Position in chronology
A song of Inana and Dumuzid (Dumuzid-Inana F1)
Translation · reference
High confidence...... my side. ...... on a bed dripping with honey. ...... his hand in my hand. ...... his foot by my foot. ...... my lips on his mouth. 2 lines fragmentary ...... like a bracelet on my hand. ...... lapis lazuli on my neck. ...... like silver ...... of my bridegroom. The brother ...... in his garden. ...... stand ...... his standing tree. ...... lie down ...... his recumbent tree. He laid me down ....... ...... dates. The ...... spoke to me among the apple trees. My precious sweet ...... my head. The ...... spoke to me among the fig trees. My precious sweet ...... my ....... The ...... spoke to me among the willow (?) trees. My precious sweet ....... The ...... spoke to me ....... My precious sweet ...... my .......
Source: ETCSL c.4.08.32: A song of Inana and Dumuzid (Dumuzid-Inana F1). Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.4.08.32
Why it matters
Transliteration
Scholarly note
Composition c.4.08.32 in the ETCSL catalogue. Sumerian literary text reconstructed from multiple cuneiform manuscripts, the great majority Old Babylonian (c. 1900–1600 BCE). Translation reproduced from the ETCSL edition.
Attribution
Image: .
Translation excerpted from ETCSL c.4.08.32: A song of Inana and Dumuzid (Dumuzid-Inana F1). Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E. & Zólyomi, G. (eds.), The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Faculty of Oriental Studies, University of Oxford. https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=c.4.08.32.
Related tablets
Related sources
The single most important literary discovery of the 19th century. It rewired the understanding of the Bible's literary context and proved that the Mesopotamian flood tradition is older. It is the oldest surviving epic poetry in human history.
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.
The single most influential Mesopotamian king list — the model for every later attempt to chronicle the deep history of the region. It transmits the political theology of divinely granted kingship, an idea that would echo through Babylon, Assyria, and into the Hebrew Bible. The Weld-Blundell prism (WB 444) at the Ashmolean is the most complete surviving copy.