http://oracc.museum.upenn.edu/saao/knpp ... 9intro.pdf
On the descent of Ishtar:1. The prophecies have to be studied as integral parts and products of a larger religious structure, the ecstatic cult of Istar, which in its essence can be defined as an esoteric mystery cult promising its devotees transcendental salvation and eternal life.
2. Like Shakta Tantrism, the ecstatic cult of the Hindu mother goddess, the cult had a sophisticated cosmogony, theosophy, soteriology and theory of the soul, which were hidden from the uninitiated through a veil of symbols, metaphors and riddles and explained only to the initiates, who were bound to secrecy by oath.
3. The cornerstone of the cult's doctrine of salvation was the myth of Istar's descent to the netherworld, in which the Goddess plays the role of the
Neoplatonic Cosmic Soul. The first half of the myth outlines the soul's divine origin and fall, the latter half its way of salvation through repentance, baptism and gradual ascent toward its original perfection.
4. A central component of this doctrine was the concept of the heavenly perfect man sent for the redemption of mankind, materialized in the institution of kingship. In the Descent of I5tar, the king's redemptory role is expressed by the image of the shepherd king, Tammuz, given as lstar's
substitute to the "netherworld," that is, the material world. This image corresponds to the king's role as the earthly representative of God, and finds another expression in the portrayal of the king as the "sun of the people" (radiating heavenly brightness to the darkness of the world) and as an incarnation of the saviour god, Ninurta/Nabo, the vanquisher of sin, darkness and death.
5. The idea of perfection embodied in the king implied total purity from sin, implicit in the soul's divine origin and personified in the figure of the
goddess Mullissu, the queen of heaven, the Assyrian equivalent of the Holy Spirit. Doctrinally, the king's perfection was not self-acquired but heaven sent. Figuratively speaking, he was the son of Mullissu; and like the Byzantine emperor, he ruled through the Holy Spirit's inspiration. The mother-child relationship between the Goddess and the king, expressed through the image of a calf-suckling cow, is a constantly recurrent theme in the prophecies.
6. The king's perfection, homoousia with God, made him god in human form and guaranteed his resurrection after bodily death. For the devotees of Istar, who strove for eternal life emulating the Goddess, he was a Christ-like figure loaded with messianic expectations both as a saviour in this world and in the next.
7. The central symbol of the cult was the cosmic tree connecting heaven and earth, which contained the secret key to the psychic structure of the
perfect man and thus to eternal life. Other important symbols were the seven-staged ziggurat;' the rainbow; the full, waning and waxing moon; the
eight-pointed star; the calf-suckling cow and the child-suckling mother; the horned wild cow; the stag; the lion; the prostitute; the pomegranate; and so on. All these different symbols served to give visual form to basic doctrines of the cult while at the same time hiding them from outsiders, and thus amounted to a secret code, a "language within language" encouraging meditation and dominating the imagery and thinking of the devotees.
8. Beside transcendental meditation, the worship of the Goddess involved extreme asceticism and mortification of flesh, which when combined with
weeping and other ecstatic techniques could result in altered states, visions and inspired prophecy.
9. The cult of Istar, whose roots are in the sumerian cult of Inanna, has close parallels in the canaanite cult of Asherah, the phrygian cult of cybele
and the Egyptian cult of Isis, all of which were likewise prominently ecstatic in character and largely shared the same imagery and symbolism, including the sacred tree. The similarities between Assyrian and biblical prophecy - which cannot be dissociated from its canaanite context - can thus be explained as due to the conceptual and doctrinal similarities of the underlying religions, without having to resort to the implausible hypothesis of direct loans or influences one way or another.
10. The affinities with later Hellenistic and Greco-Roman religions and philosophies must be explained correspondingly. These systems of thought
were not the creations of an "Axial Age intellectual revolution" but directly derived from earlier ANE traditions, as is evident from the overall agreement of their metaphysical propositions and models with those of the Assyrian religion. while each of these religious and philosophical systems must be considered in its own right and against its own prehistory, it is likely that all of them had been significantly influenced by Assyrian imperial doctrines and ideology, which (taken over by the Achaemenid, Seleucid and Roman empires) continued to dominate the eastern Mediterranean world down to the end of classical antiquity.
