Istanbul #2461 (also Ni 2461,
L.2461) is an ancient
Sumerian cuneiform
Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is named for the characteristic wedge-sh ...
tablet. Some have labelled it the world's oldest love poem.
[Oldest love poem](_blank)
– Guinness World Records. It is on display at the
Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient (Mesopotamia Hall).
It is an erotic poem addressed to king
Shu-Sin
Shu-Sin, also Šu-Suen ( akk, : '' DŠu D Sîn'', after the Moon God Sîn", the "𒀭" being a silent honorific for "Divine", formerly read Gimil-Sin) was king of Sumer and Akkad, and was the penultimate king of the Ur III dynasty. He succeeded ...
(reigned 20th or 21st century BC) by an unnamed female speaker. It is thought that the poem may be connected to a
"sacred marriage" between the king and a priestess of
Inanna.
Discovery
The tablet was unearthed at
Nippur, in lower
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the ...
(modern day
Iraq
Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...
). It was one of several thousand Sumerian tablets found by archeologists during excavations between 1889 and 1900.
The tablet was identified among 74000 others and translated by
Samuel Noah Kramer in 1951, during his years of studies in the Istanbul Museum.
Kramer was deciding what works to translate next when he found the tablet in the museum drawer. He describes the moment in his book ''History Begins at Sumer'':
[Joshua J. Mark]
The World's Oldest Love Poem (Article)
– Ancient History Encyclopedia. 13 August 2014.
Contents
The tablet contains a
balbale
Balbale (from Sumerian language, Sumerian ''bal'' "change"); is a Sumer, Sumerian form of poem, a kind of changing songs. Most of ''Tammuz and Enkimdu'' (an adamanduga) consists of changes like this. There’s a reference to balbale in the colopho ...
(a kind of Sumerian poem) which is known by the titles "Bridegroom, Spend the Night in Our House Till Dawn" or "A Love Song of Shu-Suen (Shu-Suen B)". Composed of 29 lines, this poem is a monologue directed to king
Shu-Sin
Shu-Sin, also Šu-Suen ( akk, : '' DŠu D Sîn'', after the Moon God Sîn", the "𒀭" being a silent honorific for "Divine", formerly read Gimil-Sin) was king of Sumer and Akkad, and was the penultimate king of the Ur III dynasty. He succeeded ...
(ruled 1972–1964 BC,
short chronology, or 2037–2029 BC, long chronology
). In erotic language, the female speaker in the poem expresses her ardent desires and longings for Shu-Sin, drawing heavily on imagery related to
honey
Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...
and
sweetness.
The following is the start of the poem (in Kramer's translation):
The last three lines of the poem seem to contain an invitation to a sexual encounter, but in language not adequately clear to us.
The text is one of the oldest known
lyric poems.
Interpretations
It is believed that the poem is a script for the yearly
"sacred marriage", a rite in which the king would symbolically marry the goddess
Inanna, mate with her, and ensure fertility and prosperity for the coming year. A priestess would probably represent Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of fertility, and the king
Shu-Sin
Shu-Sin, also Šu-Suen ( akk, : '' DŠu D Sîn'', after the Moon God Sîn", the "𒀭" being a silent honorific for "Divine", formerly read Gimil-Sin) was king of Sumer and Akkad, and was the penultimate king of the Ur III dynasty. He succeeded ...
would represent
Dumuzi, the god of shepherds, on the eve of their union.
Variants of the poem may have been sung during ritual ceremonies commemorating the divine marriage between the two gods all over the ancient
Near East, particularly in
Egypt
Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Medit ...
.
The translation of this tablet shed light on the
Song of Solomon in the
Old Testament, because some phrases are similar to the poems sung during such fertility feasts, as well as Sumerian weddings.
[Sebnem Arsu]
The Oldest Line in the World
// The New York Times, 14-Feb-2006.
Literature
* Sefati, Yitschak. "Sumerian Canonical Compositions. A. Divine Focus. 6. Love Poems: Dumuzi-Inanna Songs (1.169)". In ''The Context of Scripture, I: Canonical Compositions from the Biblical World.'' Hallo, William W. (ed). Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1997. 541–542.
(title: Bridegroom, spend the night in our house till dawn)
* Sefati, Yitschak. ''Love songs in Sumerian literature: critical edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna songs.'' Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Culture. Publications of the Samuel N. Kramer Institute of Assyriology. Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998. 353–359.
References
External links
* "A love song of Shu-Suen (Shu-Suen B)" at the
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (ETCSL) was a project that provides an online digital library of texts and translations of Sumerian literature.
This project's website contains "Sumerian text, English prose translation and bibl ...
translation
{{Istanbul Archaeology Museums
Clay tablets
21st-century BC literature
20th-century BC literature
1889 archaeological discoveries
Sumerian texts
Erotic poetry
Love stories
Love poems
Culture in Istanbul
Inanna