Position in chronology
A song of Inana and Dumuzi (Dumuzi-Inana W)
Written in modern English
The opening four lines are missing and two more are only partially legible. What follows is a repeated, incantatory wish: let my sheep eat whatever is growing in my fields — the camel-thorn, the winnowed barley, the stubble, the cakir plants, the colocynth, the marsh reeds, the reed shoots, the rising reeds. The list expands with each line: let them eat what sustains orphans and widows, the beer wort mixed with honey, the calves walking alongside their bulls, the blossoming apple orchard.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — scholar edition
ETCSL4 lines missing 2 lines fragmentary May my sheep eat my ...... which is growing in the fields, my plants, my camel-thorn. May my sheep eat my ......, my plants, my winnowed barley. May my sheep eat my life of the Land which is growing in the fields, my plants, my stubble. May my sheep eat my support of orphans and sustenance of widows, my plants, my cakir plants. May my sheep eat my string of clay balls (?) which is growing in the fields, my plants, my colocynth. May my sheep eat my beer wort mixed with honey, my plants, my marsh reeds. May my sheep eat my calves going together with their bulls, my plants, my reed shoots. May my sheep eat my blossoming garden of apple trees, my plants, my rising reeds.
Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature — scholar edition (Oxford, Black/Cunningham/Robson/Zólyomi).
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Scholarly note
Composition c.4.08.23 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.4.08.23: A song of Inana and Dumuzi (Dumuzi-Inana W). 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.4.08.23.
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