"Roses are red, violets are blue.. " and all the rest of it. Many rhymed, passionate, clever and crass messages were exchanged yesterday between lovers, mediated largely by Hallmark. The ancient Sumerians, 4000 years ago, knew how to put a sexually bold love poem on paper - or rather in stone. The verses did not beat about the bush. The purpose of the lyrical amorous message was unambiguous and yet quite romantic.
"ISTANBUL, TURKEY - It is as tiny as the sleekest mobile phones that fit in the palm of the hand, but its message is anything but modern. A small tablet in a special display this month in the Istanbul Museum of the Ancient Orient is thought to be the oldest love poem ever found, the words of a lover from more than 4,000 years ago.
The ancient Sumerian tablet was unearthed in the late 1880s in Nippur, a region in what is now Iraq, and had been resting quietly in a modest corner of the museum until it was brought back to the limelight this year by a company that made it part of a Valentine's Day promotion.
The tablet in fact contains a daring — and risqué — ballad in which a priestess professes her love for a king, though it is thought that the words are in fact a script for a ceremonial re-creation of a fable by the priestess and the king, Su-Sin. The priestess represents Inanna, the Goddess of Love and Fertility, and the king represents Dumuzi, the God of Shepherds, on the eve of their union.
Muazzez Hilmiye Cig, 93, a retired historian at the museum who is one of only a few people in Turkey who can read the text, said she was fascinated by the way Sumerians perceived love.
"They did not have sexual taboos in love," she said. "Instead, they believed that only love and passion could bring them fertility and therefore praised pleasures."
In the agriculture-based Sumerian community, she said, lovemaking between the king and the priestess would have been seen as a way to ensure the fertility of their crops, and therefore the community's welfare, for another year."
Read the whole story to see the text of the poem.
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