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172 was elated but Marduk was enraged. Using an_ indiscretion by Dumuzi as a pretext, Marduk sent "sheriffs" to arrest Dumuzi and bring him to trial. But Dumuzi, having seen death in an omen-dream, tried to escape and hide. In the ensuing pursuit, Dumuzi was accidentally killed. When the news reached Inanna, she raised a" great wailing. So great was the shock and grief also among the people, to whom this Romeo-and-Juliet love affair came to symbolize Love and its joys, that the anniversary of Dumuzi's death became a day of mourning for a long time thereafter. Almost two thousand years after the event the Prophet Ezekiel was abhorred to see the women of Israel sitting and "weeping for Tammuz" (the Hebrew rendering of Dumuzi). It took Inanna a long time to get over her grief; and in her search for consolation, she turned to the Gipar and its Gigunu chamber as the place where she could forget her lost love. There she perfected the rites of sex to a new form of Divine Encounter. It came to be known as the rite of the When Ishtar invited Gilgamesh "come, be my lover," he refused by listing her many previous lovers whom she used and discarded. It began, Gilgamesh pointed out, after the death of Dumuzi/Tammuz, "the lover of your youth." For him, Gilgamesh continued, "thou hast ordained a_ wailing year after year." And it was, the text implies, on those anni- versaries that Ishtar invited man after man to spend the night with her. "Come, let us enjoy your vigor! Put your hand and touch my vulva!" she would tell them. But, Gilgamesh asked, "which lover did you love forever? Which of your paramours pleased you all the time?" Then he mentioned some of those discarded lovers and their fates: One, a shepherd, had his "wing" broken after he had spent the night with her. An- other, strong as a lion, was buried in a pit. A third one was smitten and turned into a wolf; yet another, "your father's gardener," was hit and tured into a frog. "And how about me?" Gilgamesh asked at the end, "you will love me and then treat me just like them." It was no wonder that with such a reputation, Ishtar was as often as not depicted by DIVINE ENCOUNTERS Sacred Marriage.