For three long days Ninshubur, Inanna’s handmaiden, waited at the gate of the underworld. When the sun passed on the third day, she wept, for her mistress had never failed to keep a promise before.
For three more days Ninshubur stood at the gate, hoping against hope that her mistress would return at any moment, her desperation to see Inanna overcoming the command she had been given. At the sunset on the sixth day, she clutched the crown of her mistress tight in her hand, and cried:
‘Oh Inanna, my queen and friend, why am I now called to leave this place, as close to you as I can walk in this world? Why must any step I take now be further from your presence? The light of the world is dimmed in your absence, and it is I that must bear the weight of this dark news down the mountains and to your brother’s hall.’
No reply came save the echo of her voice and the chill of the mountain. On the dawn of the seventh day Ninshubur turned from the gate of the Land of the Dead, and walked alone. For seven more days she passed through hill and valley, and finally up the cragged path to the Palace of the Mountains, where Enlil Lord of the Storms held court.
At the approach of this ragged and sorrowful stranger, the guards forbade Ninshubur entry. For these were the halls of Mighty Enlil, whose breath was the rushing gale, and whose flashing eyes were the source of lightning. But when she revealed the crown of Inanna, they bowed, and gave her fresh clothes of finest silk, and a room to bathe and change, so that she could be brought before their king.
Enlil looked upon Inanna’s crown as he listened to Ninshubur’s tale, once she was brought before him. He grieved with her the loss of her mistress, for although Inanna was wild and undisciplined, and often upset the order of the world, he was fond of her, and could already see the ways that the world was dimmed and dulled for her absence. So he shook his head in sorrow when he said ‘Now Inanna is beyond aid. No power of heaven or earth can reach where she has travelled. She has entered the underworld of her own will, and in the underworld she must remain.’
None of Ninshubur’s pleading would move grim Enlil. Out of love for Inanna, he offered her a home in his palace, but angered and embittered by his refusal to offer aid to her mistress, Ninshubur departed.
Rainbow Samphire 