| Part of a series on |
| Ancient Mesopotamian religion |
|---|
 |
|
|
The Sumerian disputation poem or Sumerian debate is a genre of Sumerian literature in the form of a disputation. Extant compositions from this genre date to the middle-to-late 3rd millennium BC. There are six primary poems belonging to this genre. The genre of Sumerian disputations also differs from Aesopic disputations as the former contain only dialogue without narration. In their own language, the texts are described as adamin in the doxologies at the end of the poem, which literally means "contests (between) two".[1]
Scholars have referred to the genre by various other names as well, such as "precedence poems", "debate poems", and so on.[2] The genre outlived its Sumerian form and continued to resonate in texts written in Middle Eastern languages for millennia.[3][4]
The most well-attested of these poems are the Hoe and Plow and the Ewe and Grain, with over 60 and 70 manuscripts available for each respectively.[5]
- ^ Mittermayer 2023, p. 181.
- ^ Mittermayer 2020, p. 11.
- ^ Brock 2002.
- ^ Brock 2009.
- ^ Jimenez 2017, p. 17–18.