“Signet of Steel”

Abstract

Ludingirra was a considerable Sumerian-Ianguage poet of Babylon, with a terminus ante quern in the reign of Hammurabi’s successor Samsuiluna, thus ca. 1700 b.c.e. He rates as the author of two dirges or elegies over the deaths of his father and wife respectively, which Kramer (1963: 208-217) discovered in (he Pushkin Museum in Moscow in 1957 and subsequently edited. Ludingirra is also credited with a poem known (in Sa nagba imuru or Arma Virumque fashion) as Lii-kas^-e-lugal-la har-ra-an-na gin-na ‘Royal courier, begin the journey!’, preserved entire and edited from several tablet pieces by Civil (1964). The poet instructs the messenger to deliver greetings to his mother in Nippur, adding that “if you do not know my mother, I shall give you some signs”. Her name is Sat-Istar; instead of street directions Ludingirra then pours out in 42 lines an exaltation of his mother in extravagant poetic similes (grouped into five “signs”), concluding with a two-line clincher: “When, with the help of the signs I have given, you stand in her luminous presence, say to her: ‘Ludingirra your beloved son greets you’!”