stuff! things! also curling!

[tsuki_no_bara]

1 my flist! what are your favoring stories/myths/folktales/etc about hell/the land of the dead/the underworld/faerie/etc (yes i know one of those is not like the others)? how you get there, why you get there, how you get out of there, what/who else is there, etc etc

Comments

[amw]

It occurred to me I haven't read many stories where the main plot is about hell outside of antiquity. One of those stories I found has stuck in the back of my head is Inanna's descent to the underworld from Sumerian legend. I don't think there are any remains of the whole story, but it was reconstructed from references elsewhere. What I find so interesting about it is that it offers an odd, fragmented insight into a culture from thousands of years ago that had very different customs to us but appears to share fundamental aspects of the human experience.

You can read the outline on Wikipedia. I can't remember where I have read more about this, but I do remember about 10 years ago I was on a big Ancient Middle East kick and read a bunch of books around the topic, including a fairly loose/poetic translation of Gilgamesh and a man-tastic historical fiction take by Robert Silverberg. I wish I could remember if either of those dig deeper on the Inanna story. Perhaps I just filled in all the blanks in my head, because with such a bare and ancient story there is a rich opportunity for reinterpretation and embellishment.

[tsuki_no_bara]

i'm vaguely aware of inanna as a mythological figure, but i don't know anything about her descent into the underworld, so this is pretty neat, fragments and all.

"man-tastic historical fiction", heh.