The conceptual and doctrinal background of the prophecies will be analyzed and discussed in more detail in the first three chapters of this introduction. The aim throughout has been to concentrate on issues essential to the understanding of Assyrian prophecy as a religious phenomenon and to correlate the Assyrian data with related phenomena, especially or prophecy, Gnosticism and Jewish mysticism. I am fully aware that the issues tackled are extremely complex and would require several volumes, not a brief introduction, to be satisfactorily treated. Nevertheless, Ihave considered it essentially important not to limit the discussion to the Assyrian evidence alone but to take into consideration also the comparative evidence as fully as possible. The different sets of data are mutually complementary and it is not possible to understand one without the others. The intricate connection between mystery religion, esotericism and emperor cult, crucial to the understanding of ANE prophecy and the origins of ancient philosophy, emerges with full clarity only from the Assyrian evidence. on the other hand, the Assyrian sources, especially their symbolic imagery, cannot be fully understood without the supporting evidence of related traditions
So here we have again the myth of the the soul descending into the physical realm where it "dies" or is "imprisoned" in the physical body/realm and then is "reborn" or "resurrected" when it ascends back to it's divine state as I talked about in these posts viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4545 and viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4574To understand the Descent correctly it is essential to realize that it has nothing to do with "fertility" or "seasonal growth and decay" but, like the gnostic myth of the Fall of Sophia, addresses the question of man's salvation from the bondage of matter. Its protagonist is the "Neoplatonic" Cosmic Soul, personified as the goddess Hekate in the Chaldean Oracles. The first half of the myth presents the soul's heavenly origin and defilement in the "netherworld," i.e. the material world, the latter half outlines her way of Salvation. Like Sophia and Hekate Soteira, the goddess of the myth thus is a "two-faced" entity. Descending, she is the holy spirit entering the prison of the body; ascending, she is the penitent soul returning to her celestial home. This double role explains her contradictory figure, which combines the image of the Holy Spirit with that of the prostitute.
The affinity of the gnostic Sophia myth and the Descent of Istar is borne out by several considerations, most importantly by a Nag Hammadi treatise
entitled The Exegesis on the Soul. This text has been taken as a rephrasing of the Valentinian myth of Sophia; in actual fact, however, its narrative much more closely follows that of the Descent of Istar, to the extent that it could be considered a running commentary or a paraphrasis of the latter. In contrast with most gnostic texts, it is written in easily comprehensible, plain language, clearly meant to explain rather than to conceal. It thus offers a most valuable interpretive parallel to the Descent of Istar, whose heavily metaphorical and allegorical language served just the opposite purpose.
The descent of Istar is presented in terms of a stripping metaphor. she leaves her home as the queen of heaven, the wise, chaste and pure ''daughter
of the moon," dressed in her regal attire. At each gate of the netherworld, she has to take off one piece of her clothing, until she in the end arrives in the netherworld completely naked, stripped of all her virtues and powers. Her later ascent is expressed by reversing the metaphor: at each ofthe seven gates, she gets back a piece of clothing in an order mirroring that of their removal...
Tammuz, her brother and "the husband of her youth," must be given to the netherworld as her substitute. The sacrifice of Tammuz - an etiology for the death of the king as Son of God - constitutes the culmination of the whole myth and must be regarded as a functional equivalent of the redemptory death of Christ. As in Christianity, it paradoxically becomes a promise of eternal life for man. At the end of the myth we are told: "When Tammuz rises, the lapis lazuli pipe and the carnelian ring will rise with him, the male and female mourners will rise with him. May the dead rise and smell the incense!"
In sum, it seems certain that the Descent of Istar contained the basic tenets of an ecstatic mystery cult promising its followers absolution from sins,
spiritual rebirth and resurrection from the dead.