How could Sin, reported to have gone back to Heaven in disgust, have been able to perform such feats back on Earth? Nabunaid, confirming that Sin had indeed "forgotten his angry command . . . and decided to return to the temple Ehulhul," claimed a miracle. A miracle "that has not happened to the Land since the days of old" had taken place: A deity "has come down from Heaven."
This is the great miracle of Sin, That has not happened to the Land Since the days of old; That the people of the Land Have not seen, nor had written On clay tablets, to preserve forever: That Sin,
Lord of all the gods and goddesses,
Residing in Heaven,
Has come down from Heaven.
Regrettably, no details are provided of the place and manner in which Sin landed back on Earth. But we do know that it was in the fields outside of Haran that Jacob, on his way from Canaan to find himself a bride in the "old country," saw "a ladder set up on the earth and its top reaching heavenward, and there were angels of the Lord ascending and descending by it." At the same time that Nabunaid restored the powers and temples of Nanna/Sin, he also restored the temples and worship of Sin's twin children, IN.ANNA ("Ami's lady") and UTU ("the shining one").
The two were born to Sin by his official spouse Ningal, and were thus by birth members of the Divine Dynasty. Inanna was technically the firstborn, but her twin brother Utu was the firstborn son, and thus the legal dynastic heir. Unlike the rivalry that existed in the similar instance of Esau and Jacob, the two divine children grew up very close to each other. They shared experiences and adventures, came to each other's aid, and when Inanna had to choose a husband from one of two gods, she turned to her brother for advice.
Inanna and Utu were born in time immemorial, when only the gods inhabited Earth. Utu's city-domain Sippar was listed among
the very first cities to have been established by the gods in Sumer. Nabunaid stated in an inscription that when he undertook to
rebuild Utu's temple E.BABBARA ("shining house") in Sippar:
I sought out its ancient foundation-platform,
and I went down eighteen cubits into the soil.
Utu, the Great Lord of Ebabbara . . .
Showed me personally the foundation-platform
of Naram-Sin, son of Sargon, which for 3,200 years
no king preceding me had seen.
When civilization blossomed in Sumer, and Man joined the gods in the Land Between the Rivers, Utu became associated
primarily with law and justice. Several early law codes, apart from invoking Anu and Enlil, were also presented as requiring
acceptance and adherence because they were promulgated "in accordance with the true word of Utu." The Babylonian king
Hammurabi inscribed his law code on a stela, at the top of which the king is depicted receiving the laws from the god.
Tablets uncovered at Sippar attest to its reputation in ancient times as a place of just and fair laws. Some texts depict Utu
himself as sitting in judgment on gods and men alike; Sippar was, in fact, the seat of Sumer's "supreme court."
The justice advocated by Utu is reminiscent of the Sermon on the Mount recorded in the New Testament. A "wisdom tablet"
suggested the following behavior to please Utu:
Unto your opponent do no evil;
Your evildoer recompense with good.
Unto your enemy, let justice be done. ...
Let not your heart be induced to do evil. . . .
To the one begging for alms -
give food to eat, give wine to drink. . . .
Be helpful; do good.
Because he assured justice and prevented oppression - and perhaps for other reasons, too, as we shall see later on - Utu was considered the protector of travelers. Yet the most common and lasting epithets applied to Utu concerned his brilliance. From earliest times, he was called Babbar ("shining one"). He was "Utu, who sheds a wide light," the one who "lights up Heaven and Earth."
Hammurabi, in his inscription, called the god by his Akkadian name, Shamash, which in Semitic languages means "Sun." It has therefore been assumed by the scholars that Utu/Shamash was the Mesopotamian Sun God. We shall show, as we proceed, that while this god was assigned the Sun as his celestial counterpart, there was another aspect to the statements that he "shed a bright light" when he performed the special tasks assigned to him by his grandfather Enlil.
Just as the law codes and the court records are human testimonials to the actual presence among the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia of a deity named Utu/Shamash, so there exist endless inscriptions, texts, incantations, oracles, prayers, and depictions attesting to the physical presence and existence of the goddess Inanna, whose Akkadian name was Ishtar. A Mesopotamian king in the thirteenth century B.C. stated that he had rebuilt her temple in her brother's city of Sippar, on foundations that were eight hundred years old in his time. But in her central city, Uruk, tales of her went back to olden times. Known to the Romans as Venus, to the Greeks as Aphrodite, to the Canaanites and the Hebrews as Astarte, to the Assyrians and Babylonians and Hittites and the other ancient peoples as Ishtar or Eshdar, to the Akkadians and the Sumerians as Inanna or Innin or Ninni, or by others of her many nicknames and epithets, she was at all times the Goddess of Warfare and the Goddess of Love, a fierce, beautiful female who, though only a great-granddaughter of Anu, carved for herself, by herself, a major place among the Great Gods of Heaven and Earth.
As a young goddess she was, apparently, assigned a domain in a far land east of Sumer, the Land of Aratta. It was there that "the lofty one, Inanna, queen of all the land," had her "house." But Inanna had greater ambitions. In the city of Uruk there stood the great temple of Anu, occupied only during his occasional state visits to Earth; and Inanna set her eyes on this seat of power. Sumerian king lists state that the first nondivine ruler of Uruk was Meshkiaggasher, a son of the god Utu by a human mother. He was followed by his son Enmerkar, a great Sumerian king. Inanna, then, was the great-aunt of Enmerkar; and she found little difficulty in persuading him that she should really be the goddess of Uruk, rather than of the remote Aratta. A long and fascinating text named "Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta" describes how Enmerkar sent emissaries to Aratta, using every possible argument in a "war of nerves" to force Aratta to submit because "the lord Enmerkar who is the servant of Inanna made her queen of the House of Anu." The epic's unclear end hints at a happy ending: While Inanna moved to Uruk, she did not "abandon her House in Aratta." That she might have become a "commuting goddess" is not so improbable, for Inanna/Ishtar was known from other texts as an adventurous traveler.
Her occupation of Anu's temple in Uruk could not have taken place without his knowledge and consent; and the texts give us strong clues as to how such consent was obtained. Soon Inanna was known as "Anunitum," a nickname meaning "beloved of Anu." She was referred to in texts as "the holy mistress of Anu"; and it follows that Inanna shared not only Anu's temple but also his bed - whenever he came to Uruk, or on the reported occasions of her going up to his Heavenly Abode. Having thus maneuvered herself into the position of goddess of Uruk and mistress of the temple of Anu, Ishtar proceeded to use trickery for enhancing Uruk's standing and her own powers. Farther down the Euphrates stood the ancient city of Eridu - Enki's center. Knowing of his great knowledge of all the arts and sciences of civilization, Inanna resolved to beg, borrow, or steal these secrets. Obviously intending to use her "personal charms" on Enki (her great-uncle), Inanna arranged to call on him alone. That fact was not unnoticed by Enki, who instructed his housemaster to prepare dinner for two.