𒀭

𒀭 is a story written by shukyou and illustrated by beili. It ran in Issue 79 at http://www.shousetsubangbang.com/.

Author's notes

𒀭 is rendered in English as DIĜIR or Dingir, but it's hard to say that it's pronounced that way, because it usually isn't pronounced at all as I've got it here. Instead, it's a silent character in put front of a Sumerian name to indicate the divinity of the owner of that name. Sometimes it's rendered with a capital superscript D, as in the case of ^DInanna, as she would be by the end of this story.

The story of Inanna's descent into the underworld is one of the better-known tales from Sumerian mythology, which means it's still not very well-known today. I have clearly diverged _wildly_ from it, most notably with how in the original, a) Inanna is a goddess (and a GIANT dick) from the get-go, b) Dumuzi is both a shepherd and a god, c) Neti the doorman is a whole separate character, and d) Ereshkigal doesn't get off her butt to do anything. Consider this more of the "true story" out of which the final form of the myth might arise. (Apologies to Dumuzi for the unearned character assassination.)

For consistency, I chose the spellings from the University of Oxford's Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL).