual work that the Hymn is doing and the potential use of multicultural models
within that process.
Introduction
In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, in a moment thick with dramatic tension, the god-
dess gets undressed. The mortal prince, Anchises, does the deed (preparatory to ac-
tually doing the deed) and the poet of the hymn describes the process in great detail:
κόσμον μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἀπὸ χροὸς εἷλε φαεινόν,

πόρπας τε γναμπτάς θ’ ἕλικας κάλυκάς τε καὶ ὅρμους.
λῦσε δέ οἱ ζώνην ἰδὲ εἵματα σιγαλόεντα
ἔκδυε καὶ κατέθηκεν ἐπὶ θρόνου ἀργυροήλου
᾿Aγχίσης· ὁ δ’ ἔπειτα θεῶν ἰότητι καὶ αἴσῃ
ἀθανάτῃ παρέλεκτο θεᾷ βροτός, οὐ σάφα εἰδώς.²
HHAph. 162– 167
First he lifted the shining raiment from her skin:

her brooches and her twisted bracelets, her earrings and her necklaces.
Then he loosed her girdle and her shining clothes
he took them off and placed them on a silver-studded chair,
Anchises did this. Thereafter by fate and by the will of the gods
he lay, a mortal, beside an immortal goddess, and did not know it clearly.
 Many thanks are due to Carolina López-Ruiz, Sarah Iles Johnston, and Mark Thatcher for their
thoughtful feedback at multiple stages of this project, to Andrew Faulkner for a stimulating con-
versation about the big ideas, and to the audience who heard the first public airing of these thoughts
at the e congrès de la Fédération internationale des associations d’études classiques in August
.
 The text of the Hymn follows Allen’s edition; all translations from the Greek are my own.
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134 Hanne Eisenfeld
The description of the undressing is exceptional: nowhere else in extant archaic lit-
erature do we see Aphrodite disrobing.³ As such, this passage provides a useful start-
ing point for thinking about the poetic activity that shaped the Hymn. At one level we
can read the scene as fully integrated into the narrative of the hymn, the logical con-
sequence of the masquerade enacted by Aphrodite in order to seduce Anchises. The
step-by-step description heightens the tension of Anchises’ inexorable approach to
dangerous intimacy with the goddess and can be read as a poetic innovation moti-
vated by events internal to the poem. And yet, while the passage is readily compre-
hended without recourse to external parallels, modern interpreters often look to ech-
oes in the contemporary epic landscape in order to understand how the undressing
sequence depends on and develops available narrative models.⁴
Another parallel, closer in detail though more distant in time and space, is also
available for our undressing scene: in the Assyrian myth of Ishtar’s Descent, that
goddess takes off her clothes, piece by piece, as she passes through the seven
gates of the Underworld. As she approaches each of the seven gates, the Gatekeeper
requires the removal of another garment, beginning with her headdress, before she
can pass through:
He made her enter through the first gate, he loosed and removed the tiara of her head.
“Why, gatekeeper, did you take away the tiara of my head?”
“Enter my lady, thus are the rites of the mistress of the netherworld.”
Descent of Ishtar 42– 44, trans. Lapinkivi⁵
The sequence continues, the same question and answer exchanged seven times as
the gatekeeper goes on to require the removal of the “earrings of her ears,” the
“egg-shaped beads of her neck,” the “dress-pins of her breast,” the “girdle of birth-
stones of her waist,” the “bangles of her wrists and ankles,” and “the garment of her
dignity.”⁶ Aphrodite lacks the tiara, but the earrings, necklace, brooches, girdle, and
garment are all present, though the order is not mechanically recreated in the Greek
text, nor are the narrative contexts simply parallel.
The poet of the hymn is not retelling an Assyrian story in the way that the Assyr-
ians themselves reworked the Sumerian myth of Inanna’s Descent, leaving the core
narrative largely intact. Nor is the Aphrodite of our Greek hymn recognizable as a
 Brillet-Dubois , .

 Faulkner ,  – . On the question of the hymn’s relation to Homeric (and Hesiodic) mod-
els I follow Faulkner,  – , in considering it likely that the poet is aware of and actively responding
to these poems, though a common model cannot be fully excluded. Brillet-Dubois , , sug-
gests a “dialogic or agonistic” relationship between the hymn and the epic traditions. Podbielski
,  – , offers an overview of earlier scholarship.
 In all references to the Descent of Ishtar, henceforth DI, I follow the edition and translation of Lap-
inkivi  which is a composite of the Neo-Assyrian Nineveh and Assur versions, but primarily
based on the Nineveh text.
 DI  – .
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Ishtar Rejected: Reading a Mesopotamian Goddess in the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 135
clear counterpart to Ishtar, the way Ishtar herself is the Assyrian counterpart to the
Sumerian Inanna.⁷ Our poet is playing a more complicated game with the identity of
the goddess at the heart of his composition. In order to recreate and redefine Aphro-
dite—and this project is part of the brief of the Homeric Hymns despite Furley and
Bremer’s objection that they cannot be considered cult hymns in the true sense⁸—
the poet is reacting to multiple available models. The whole composition is deeply
rooted in the landscapes and personality of Greek epic, responding to depictions
of Aphrodite in Homer and, presumably, other early epic. I propose that our poet in-
troduces a Mesopotamian model into the narrative spaces shaped by these epic tra-
ditions. Assyrian Ishtar, a goddess whose competences and persona partially coin-
cide with representations of Greek Aphrodite, is introduced as a potential—but
ultimately rejected—template for the goddess constructed by the hymn.
The detailed description of Aphrodite’s disrobing offers a particularly striking
correspondence between the Greek hymn and Mesopotamian traditions but the
myth of the Descent is not the only source of such echoes within the hymn. I suggest,
rather, that our poet crafted a myth about Aphrodite in conscious conversation with a
range of contemporary narrative and ritual contexts, drawing on the complex weave
of mythological traditions surrounding Ishtar. By reading the inclusion of Mesopota-
mian intertexts as an intentional literary decision I consider the possibilities of active
negotiation across cultural boundaries rather than the inexorable slide of “techni-
que,” “motif,” or “influence” from one side of a border to another.⁹ This model
also suggests a conscious engagement with a conceptual boundary between cultural
spheres. In the interconnected Mediterranean of the first millennium BCE, no simple
line separated East and West.¹⁰ I propose that a poet who lived in a Greek-speaking
community and whose deities were conceptualized, in part, with reference to shared
epic models, could nonetheless look to material beyond that cultural sphere. By in-
tegrating Mesopotamian traditions into his composition he could play on specific
cultural resonances and incongruities in order to demarcate the nature of his own
gods in contrast to the nature of the gods his neighbors worshipped. The poet defines
his goddess in accordance with the needs of his human and divine community,
against a model that challenges the structures that support those mythical and theo-
logical systems.
 For the Sumerian Descent v. the translation at Oxford’s Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature Project
(OTCSL): http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t...#. On the identification of Inanna
and Ishtar: Goodnick Westenholz ,  – , Bottéro ,  – .
 Furley and Bremer , vol. , . On the Homeric Hymns as expressions of the sacred v. Bernabé
.
 The most picturesque expression of unmotivated movement of culture is owed to West , :
“Culture, like all forms of gas, tends to spread out from where it is densest into adjacent areas
where it is less dense.” The model of simple East to West drift has been challenged over the last dec-
ades: Ulf .
 Morris .

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136 Hanne Eisenfeld
Ishtar is enlisted as a potential model that ultimately provides not a proper like-
ness but the reflection from a funhouse mirror. She is a goddess like the goddess that
Aphrodite might have been if Aphrodite were not integrated into the structures and
internal logic of the Olympian pantheon¹¹—an orientation that the hymn simultane-
ously establishes and insists upon. But Ishtar’s role in the mythologizing project un-
dertaken in the hymn becomes invisible without an appreciation of the contexts com-
municated by the echoes of Mesopotamian traditions. In order to examine the effect
of Ishtar’s allusive presence in the hymn I first discuss the critical distinction be-
tween shared myths and imported motifs and then lay out the modes of contact
that might have brought Ishtar’s traditions to the attention of Greek-speaking popu-
lations. I then track three themes that constitute Ishtar’s identity and are flirted with
but rejected in the hymn’s representation of Aphrodite. The first of these themes is
Ishtar’s celebrated sexual potency, the second is her high status within the Assyrian
pantheon, and the third is her maternal association with kingship and characteriza-
tion as a source of royal authority.
1 Motifs or Myths?
The debt owed by Greek literature to the traditions of the Eastern Mediterranean is no
longer in doubt, but the methods and motivations for multicultural adaptation have
become the focus of productive debate.¹² The presence of Near Eastern motifs in the
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite has been recognized and cited for decades, but scholar-
ship to this point has largely interpreted these imports as atomized ritual or narrative
elements, disiecta membra incidentally fossilized in the soil of Greek epic. In the in-
troduction to his recent commentary, Andrew Faulkner catalogues these moments
and the Near Eastern traditions in which they originated, but sees the Greek epic tra-
dition as a more probable proximate source for their inclusion in the hymn.¹³ He sit-
uates the period of transmission in an earlier stage of literary development, arguing
that the collected correspondences demonstrate only the “extent to which traditional
epic material surrounding Aphrodite has been influenced by the transmission of cul-
tural material from East to West.”¹⁴
Following this logic, the poet of the hymn is already constrained by the Greek
epic material that has developed around the goddess; his room to play is limited
to modulating or reimagining what a Greek Aphrodite might do in the circumstances
he creates for her. A variation on this position was already staked out by Penglase in
 I use the term carefully, bearing in mind that the twelve Olympians were not an established group
at this early date, but nonetheless depending on the epic constructions of power relationships among
the gods.
 Purcell .
 Faulkner ,  – .
 Faulkner , .

