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The recent edition of the compositions concerned with the relations between manna and Dumuzi by Yitschak Sefati provides an occasion to revisit some important Assyriological questions concerning literature, ritual, and language. Some editorial problems raised by the diverse epigraphic conventions used to transcribe cuneiform texts in this edition, and several matters of detail, are also addressed.
This is a review article of: Love Songs in Sumerian Literature. By YITSCHAK SEFATI. Bar-Ilan Studies in Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Publications of The Samuel N. Kramer Institute of Assyriology. Ramat Gan: BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY PRESS, 1998. Pp. 445, 44 plates. $49.
LOVE AND MARRIAGE
THE LABEL "LOVE POETRY" may raise some eyebrows when applied to the Sumerian compositions containing references to the relations between manna and Dumuzi, the so-called cycle of Dumuzi and manna (usually abbreviated DI). Some scholars would prefer "sexual lyric" or "sex poetry."1Nevertheless, this is probably the result of our Western bias. The tradition of love poetry that stems from the trouveres, troubadours, and Minnesinger of the Middle Ages and their understanding of "courtly love" shows little awareness of the bodies of the lovers.2 This medieval tradition, eventually blended with partly Theocritean and Virgilian models of pastoral love, permeates, in one way or another, our whole concept of love in poetry, from il dolce stil nuovo (Guido Cavalcanti, Cino da Pistoia, etc.) to Romanticism. Even the generic umbrella under which we place love poetry as a distinctive genre, viz., lyric, seems to have had different meanings in different periods.3 Moreover, one can always object that our scholarly classification of ancient Near Eastern literary works according to Greco-Roman and Western genres forces our compositions into a Procrustean bed on which they frequently appear to be quite uncomfortable.4 Nevertheless, in spite of all the possible pitfalls and shortcomings of generic labels, the term "love" does seem appropriate for the contents of most of these lyrics, whether this love is full of carnal passion, or as elusive as the mere hint of what may have perhaps been an ancient ritual.5
The so-called "sacred marriage" ritual poses more serious problems. It has been traditionally assumed that the cycle of lyric compositions focused on the relations between manna and Dumuzi reflects a ritual usually called by scholars "sacred...