Ancient Near Eastern literature is overflowing with epic love stories, tales of longing and desire, so to no great surprise that the oldest recorded love poem was of Sumerian composition.
Sumer was a civilization that flourished in the 6000 years ago in the southern part of what is now Iraq. The heartland of Sumer lay between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, in what the Greeks later called Mesopotamia. At that time, the two rivers formed at the Persian Gulf flow deltas branched with a significant flow. Having abundantly the main human resource, food, the Sumerians were able to develop a prosperous civilization from all points of view.
Known for their innovations in language, governance, architecture and more, Sumerians are considered the creators of civilization as modern humans understand it. Their control of the region lasted for short of 2,000 years before the Babylonians took charge in 2004 B.C.
The origin of the Sumerians is not known.
Many historians think that cities and towns were first formed in Sumer around 5000 BC. Nomads moved into the fertile land and began to form small villages.
This early population—known as the Ubaid people—was notable for strides in the development of civilization such as farming and raising cattle, weaving textiles, working with carpentry and pottery and even enjoying beer.
Villages and towns were built around Ubaid farming communities.
Eventually these villages and towns developed into the civilization of the Sumer.
Their culture was comprised of a group of city-states, including Eridu, Nippur, Lagash, Kish, Ur and the very first true city, Uruk. These city-states often fought each other. They built thick wall with rooms for the soldiers around their cities for protection.
The fortifications of the city of Uruk, built around 2000 BC, consist of a double wall, protected by about 800 towers, with gates only to the north and south.
Farmland was outside the walls, but people would retreat to the city when invaders came. Uruk has been estimated to have had a population of 50,000–80,000 at its height; given the other cities in Sumer, and the large agricultural population, a rough estimate for Sumer’s population might be 0.8 million to 1.5 million.
Each city-state had its own ruler. They went by various titles such as lugal, en, or ensi. The ruler was like a king or governor. The ruler of the city was often the high priest of their religion as well. This gave him even more power.
In addition to the king or governor, there was a fairly complex government with officials who helped to organize city building projects and keep the city running. There were also laws that the citizens must follow or face punishment. The invention of government is often credited to the Sumerians.
The Sumerian language is the oldest linguistic record. It first appeared in archaeological records around 3100 B.C. and dominated Mesopotamia for the 1,000 yrs – mostly replaced by Akkadian around 2000 B.C. , but held on as a written language in cuneiform for another 2,000 years.
Written on clay tablets , evolving to script known as cuneiform, or “wedge-shaped” was born out of economic necessity and tool of the theocratic ruling elite who needed to keep track of the agricultural wealth of the city-states.
Extremely detailed records of offerings, rations, taxes and agricultural work have come down to us.
Over 500,000 clay tablets have been discovered, illuminating the breadth of knowledge they possessed and the lengths traversed to preserve it. The oldest written laws date back to 2400 B.C. in the city of Ebla, where the Code of Er-Nammu was written on tablets.
Sumerian Art and Architecture
Architecture on a large scale is generally credited to the Sumerians, with religious structures dating back to 3400 B.C., although it appears the basics of the structures began in the Ubaid period as far back as 5200 B.C. and were improved over time.
The house of ancient Mesopotamia was built of bare bricks, reeds, mats and few planks of wood, which from the fourth-millennium had acquired a typical form, which had remained for several millennia and had not changed at all in the historical times
. The buildings are noted for their arched doorways and flat roofs.
There was also the statue of the protective god of the house next to a clay sacrificial, and besides it the exterior walls of the houses were painted with asphalt, but also with red stripes, this being the color that drove away from the demons.
Elaborate construction, such as terra cotta ornamentation with bronze accents, complicated mosaics, imposing brick columns and sophisticated mural paintings all reveal the society’s technical sophistication.
Sculpture was used mainly to adorn temples and offer some of the earliest examples of human artists seeking to achieve some form of naturalism in their figures. Facing a scarcity of stone, Sumerians made leaps in metal-casting for their sculpture work, though relief carving in stone was a popular art form.