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his work on Mesopotamian influences in the Homeric Hymns and Hesiod. He argued
that a specific motif—the journey for power—had been adopted into Greek tradition
and that the hymns ring the changes on the theme. In the Hymn to Aphrodite he sees
Aphrodite’s visit to Anchises mirroring the journeys that Ishtar makes to her own
lover, the herdsman Dumuzi.¹⁵ Penglase identifies Ishtar’s seduction of her herds-
man, frequently the central event of hymns to the goddess, as an expression and re-
inforcement of her authority. The journey-model, according to Penglase, could have
been easily communicated orally during the extensive periods of contact between
Greece and Mesopotamia, but its integration into Greek narrative could not occur
until a length of time had passed sufficient to “allow the assimilation of the material
to the extent seen in the myths so that they are accepted as part of the mythological
tradition of Aphrodite.”¹⁶
Penglase’s model, like Faulkner’s, restricts the unit of influence to the level of
mytheme¹⁷ rather than myth. That is, it envisions the poet selecting individual bits
and pieces of Mesopotamian tradition—single plot points, metaphors, etc.—from a
sort of Greek literary toolbox. Each can be pulled out and used as an isolated ele-
ment without dragging its own contextual or cultural baggage into the resulting lit-
erary creation. In the case of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, however, it is precisely
by deploying carefully calibrated cultural baggage that our poet (re)constructs an
Aphrodite who can be accommodated within his audience’s theological models.
The effect depends on the intentional use of Mesopotamian conceptions incongruent
with the social and religious systems embraced by the poet and his community. To
put it another way, we are dealing not merely with imported motifs or mythemes
but full-fledged myths with their own cultural commitments.
A consideration of Faulkner’s parallels highlights a high degree of coherence
among them: they all derive from Mesopotamian traditions and each of those tradi-
tions focuses on Ishtar (or Inanna).
i. Aphrodite’s toilette (ll.  – ) i. Inanna prepares herself for Dumuzi (ANET ¹⁸, Song of In-
anna and Dumuzi)
ii. Aphrodite’s erotic power over ii. Animals (and humans) leave off mating in Ishtar’s absence
animals (ll.  – ) (Descent of Ishtar, BM III.. – ,  – )¹⁹
 Penglase ,  – .

 Penglase ,  – .
 The term was popularized by Lévi-Strauss  on analogy to the linguistic phoneme.
 ANET = Ancient Near Eastern Texts: Pritchard .
 BM = Before the Muses: Foster . Faulkner also notes that Ishtar’s power over animals could
indicate a conflation with the Anatolian Magna Mater—but stresses that this is not a necessary con-
clusion—and to Ugaritic Astarte whom he understands as a close relative of Ishtar.

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138 Hanne Eisenfeld
iii. Aphrodite’s apparel and its re- iii. Inanna’s adornment for Dumuzi (ANET ); Ishtar’s apparel
moval (ll.  – ) removed as she enters the Underworld (Descent of Ishtar, BM
III.. – )
iv. Aphrodite as threat to Anchises iv. Ishtar as threat to Gilgamesh (Gilgamesh, Tablet VI  ff); (cf.
(ll.  – ) again Magna Mater)
Moreover, the compositions that Faulkner identifies as the sources of these motifs re-
flect activities and concerns relevant to the mythical narrative of the Homeric Hymn:
Inanna/Ishtar and her passion for her shepherd; her beauty and sexuality; the dan-
ger that can derive from arousing her erotic interest. I will return to these themes in
the following discussion, but for the moment it is their accumulation within our text
that is of particular interest. By integrating these elements the poet introduces multi-
ple points of contact between the two goddesses and establishes Ishtar as a basis of
comparison for Aphrodite.
The partial parallels give way, however, as the new myth follows its own narra-
tive trajectory, distancing Aphrodite from her potential comparandum. Ishtar is pro-
gressively rejected as an appropriate model in order to confirm Aphrodite’s orienta-
tion and position within a divine order consonant with the expectations of the
worshiping communities for whom it was composed. Reading the mythological ele-
ments of the hymn in this way complicates our models of influence and reception
and emphasizes the agency exercised by the Greek poet. Instead of understanding
the lenses of cultural exchange and hybridity as modes of analysis exclusive to mod-
ern scholarship we can begin to perceive how they could also serve as tools in the
hands of the artists and poets whose creations shaped an authoritative discourse
about the nature of the divine.
2 Modes of Contact
The hymn gestures to the possibility of such multicultural play in the voice of the
goddess herself. In order to seduce her Trojan prince, Aphrodite disguises herself
as a human, specifically as a Phrygian princess. In the course of presenting her
cover story to Anchises, Aphrodite pauses to explain how a Phrygian maiden can
speak the Trojan language:
γλῶσσαν δ’ ὑμετέρην καὶ ἡμετέρην σάφα οἶδα·

Τρῳὰς γὰρ μεγάρῳ με τροφὸς τρέφεν, ἡ δὲ διὰ πρὸ
σμικρὴν παῖδ’ ἀτίταλλε φίλης παρὰ μητρὸς ἑλοῦσα.
ὣς δή τοι γλῶσσάν γε καὶ ὑμετέρην εὖ οἶδα.
HHAph. 113 – 116
I know well both your language and my own

for a Trojan nurse brought me up in my palace; indeed from the time I was small
she played with me, taking me from my mother’s arms.
And in this way, you see, I speak your language.

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If we focus on the narrative function of this speech, Aphrodite’s excessive emphasis

on the linguistic parameters of the situation contributes to the awkward circumstan-
ces of disguise: the goddess has fallen into the trap of overexplicating a complicated
lie. If Aphrodite is overdoing it, though, the poet is playing it cool. The meta-literary
significance of the interaction is not stated explicitly but the audience’s attention is
nonetheless drawn to the permeability of cultural and linguistic boundaries. A strong
contrast emerges when this passage is set against instances of cultural interaction in
the Homeric epics: throughout the Iliad allies and enemies from across the Greek
world and the eastern Mediterranean exchange boasts and insults on the battlefield
without reference to translation or miscommunication.²⁰ The passage in Aphrodite is
the first reference to bilingualism in extant Classical literature²¹ and reveals a keen
interest on the part of the poet in the existence of individuals conversant in multiple
cultural spheres.
Such individuals potentiate the dissemination of knowledge beyond the bounda-
ries of the culture that produced it and offer a model for how awareness of Ishtar
might have come to the Greek world. Vanishingly few Greek speakers would have
had access—in terms of linguistic capability and geographical proximity—to Mesopo-
tamian texts or the scribes that produced them, but a far wider population might
have heard the stories recorded in those texts. Literary and mythological conventions
are culturally specific products, but a predilection for narrative characterizes humans
as a species.²² A child raised in part by a foreign nurse, as Aphrodite claimed to be, is
an ideal recipient of imported stories, but one can also envision conversations on
board ship, in marketplaces and in multicultural settlements in which all sorts of
people shared—and compared—the stories they were raised with. Following this
model, then, I propose that the poet of the hymn could draw on a range of orally
communicated narratives that dealt with the big ideas that people talked about
when they talked about Ishtar. The playful dilation on bilingualism nudges his audi-
ence to recognize and appreciate that this is exactly what he is doing.²³
In order to think about how such modes of communication shaped the creation
and reception of the Hymn to Aphrodite we have to deal with two related but distinct
questions. The first is whether this sort of knowledge about Ishtar’ s myths was cir-
culating and readily available within the poet’s community and among other poten-
tial audiences for the hymn. The second is whether hearing the new myth within the
hymn would have activated this knowledge. The responses to both are necessarily
speculative, but a closer inspection of the origins of the hymn itself may provide a
toehold or two in an otherwise forbidding rock face.
 The issue appears only once, at Il. . – , when the commanders of the Trojan armies are told
to pass on instructions to their troops, each in their own language.
 Hall , .
 E. g. Young and Saver .
 López-Ruiz ,  – ; Pedley , : sanctuaries as a site of exchange. Cf. Foster,  – ,
on the role of oral transmission of knowledge within Mesopotamia.

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140 Hanne Eisenfeld
Little can be said with certainty about the circumstances in which the Hymn to
Aphrodite was created but linguistic analysis offers the suggestive possibility that it
was composed for a community in West or Northwest Asia Minor, based on Aeolisms
and verbal similarities with the poems of Sappho and Alkaios.²⁴ Those poets are
clearly writing in a context of exchange with neighboring non-Greek communities
—Sappho’s poetic speaker can yearn for a Lydian mitra²⁵—and there is no reason
to doubt ongoing interaction throughout the archaic period. If the genesis of the
hymn could be placed in this region with certainty, the case for a generalized aware-
ness of a powerful eastern goddess—not only on the part of the poet, but on the part
of the audience as well—would be significantly strengthened. Much earlier finds
from the archive at the Hittite capital Hattusa—dated between the fourteenth and
twelfth century—include works of Babylonian literature as well as evidence for the
integration of Ishtar into the local Anatolian pantheon.²⁶ Evidence of mythological
exchange along the trade routes linking Hittite and Mesopotamian centers heightens
the probability that knowledge of Ishtar, having already penetrated to western Ana-
tolia in the late Bronze age, persisted and continued to be reinforced in later periods.
Even if we could decisively situate the poet in an Aeolic context, however, we
come to the second question: to what extent would audiences have appreciated
the metamythic play? Whatever the historical reality of Aphrodite’s origins, her no-
tional derivation from the east consistently informed her persona across a range of
genres.²⁷ Hesiod’s account of Aphrodite’s birth links the goddess to Cyprus, an exotic
locale on the boundaries of the Greek world, and the Iliad echoes a similar or related
tradition in the epithet, Kypris.²⁸ Later authors trace her presence in the Greek world
to the influence of eastern populations: Herodotus says that the oldest temple of
Aphrodite Ourania is at (Levantine) Ashkalon while her cult on Cythera was founded
by Phoenicians from Syria and Pausanias reports that she was worshipped first by
the Assyrians.²⁹ Elsewhere Herodotus takes a step further in his theological elabora-
tions when he indicates that the Persians learned from the Assyrians and Arabians
how to sacrifice to Aphrodite, adding that each of these communities has a different
name for the goddess.³⁰ This enduring ancient fascination with her eastern identity
 Faulkner ,  – .

 Sapph. a Voigt.
 Gilgamesh fragments in Hurrian and Hittite at Hattusa: West ,  –  (with a map!). Ish-
tar: in the Kumarbi cycle, Sauska, the sister and helper of the storm god Tessub, is written as Ishtar
(Hoffner and Beckman , ); in the Song of Hedammu (Hoffner and Beckman , ) she is
referred to as “the Queen of Nineveh;” BM III.: great prayer to Ishtar found in Hattusa and Meso-
potamia as well as in Hittite translation.
 Pirenne-Delforge ,  – ,  – . For one reconstruction emphasizing the role of Cyprus v.
Budin .
 Hes. Theog. – ; Il.., , , , . (V. n. , infr. on the concentration in Book
.)
 Hdt. .. – ; Paus. ...
 Hdt. ...

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would have primed an audience with knowledge of Ishtar’s traditions to appreciate

the moments when a hymn in praise of Aphrodite flirted with myths about a bona
fide eastern goddess.
The dating of the ode further supports a heightened interest in the integration of
recognizably imported elements. Widely considered among the earliest in the corpus
of Homeric hymns, Aphrodite is usually dated to the seventh century or, as Faulkner
puts it, “post-Homeric but prior to the sixth century.”³¹ This dating places the crea-
tion of the hymn in the full bloom of the so-called Orientalizing period, a time when
artistic production in the Greek world was strongly marked by imports and adapta-
tions of techniques from points east. The roads and seaways carrying material images
to Greek populations were likely to have been carrying narratives and ways of think-
ing about the images as well.³² That such influences were in part Mesopotamian rath-
er than exclusively Phoenician/Levantine is suggested by the fact that the Assyrian
Empire reached its apogee and widest geographical extent in the seventh century.³³
Ishtar’s influence was already widespread, with longstanding cult attested from Mari
in contemporary Northern Syria to Tell Alalakh in southern Turkey.³⁴ The expansion
of imperial influence, with neighboring civilizations increasingly brought under the
yoke of Assyrian power, would only have spread the goddess’s fame ever further
afield and rendered knowledgeable audiences more receptive to comparative play.
While a circumstantial case can be constructed to show that Greek communities
in Asia Minor had the cultural tools to recognize and appreciate the intercultural
modeling I am proposing, the same arguments probably do not apply to other poten-
tial mainland audiences. This need not concern us too much. The Homeric Hymns
tread careful and complicated lines between local contextualization and Panhellenic
appeal.³⁵ In the Hymn to Apollo, for instance, Apollo’s Delian festival is recreated in
the text but, in the same passage, the poet describes his far-flung travels.³⁶ With his
myth of Aphrodite and Anchises our poet creates a mythical narrative that commu-
nicates meaning on multiple levels. For audiences entirely unfamiliar with Near East-
ern mythical models, the poet’s articulation of Aphrodite is readily comprehended
within the context of epic frameworks, probably with an added frisson of whatever
ideas these populations did entertain about the east, by virtue of the setting in the
Troad and Aphrodite’s Phrygian disguise. The poet has not encoded an entirely dif-
ferent narrative for those who had access to the mythological traditions of the east.
Rather, for these audiences the same claims about the goddess are strengthened and
 Faulkner , ; Janko , .

 Burkert  thinks of itinerant craftsmen. Cf. Papalexandrou  on “hybrid visuality” in con-
texts dealing with these cross-cultural influences for ways of thinking about new cultural conceptions
and habits that accompanied the exchange of technologies.
 Kuhrt ,  – .
 Mari: Parrot ; Alalakh: Budin ,  – .
 On this balance v. Faulkner ,  – ; Clay  and Clay .
 HHApoll.  – .

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142 Hanne Eisenfeld
nuanced with reference to a level of meaning that shaped the poet’s choices and,
consciously or not, the audience’s perceptions.
3 The Limits of Sex

The mythical narrative of the hymn simultaneously celebrates Aphrodite and con-
tests and defines her divine nature. By rendering Aphrodite’s relationship to sexual-
ity both prominent and problematized the poet establishes a context that distin-
guishes the causation and sensation of desire and values the two experiences
differently. This prescriptive modeling is emphasized when we appreciate the struc-
tural parallels shared by our poet’s myth of Aphrodite’s encounter with Anchises and
the mythical representations of Ishtar’s encounters with her own shepherd, Tammuz,
itself an adaptation of the earlier Sumerian corpus celebrating the sexual love be-
tween Inanna and Dumuzi.³⁷ The dramatis personae are similar: a goddess with com-
petencies over sexuality and desire makes herself desirable through visual and olfac-
tory adornment, then presents herself to a hierarchically inferior male figure
identified as a herdsman and ultimately sleeps with him. Ishtar’s paramour, Tam-
muz, is sometimes represented as a god and sometimes as a mortal, while Aphro-
dite’s target is emphatically mortal, but described as godlike in terms of his appear-
ance and bearing.³⁸ An appreciation of the structural similarities highlights the
disjunction in tone between the two mythical models. The narratives of Ishtar and
Tammuz celebrate the love between goddess and shepherd³⁹ while the hymn’s nar-
rative, titillating but fraught, emphasizes the irregularity of the encounter and its in-
herent dangers.⁴⁰
Aphrodite’s encounter with Anchises confirms her erotic power in the sense that
she is able to make her conquest, but the tensions embedded in the hymn establish
Aphrodite’s personal experience of desire as a detraction from her dignity and status.
Both Hesiod and Homer were already familiar with the tradition that made Aphrodite
and Anchises the parents of Aeneas, but neither poet explains how the tryst came
about.⁴¹ By emphasizing the motivations rather than the outcome, our poet frames
the whole seduction as a rebuke of Aphrodite’s behavior: Aphrodite has been seduc-
ing gods into sleeping with mortals and then mocking them for their indiscretions.⁴²
 For the Dumuzi/Inanna songs v. Sefati ; for Ishtar/Tammuz v. DI , ; Ishtar/Dumuzi:
Gilgamesh VI. (George ).
 HHAph. ,  – ; Cyrino , , argues that Aphrodite successfully meets Anchises in a
liminal space between their two natures, but this does not meld perfectly with Hera’s use of the same
space at Il. . – .
 Their joyful tone does not seem to be impeded by the dark conclusion of the Descent myth: http://
etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t...#,  – .
 Smith .
 Hom. Il. . – ; Hes. Theog.  – .
 HHAph.  – .

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Aphrodite’s insuppressible desire for Anchises is Zeus’ retribution: turnabout is fair

play. The implication of Zeus’ choice of punishment is that the experience of desire is
not an affirmation of Aphrodite’s competency in the sphere of sexuality but a humil-
iation, a subjugation to the very effects over which she is meant to exert control. The
effect is not limited to the Hymn: at no point in extant representations do we see
Aphrodite in a positively valued situation of personal desire or sexual excitement.⁴³
In fact, in the best-known circumstance where we see Aphrodite in flagrante, in Odys-
sey 8, the punchline of the narrative is once again humiliation. In this case Aphrodite
has yielded to her desire for a god rather than a mortal, but it is the wrong god—her
lover Ares rather than her husband Hephaistos.⁴⁴ The jealous spouse traps the lovers
in bed and displays their transgression to the community of the gods, a display that
the bardic performances—the embedded poetic one and the historically realized one
—make available to human audiences.
Aphrodite’s personal sexuality, in Odyssey 8 and in the hymn, is coded problem-
atic even as her control over the sexuality of others constitutes her divine persona. By
employing the structural parallels that introduce Ishtar’s relationship with Tammuz,
our poet highlights the divergence between the models to express the critical differ-
ence between the goddesses. For Ishtar the inspiration and experience of sexuality
are inseparable aspects of her divinity. Her glory derives from her status as both ob-
ject and subject of desire with her own body as an appropriate site for the expression
of her power: her divine status and her personal sexuality are mutually reinforcing
rather than mutually exclusive.⁴⁵ In the corpus of Sumerian hymns celebrating the
union of Inanna and her shepherd the language is rich with eroticized metaphor
in which mutual desire is celebrated: Inanna is the dry uncultivated land and she
asks who will station an ox there; the conjugal bed—and sometimes the lover him-
self—is described as dripping with honey.⁴⁶ While these early texts were created
more than a thousand years before the period we are interested in, the motifs
seem to have had some staying power. In an early second millennium royal hymn
Ishme-Dagan can boast: “Inana, the lady of heaven and earth ……, chose me as
her beloved spouse. She put attractiveness in my waist-belt (?), looking at me with
her life-giving look, as she lifted her radiant forehead to me, to make me step
onto the flowery bed,”⁴⁷ and praise of Ishtar from the second half of the millennium
proclaims, “Seven for her midriff, seven for her loins,/ sixty then sixty satisfy them-
 Cyrino , , argues that desirability and nudity are part of Aphrodite’s nature and that Aph-
rodite “is never shamed, vengeful or diminished by the revelation of her nude body in the Greek
texts.” I agree with her about desirability (as in Homeric Hymn  where Aphrodite’s nudity expresses
her beauty in a setting that is sexualized but devoid of actual sex), but, especially before Praxiteles,
Aphrodite’s nudity can also be deployed to critique her behavior, as in these passages.
 Od. .  – .
 Cf. Serwint ,  – , who notes that this aspect of Ishtar is relevant to Cyprian Aphrodite.
 Sefati , for metaphors of desire v. esp.  – .
 ETCSL: http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section/tr.htm.

