The Descent of Ishtar to the Netherworld

Record summary

George Smith’s The Chaldaean Account of Genesis (1876) helped introduce English readers to a version of the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar’s journey into the realm of the dead. The narrative describes gates, removal of divine regalia, confinement, and negotiated return, making it a useful comparison for boundary-crossing myths and controlled passage between cosmic zones. The text’s reconstruction was incomplete, and later scholarship distinguishes the Sumerian Inanna tradition from Akkadian Ishtar versions. Translation, tablet arrangement, and nineteenth-century assumptions about “Chaldean mythology” all require checking.