Istanbul #2461 (also Ni 2461, L.2461) is an ancient Sumerian

cuneiform Cuneiform is a logo-syllabic writing system, script that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East, Ancient Middle East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. It is nam ...

tablet. Some have labelled it the world's oldest love poem.Oldest love poem
– 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 (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 Inanna, also sux, 𒀭𒊩𒌆𒀭𒈾, nin-an-na, label=none is an ancient Mesopotamian goddess of love, war, and fertility. She is also associated with beauty, sex, divine justice, and political power. She was originally worshiped in Su ...

Discovery

The tablet was unearthed at

Nippur Nippur ( Sumerian: ''Nibru'', often logographically recorded as , EN.LÍLKI, "Enlil City;"The Cambridge Ancient History: Prolegomena & Prehistory': Vol. 1, Part 1. Accessed 15 Dec 2010. Akkadian: ''Nibbur'') was an ancient Sumerian city. It wa ...

, 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 ...

). 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 Samuel Noah Kramer (September 28, 1897 – November 26, 1990) was one of the world's leading Assyriologists, an expert in Sumerian history and Sumerian language. After high school, he attended Temple University, before Dropsie and Penn, both i ...

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.

The tablet contains a balbale (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 (ruled 1972–1964 BC,

short chronology The chronology of the ancient Near East is a framework of dates for various events, rulers and dynasties. Historical inscriptions and texts customarily record events in terms of a succession of officials or rulers: "in the year X of king Y". Com ...

, 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 Sweetness is a basic taste most commonly perceived when eating foods rich in sugars. Sweet tastes are generally regarded as pleasurable. In addition to sugars like sucrose, many other chemical compounds are sweet, including aldehydes, ke ...

. 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 Modern lyric poetry is a formal type of poetry which expresses personal emotions or feelings, typically spoken in the first person. It is not equivalent to song lyrics, though song lyrics are often in the lyric mode, and it is also ''not'' equi ...

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

, 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 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 The ''Near East''; he, המזרח הקרוב; arc, ܕܢܚܐ ܩܪܒ; fa, خاور نزدیک, Xāvar-e nazdik; tr, Yakın Doğu is a geographical term which roughly encompasses a transcontinental region in Western Asia, that was once the hist ...

, 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 Medite ...

. The translation of this tablet shed light on the Song of Solomon in the

Old Testament The Old Testament (often abbreviated OT) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon, which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew writings by the Israelites. T ...

, 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

Discovery

Contents

Interpretations

Literature

References

External links