Under the Akkadian dynasty, sculpture reached new heights, as evidenced by intricate and stylized work in diorite dated to 2100 B.C. Palaces also reach a new level of grandiosity.
Ziggurat
Ziggurats began to appear around 2200 B.C. The ziggurat looked like a step pyramid with a flat top, featured no inner chambers and stood about 170 feet high.
Here the priests would perform rituals and sacrifices. Ziggurats often featured sloping sides and terraces with gardens.
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of these. Ziggurats are found scattered around what is today Iraq and Iran, and stand as an imposing testament to the power and skill of the ancient culture that produced them.
The Great Ziggurat
One of the largest and best-preserved ziggurats of Mesopotamia is the great Ziggurat at Ur. The Ziggurat at Ur and the temple on its top were built around 2100 B.C.E. by the king Ur-Nammu of the Third Dynasty of Ur for the moon god Nanna, the divine patron of the city state. T The height is speculative, as only the foundations of the Sumerian ziggurat have survived. In antiquity, to visit the ziggurat at Ur was to seek both spiritual and physical nourishment.
The structure had crumbled to ruins by the 6th century BCE of the Neo-Babylonian period, when it was restored by King Nabonidus. Its remains were excavated in the 1920s and 1930s by Sir Leonard Woolley.
Sumerian Science
Cuneiform writing in Mesopotamia began as a system of pictographs written with styli on clay tablets. The earliest cuneiform tablets. written in proto-cuneiform, were discovered in excavations of periods IV-III of the Eanna (Eana) district of Uruk (Warka) an ancient city of Sumer and later Babylonia, situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates river, some 30 km east of modern As-Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq. Between 1928 and 1976 approximately 5000 proto-cuneiform tablets were excavated at Uruk by the German Archaeological Institute. Proto-cuneiform texts corresponding to the Uruk III [circa 3100 BCE] tablets have been found in the northern Babylonian sites of Jemdet Nasr , Khafajah , and Tell Uquair , testifying to the fact that the new technology spread quickly throughout Babylonia soon after its invention (in ancient Iran proto-cuneiform possibly inspired the proto-Elamite script ca BC.)“Indeed that the vast majority of the earliest texts [discovered at Uruk and elsewhere in Mesopotamia] are administrative in nature suggests that the invention of writing was a response to practical social pressures—simply put, writing facilitated complex bureaucracy
Sumerians had a system of medicine that was based in magic and herbalism, but they were also familiar with processes of removing chemical parts from natural substances. They are considered to have had an advanced knowledge of anatomy, and surgical instruments have been found in archaeological sites.
One of the Sumerians greatest advances was in the area of hydraulic engineering. Early in their history they created a system of ditches to control flooding, and were also the inventors of irrigation, harnessing the power of the Tigris and Euphrates for farming. Canals were consistently maintained from dynasty to dynasty.
Sumerian Culture
Schools were common in Sumerian culture, marking the world’s first mass effort to pass along knowledge in order to keep a society running and building on itself.
Sumerians left behind scores of written records, but they are more renowned for their epic poetry, which influenced later works in Greece and Rome and sections of the Bible, most notably the story of the Great Flood, the Garden of Eden, and the Tower of Babel. The Sumerians were musically inclined and a Sumerian hymn, “Hurrian Hymn No. 6,” is considered the world’s oldest musically notated song.
Religion
The Sumerians worshipped hundreds of gods, with each city having its own patron deity.
The principal gods were too busy to bother with the plight of individuals. For that reason, each Sumerian worshipped a minor god or goddess who was expected to interact with the major gods. The soul and center of each city-state was its temple to the patron god.
The Sumerians did not believe in a heavenly afterlife and were realistic about the limits of human goodness.
They felt the gods were above questioning, but were not always kind.
The relationship with the gods was totally submissive, and their perception was that humans were created to serve the gods, thus diminishing the role of man in the universe.
