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Nergal and Ereškigal (el-Amarna Version):
Ereškigal will call out: ‘Doorkeeper, [open] your door!” - “Loosen the thong, that I may enter into the presence of your mistress Ereškigal. I have been sent!” The doorkeeper went and said to Namtar: “One god is standing at the entrance of the door, come, inspect him and let him enter.” Namtar came out and saw him and gladly: “[Wait] here!” He said to his mistress: “My lady, here is the god who in previous months had vanished, and who did not rise to his feet in my presence!” - “Bring him in. As soon as he comes, I shall kill him!” … Inside the house, he seized Ereškigal by her hair, pulled her from the throne to the ground, intending to cut off her head. “Don’t kill me, my brother! Let me tell you something.” Nergal listened to her and relaxed his grip, he wept and was overcome (when he said), “You can be my husband, and I can be your wife. I will let you seize kingship over the wide earth! I will put the tablet of wisdom in your hand! You can be master, I can be mistress.”
Homer, Odyssey 10.310-335:
So I stood at the gates of the fair-tressed goddess. There I stood and called, and the goddess heard my voice. Straightway then she came forth, and opened the bright doors, and bade me in; and I went with her, my heart sore troubled. She brought me in and made me sit on a silver-studded chair, a beautiful chair, richly wrought, and beneath was a foot-stool for the feet. And she prepared me a potion in a golden cup, that I might drink, and put therein a drug, with evil purpose in her heart. But when she had given it to me, and I had drunk it off, yet was not bewitched, she smote me with her wand, and spoke, and addressed me: ‘Begone now to the sty, and lie with the rest of thy comrades.’ So she spoke, but I, drawing my sharp sword from beside my thigh, rushed upon Circe, as though I would slay her. But she, with a loud cry, ran beneath, and clasped my knees, and with wailing she spoke to me winged words: ‘Who are you among men, and from whence? Where is your city, and where your parents? Amazement holds me that you have drunk this charm and was in no wise bewitched. For no man else soever has withstood this charm, when once he has drunk it, and it has passed the barrier of his teeth. Nay, but the mind in thy breast is one not to be beguiled. Surely you are Odysseus, the man of ready device, who Argeiphontes of the golden wand ever said to me would come hither on his way home from Troy with his swift, black ship. Nay, come, put up your sword in its sheath, and let us two then go up into my bed, that couched together in love we may put trust in each other.’
Sources (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Homer, Odyssey 10.310-335
Nergal and Ereškigal (el-Amarna Version)
Bibliography
| West 1997, 409 | West, Martin L. The East Face of Helicon. West Asiatic Elements in Greek Poetry and Myth. Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997. |
Amar Annus
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