When Gods Love and Hate: The Late Babylonian Corpus of the Divine Love Lyrics

by Nathan Wasserman and Rocío Da Riva¹

At the end of a sweltering summer afternoon, the goddess Zarpanītu searches for her husband, the god Marduk, in the inner chambers of the Esagila. Esagila, their temple, stands in the heart of Babylon, east of the Euphrates river. Her search proves fruitless: Marduk is nowhere to be found. Zarpanītu learns he is on the temple roof, not alone, but in the company of the alluring Ištar of Babylon. Enraged, she storms around the temple, ascends the ziggurat, descends to the garden to seek the gardener, calls out to Babylon’s women in the streets, who are astonished by the spectacle, and hurls insults at Ištar using coarse language.

Tablet BM 40090 + BM 41005 + BM 41107 (https://www.ebl.lmu.de/fragmentarium/BM.40090?tab=photo)

This vivid scene, far removed from the official portrayal of the Babylonian pantheon, is found in a collection of tablets from various Assyrian and Babylonian sites, dating from the Neo-Assyrian to the late Hellenistic period. Known as ‘Divine Love Lyrics’ (a term proposed by Wilfed G. Lambert), these texts are not about love, but rather sex, jealousy, and betrayal. They are not ‘lyrical’ texts, but documents related to religious rituals (an Ištar-Zarpanītu-Marduk festival) that blend ceremonial instructions with recitations or songs to be performed during the rites.

Over 40 fragmentary cuneiform tablets attest to this ceremony, which occurred during the first week of Du’uzu (mid-July) in Babylon’s temples, notably the Eturkalamma dedicated to Ištar of Babylon, as well as along its streets, canals, and gates. The festival features a diverse cast of characters and locations, with Babylon itself as the main protagonist. The urban setting is evident from the mentioned professionals and craftsmen.

While the tablets’ fragmentary state prevents a complete understanding of the ceremony’s progression, it’s clear this complex event was not confined to sanctuary interiors or limited to a select few. The festival was largely public, with common people appearing in various passages. It seems particularly relevant to lower and non-hegemonic social groups, such as prostitutes, carefree and perhaps promiscuous women, ordinary men, workers, and criminals.

Notably, most deities mentioned, and many human participants, are women. While we cannot claim these texts were written by women in the strictly patriarchal Babylonian society, they do present a clear gender perspective: emotions are described from a female viewpoint.

Reclining woman (or goddess?), Babylon, 100 BC – 100 AD Alabaster with garnet inlays, applied bitumen and gold. The Wyvern Collection, United Kingdom (https://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/persia/)

The composition’s main theme contrasts two opposing female archetypes: the ideal woman, a diligent housewife tending to her husband’s needs and home, embodied by the matron Zarpanītu, and the unmarried, promiscuous woman, represented by Ištar.

Despite interpretative challenges due to the tablets’ condition, the festival clearly involved a complex set of activities across various sacred and secular sites in Babylon. Some ritual sites remain unidentified and can only be provisionally located: the Equlû, the House of Wailing, etc. Even the main ritual site, the Eturkalamma, is only vaguely known, though likely near the Esagil temple.

1. This article was written by Nathan Wasserman and Rocío Da Riva. The platform does not allow multiple authors to write an article. So, as the editor of this blog, I suggested that the two authors write two versions of the article, one in English and the other in French. In this way, I can attribute one version to Nathan and another to Rocío. The automatic bibliographic referencing will attribute the article to the author indicated by the platform. The title of the two versions is different because it is preferable for automatic bibliographic referencing. The French version is available here [↩]

nathan

Voir tous les articles