Endnote 11 – Unlocking the Poetry of Love in the Song of Songs

See the works of White (1978), Murphy (1979 BTB) and Davis (1980). Mesopotamia has not produced love poetry that is similarly secular, since almost all examples either are drawn from religious circles or insert Ishtar/Inanna as paradigmatic of the beloved. Recent texts that could be placed in the same category are available in Jerome A. Black (1983); Jacob Klein, Three Sulgi Hymns: Sumerian Hymns Glorifying King Sulgi of Ur (Bar Ilan University press: Ramat Gan, 1981); and Joan G. Westenholz, forthcoming in the Reiner Festschrift (1984). A few more examples, already identified as such, await publication. A most delightful study of the Mesopotamian evidence is available in the recent French edition of a book by Samuel Noah Kramer. Le Mariage Sacré, à Sumer et à Babylone, translated by Jean Battéro (Berg International: Paris, 1983). Cesare Perugini, “Cantico dei Cantici e lirica d’amore sumerica,” Rivista Biblica 31 (1983), pp. 21–41, assesses the import of Sumerian “sacred marriage” texts upon the Song of Songs. Frederic Raurell, “Erotic Pleasure in the ‘Song of Songs,” Laurentianum 24 (1983), pp. 5–45, writes interestingly on the erotic in the Songs.