Emily H Wilson at The Guardian:
Inanna is remarkably little known these days, but at the dawn of civilisation, she was vastly important. She went on to become Ishtar, who is more widely recognised, and then aspects of her character were incorporated into the goddesses Aphrodite and Venus. Of all the deities, she is arguably the one who has lived the longest.
I first became interested in Inanna while rereading the Epic of Gilgamesh. She is something of a baddie in the story, throwing a massive sulk when Gilgamesh refuses to marry her. But what an interesting and unusual creature she is, even glimpsed sideways, in a story about the man who spurned her. Somehow, on earlier readings, I had failed to clock her magnificence.
It was then that I researched the myths in which Inanna is a central figure. There’s the story of her descent into the underworld, for example, which leads to her horrifying death and subsequent resurrection.
more here.