Eski Mezopotamya’da Öteki Dünya Algısının Yeraltı Tanrıçası Ereškigal Bağlamında Değerlendirilmesi

For ancient Mesopotamian societies, beginning with the Sumerian tradition and continuing with Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian, death and reincarnation after death is a complex and ambiguous subject, as in all other cultures. According to surviving written documents, ancient Mesopotamians believed that there was a realm under the ground and depicted this realm as a dark shadow of existence on earth. In order to understand the perception of the other world of ancient Mesopotamian societies in the context of the goddess who ruled this realm, the Mesopotamians' views on the universe must first be known within the scope of this study. It is important to document how the goddess of the underworld was sent to this realm and to prove the perspective of this goddess in the cosmos created in the minds of ancient Mesopotamian people in order to clarify the issue. Among the mythological stories in which Ereškigal, the goddess of the underworld, is most frequently mentioned are the Sumerian “Inanna's Descent into the Land of the Dead”, the Akkadian version of “Ishtar Descends into the Land of the Dead” and the Babylonian myths of “Nergal and Ereškigal”. It is understood from these texts that this goddess, who has the ability to kill deities but is deprived of worldly pleasures, occupies an important place in the cosmos at the end of the stories. Within the opposition of life and death, the meaning of another world after death is reflected in the myths in which the goddess of the underworld is mentioned. The aim of this study is to analyze the meaning that ancient Mesopotamians attributed to the underworld within the perception of the universe, the element of balance in the cosmos, in the light of two myths in the context of the goddess Ereškigal and the world she rules.