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167 and shrines, each with specified functions, the compound also included special sleeping quarters for the divine visitors. The two of them, however, do not seem to have shared the same hedroom. Once the banquet and other ceremonies were completed and the meal of the night was served, the two divine visitors were led through the main courtyard to two separate courts. Antu was escorted to the "House of the Golden Bed," and "the Divine Daughters of Anu and the Divine Daughters of Uruk" kept watch outside till daybreak. Anu was escorted by male gods to his own quarters, a house known as the Gipar; we know from a number of Sumerian and Akkadian texts that it was a "taboo" place, a harem if you will (for that, "taboo," is the meaning of the Arabic word "harim")—the place where the Entu, a chosen virgin, was awaiting the god. In later times the Entu was a daughter of the king, and her role as a Hierodule, a "sacred maiden," was deemed a great honor. In the case of Anu and his visit to the Kullab, how- ever, it was not a mortal female who was chosen to await him in the Gipar; it was his great-granddaughter Irninni. They spent the night in the closed-off chamber inside the Gipar, the Gigunu ("Chamber of Nighttime Pleasures"). And after that Irninni was renamed IN.ANNA—"Anu's Beloved." While we may view the encounter as an abhorrent case of incest, it was not so deemed at the time. Sumerian hymns extolled the fact that Inanna was Anu's beloved, his beautiful Hierodule. A Hymn to Ishtar written on a tablet from Uruk (tablet AO.4479 in the Louvre Museum) described Ishtar "clothed with love, feathered with seduction, a goddess of joy," "with Anu together occupying the closed-off Gigunu, the Chamber of Joy, as the other gods stand in front." Indeed, another text (AO.6458) reveals that the very idea of selecting Irmninni for the honor of sleeping with Anu was not at all Anu's idea—but that of Ishtar herself. It was through the other gods that she was introduced to Anu, and it was they who persuaded Anu to agree ... Since Anu (and Antu) were only visiting, they had no permanent need for the E.ANNA temple; and so it was that as a reward, Anu granted use of the temple to Inanna: Encounters in the GIGUNU