We have already seen that some of the ancient generic classifications discussed earlier should perhaps best be understood as indicating types of performance, while sir-namgala, for instance, literally means ‘song of the gala priestly class’ (see Group H). It would be perverse to argue that many of the hymns to deities or rulers did not start out in cultic or court settings, even if they were eventually adopted and adapted for scholastic purposes. Administrative records document the existence of various types of musicians, singers, and other performers attached to both temples and palaces. Officially commissioned art objects depict deities, royalty, and dignitaries being entertained in music and song. A praise poem of Lipit-EStar (Group J) was even carved onto a large boulder, suggesting that it served as the text of a monument, perhaps in a temple or other public space.
The contents of some royal hymns can be closely related to particular events in courtly life. Hymns were commissioned for events as varied as ‘sacred marriage’ ceremonies, involving the king and the cult of the goddess Inana (see Inana andISme-Dagan, Group B), the inauguration of new cultic furniture (see Sulgi andNinlil’s barge, Group C), and perhaps the renovation of temples (Enki’s journey to Nibru, Group J). The naming of the new year could also be commemorated with a hymn of praise: the sixth year of king Sulgi’s reign, for instance, was named ‘The year the king put in order the road to Nibru’, which closely relates to A praise poem of Sulgi (Group J) celebrating Sulgi’s heroic run from his capital city Urim to Nibru and back in a single day—a distance of a few hundred kilometres!
The literary works themselves often mention cultic or courtly settings for the performance of songs with the same generic names that we find in the literary corpus. In a hymn commemorating king Ur-Namma’s death (The death of Ur-Namma, Group A), the dead monarch is made to say:
My tigi, adab, flute and zamzam songs have been turned into laments because of me.
Fig. 7. A harpist on a terracotta plaque of the early second millennium bce
And The Kes temple hymn (Group J) provides a glimpse into performance in a cultic setting:
The bull’s horn is made to growl; the drumsticks (?) are made to thud. The singer cries out to the ala drum; the grand sweet tigi drum is played for him. The house is built; its nobility is good!
The literary compositions can even be self-referential. At the end of Inana and Su-kale-tuda (Group F) even as the goddess condemns Su-kale-tuda to death she says:
Your name, however, shall not be forgotten. Your name shall exist in songs and make the songs sweet. A young singer shall perform them most pleasingly in the king’s palace. A shepherd shall sing them sweetly as he tumbles his butter-churn. A shepherd boy shall carry your name to where he grazes the sheep.
And this, we are to believe, is one such song. However, the reference to the ‘shepherd boy’ should not necessarily lead us to imagine the widespread dissemination of such compositions amongst the illiterate peasant classes. Rather, Inana may be humiliating Su-kale-tuda one last time by reminding him of the existence of her lover, the shepherd-god Dumuzid.
But Inana’s words do capture here the importance of Sumerian literature
For its royal patrons. A good literary work will survive, one hopes, long after the individual patron is dead. Thus immortality of a kind is achieved. Sulgi and Isme-Dagan’s commissions lived on in House F and elsewhere for centuries after they had died, and long after their dynasties had collapsed— and we are remembering and celebrating the literature they patronized some four thousand years later.
World History
