“Why has your heart led you on the road from which no traveler returns?”
The plot of the story revolves around Inanna’s thirst for power over every domain. The jealousy of her sister Ereshkigal being the queen of the dead motivates her to set off for the underworld. Which in this case is metaphorically described as a one-way street.
“A piece of rotting meat”
Inanna’s punishment in the underworld is being turned into a piece of spoiled meat that hangs from the wall. This punishment and her subsequent revival situates her as a metaphor for meat that has been warehoused in underground storage for the winter and which must be disposed of with the arrival of spring when the spoiled meat with replaced with fresh supplies for the coming winter.
Garments
Clothing plays a huge role in the story as they become a symbol of power. As he treks through the underworld to meet her sister, the queen of the dead, Inanna must pass through seven gates and at each gate an item of clothing is removed until, finally, she arrives before Ereshkigal and stands completely naked. Nakedness here is a symbol for something far more expansive than mere exposure; the removing of garments is a metaphor for the life cycle with a naked body coincident with a corpse.
Milk
Inanna, Queen of Heaven is unusually explicit in its erotic imagery. Multiple mentions of “vulva” are made through direct address. Interestingly, however, the language becomes metaphoric in the description of semen. Seminal fluid is transformed from the merely literal into the heavily symbolic as a fluid of sustenance to be consumed not just vaginally, but by mouth in imagery that still retains an explicit sexual suggestiveness.
Huluppa Tree
The Huluppa Tree which Inanna takes from the banks of the Euphrates and plants in her garden is a familiar metaphor for supreme knowledge of the universe. Inanna’s story even features a “serpent who could not be charmed.” The Huluppa tree is the ancient myth of Gilgamesh version of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil with Inanna’s garden being Eden and the serpent speaking for itself.
