The Harps that Once... Sumerian Poetry in Translation

1. The New House
2. The Sister’s Message
3. The Wiles of Women
4. The Bridal Sheets
5. Let Him Come!
6. Dumuzi’s Wedding
7. Unfaithfulness
8. Dumuzi’s Dream
9. The Wild Bull Who Has Lain Down
10. Recognition
11. Vain Appeal
12. In the Desert by the Early Grass
13. Love-Song to Shu-Suen
14. As You Let Day Slip By
15. He Arrives
16. My “Wool” Being Lettuce
17. Vigorously He Sprouted
18. The First Child
19. Tavern Sketch
20. Hymn to Enlil
21. Hymn to Inanna
22. The Nanshe Hymn
23. The Eridu Genesis
24. The Birth of Man
25. Enlil and Ninlil
26. Enki and Ninsikila/Ninhursaga
27. Inanna’s Descent
28. The Ninurta Myth Lugal-e
29. Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta
30. Lugalbanda and the Thunderbird
31. Gilgamesh and Aka
32. The Cursing of Akkade
33. Hymns to Temples
34. Hymn to Kesh
35. The Cylinders of Gudea
36. The Lament for Ur
37. The Destroyed House
38. The Verdict of Enlil

The eminent Assyriologist Thorkild Jacobsen, author of Treasures of Darkness, here presents translations of ancient Sumerian poems written near the end of the third millennium b.c.e., including a number of compositions that have never before been published in translation. The themes developed in the poems—quite possibly the earliest poems extant—are those that have fascinated humanity since the time people first began to spin stories: the longings of young lovers; courage in battle; joy at the birth of a child; the pleasures of drink and song.