Did the Sumerians Invent Porn?

This is an important question. If we look back at the archaeological record, it's hard to know just where porn started. Many of the so-called fertility figures may have been considered "erotic," or their massive breasts and visibly etched vaginas may have been linked to pregnancy and childbirth. We don't know the purpose of these early figures. Were they carved by women for women, or were they early manifestations of the masculine gaze that seeks to capture and control the feminine form? This figure, the Venus of Hohle-Fels seems the former



Whereas this one, the latter:


But these are just speculations. It's not until writing appears on the scene that we can really know for certain how to take these things. And then it's pretty clear. Consider, for example, this snippet from a Hymn of Inanna, the Sumerian goddess of fertility, translated from cuneiform tablets:

Inanna spoke:

What I tell you
Let the singer weave into song.
What I tell you, let if flow from ear to mouth,
Let it pass from old to young:
My vulva, the horn,
The Boat of Heaven,
Is full of eagerness like the young moon.
My untilled land lies fallow.

As for me, Inanna,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will plow my high field?
Who will plow my wet ground?

As for me, the young woman,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will station the ox there?
Who will plow my vulva?

Dumuzi replied:

Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva.
I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva.

Inanna:

Then plow my vulva, man of my heart!
Plow my vulva!

At the king's lap stood the rising cedar.
Plants grew high by their side.
Grains grew high by their side.
Gardens flourished luxuriantly.

On the off chance you're still uncertain that the Sumerians made porn, let's look at a couple of pieces of art.

This first one I call "Plow me now."

Yes, that is a woman playing a tambourine reaching around to grab the man's ox and guide it to its station.

And then there's this clay tablet from 3000 BCE.

Most commentators on this piece talk about it as a sign of the "sacred marriage" the ceremonial union between the king and the high priestess that re-enacts the relationship between Duzumi and Inanna that ensured the fertility of the land and the plenitude of the harvest. Whether that is so or not, it is still an explicit representation of sexuality that is probably intended at least partially to arouse.

Even more importantly, the woman using her hand to offer her breast to the man marks, to my mind, the first evidence of eroticization of the breast, which in and of itself is a cultural advance of unparalleled importance for which we should all be grateful.