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144 Hanne Eisenfeld
selves in turn upon her nakedness. /Young men have tired, Ishtar will not tire.”⁴⁸ Fi-
nally, a love spell roughly contemporary with our hymn—a charm that might well
have exerted some cross-border appeal—asks that the spellcaster be able to do for
her lover what Inanna does for Dumuzi:
Potency, potency(!) I(?) have made a bed for potency!

What Ishtar does for Dumuzi,
What Nanay d[oes] for her lover,
What Ishara d[oes] for her mate(?),
Let me do for my lover!
Let the flesh of so-and-so, son of so-and-so, tingle,
[Let his penis stand erect]!
May his ardor not flag, night or day!
By command of the Capable Lady, Ishtar, Nanay, G[azbaba Is]hara.⁴⁹
Ishtar’s personal sexuality is emphasized and positively valued across a variety

of poetic genres via these representations of her relationship with Tammuz; her em-
bodiment of desire functions as an enactment of her divinity and power. Our poet
uses the same potential model and inverts the terms: Aphrodite’s experience of de-
sire is exceptional and potentially transgressive; at odds with her divine status.
The divergences become even clearer when we consider the impact of the self-
adornment sequence that occurs in the Hymn, elsewhere in Greek epic, and in Su-
merian depictions of Ishtar preparing herself for Dumuzi.⁵⁰
Inanna, at the command of her mother,

Bathed, anointed herself with goodly oil,
Covered her body with the noble pala-
garment
Took…, her dowry
Arranged the lapis lazuli about (her) neck⁵¹
Aphrodite enacts this same opulent process when she flies to Cyprus to prepare for
her seduction of Anchises:
ἐς Κύπρον δ’ ἐλθοῦσα θυώδεα νηὸν ἔδυνεν

ἐς Πάφον· ἔνθα δέ οἱ τέμενος βωμός τε θυώδης·
ἔνθ’ ἥ γ’ εἰσελθοῦσα θύρας ἐπέθηκε φαεινάς.
ἔνθα δέ μιν Χάριτες λοῦσαν καὶ χρῖσαν ἐλαίῳ
ἀμβρότῳ, οἷα θεοὺς ἐπενήνοθεν αἰὲν ἐόντας,
ἀμβροσίῳ ἑδανῷ, τό ῥά οἱ τεθυωμένον ἦεν.
ἑσσαμένη δ’ εὖ πάντα περὶ χροῒ εἵματα καλὰ
 BM III.e. – ; all BM translations by Foster.

 BM IV. c.
 Breitenberger ,  – , reads the motif in the Hymn as a potential echo of cult practice.
 ANET, .

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χρυσῷ κοσμηθεῖσα φιλομμειδὴς ᾿Aφροδίτη

σεύατ’ ἐπὶ Τροίης προλιποῦσ’ εὐώδεα Κύπρον
ὕψι μετὰ νέφεσιν ῥίμφα πρήσσουσα κέλευθον.
HHAph. 58 – 67
Arriving in Cyprus she entered her sweet-smelling temple,

at Paphos, where she has her precinct and sweet-smelling altar,
entering there she laid wide the shining doors,
there the Graces bathed her and anointed her with oil
immortal oil, that worn by the gods who exist forever,
and with sweet ambrosia which is sacrificed to her.
With beautiful garments covering her skin
and adorned with gold, laughter-loving Aphrodite
hastened toward Troy, abandoning Cyprus and its lovely roads,
cutting a swift path through the high clouds.
While Ishtar inhabits the full radiance created by her preparations, Aphrodite’s
elaborate adornments are rendered paradoxical when, arriving at the camp of her
Trojan prince, she takes on the appearance of a Phrygian maiden. The poet tells
us that Aphrodite diminishes her size and dulls her appearance in order not to fright-
en Anchises (μή μιν ταρβήσειεν)⁵² but we can perceive a more complicated nexus of
cultural values behind her decision.
The contrast between Aphrodite’s elaborate adornment and her subsequent dis-
guise reveals the insuperable distance between her divine status and her personal
sexuality. In order to appeal to Anchises, Aphrodite must dull the visual and olfac-
tory splendor she has just put on in exchange for a persona that is doubly antithet-
ical to her own nature: that of a mortal and a virgin. In order to activate Anchises’
interest, Aphrodite must first enact powerlessness—describing how she has been
snatched away from her demure maidenly dance by Hermes himself—and present
her availability to Anchises in terms of her designation for marriage with the attend-
ant parental permissions and exchanges of property.⁵³ When Anchises doubts her
story, perceiving her divine radiance despite her disguise, Aphrodite browbeats
him into acceptance of her narrative: οὔ τίς τοι θεός εἰμι: τί μ᾽ ἀθανάτῃσιν ἐΐσκεις;
—“I am no divinity! Why do you compare me to the immortals?” In short, the
Greek goddess of sex—to use an oversimplified periphrasis—must repress her divin-
ity and her sexuality and become a conquest in order to make one. By setting up an
initial parallel in the mirrored preparation scenes of the two goddesses, the author of
the hymn underscores the integration of Aphrodite into a set of cultural expectations
distinct from the one that can accommodate a sexualized Ishtar.
 HHAph.  – : though, as noted by West ,  – , the comparison of her “mortalified”
gleaming adornment to the moon still echoes Sumerian description of Inanna’s finery.
 HHAph.  – .

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146 Hanne Eisenfeld
There is an earlier epic instance of self-adornment that offers a close parallel to

Aphrodite’s preparations: Hera’s seduction of Zeus in Iliad 14.⁵⁴ Like Aphrodite, Hera
puts on oil and fragrance, shining clothing, and elaborate jewelry in preparation for
a seduction⁵⁵—but there are important situational discrepancies. Hera, for political
purposes, sets out to seduce her own husband; moreover, she needs Aphrodite’s
help, specifically the loan of her girdle, to manage it. Aphrodite’s involvement, as
well as the common location of both seductions—Aphrodite’s of Anchises and
Hera’s of Zeus—on Mt. Ida suggests that our poet may be intentionally playing
with the Iliadic episode rather than simply using the same riff from the epic play-
book. If this is the case then this passage demonstrates our poet’s ability to draw
on complementary traditions from Greek epic and Mesopotamian traditions as
frameworks for his new narrative. Aphrodite’s experience overlaps with Hera’s but
diverges in the object of seduction: Hera seduces a powerful god who is also her
rightful husband; Aphrodite a mere mortal to whom she must pretend marital avail-
ability. Ishtar’s presence highlights the importance of those differences. While the ex-
pressions of desire in Hera and Aphrodite’s seductions are complicated and deem-
phasized by the underlying power games being played, Ishtar’s seduction of
Tammuz shows the mutually amplifying effects of power and desire.
While social limitations on sexuality probably applied to Mesopotamian women
as much they applied in the western Mediterranean,⁵⁶ Greek representations of the
archaic period extended those same limitations to divine females. To return to the
inset Aphrodite narrative of Odyssey 8, we see that Aphrodite is not only set up as
the object of censure for her sexual choices but, moreover, that she is unflatteringly
contrasted with the other goddesses who have modestly remained at home while the
male deities flock to the shocking scene.⁵⁷ In a move related to the narrative of the
hymn, Aphrodite’s potentially problematic exotic/erotic nature is at once empha-
sized and constrained via her forced integration into a set of Greek social norms.
The impropriety of Aphrodite’s sexualization in her encounter with Anchises is
underscored by the hymn’s repeated application of the epithet φιλομμειδὴς. The ad-
jective simultaneously evokes the overtly sexual nature of the rejected Mesopotamian
goddess and the contested sexuality that already surrounds representations of Aph-
rodite in Homer and Hesiod. In the Theogony, rather than φιλομμειδὴς, Hesiod gives
φιλομμηδέα, derived from μήδεα, genitals, with reference to Aphrodite’s creation
from the genitals of Kronos.⁵⁸ If, as a result of Hesiod’s influence, the significance
“genital-loving” is layered with the etymologically accurate meaning of “laughter-
loving” (or even “wiles-loving”) then the adjective draws Aphrodite into the model
 Hom. Il. . – .

