This composition is one of a complex of related narratives focusing on the goddess Inana’s journey to the Underworld, her rescue and return, and her pact with the Underworld gods, whereby she is replaced in the Underworld by her lover, the god Dumuzid.
In Dumuzid’s dream Dumuzid is being hunted down by the demons of the Underworld, who, we have to assume, have just been promised him by Inana. He has a disturbing dream with presentiments of death, whose meaning his sister Gestin-ana woefully confirms. Immediately she notices the demons approaching and warns Dumuzid to hide, swearing to tell no one where he is.
When the demons catch GeStin-ana and demand Dumuzid, she refuses to tell them where he is hiding. They turn instead to Dumuzid’s friend, who reveals his whereabouts, and Dumuzid is captured. Dumuzid pleads with the sun-god Utu to help him escape. Utu turns him into a gazelle and Dumuzid runs away. When the demons find Dumuzid, he pleads with Utu a second time. Once more Dumuzid is transformed into a gazelle, and this time he takes shelter in the house of an old woman. The demons catch Dumuzid a third time. A third time Dumuzid prays to Utu, and Dumuzid again takes the form of a gazelle, finding refuge at his sister’s sheepfold. But GeStin-ana gives herself away by the fear on her face. When the demons come for Dumuzid they wreck the sheepfold, killing Dumuzid and fulfilling his portentous dream.
The composition exploits the powerful image of the sheepfold as a centre of warmth, well-being, prosperity, and stability: contented sheep and cattle in their byres are a common motif on cylinder seals and monumental art, especially of the Uruk and Early Dynastic periods. In the city laments too, the cities are often characterized as deserted sheepfolds or cattle-pens which have been abandoned by the gods. When the comfortable, ordered world of the sheepfold is attacked and disordered, as first in Dumuzid’s dream and second when the demons enter, nothing but misery and death can come of it.
World History
