She opened her ear to the Great Below

[stillsostrange]

Can anyone recommend good translations of The Descent of Inanna?

Comments

[beccastareyes]

A friend of mine who was an anthropology major in college is running a summer Sumerian-reading club. I can ask him what he recommends. We're doing The Exploits of Ninurta, but he linked us to online translations and transliterations of Sumerian texts.

(Of course, he's the type to, when we have questions, bring up the cuneiform on the screen so we can look at it and see what it means, so that may be a bit technical.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

I don't know a translation, but there's a terrific novelisation by Fay Sampson, Star Dancer.

[blades-of-grass.livejournal.com]

I liked this one, though I cannot vouch for accuracy:

http://www.amazon.ca/Inanna-Myths-Ancient-Kim-Echlin/dp/0888994966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1312387771&sr=8-1

Wolkstein and Kramer

[cate-morgan.livejournal.com]

Wolkstein and Kramer do a wonderful job focusing on the symbolism and spirit of Inanna's journey. I'd recommend giving it a try.

Re: Wolkstein and Kramer

[caprine.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I used the Wolkstein and Kramer edition in an undergraduate religion class and found it quite readable.

[sovay]

Can anyone recommend good translations of The Descent of Inanna?

Benjamin Foster. Try either Before the Muses or From Distant Days.

I have also translated Ištar's Descent, although mostly it exists on my livejournal from several years ago; if you'd like me as a resource, I'd be fine with that.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Thank you. Can you also recommend Akkadian and Sumerian grammars? There will be fantasyland mangling, but I'd like to have at least a thin foundation of research.

[sovay]

Can you also recommend Akkadian and Sumerian grammars? There will be fantasyland mangling, but I'd like to have at least a thin foundation of research.

I don't read Sumerian, so I'd ask hans_the_bold on that front; I learned Akkadian using Caplice's Introduction to Akkadian (fourth ed., 2002), which is spare, but well-organized and informative.