The Descent of Inanna is the best preserved long myth in Sumerian and one of the oldest narratives of any kind. Inanna, mistress of heaven, decides to go down to the great below, where her sister Ereshkigal rules the dead. She instructs her servant Ninshubur to raise the alarm if she does not return in three days. She arrives at the outer gate dressed in the full regalia of her office.
There are seven gates. At each one the gatekeeper removes a piece of what she is wearing, on Ereshkigal's order, and at each removal Inanna asks what this is and is told: the ways of the underworld are perfect, they may not be questioned. Crown, rod and line, necklace, breast stones, gold ring, breastplate, garment. She arrives naked and bowed low. The seven judges fix her with the eye of death; she is turned into a corpse and hung on a hook.
Ninshubur does as instructed. Enlil and Nanna both refuse to help, on the grounds that whoever demands the great below gets it. Enki does not refuse. He scrapes dirt from under his fingernails and makes two creatures who are neither male nor female and so can pass the gates unchallenged, and sends them down with the food and water of life. They find Ereshkigal groaning as though in labour, and instead of asking for anything they echo her cries back to her, sympathising, until in gratitude she offers them a gift and they ask for the corpse.
Inanna rises, but the underworld releases no one without a substitute. Demons follow her up to collect one. She spares Ninshubur and her sons, who are all in mourning for her, and finds her husband Dumuzi seated on his throne in clean clothes, not mourning at all. She fixes him with the eye of death. He flees, is caught, and in the end his sister Geshtinanna takes half his term, so that he is below for half the year and she for the other half.