 Hom. Il. . – .
 Gansell , , suggests that” the primary personal attributes of Neo-Assyrian beauty en-
tailed sexuality (encompassing sexual allure and availability), fertility, and moral and sexual purity.”
 Hom. Od. .: θηλύτεραι δὲ θεαὶ μένον αἰδόῖ οἴκοι ἑκάστη
 Hes. Theog.  – .

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of Ishtar’s unapologetically sexual persona while the narrative context underscores

the unseemliness of this attitude for the Greek goddess.
Instances of the adjective are not deployed at random throughout the Hymn.
They cluster in the passages that describe Aphrodite’s transgressive behaviors—
first her manipulation of the sexual availability of the other gods, then her own mis-
matched sexual encounter. The epithet first occurs at line 17 where we are told that
φιλομμειδὴς Aphrodite cannot force Artemis into sexual encounters and appears for
the last time at line 155 when the disguised Aphrodite takes Anchises’ hand and de-
murely enters his bed; the epithet occurs three more times between these two instan-
ces. Aphrodite receives other epithets in the hymn, but only one of these occurs be-
tween the first and last instance of φιλομμειδὴς.⁵⁹ By insisting on this descriptor, the
poet highlights an aspect of Aphrodite’s nature that is prone to excess and requires
containment. Its use in the hymn ceases when Aphrodite reclaims her divine stature
and asserts her inaccessibility to Anchises.
The thick significance of the adjective in the hymn is further substantiated by its
single employment in Odyssey 8. Released from the unbreakable chains that He-
phaistos has lashed around her and her lover, Aphrodite escapes the mocking audi-
ence of gods by flying to a place where her authority obtains and she can reconstruct
the trappings of her divinity.
ἡ δ’ ἄρα Κύπρον ἵκανε φιλομμειδὴς ᾿Aφροδίτη,

ἐς Πάφον, ἔνθα τέ οἱ τέμενος βωμός τε θυήεις.
ἔνθα δέ μιν Χάριτες λοῦσαν καὶ χρῖσαν ἐλαίῳ,
ἀμβρότῳ, οἷα θεοὺς ἐπενήνοθεν αἰὲν ἐόντας,
ἀμφὶ δὲ εἵματα ἕσσαν ἐπήρατα, θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι.
Od. 8.362– 366
And she came to Cyprus, (laughter/genital)-loving Aphrodite,

at Paphos, where she has her precinct and sweet-smelling altar,
there the Graces washed her and anointed her with oil,
immortal oil, that worn by the gods who exist forever,
and they dressed her in lovely garments, a wonder to behold.
The epic critique of Aphrodite’s indulgence of her sexuality is emphasized by the de-
ployment of this epithet at the moment of her release. Three lines from this passage
are quoted nearly verbatim in the hymn⁶⁰ as Aphrodite prepares for her encounter
with Anchises. The brief intertext nods to models of Aphrodite’s problematized sex-
uality in the epic tradition and develops them further in conversation with Ishtar’s
traditions. The Mesopotamian goddess’s sensuous preparation for an erotic encoun-
 HHAph. : Διὸς θυγάτηρ—the epithet comes two lines before Aphrodite explicitly denies her
divinity.
 HHAph. ,  – . If we assign Homer precedence, as is generally done: v. supr. n. , and
Janko , .

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148 Hanne Eisenfeld
ter with her shepherd is celebrated as a foundational element of her divine persona;
Aphrodite’s parallel actions curtail and correct her divine nature.
4 The Limits of Power

By expanding our field from the person of each goddess to her place within the di-
vine system to which she belongs we can perceive how our poet redefines Aphro-
dite’s nature with reference to her status within her divine community. The hymn’s
representation of Aphrodite’s encounter with Anchises constructs two narrative per-
spectives and uses the tension between these to define Aphrodite’s competencies and
assert the existence of limits to her power. One perspective belongs to the narrative of
Aphrodite’s encounter with Anchises as experienced by the two principals. In this
context, as Andrew Faulkner emphasizes, Aphrodite is driven by her own desire
and takes the necessary steps to achieve her goal;⁶¹ Anchises is duly awed, seduced,
and frightened. The other perspective challenges the power relations just proposed
by framing the whole encounter as the enforced enactment of Zeus’ plan for revenge
against the goddess who has been unduly influencing him and the other gods.⁶² The
points of contact between Ishtar and Aphrodite within the perspective of the internal
narrative become points of contrast with the additional information provided by the
external frame and highlight Aphrodite’s integration into the community of Olympi-
ans in contrast to Ishtar’s extraordinary status within the Mesopotamian pantheon.
This article opened with the striking parallels between Aphrodite being un-
dressed in the hymn and Ishtar being undressed in the myth commonly designated
“Ishtar’s Descent to the Underworld.” Beyond this single moment of disrobing, the
two myths also share a narrative arc. In each myth a goddess, driven by desire, in-
serts herself into a precarious situation and is subsequently subjected to danger or
humiliation before she is extricated. Aphrodite a) struck with desire for Anchises
b) adorns herself and makes her way to Mt. Ida where she c) is undressed immedi-
ately preparatory to d) a close encounter with a mortal prince before e) reasserting
her divinity and returning to her sanctuary. Ishtar a) struck with an urge to penetrate
the Underworld, b) makes her way to the gates of the Underworld where c) she is un-
dressed immediately preparatory to d) a close encounter with mortality following an
attack by the goddess of the Underworld before e) being revived and reasserting her
divinity.⁶³ With Aphrodite’s sweeping flight from Olympus to Cyprus and then on to
Ida, we could even think of the central narrative in the hymn as “Aphrodite’s Descent
to Anchises.” The structural parallels with Ishtar’s Descent myth, however, reveal
highly variable motivations, especially with reference to first causes, and construct
 Personal communication, March , .

 Cf. Bergren .
 Brillet-Dubois , : Aphrodite’s undressing brings her close to the heroic experience of
mortality.

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a handy case study for how Ishtar’s experiences are altered—even deformed—in Aph-
rodite’s myth.
By framing the myth within the narrative of Zeus at the limits of his patience, the
hymn emphasizes that Aphrodite’s powers—even over her own sphere of erotic desire
—always depended on Zeus’ toleration. Her power extends up to the point where his
begins. Whether or not she knows it, Aphrodite’s journey to Anchises is a reaction to
the desire-as-punishment forced upon her by Zeus. She choreographs the assignation
and travels under her own power, but the will that motivates the whole endeavor is
not her own. In contrast, Ishtar’s decision to seek the Underworld, while the motiva-
tions are not made explicit, is never represented as a response to any stimulus but
her own desire: “To the Netherworld, the Land of No Return,/ Ishtar, the daughter
of Sîn, set her mind.”⁶⁴ The correlations in structure give way to divergences in agen-
cy that serve to highlight Ishtar’s power while expressing the limits placed on Aph-
rodite’s.
The outcomes of the undressing sequence further develop the parallels and di-
vergences between the two goddesses. Within the internal narrative of the hymn
the effect is similar: Ishtar achieves entry to the Underworld, and Aphrodite to An-
chises’ bed, by voluntarily allowing her clothing to be removed piece by piece. For
Aphrodite, whose whole purpose is seduction, the sequence has even been read as
a further demonstration of her sexuality and power.⁶⁵ With their clothing removed,
however, each places herself in a vulnerable position that is simultaneously a neces-
sary step to the successful completion of her goals and an entrance into a situation
not fully within her control.
The disparities between the limits of each goddess’ power—more striking for the
similar plot structures within which they occur—are stark and eloquent. In Ishtar’s
case, after undressing, she is rendered physically powerless by a no-holds-barred at-
tack by Ereshkigal, the Underworld queen.
Release sixty diseases against her, Ishtar:

disease of the eyes against her eyes,
disease of the arms against her arms
disease of the feet against her feet,
disease of the heart against her heart
disease of the head against her head,
let them loose against her body, against all of her!⁶⁶
The extent of her incapacity is evoked when her body is compared to a waterskin by
the emissary who comes to retrieve her.⁶⁷
 DI  – .
 Cyrino , , offers this as one potential interpretation, but sees the implication of a leveling
of status between the two lovers as well.
 DI  – . NB: Italics indicate conjectures on the part of the translator.
 DI  – . For discussion of the waterskin imagery v. Lapinkivi ,  – .

