Enlil’s Letter to Shu Sin
In 1951, the staff at Istanbul’s Archaeological museum discovered a well-preserved cuneiform tablet discarded in a drawer. Archaeologists recovered the tablet from the library of the Assyrian King Ashurbanipal during early nineteenth century excavations of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Nineveh. Other finds from the library had revealed stories of the Great Flood, Noah’s Arc and the fall of man, which predated the biblical versions. The tablet once translated proved to somewhat more prosaic, but none the less astounding for it was a ‘love letter’ from around 2000BC, written in poetic form by a Mesopotamian priestess, Enlil and addressed to the King of Ur, Shu Sin.
The tablet was couched with many standard terms of endearment familiar to lovers across the ages. “Bridegroom, dear to my heart,” Enlil began, before she continued, addressing her ‘beloved’ with all the excitement of an eager bride looking forward to her wedding night and the consummation of her marriage. “You have captivated me… I would be taken by you to the bedchamber… Bridegroom, let me caress you… My Shu-Sin, who gladdens Enlil’s heart.” The letter, which may well have been read out to the King by Enlil, was not, however quite what it seemed.
For the marriage and consummation that Enlil anticipated so fervently was no a romantic one or even a matter of state. It was instead part of a religious ritual to ensure the continued fertility and prosperity of Ur and its territories. This ritual was the annual Sacred marriage which occurred every spring Equinox when the King of the land metaphorically married- and mated – with the goddess of fertility, Inanna. Enlil was not marrying Shu Sin herself. Instead, she was standing in as a proxy for the goddess- for all aspects of the ritual.
As a prelude to the main ceremony when the couple consummated their brief union, King Shu Sin would have ‘courted’ Enlil, sending her gifts and letters similar to her own, pressing his suit. Enlil’s eager acceptance is the only part of this ritual courtship that survives. In this respect, the couple was mimicking Innana and her celestial lover Dumuzi. However, their resulting marriage was for one night only- at least, until the following year.
Eight hundred years later, a widowed Egyptian Queen’s applied for a new husband in a much less romantic fashion.