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Inanna and Šulgi: A Sumerian Fertility Song

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 August 2014

S. N. Kramer
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Extract

One of the most lucid, succinct, comprehensive assessments of Šulgi and his reign is that of C. J. Gadd in Chapter XXII of vol. I of the revised Cambridge Ancient History. Šulgi's remarkable achievements as ruler of Sumer were no doubt due to his intelligence, energy, courage, and dedication. So, at least the modern historian would surmise. He was also, they might add, lucky—the gods were with him. In this they would agree to some extent with the Sumerian theologians who had no doubt on the matter—Šulgi was a highly successful king, because all the high gods favoured him, and especially because he was the beloved spouse of Inanna. Thus we learn from a tablet in the Böhl Collection at Leiden, it was Inanna, who after tasting of his love, blessed Šulgi with victory in battle and acclaimed him as the king eligible for all the rights, prerogatives, and insignia of kingship (cf. now The Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Volume of the Jewish Quarterly Review (1967), 370–380). But what Sumer needed most was fertility of field, garden, and orchard. And this need, too, was fulfilled by Inanna as the lover of Šulgi. So, at least, we may conclude from the following poem inscribed on a Nippur tablet in the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient, and copied by Muazzez Çıǧ (Ni. 4171; Plate IV).

Type
Research Article
Information
IRAQ , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , Spring 1969 , pp. 18 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © The British Institute for the Study of Iraq 1969

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References

1 For similar “brother-sister” dialogues between Inanna (or a hierodule representing Inanna) and Dumuzi (or a king as Dumuzi incarnate), cf. e.g. PAPS 107, 508–510Google Scholar (Nos. 8, 9, and 11), and SRT, 5 and 31.

2 Note the use of Emesal in lines 4 and 5.

3 It is difficult to get at the real meaning of this passage since the rendering of the crucial word hḫul and the verbal form nu-mu-e-dè-ri-ri.. in lines 1–5 is uncertain, while the text of the remaining lines is quite fragmentary.

4 So, to judge from lines 6ff. of the reverse, where the goddess commands the farmer to plow the field for Sulgi. Note that the passage is divided into two sections (lines 10–17 and lines 18–end of obverse); the text of the second section is fragmentary but it probably parallels the first in general content.

5 Probably this gap was not very large; it may have contained no more than a few closing lines of Šulgi's speech and the initial lines of Inanna's response.

6 Perhaps this farmer is Enkimdu, cf. last Dijk, J. S. Van, La Sagesse Sumero-Accadienne, 65–85Google Scholar.

7 Note that there is some possibility that ḫul nu-mu-e-dè-ri-ri-.. was repeated in the first line.

8 Nor is the meaning of -e-dè- certain; perhaps it is to be rendered “with you”, that is, “under your (Šulgi's) reign”, or in the fields and garden “ in your possession”.

9 Note also the variants ki-ig-ga-ág in e.g. Ni 4596 (PAPS 107, 525) col. iii 12 and SRI No. 31, line 18, and probably in Ni 2461 (Belleten 16 (1952), LXVIGoogle Scholar) lines 1 and 3.

10 The second complex in line 14, .. -a-šu-nim-[bi] (perhaps the sign before -a- is an erasure) is difficult; it seems to parallel the a-sig-bi of line 15 and might therefore have been expected to read simply a-nim-bi but cf. e.g. ab-sin šu-nim-ma in Landsberger, , JNES 8 (1954), 278Google Scholar, n. 100.

11 But note that if so, the Emesal mar-ra might have been expected (rather than -gar-ra).