Dumuzi/Tammuz a priest-king and shepherd of the land, who had his kingship?

Kingship & Legacy

Ishtar had a special relationship with the human rulers of Mesopotamia. In her association with Mesopotamian kings, Ishtar/Inanna is represented as spouse, lover, sister, and mother—sometimes all within a single composition. Although her role shows flexibility, the textual evidence is thematically linked through an emphasis on the goddess' physicality, especially her feminine form. The affections of the goddess held a legitimising function for kings, with the concept of “king by love of Inanna” able to be traced back to the earliest origins of political hierarchy.

Ishtar is not well-known in the modern day, and what remains of her image has been frequently obscured by historiographical biases. The controversy around Ishtar's modern image can be most overtly seen in the distorted fixation on the goddess's sexuality found in much 20th-century CE scholarship. While Ishtar's sexuality is a vital aspect of her image, the emphasis on her erotic side has overshadowed many of the other important elements of the deity's image, such as her connection to warfare and the dispensing of justice, her association with music, joy, and abundance, and her religious ties to death and vengeance.