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Aphrodite’s entry into vulnerability occurs under significantly less direct pres-
sure: without passing into the domain of a stronger divinity or being physically over-
powered she yields her agency to Anchises in order to achieve her goal. Rather than
depicting Aphrodite in Anchises’ bed, the poet elides the moment, moving directly
from Aphrodite’s undressing to her reassertion of her power after the deed is
done. While she can effortlessly reclaim her divine stature and status and reclaim
control over the immediate situation, a price must still be paid. Although Aphrodite
can terrify and then depart from Anchises whenever she wishes, she suffers what she
herself perceives as an enduring diminishment in the eyes of the other divinities, de-
prived now of the erotic superiority she had once exerted over them by virtue of hav-
ing been subject to the same erotic compulsion.⁶⁸ Ishtar’s return to her own sphere
comes at a different price: before her Descent she gives a servant instructions for her
retrieval. When these are followed the Underworld powers agree to Ishtar’s release,
but only if another life is offered in return: though the text is fragmentary, enough
survives to glimpse her handing over her lover, Tammuz, in her place.⁶⁹
This interaction between Ishtar and Tammuz conjures another aspect of Ishtar’s
traditions with resonances for the narrative in the Hymn. In the Gilgamesh epic the
eponymous hero catches Ishtar’s eye and is propositioned by the goddess.
On the beauty of Gilgamesh Lady Ishtar looked with longing:

Come Gilgamesh, be you my bridegroom!
Grant me your fruits, oh grant me!
Be you my husband and I your wife!⁷⁰
His response, unequivocal and negative, is a sort of negative aristeia of Ishtar’s sex-
ual exploits. He will not accept, he says, first because he does not see a place for
himself as a mortal to be consort of the goddess, and, second, because he is too
aware of the trail of broken men she has left behind her.
Come, let me tell you the tale of your lovers:

of……………………………………………………….his arm.
Dumuzi, the lover of your youth.
year upon year to lamenting you doomed him.
You loved the speckled allalu-bird,

but struck him down and broke his wing:
now he stands in the woods crying “My wing!”
You loved the lion, perfect in strength,
but for him you dug seven pits and seven.⁷¹
 HHAph.  – .

 DI  – .
 Gilgamesh VI , trans. George.
 Gilgamesh VI ,, trans. George.

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(And so on…)
It has been suggested to me that when Aphrodite creates a mortal persona in the
hymn the poet is emphasizing her greater grasp of strategy rather than the diminish-
ment of her divinity: we might even say that she had learned from her Mesopotamian
predecessor’s experience.⁷² Within the internal frame this argument works well: Aph-
rodite achieves through misdirection and reassurance what would have been impos-
sible with awe and main force.⁷³ Within the framework of the Zeus-dominated per-
spective, however, a different nuance emerges when we include the Gilgamesh
tradition in our interpretive apparatus. Ishtar is famous for her serial relationships
with a range of mortals and immortals—and the persona thus expressed is powerful
and controlling, if also entirely negative from a mortal hero’s perspective. The over-
ture to Gilgamesh, like the Descent to the Underworld, is an expression of Ishtar’s
own desire. Even when she is spurned, her reaction underscores her power more
than her failure. In anger she asks her father to send the Bull of Heaven against Gil-
gamesh and Enkidu as retribution—and he does so.⁷⁴ Aphrodite’s overtures to An-
chises effect an inversion of these relationships: her efforts are successful thanks
to the stratagem she employs, but her pride is wounded precisely by her success.
It is Zeus himself who has masterminded the whole interaction and, as such, is
the cause of her humiliation rather than a source of redress. By reading Ishtar’s ap-
proach to Gilgamesh as a comparandum we can see once more how our poet con-
structs elements of narrative congruity between the hymn and a tradition from Ish-
tar’s mythology to assert an aspect of Aphrodite incongruous with the other goddess.
We can push the implications of the divergences between Gilgamesh’s reaction to
Ishtar and Anchises’ reaction to Aphrodite a little further in order to identify a more
profound disparity in the status of the two goddesses. In extant texts, Ishtar does not
explicitly identify herself to Gilgamesh when she makes her proposal, but he has no
doubt about her identity and rejects her advances precisely because he recognizes
and fears her. Ishtar’s personal power and extraordinary status within the Assyrian
pantheon is not limited to the Gilgamesh Epic. Described in a variety of genres and
periods as “Queen of Heaven,” “Queen of Heaven and Earth,” and “Greatest of the
Igigi Gods,” Ishtar’s preeminence within her divine society constitutes a consistently
available aspect of her divine persona. ⁷⁵ While there are contexts in which another
goddess takes center stage, Ishtar’s elevated status can always be recognized—and
 Many thanks to Carolina López-Ruiz for this stimulating counterpoint.

 Cf. Clay , .
 Gilgamesh VI  – , trans. George.
 V. Crouch  on seventh century depictions of Ishtar as cosmic warrior and divine sovereign.

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152 Hanne Eisenfeld
often praised—and does not threaten the equilibrium of the divine system to which
she belongs.⁷⁶
In contrast, when Anchises first catches sight of Aphrodite and doubts her hu-
manity despite her disguise, his speech—all innocent—reveals the inapplicability
of such an extraordinary status to Aphrodite, or perhaps to any Greek goddess. Play-
ing it safe, Anchises addresses the disguised Aphrodite with reverence, promising to
build a shrine and offer sacrifice.
Χαῖρε ἄνασσ’, ἥ τις μακάρων τάδε δώμαθ’ ἱκάνεις,

Ἄρτεμις ἢ Λητὼ ἠὲ χρυσέη ᾿Aφροδίτη
ἢ Θέμις ἠϋγενὴς ἠὲ γλαυκῶπις ᾿Aθήνη
ἤ πού τις Χαρίτων δεῦρ’ ἤλυθες, αἵ τε θεοῖσι
πᾶσιν ἑταιρίζουσι καὶ ἀθάνατοι καλέονται,
ἤ τις νυμφάων αἵ τ’ ἄλσεα καλὰ νέμονται,
ἢ νυμφῶν αἳ καλὸν ὄρος τόδε ναιετάουσι
καὶ πηγὰς ποταμῶν καὶ πίσεα ποιήεντα.
HHAph. 92– 99
Greetings goddess, whichever of the blessed ones you are

who have come to these dwellings-
Artemis or Leto or golden Aphrodite,
well-born Themis, or grey-eyed Athena,
or whether you are one of the Graces who has come here, those
who keep company with the gods and are called immortal.
or one of the Nymphs who dwells in the groves
or who inhabit this lovely mountain,
or the springs of the rivers or grassy meadows.
While Anchises hits on the correct identification with his third try, his whole ap-
proach to the problem of addressing an unidentified female deity signals the inabil-
ity of his conception of the divine to accommodate any single goddess who enjoys
the status claimed by Ishtar. His guesses are not even apparently hierarchical but de-
pend instead on a base-covering approach, incorporating beings as diverse as Arte-
mis, Aphrodite, and the Nymphs into a generalized model of feminine divinity. The
worldview we glimpse through his prayer has no place for a goddess who towers
above the rest.
The opening lines of the hymn contextualize Aphrodite’s praise within a similar-
ly limiting framework. While the composition begins by emphasizing Aphrodite’s
power to rouse desire in gods, men, and beasts alike,⁷⁷ the proemion also sets up
a subtle challenge. The poet claims that the works of Aphrodite are of concern to
all (πᾶσιν δ’ ἔργα μέμηλεν) but the lofty claim gives way to some thirty lines demon-
 Queen of the Gods: BM III..a.; Queen of Heaven: BM iii..iii.; of Heaven and Earth: BM
II.. – ; greatest among the Igigi gods: BM II..i, III.a/b.; Enlil and Ninlil make her “without
rival in heaven or earth:” http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t....#).
 HHAph.  – .

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strating its limited veracity. This passage effectively develops sequential mini-hymns
to Artemis, Athena, and Hestia, followed by four lines praising those qualities that
make Hera the ideal wife of Zeus. Jenny Strauss Clay has argued, correctly, I think,
that this section serves primarily to define Aphrodite’s competencies against those
of the other goddesses.⁷⁸ On another level, though, the passage insists on Aphrodite’s
status as one goddess among many, implicitly denying her the elevated status that
Ishtar enjoys within the Assyrian pantheon.
Concurrent with celebrating Aphrodite’s extraordinary power within her own
sphere of erotic activity, the hymn emphasizes that this sphere is circumscribed
with reference to the competencies of other Olympian divinities and constrained
by the power of Zeus as the god who presides over that order. Aphrodite’s power
over mortals remains unchallenged, but her absolute power and its limits are rede-
fined by a demonstration of Zeus’ control over Aphrodite herself. The mechanism of
limitation is important: when her activities transgress the order of her divine society,
Zeus simply decides to intervene—and does so. The effect is striking in its simplicity:
Zeus put desire in her heart (τῇ δὲ καὶ αὐτῇ Ζεὺς γλυκὺν ἵμερον ἔμβαλε θυμῷ), the
poet tells us, and then repeats the sentiment a few lines later (᾿Aγχίσεω δ᾽ ἄρα οἱ γλυ-
κὺν ἵμερον ἔμβαλε θυμῷ).⁷⁹
The ease with which Aphrodite’s problematic behavior can be constrained—and
this is a theme that, as Cyrino notes, appears elsewhere in early literary representa-
tions of Aphrodite⁸⁰—evokes a further contrast with Ishtar’s capacity for havoc. A
narrative known as the Agushaya poem frames Ishtar’s exceptional strength, espe-
cially her military aspect, as destructive and out of control. After receiving extraordi-
nary powers from Ea, the god of wisdom,⁸¹ Ishtar abuses her competencies in the
sphere of military power, urging on battles that decimate cities and threaten the com-
munities of gods and men.
She is more fearsome than a bull, her clamor like its raging,
She stood forth with no hindrance, in her might she set forth.
At her uproar Ea, the wise god, became afraid,
Ea became enraged with her.⁸²
Ea regrets her power but does not—cannot?—curb it by a simple expression of his

will. Instead, he creates a figure called Saltu—Discord—in the image of Ishtar herself.
Only a second Ishtar is a match for the goddess, and then only because the original
 Clay ,  – .

 HHAph. ,.
 Cyrino , , notes that the narrative motif of “putting Aphrodite in her place” occurs with
some frequency in literary myths.
 BM II.. iv. – .
 BM II.. iv. – .