Sumerian Economy and Trade
The Sumerians grew wheat, barley, peas, onions, turnips, and dates. They raised cattle and sheep, fished, and hunted wildfowl along the river. Food was generally abundant, and populations grew accordingly.
Since their homeland was largely devoid of timber, stone and minerals, the Sumerians were forced to create one of history’s earliest trade networks over both land and sea. With the development of the wheel and sail, transportation of goods became easier.
Their most important commercial partner may have been the island of Dilmun (present day Bahrain), which held a monopoly on the copper trade, but their merchants also undertook months-long journeys to Anatolia and Lebanon to gather cedar wood and to Oman and the Indus Valley for gold and gemstones.
The Sumerians were particularly fond of lapis lazuli—a blue-colored precious stone used in art and jewelry—and there is evidence that they may have roamed as far as Afghanistan to get it. Historians have also suggested that Sumerian references to two ancient trading lands known as “Magan” and “Meluhha” may refer to Egypt and Indus Valley civilization.
Evidence for imports from the Indus to Ur can be found from around 2350 BCE. Various objects made with shell species that are characteristic of the Indus coast, particularly Trubinella Pyrum and Fasciolaria Trapezium, have been found in the archaeological sites of Mesopotamia dating from around 2500-2000 BCE.
Several Indus seals with Harappan script have also been found in Mesopotamia, particularly in Ur, Babylon and Kish.
Relationships between Sumerians
For Sumerians, the family was very important, being considered, as in the present day, the foundation of the society. Just as the king was ruler over the city-state, so was the father/husband king over his house. The marriage was monogamous, and the woman, unlike other societies of that time, had more freedom, as in the Sumerians the role of mother was crucial. Being very high infant mortality due to lack of hygiene, the woman had to give birth to as many children as possible.
As for the holidays, everyone took part in them, and on these occasions, any social difference was erased, and there were also processions that ended with orgies.
Gilgamesh
The very first ruling body of Sumer that has historical verification is the First Dynasty of Kish. The earliest ruler mentioned is Etana of Kish, who, in a document from the time, is credited as having “stabilized all the lands.” One thousand years later, Etana would be memorialized in a poem that told of his adventures in heaven.
The most famous of the early Sumerian rulers is Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who took control around 2700 B.C. and is still remembered for his fictional adventures in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first epic poem in history and inspiration for later Roman and Greek myths and Biblical stories.
A devastating flood in the region was used as a pivotal point in the epic poem and later reused in the Old Testament story of Noah.
Sumerian Power Struggles
Somewhere around 2600 B.C., a power struggle erupted between the leaders of Kish, Erech and Ur, which set off a “musical-chairs” scenario of rulers for the region for the next 400 years.
The first conflict resulted in the kingdom of Awan seizing control and shifting the ruling body outside of Sumer until the kingship was returned to the Kish.
The Kish kept control briefly until the rise of Uruk King Enshakushanna, whose brief dynasty was followed by Adabian conqueror Lugalannemundu, who held power for 90 years and is said to have expanded his kingdom up to the Mediterranean. Lugalannemundu also conquered the Gutian people, who lived in the Eastern Iraqi mountains and who would later come to rule Sumer.
In 2500 B.C. the only woman to rule the Sumerians, Kubaba, took the throne. She is the only female listed on the Sumerian King List, which names all rulers of Sumer and their accomplishments. Kubaba’s son, Puzur-Suen, eventually reigned, bringing in the fourth dynasty of Kish, following a brief ascendency of Unzi, the first in the Akshak Dynasty.
This last Kish dynasty ruled for a century before Uruk king Lugal-zage-si ruled for 25 years before Sargon took control in 2234.
Among the Nippur temple and fortresses located about 600 miles south of Baghdad during the Bronze Age, archaeologists have turned up thousands of stone tablets with ancient texts.
They were first rediscovered during the excavations at Nippur in the 1880’s, written on a small clay cuneiform tablet, which has been held by The Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient ever since. The archaeological work done in Mesopotamia completely changed the way history, and the world, could be understood.
