The World's Oldest Love Poem

Q: What is the world's oldest love poem?

The world's oldest love poem is The Love Song for Shu-Sin from Mesopotamia dated to c. 2000 BCE.

Q: What is The Love Song for Shu-Sin about?

The Love Song for Shu-Sin is both an intimate poem of romantic and erotic love and a ritual work celebrating the marriage of the king with the goddess Inanna to ensure fertility in the coming year.

Q: When was The Love Song for Shu-Sin discovered and translated?

The Love Song for Shu-Sin was discovered in the mid-19th century and translated in 1951.

Q: Why is The Love Song for Shu-Sin important?

The Love Song for Shu-Sin is important because it is the oldest love poem in the world, pre-dating the Song of Solomon (also known as The Song of Songs) which was previously understood as the oldest love poem extant. The Love Song of Shu-Sin, along with other Mesopotamian texts, encouraged a new understanding of world history.

Joshua J. Mark

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Article:	The World's Oldest Love Poem
Author:	Joshua J. Mark
Narrator:	Jennifer Sabir

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About the Narrator

Jennifer Sabir

I hold a M.A. in Second Language, Policy, Culture with a passion for Russian language and culture and a working knowledge of French. Additionally, I work as a freelance linguist editor, enjoy voice work, and have experience with poetry translation.

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Joshua J. Mark

Joshua J. Mark is World History Encyclopedia's co-founder and Content Director. He was previously a professor at Marist College (NY) where he taught history, philosophy, literature, and writing. He has traveled extensively and lived in Greece and Germany.

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Uploaded by Joshua J. Mark, published on 13 August 2014. The copyright holder has published this content under the following license: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. When republishing on the web a hyperlink back to the original content source URL must be included. Please note that content linked from this page may have different licensing terms.

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