Epic of Gilgamesh
The "Epic of Gilgamesh" was discovered by Austen Henry Layard, Hormuzd Rassam, and W. K. Loftus in 1853. The central character of Gilgamesh was initially reintroduced to the world as ""Izdubar"", before the cuneiform logographs in his name could be pronounced accurately. The first modern translation was published in the early 1870s by George Smith. Smith then made further discoveries of texts on his later expeditions, which culminated in his final translation which is given in his book "The Chaldaean Account of Genesis" (1880).
Inanna
Ishtar's first major appearance in modern literature was in "Ishtar and Izdubar", a book-length poem written in 1884 by Leonidas Le Cenci Hamilton, an American lawyer and businessman, loosely based on the recently-translated "Epic of Gilgamesh". "Ishtar and Izdubar" expanded the original roughly 3,000 lines of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to roughly 6,000 lines of rhyming couplets grouped into forty-eight cantos. Hamilton significantly altered most of the characters and introduced entirely new episodes not found in the original epic. Significantly influenced by Edward FitzGerald's "Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" and Edwin Arnold's "The Light of Asia", Hamilton's characters dress more like nineteenth-century Turks than ancient Babylonians. In the poem, Izdubar (the earlier misreading for the name "Gilgamesh") falls in love with Ishtar, but, then, "with hot and balmy breath, and trembling form aglow," she attempts to seduce him, leading Izdubar to reject her advances. Several "columns" of the book are devoted to an account of Ishtar's descent into the Underworld. At the conclusion of the book, Izdubar, now a god, is reconciled with Ishtar in Heaven. In 1887, the composer Vincent d'Indy wrote "Symphony Ishtar, variations symphonique, Op. 42", a symphony inspired by the Assyrian monuments in the British Museum.