Men and The Goddess

Early on when I began this blog I was studying Inanna, Queen of Heaven and War for the Sumerians. The recent issue of Archeology had an article on the latest finds in Uruk, perhaps the oldest and largest City-State of Sumer. The article referred to Eanna as the temple to the Goddess and also referred to her as “Eanna.” I like the sound of Eanna and like to think of her as one of the earliest of The Divine Feminine. In a separate article in the same issue of the journal there is a craft brewery attempting to replicate a recipe for beer from Sumer. I am confident Eanna was not only Goddess of Heaven and War but surely of the harvest, and beer!

Eanna, Goddess of Beer

The harvest is in,
The golden grains
Carefully fanned
And filed by field.

The scribes record
In clay to remind
Through millennia
The wealth that mattered.

The brew is set,
The jars are new and clean
To receive and store
The precious liquid gold.

The set-aside
Is of the best,
Saved in perfect
Vessels marked.

The day of lowest Sun,
The longest night all year
Is time to commune and celebrate
Eanna, Goddess of beer.

©2013 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.

PS: Apologies to Ninkasi, the Goddess of Beer from about 5000 years ago, whose poem is the source of the recipe for Sumerian beer.