By Dr Gwendo Leick
Intercourse and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature is a brand new contribution to present debates approximately intercourse and eroticism. It offers an perception into Mesopotamian attitudes to sexuality via analyzing the oldest preserved written proof at the topic - the Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform resources - which have been written among the twenty first and the fifth centuries B.C. utilizing those long-neglected and sometimes superb info, Gwendolyn Leick is ready to anlayse Mesopotamian perspectives of prostitution, love magic and deviant sexual behaviour in addition to extra common problems with sexuality and gender. This attention-grabbing e-book sheds gentle at the sexual tradition of 1 of the earliest literate civilisations.
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Additional info for Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature
Sample text
Enki controls the waters within the context of Sumerian civilization, where the intelligent management of the element provided the economic basis for its very existence. The purifying power of water, like that of fire, is an essential substance in magic rituals and by the second millennium Enki’s intelligence was mainly associated with efficacious spells. The source of Enki’s creative and reproductive potential was also linked to water. There is the inherent fecundity of muddy water, usually referred to as the ‘fathering mud of the Apsû’—with its self-generating force we encountered in context with cosmogony— and there is the semen virile, the ‘fluid’ of the penis, as the Sumerian expresses it.
He tells her that he is the gardener and has brought cucumbers, apples and grapes, ‘for your “so be it”’. Uttu, ‘full of joy’, opens the door and Enki presents her with his gifts and pours out a ‘large measure of beer’ (line 177). At last he is able to take her in his arms: He embraced her, lying in her lap, Stroked her thighs, massaged her, 34 ENKI AND NINHURSAGA He embraced her (again), lying in her lap, Copulated with the youngster and kissed her, Enki ejaculated into Uttu’s womb, She received the sperm in (her) womb, the sperm of Enki.
Like Alster, he noticed the motif of male womb-envy and believed that Enki became pregnant and suffered because he was unable to give birth himself. : 22). I shall not try to formulate an ‘interpretation’ that accounts for all the motifs of this composition. There are still too many passages that remain beyond my comprehension linguistically or are just too damaged. But the observations by Jacobsen and Kramer and Maier, that it might in parts be satirical, seem worth pursuing. Jacobsen mentioned the ‘sailors of Dilmun’ and their hypothetically ‘rough sense of humour’; he imagined the work to have been recited at the court of Ur.