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154 Hanne Eisenfeld
Ishtar perceives the horrifying figure that she has become and consciously adjusts
her own behavior.
This final strand I have drawn out from accumulated Ishtar traditions highlights
the limitations on Aphrodite’s power expressed within the hymn in conversation with
earlier Greek epic and Mesopotamian models. The militant aspect of Ishtar’s persona,
clearly expressed in the Agushaya poem, is firmly rejected in Homeric representa-
tions of Aphrodite, especially in Iliad 5.⁸³ Diomedes, temporarily given the ability
to perceive divine actors on the battlefield, is told that as a mortal he must not aspire
to do battle with the immortal gods—except for Aphrodite. When he subsequently
takes his chance and hits her with his spear the wounded Aphrodite seeks sympathy
from Zeus whose amused response cuts out all validity from Aphrodite’s anger and
sanctions her circumscribed sphere of competence:
Ὣς φάτο, μείδησεν δὲ πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε,

καί ῥα καλεσσάμενος προσέφη χρυσῆν ᾿Aφροδίτην·
οὔ τοι τέκνον ἐμὸν δέδοται πολεμήϊα ἔργα,
ἀλλὰ σύ γ’ ἱμερόεντα μετέρχεο ἔργα γάμοιο,
ταῦτα δ’ Ἄρηϊ θοῷ καὶ ᾿Aθήνῃ πάντα μελήσει.
Il. 5.426 – 430
Thus she spoke, and he smiled, the father of gods and men,
and summoning golden Aphrodite, addressed her:
not to you, my child, are warlike works given,
but you have a share in the lovely sphere of marriage
while these things are all the business of swift Ares and Athena.
The hymn further develops the Homeric project of Aphrodite’s definition and in-
tegration. No overt allusion is made to the possibility that Aphrodite might aspire to
military intervention. Instead, the poet raises the stakes by further defining the ap-
propriate boundaries for her erotic activities. By representing Zeus’ effortless inter-
vention in her control over the erotic experiences of the gods, the hymn underscores
the restricted nature of Aphrodite’s sphere and the poetic interest in defining her
place within a pantheon of deities whose status equals hers. The project of definition
and restriction within the hymn contributes to the creation of an Aphrodite who is
allowed to exert control within a carefully defined sphere. The constraints of her
power are rendered at once narrower and less inevitable when Ishtar with her tow-
ering status stands as a comparandum beside her.
5 The Limits of Patronage

When Aphrodite came into Diomedes’ line of fire in the Iliadic passage cited above,
she was driven by a desire to protect her son, the grown Aeneas. In this passage the
 Pirenne-Delforge ,  – .

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tradition of Aeneas’ birth from Aphrodite functions as an index of his nobility and
prowess: when Sthenelus recognizes Aeneas he identifies him to Diomedes as the
son of Anchises and Aphrodite and advises retreat.⁸⁴ As evidenced by her attempted
protection of her son, the Aphrodite of the Iliad is a willing and active participant in
this mother/son relationship, just as Thetis is actively involved in Achilles’ well-
being. The hymn develops Aeneas’ relationship with his mother differently: Aphro-
dite’s interest in her son is limited to a desire to keep their relationship secret. Within
the logic of the narrative, Aphrodite’s distaste for the child is a natural response to
her discomfort with the circumstances of conception. Simultaneously, on the level of
mythic modeling, the distance established between goddess and royal offspring
looks to—and rejects—a model of divine patronage linked to maternal intimacy be-
tween goddess and ruler which is expressed in the ideology of Neo-Assyrian rulers
roughly contemporary with the period of the hymn’s composition.
Ishtar’s associations with royal power were longstanding and are probably best
explained with reference to her competency in war: as a goddess of the battlefield
Ishtar brought victory to those she favored, strengthening their political claims
with reference to military successes.⁸⁵ During the reigns of two Neo-Assyrian
kings, Esarhaddon (680 – 669) and his son Assurbanipal (668 – 631/27(?)), her status
as patron becomes more central to the self-representation of the royal family and her
relationship with the kings becomes more intimate. While Hattusili III, a Hittite king
of the 13th century, could demonstrate his closeness with the goddess by claiming
that he had served as her priest in his youth, the Neo-Assyrian rulers break the hier-
atic frame and claim something close to a familial relationship.⁸⁶ In one prophetic
text from a collection dated to this period and archived at Nineveh we hear a
voice attributed to Ishtar herself articulating this relationship.⁸⁷
I give long days and eternal years to Esarhaddon, my king in the City…I am your great midwife, I
your good wetnurse… I have made firm your throne for long days and eternal years under the
great heavens…⁸⁸
By having Ishtar designate herself “midwife” and “wetnurse” this prophecy es-
tablishes Ishtar in a quasi-maternal attitude toward the king. Her promise of long
and stable rule is not expressed primarily in terms of Esarhaddon’s services to her,
 Il. . – .

 BM I.; III..v  ff.; III.a; III.c  ff.; Hansen  on Ishtar’s association with Naram Sin’s
rule (late third millennium); on Ishtar in this role at Ebla v. Matthiae .
 Nissinen ,  – .
 Here I use Foster’s translations, but for the critical edition v. Parpola  (SAA ). Some of the
prophecies are spoken by other deities, but the majority are attributed to Ishtar: Nissinen et al. ,
 – . A multiplicity of Ishtars appear in fact—e. g. Ishtar of Nineveh and Ishtar of Arbelah—a dis-
tinction that was presumably meaningful for the Assyrian population (v. Porter ) but would
probably not have travelled clearly along the long chains of transmission posited here.
 BM IV..

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156 Hanne Eisenfeld
or even with reference to his status as ruler. Ishtar’s care for this king began even be-
fore his arrival in the human world: she was there as midwife to ease his entry into
life and she nursed him—metaphorically at least, if we can put any weight on “wet-
nurse”—at her own breast. Assurbanipal, Esarhaddon’s son, takes a further step in a
prayer to the goddess, claiming an even less mediated relationship with Ishtar:
The Lady-of-Nineveh, the mother who bore me, has given me an unrivalled kingship/ The Lady-
of-Arbela, who created me, has ordered a long life for me./ They have ordained it my destiny to
exercise sovereignty over all the inhabited world,/ They have made all its kings submit at my
feet.⁸⁹
The grandeur of Esarhaddon’s claim to sovereignty—not only over his own people
but also over the whole of the inhabited world—is matched by the claim he makes
on Ishtar’s patronage by designating himself her son. The two claims are, in fact,
closely interwoven: his right to power is represented as determined by and depend-
ent on Ishtar’s will; Ishtar’s motivation is predicated on her intimate relationship
with him.
This strain of royal iconography is relevant for our understanding of Ishtar as she
might have been known to the poet of the hymn, in part because Assurbanipal’s de-
scription of his influence was only somewhat exaggerated: in these decades the As-
syrian empire reached its apex, sprawling from the eastern shores of the Mediterra-
nean into modern day Iran and Egypt.⁹⁰ The developments in divine iconography
and ideology were, as we see in the prophetic texts, deployed in support of the im-
perial project.⁹¹ It is likely, then, that these new conceptions of Ishtar travelled the
routes of empire; accounts, however garbled, of Ishtar’s increased identification
with the royal family could well have reached the Greeks on the coast and islands
of Asia Minor and proved a point of interest for thinkers political and poetic.⁹²
The proposed maternal orientation of goddess to king appears distorted, even in-
verted, in the Hymn to Aphrodite. Aeneas embodies the same semi-divine lineage that
Assurbanipal celebrates, but Aphrodite rejects the whole relationship. The author of
the hymn reworks the same familial elements to emphasize a disjunction rather than
a correlation between the interests of parent and child. The hymn emphasizes the tar-
nished reputation suffered by the divine parent, rather than the mutual benefit of the
Neo-Assyrian model, or the glory that accrues to the human son, as in the Iliad.
By emphasizing Aphrodite’s distress the poet distinguishes the troubled relation-
ship between Aeneas and his mother from the mutually desired relationship, howev-
er metaphorical, that contemporary Assyrian kings claimed to Ishtar. The child’s
name will be Aeneas, she says, because terrible pain (αἰνὸν ἄχος) gripped her as
 BM IV..c. ff.
 V. supr. n. .
 Cf. Aster .
 Cf. Rollinger . For contact with Cyprus v. Satraki .

