Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature

Antiquity, Sept, 1995 by Timothy Taylor

Although Leick sets her interpretations within a chronological and cultural framework that owes much to a century-and-a-half of archaeological endeavour, none of her specific insights or conclusions depend on archaeological evidence - a fact that reflects poorly on the discipline in general. The texts demonstrate that sex was important and celebrated in ancient Mesopotamia. In Chapter 9, 'Inanna rejoicing in her vulva', Leick notes how Sumerian brides drew attention to their sexuality ('our parts have grown hair', 'our breasts are now standing out'), while in a well-known proverb an older woman says 'my vulva is (still) fine, although people say it's finished with you' (p. 92f). The vulva was the epitome of a woman's sexual identity, so that a woman might be introduced to her prospective parents-in-law for the first time as 'the vulva'. Whereas 'the phallus represented fertility, the vulva represented sexual potency and became the primary focus of Mesopotamian eroticism' (p. 96). The positive sexual image of women did not last. Leick notes the stark contrast with modern attitudes in the Near East, while western ideas have been prejudiced against Mesopotamian sexual values ever since the 2nd century AD: in the Book of Revelations, John is shown a 'great whore that sitteth upon many waters . . . having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication: And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.'

Behind the 'whore' and 'harlot' of the King James' translation, (and the presumably similarly interchangeable original Greek terms), lay a rich and essentially non-derogatory vocabulary for types of female prostitute, as well as various kinds of intersex performers (chapter 14). Leick notes (p. 159) that one of the oft-quoted epithets of the great 'Lady of Heaven' Inanna, (Assyrian Istar, Biblical Ashtoreth, Semitic Astarte) was 'the one who can change man into woman and woman into man'; this, according to Leick, 'should not be taken as a reference to some vague ritual gender swapping . . . but as an acceptance of asexuality and hermaphroditism as divinely decreed'. Leick's literary evidence for the incorporation of sexually ambiguous individuals in Mesopotamian society (Sumerian sag-ur-sag, pilpili and kurgarra; Assyrian assinnu), challenges the standard male-female division of much funerary archaeology. Biological intersexers are unusual genetically and/or hormonally, and may be identified by their non-standard genitalia and secondary sexual characteristics (one of Leick's texts mentions a lu-su-ba-gis-nu-gar-gal-la-nu-gar - 'a person on whose body was neither a penis nor a vulva'). The childhood incidence of physically intersex individuals is one to two per thousand (Glatzl 1987), but the total number of sex/gender ambiguous individuals in any society is usually much higher and results from a range of factors, both social and biological. Cross-culturally there is little evidence for the removal of such people from society, either through infanticide or later exclusion; on the contrary, they may be assigned a special place and role. Some of them should sometimes be archaeologically identifiable, skeletally and/or artefactually and/or iconographically. In practice they are generally not recognized. This is probably because they are generally not looked for.

Aspects of Mesopotamian sexuality as reconstructed from the texts are occasionally paralleled in published iconography. For example, the connection between sex and alcohol, a common theme of love songs, is depicted on an early 2nd-millennium BC moulded terracotta relief from Tello (plate 6) showing a couple, probably in a tavern (e-es-dam): the woman is standing, drinking beer from a jug on the floor through a long straw which she holds in her left hand, while reaching - rather distractedly - back with her right to stroke the brow of her partner who is making love to her from behind (penetration is probably vaginal, although it is impossible to be sure; anal sex is a common theme in the texts.) This is the most explicit of only five unambiguously sexual scenes illustrated in Leick's book, all showing heterosexual couples. Where are the similarly profane scenes of homosexuality, or ambiguity, or the sacred images of the hero Enki masturbating the river Tigris into existence? Jeremy Black & Anthony Green (1992) note that 'numerous objects from Mesopotamia ranging in date from prehistoric to Middle Assyrian times depict scenes of sexual intercourse', but that 'Analysis is made difficult both because the few remarks in written sources are vague and obscure, and because much of the iconographic material is unpublished (a reflection on modern academic etiquette)'.

Leick admirably resolves Black & Green's first complaint. Her treatment of the literary evidence builds a complex picture of a Sumerian and Akkadian sexuality that is different from our own in unexpected ways, and which complements similar endeavours for other paris of the ancient world, notably Greece (e.g. Halperin et al. 1990). The second complaint must be resolved by archaeologists. The problem with the data cannot be simply referred to the current cultural mores of countries like Iraq where examples of sexually explicit ancient imagery may not easily find their way into museum displays. Even if as archaeologists we choose not to accept what many anthropologists have believed since Malinowski - that sex dominates almost every aspect of culture - it is at least incumbent on us properly to present what evidence there is. It is not the existence of the physical remains of ancient sexuality, but the stark gap between Leick's study of the centrality of sexuality to much of Mesopotamian life on the one hand, and the unsystematized and scanty fragments of archaeological data that relate to it on the other, that is a true source of shame.