Bari Gongju vs Inanna

The seventh daughter of a king, thrown away at birth, who alone agrees to journey to the Western Heaven for the water of life when her parents are dying; she returns in time to revive them and becomes the goddess who guides the dead to the other world.

The seventh daughter of King Ogu and Queen Gildae, abandoned at birth (versions differ in names and details).

The story of Princess Bari is a *muga*, a shamanic narrative song, sung by Korean shamans in rites for the dead such as the Seoul *jinogwi-gut* and the east-coast *ogu-gut*, where the shaman guides the soul of the dead to the other world as Bari did. It exists in many dozens of recorded versions; one of the first to be written down was recorded from a Seoul shaman and published by Akiba Takashi and Akamatsu Chijō in 1937, and the folklorist Kim Tae-gon later recorded many more.

Queen of Heaven and goddess of love and war. Inanna is the most complex and dynamic deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon, embodying both desire and destruction.

Inanna was born to the moon god Nanna/Sin and his wife Ningal. Unlike goddesses who received their powers passively, Inanna actively gathered the me (divine powers) from Enki, establishing herself as the goddess of civilization. She chose the shepherd Dumuzi as her consort in a sacred marriage that ensured the fertility of the land.

Inanna is the most celebrated and complex deity of ancient Mesopotamia. She embodies seemingly contradictory forces: passionate love and bloody war, fertility and destruction, order and chaos. As the personification of the planet Venus, she is both the morning and evening star, combining masculine and feminine energies in her divine nature.