Nergal and Ereshkigal

Anonymous / tradition · c. 14th-7th century BC (a Middle Babylonian copy survives from Amarna in Egypt; the fuller version is Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian, from Sultantepe and Uruk) · Babylon (Iraq) · epic

After the war god Nergal insults Ereshkigal's envoy at a banquet of the gods, he is sent to the netherworld to answer for it, seduces its queen instead of submitting to her judgment, and the myth argues that even the underworld's rigid rule of no return can be renegotiated into a marriage.