One of those tablets is referred to as “number 2461″that includes an exquisite love poem. Poem recited by the annual brides of King Shu-Sin (c. 4000 BC)
Also known as ‘The opus ‘Bridegroom, dear to my heart’ captures the passionate words from a lover to a King.
It is the oldest known love poem ever found.
These loving words were passed down over generations.
Following the discovery of Mesopotamia’s ancient past, history was enlarged, deepened, and humanity’s story became much more complex and interesting.
The literature of ancient Mesopotamia provided the first forms of world literature, the first expressions of human emotion and experience and, among them, the experience of romantic love and passion through the world’s oldest love poem.
The author is unknown but is believed to have been recited by a bride of Sumerian King Shu-Sin, and used as a script for a ceremonial recreation of the sacred marriage rite.
It would have been sung at the Akitu – the ancient New Year festival in Mesopotamia, and at banquets and festivals accompanied by music and dance.
The poem is believed to have been used as part of a sacred ritual in which the king symbolically married a goddess named Inanna, a Sumerian goddess of love. The idea was this would ensure fertility and prosperity for the year.
The poem was likely recited by Shu Shin’s chosen bride. While it wasn’t love as we know it today, it was the ultimate representation of love between a monarch, his bride, and their god.
The Akitu festival originally took place at the Vernal Equinox, but this date was moved during the Ur III period to coincide with the main harvest festivals, and to align with the Nippurian calendar, who reigned as king in the city of Ur from 1972-1964 BC.
The equinoxes, along with solstices, are directly related to the seasons of the year. In the northern hemisphere, the vernal equinox (March) conventionally marks the beginning of spring in most cultures and is considered the New Year in the Persian calendar or Iranian calendars as Nouroz (means new day).
An equinox is an astronomical event in which the plane of Earth’s equator passes through the center of the Sun, which occurs twice each year, around 20 March and 23 September. On an equinox, day and night are of approximately equal duration all over the planet. They are not exactly equal, however, due to the angular size of the sun and atmospheric refraction. To avoid this ambiguity, the word equilux is sometimes used to mean a day in which the durations of light and darkness are equal.
Shu-Sin was the younger son of Shulgi of Ur (reigned 2029-1982 BC) ; the last great king of the Ur III Period.
According to the historian Stephen Bertman, besides this poem, “Shu-Sin was also the male lead in a series of erotic poems in Akkadian written in dialogue form similar to the later biblical Song of Songs” (105).
In his book, History Begins at Sumer, Kramer describes his experience upon realizing what he discovered.
“When I first laid eyes on it, its most attractive feature was its state of preservation. I soon realized that I was reading a poem, divided into a number of stanzas, which celebrated beauty and love, a joyous bride and a king named Shu Shin… As I read it again and yet again, there was no mistaking its content. What I held in my hand was one of the oldest love songs written down by the hand of man.” (pg. 245)
The following translation of The Love Song of Shu-Sin is from Samuel Noah Kramer’s work History Begins at Sumer, pp 246-247:
Bridegroom, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet,
Lion, dear to my heart,
Goodly is your beauty, honeysweet.You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Bridegroom, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber,
You have captivated me, let me stand tremblingly before you.
Lion, I would be taken by you to the bedchamber.
Bridegroom, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey,
In the bedchamber, honey-filled,
Let me enjoy your goodly beauty,
Lion, let me caress you,
My precious caress is more savory than honey.Bridegroom, you have taken your pleasure of me,
Tell my mother, she will give you delicacies,
My father, he will give you gifts.Your spirit, I know where to cheer your spirit,
Bridegroom, sleep in our house until dawn,
Your heart, I know where to gladden your heart,
Lion, sleep in our house until dawn.You, because you love me,
Give me pray of your caresses,
My lord god, my lord protector,
My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil’s heart,
Give my pray of your caresses.
Your place goodly as honey, pray lay your hand on it,
Bring your hand over like a gishban-garment,
Cup your hand over it like a gishban-sikin-garment