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The Sacred Marriage (Inana & Dumuzi)
The oldest love songs on earth: a goddess and a shepherd-king, whose union was thought to ripen the whole land.
A cycle of exquisite Sumerian love-songs celebrates the courtship and union of the goddess Inana and the shepherd Dumuzi. In its royal application, a king (standing in for Dumuzi) was joined to the goddess (through her priestess or image), a union thought to secure the land's fertility and to confirm the king's god-favored rule. The poetry is tender, sensuous, and joyful. Scholars debate how far an actual 'sacred marriage rite' was performed versus how much is literary; the love-songs themselves are unmistakably real and among the oldest love poetry in the world.
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