Before the Church · c. 1700 BC; Sumerian original earlier
The Descent of Ishtar to the Underworld
Anonymous
What it is
Ishtar goes down to the land of no return and is stripped of one garment at each of seven gates until she stands naked before her sister and is hung on a hook. While she is below, no bull mounts a cow and no man lies with a woman, and she is ransomed only by sending Dumuzi down in her place.
Why it lasted
The oldest descent-and-return myth on record, and the background to the women weeping for Tammuz that Ezekiel saw at the temple gate. It is the pattern later Christian writers would reach for in describing the harrowing of hell.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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