English (United Kingdom) 
Russian (Russia) Few texts that directly describe the rite of sacred marriage have survived from Sumer. This is a hymn to Shulgi X, in which the Uruk king Shulgi is married to Inanna in her Uruk temple. There are two hymns to the kings of Isin: Idindagan A and Ishmedagan K, in which the event itself and the festival dedicated to it are the main objects of praise. In addition, the hymns to the gods “Enki and Ninhursag”, “Enlil and Ninlil”, “Enki and the Order of the World” mention the sacred marriage.
In the hymn X, Shulgi makes a trip to the sacred Kulab to confirm his royal status. Mooring at the Kulab pier, the king of Ur makes rich sacrifices of bulls and lambs, and he presses the smallest ones to his chest — a sign of a gift from a pure heart. Upon entering the Eninnu's sanctuary, Shulgi dresses in the ruler's linen robe and puts a hili tiara (in Sumerian it means "sexual attraction") on his head. Inanna greets him with joy and after the marriage (a description of this moment in the hymn is omitted) determines a favorable fate for King Shulgi. Among the virtues that the goddess rewards him with are the attributes of royal power, and the impeccable possession of weapons, and the dignity of an excellent runner. This distribution of wonderful qualities ends with such a wish: “May the days of your loving heart be long!”. After that meeting with Inanna, Shulgi goes to Utu and Nanna to ask for other qualities necessary for the king, but these visits are no longer connected with the ritual of sacred marriage (Klein, 1981, 135-146).
In the hymn Ishmedagan K, the marriage of the king and Inanna is reported very briefly. Inanna is given as a wife to King Isin by Enlil and Ninlil; together with her, Ishme-Dagan receives attributes of power over the peoples of the entire Mesopotamia, and in return undertakes to regularly celebrate festivals in honour of gods and feed them with sacrifices (Rőmer, 1988, 24-60).
Perhaps the most detailed description is the great hymn Iddindagan A (also called “Inanna and Iddin-Dagan”). It speaks of a grand celebration in honour of the planet Venus, which was called Inanna-Ninisinna in Isin (Sumerian “Inanna is the mistress of Isin”). The goddess appears here in two guises: as the mistress of the temple of Egalmah in Isin, who marries the king, and as a heavenly deity, contemplating the festival of the people subject to him. The text opens with a description of a gigantic procession that takes place in the afternoon, when the new month of the New Year has already appeared in the sky. Musicians and transvestites march in the same row. Transvestites carry in one hand a spindle, a symbol of the female gender, and in the other a club, the symbol of the male one. On one side of the body they have men's clothes, on the other — women's. There are young and old women with curled hair. Temple priests are going, torturing themselves to the beat of drums. In the evening, Inanna sends old women to cook her a festive meal. Sports competitions are started in the city (first of all, competitions in jumping rope, one of the symbols of Inanna). On the night before the main festival day, people can still make love, this is even welcome, because it charges Inanna herself with love passion. Inanna descends from heaven, carrying with her the ME that she had recently been honoured in the Abzu by the god Enki. Before dawn, the goddess conjures evil and blesses good. In the morning of the next day, the rite of saturation of the goddess and the consecration of the city is performed. Mountains of fruit, cheese, butter, beef cattle, beer of all kinds, flour, ointments and incense are to prepare Inanna for the celebration of the New Year's marriage. The marriage takes place in the palace and is performed “in order to control life throughout the country, to oversee the servants, ... to perform the rituals perfectly.” Before entering her beloved, Inanna washes her loins for a long time, anoints herself and fumigates the bedroom with noble aromas, and the sacred plant numun is placed on her bed, which, according to legend, should stimulate love passion. After the marriage, the king goes to celebrate the New Year in the temple of Inanna Egalmah, where she calls him her beloved. The anthem ends with praises to Inanna (see the Appendix for a translation of the text). These are basically the rituals of the sacred marriage of the first type. They are performed in the palace of the king or in the temple of the goddess, their goal is to legitimize the ruler and stimulate earthly fertility, they are performed on the New Year's Eve, and their result is always a favorable fate that the goddess gives to the king and his country.
In the hymns to the gods, three more types of sacred marriage rituals are mentioned. The marriage of the god with the river is described in the text about Enki and the order of the world. Enki emits his seed into the rivers, which are very happy about this, because their waters after this act become fertile. Of course, this type of marriage can be considered a literary topos, but most likely, we have a very archaic and naturalistic rite that could have existed in ancient times: the leader of the tribe, as a sign of his power, copulates with the river and expects offspring from it in the form of barley ears. Marriage in the Underworld, known to us from the text “Enlil and Ninlil”, could also have a ritual basis, but we currently know nothing about its nature. Finally, a marriage with a goddess on the island of Dilmun, which turns salty waters into fresh ones, and a dead island into a living one, is undoubtedly already a mythologeme, an extended metaphor that has a distant relation to the real rite... However, if this is a local Dilmun rite, then not so much a metaphor — after all, it was necessary to somehow explain the existence of freshwater springs in Bahrain, flowing directly from the bottom of the sea.
Literature:
- Cooper J.S. Sacred Marriage and Popular Cult in Early Mesopotamia // Official Cult and Popular Religion in the Ancient Near East. Heidelberg, 1993
- Klein J. Three Shulgi Hymns. Sumerian Royal Hymns Glorifying King Shulgi of Ur. Ramat-Gan, 1981
- Lapinkivi P. The Sumerian Sacred Marriage in the Light of Comparative Evidence (State Archives of Assyria Studies 15). The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, Helsinki, 2004.
- Römer W.H.Ph. Sumerische Hymnen, II // Bibliotheca Orientalis 45 (1988).
- Römer W.H.Ph. "Hymnen, Klagelieder und Gebete in sumerischer Sprache" // Lieder und Gebete I. Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments II, 5. Kaiser, Otto (ed). Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus Gerd Mohn, 1989. S. 659-673.