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the result of her foray into a mortal’s bed.⁹³ After recounting the experiences of Gan-
ymede and Tithonos in a demonstration of the generalized difficulty of enduring re-
lationships between mortals and immortals,⁹⁴ her thoughts turn again to her own sit-
uation, her frustration expressed in the language of resentment for her loss of status
and revulsion for its cause:
νῦν δὲ δὴ οὐκέτι μοι στόμα χείσεται ἐξονομῆναι

τοῦτο μετ’ ἀθανάτοισιν, ἐπεὶ μάλα πολλὸν ἀάσθην
σχέτλιον οὐκ ὀνοταστόν, ἀπεπλάγχθην δὲ νόοιο,
παῖδα δ’ ὑπὸ ζώνῃ ἐθέμην βροτῷ εὐνηθεῖσα.
HHAph. 252– 255
No longer will I be able to speak in this way

among the other gods, for I have been extremely foolish,
miserable, blame-able, I wandered from my senses
when I got a child under my girdle, lying with a mortal man.
Aphrodite’s rejection of Anchises is one of the strands that shapes her final
speech in which she develops her strategy for damage control. In order to rehabilitate
her status on Olympus, Aphrodite has to separate herself from her Trojan interlude.
Though she cannot hide her situation from the other gods, her plan allows her to
limit further association with her son by keeping their affiliation away from mortal
eyes and ears. She will not raise him herself, she tells Anchises, but will deliver
him to the nymphs as soon as he is born.⁹⁵ Though she is his mother, Aphrodite
hands off the intimate work of nursing and raising, distancing herself from the nur-
ture of what is hers by nature.
Aphrodite promises to bring Aeneas to Anchises when he turns five, a time when
he will leave the company of the nymphs and claim his place at Troy. His entry into
the human world will inevitably raise questions, but Aphrodite has answers ready.
Her instructions balance the joy that Anchises should take in his human heir with
dire warnings against indicating her role in that heir’s existence:
ἢν δέ τις εἴρηταί σε καταθνητῶν ἀνθρώπων

ἥ τις σοὶ φίλον υἱὸν ὑπὸ ζώνῃ θέτο μήτηρ,
τῷ δὲ σὺ μυθεῖσθαι μεμνημένος ὥς σε κελεύω·
φασίν τοι νύμφης καλυκώπιδος ἔκγονον εἶναι
αἳ τόδε ναιετάουσιν ὄρος καταειμένον ὕλῃ.
εἰ δέ κεν ἐξείπῃς καὶ ἐπεύξεαι ἄφρονι θυμῷ
ἐν φιλότητι μιγῆναι ἐϋστεφάνῳ Κυθερείῃ,
Ζεύς σε χολωσάμενος βαλέει ψολόεντι κεραυνῷ.
HHAph. 281– 288
 HHAph. .
 HHAph.  – ; for this theme throughout the Hymn: Smith .
 HHAph.  – .

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158 Hanne Eisenfeld
If any mortal man should ask you

which woman got this son for you under her girdle
tell him this story—and remember my command -
say that he is the offspring of some cow-eyed nymph
those who dwell on the shaded slopes of this mountain.
But if you speak out and boast with your foolish mind
that you lay in love with Kythereia of the lovely crown,
Zeus will grow angry and drive his flashing thunderbolt against you.
The possibility that Aphrodite might take pride in her offspring does not enter into
this model. Her sole concern is that Anchises should not develop their encounter
—for her an enduring source of debasement—into an account of conquest. In
order to reclaim her power and her appropriate status among the other Olympians,
Aphrodite considers it necessary to suppress all report of her contribution to the Tro-
jan line. The fact that it is exactly this report which the hymn amplifies, working from
a tradition already in circulation in the human world, only highlights the fact this
real-world outcome is not the one Aphrodite desired and that the divine inheritance
does not redound equally to the glory of the goddess and the royal family.
This discrepancy need not detract from the glory of Aeneas—divine blood is di-
vine blood, after all. It has even been argued that the hymn was created for a con-
temporary royal line in the Troad that claimed descent from Aeneas and considered
his divine mother a point of family pride in the same strategy later embraced at Rome
by the Julio-Claudians.⁹⁶ It is significant that Aeneas’ prospects are not dimmed by
his mother’s attitude toward his conception. In fact, Aphrodite assures Anchises of
Aeneas’ future glory:
οὐ γάρ τοί τι δέος παθέειν κακὸν ἐξ ἐμέθεν γε

οὐδ’ ἄλλων μακάρων, ἐπεὶ ἦ φίλος ἐσσὶ θεοῖσι.
σοὶ δ’ ἔσται φίλος υἱὸς ὃς ἐν Τρώεσσιν ἀνάξει
καὶ παῖδες παίδεσσι διαμπερὲς ἐκγεγάονται·
HHAph. 194– 197
There is no reason for you to fear any evil from me

nor from the other blessed ones, for you are dear to the gods.
A son will be born to you who will rule among the Trojans
and generations upon generations will come forth continually.
This is effectively the same line taken by Poseidon’s prophecy at Iliad 20.307– 8;⁹⁷ Ae-
neas’ heroic status, bound up with his divine lineage, is not in question. The poet
actually depends on the audience’s familiarity with this tradition: by emphatically
designating Aeneas for future glory, the hymn underscores Aphrodite’s removal
 West ,  –  takes this as given; Faulkner ,  –  sees its appeal and provides an over-
view of the scholarship.
 Faulkner , .

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from the equation. The power of the Trojan line is bound up with the favor of the
gods, but not with the continued maternal favor of this particular goddess. Unlike
Ishtar, whose divine persona could accommodate an attitude of personal and mater-
nal intimacy toward a royal line, Aphrodite’s cannot. The hymn emphasizes the dis-
tinction by constructing a situation with components that could have been developed
to endorse the same relationship between Aphrodite and the Trojan royal house that
the Assyrian royal house enjoys with Ishtar. In the Hymn, however, the situation is
reworked to categorically deny the possibility. Aphrodite’s final speech becomes a re-
jection of an alternate potential self that the Greek pantheon cannot accommodate.
Conclusion
I have argued here that the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite draws on a nexus of ideas
surrounding the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar in order to (re)define a goddess
who fits within the divine structures conceptualized by the poet’s community. By al-
luding to mythical narratives featuring Ishtar, the poet of the hymn introduces a god-
dess whose nature and experiences partially overlap with Aphrodite’s. Having estab-
lished the basis for a potential comparison, the poet constructs a narrative for
Aphrodite that consistently diverges from the myths surrounding Ishtar. The potential
commonalities derive from a situation that sees Aphrodite challenging the bounda-
ries that define her status within the communities of gods and humans; the dispar-
ities reestablish those definitions by rejecting Ishtar as an appropriate model and
forcing Aphrodite to conform to the expectations of her own divine society. By inte-
grating the established tradition of Aphrodite’s liaison with Anchises with Mesopo-
tamian traditions surrounding Ishtar, as well as traditions from Greek epic, the poet
uses his mythical narrative to orient Aphrodite away from her potential eastern na-
ture and toward a circumscribed and appropriate position within the Greek pan-
theon.
Robert Parker has written that “… ‘influence’ or ‘borrowing’ can never provide
more than a partial explanation of cultural change. Foreign thought is not picked
up irresistibly, like a foreign disease; and the decision to take up this or that idea al-
ways requires an explanation.”⁹⁸ I have proposed here that the Greek epic tradition
had not somehow become immunized to foreign influence by the archaic period,
having been infected once and for all during the Bronze Age. I hope, instead, that
this reading of the hymn will encourage further consideration of the possibility of ac-
tive engagement on the part of Greek poets with recognizably non-Greek models and
the potential impact such interactions had on how Greek-speaking communities con-
ceptualized the divine within a multicultural Mediterranean world.
 Parker , .

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160 Hanne Eisenfeld
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Ishtar Rejected: Reading A Mesopotamian Goddess in The Homeric Hymn To Aphrodite

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Hanne Eisenfeld

Ishtar Rejected: Reading a Mesopotamian

κόσμον μέν οἱ πρῶτον ἀπὸ χροὸς εἷλε φαεινόν,

First he lifted the shining raiment from her skin:

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 Brillet-Dubois , .

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 Penglase ,  – .

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γλῶσσαν δ’ ὑμετέρην καὶ ἡμετέρην σάφα οἶδα·

I know well both your language and my own

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If we focus on the narrative function of this speech, Aphrodite’s excessive emphasis

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 Faulkner ,  – .

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would have primed an audience with knowledge of Ishtar’s traditions to appreciate

 Faulkner , ; Janko , .

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3 The Limits of Sex

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Aphrodite’s insuppressible desire for Anchises is Zeus’ retribution: turnabout is fair

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Potency, potency(!) I(?) have made a bed for potency!

Ishtar’s personal sexuality is emphasized and positively valued across a variety

Inanna, at the command of her mother,

ἐς Κύπρον δ’ ἐλθοῦσα θυώδεα νηὸν ἔδυνεν

 BM III.e. – ; all BM translations by Foster.

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χρυσῷ κοσμηθεῖσα φιλομμειδὴς ᾿Aφροδίτη

Arriving in Cyprus she entered her sweet-smelling temple,

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There is an earlier epic instance of self-adornment that offers a close parallel to

 Hom. Il. . – .

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of Ishtar’s unapologetically sexual persona while the narrative context underscores

ἡ δ’ ἄρα Κύπρον ἵκανε φιλομμειδὴς ᾿Aφροδίτη,

And she came to Cyprus, (laughter/genital)-loving Aphrodite,

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4 The Limits of Power

 Personal communication, March , .

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Release sixty diseases against her, Ishtar:

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On the beauty of Gilgamesh Lady Ishtar looked with longing:

Come, let me tell you the tale of your lovers:

You loved the speckled allalu-bird,

 HHAph.  – .

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 Many thanks to Carolina López-Ruiz for this stimulating counterpoint.

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Χαῖρε ἄνασσ’, ἥ τις μακάρων τάδε δώμαθ’ ἱκάνεις,

Greetings goddess, whichever of the blessed ones you are

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Ea regrets her power but does not—cannot?—curb it by a simple expression of his

 Clay ,  – .

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Ὣς φάτο, μείδησεν δὲ πατὴρ ἀνδρῶν τε θεῶν τε,

5 The Limits of Patronage

 Pirenne-Delforge ,  – .

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