And so, the academic year draws to a close.

What a year.

I feel I must take this opportunity to thank the team at the University of O for their tireless support of my research project into kissing. But above all, I want to thank each and every one of you, my loyal students.

For whom it is all for.

We have gone on such a journey together, haven’t we? We have seen Medieval Venice, Puritan America, the Berlin Wall and even the Pope, which was very special. We have looked through the eyes of the ancients. Only a month ago, we were in the ruins of Persepolis - do you remember? We looked at a picture of an ancient Persian man blowing a kiss at another ancient Persian man, and we enjoyed it just as though we ourselves had ancient Persian eyes.

And now, in our final lesson, I hope to take you to the point beyond which it is impossible to travel : the origin.

Put down your pencils.

The time for note taking is past.

For today, we shall glimpse the Kiss of God.

A Sumerian Experience

Do you remember our immersive lesson, from earlier in the term? We are going to apply an immersive technique right now. I’m going to ask you to take an imaginative leap into the body of an ancient Sumerian person. Can you do that for me?

Good.

Around you lies the Sumerian Empire, occupying the land between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates (a bit like modern Iraq). The time is somewhere between 4500 BCE and 2000 BCE. This empire will fall of course, as all empires must. The Sumerians will give way to the Babylonians, who will give way to the Persians, who will give way to Alexander the Great. But his time is not yet come…

You are not thinking about any of that becuase you yourself are now an ancient Sumerian person. You are enjoying a long, lazy afternoon. The sun is extremely hot though it hangs low in the sky. Your daily chores are done, so you’ve kicked up your feet and you are whiling away your time. For entertainment, you hold in your hands a small tablet - a recently developed technology by which people can share words without using their mouths ! The sunlight glances over the terracotta surface at a low angle, throwing confusing shadows across its carved surface. You take a moment to angle it so you can see it more easily.

That’s better.

And you begin to read …

Perhaps, in common with many of your ancient Sumerian friends, you actually can’t read.

After all, writing has only just been invented.

Perhaps the tablet belongs to your husband who learned to read for work. He’s probably an accountant.

But let us say that you don’t mind not being able to read. You are not frustrated. You are, instead, quite happy to gaze at the mysterious geometric patterns as they bend and stretch in the light of the sinking Sumerian sun.

It is fun. It is beautiful.

Take a nice deep breath.

And have another go…

You have been enjoying the oldest love song in the world.

Istanbul #2461

The year is 1951 and the famous Assyriologist, Samuel Noah Kramer, is thumbing through a drawer in the archive of the Museum of the Ancient Orient in Istanbul.

In amongst many other artefacts, Samuel Noah Kramer notices a little tablet - numbered 2461 - in a most attractive state of preservation. He picks it up and gazes at it. Now, what you should know about Samuel Noah Kramer is that he can decipher ancient writing, so he realises, almost immediately, that he is looking at a song, divided into verses. And he sees, almost instantaneously, that it is a song celebrating beauty and love. And as he reads it again and yet again, there is no mistaking its content. What he holds is one of the oldest love songs written down by the hand of man.

Being a true historian, of course his next thought is : Does it have a kiss in it?

For if so, it would be the oldest kiss captured by the hand of man.

What a find.

He searches high and low on the little tablet, amongst the lines and crosses, but he can perceive no kiss. And yet, something else catches his eye. Something, perhaps, even more extraordinary. For within those scratches are snatches of phrases that remind him of another song - a song with a kiss in it which is very famous indeed - a song believed to be the work of God himself. 

Samuel gasps and drops the tablet back in the drawer.

…

The Song of Songs

The song of songs, which is Solomon's.
Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth:
for thy love is better than wine.

These are the opening lines of The Song of Songs from The Bible. They contain the only erotically charged kiss in the whole of the good book.

Hugely popular.

It was so popular that Rabbi Akiva, in the second century AD, had to tell people off for singing it in bawdy houses and taverns. He explained this song was made for the temple alone.

Does The Song of Songs imply that God created kissing along with everything else?

In 1951, this was generally understood to be the case. This is largely because it was understood that The Song of Songs was a completely original composition written especially for The Bible, by God. Immaculately conceived, so to speak. From nothing. From his divine mind. A few scholars conceded there was some collaboration involved in its composition - between God and Solomon (note the decisive first line) - but, even then, it was generally accepted that God did the lion’s share of the work. So much so that the song was commonly referred to as: The Word of God.

Istanbul #2461 suggested a rather more complex story.

Istanbul #2461 (along with the wider work of Samuel Noah Kramer and his Assyriologist friends) suggested that the origins of The Song of Songs went all the way back to the Sumerian empire. Some rogue academics went so far as to claim that The Song of Songs was a hodge podge of ancient Sumerian and later Babylonian songs. Sumerian poets, of course, were not Jewish or Christian or even Muslim. They were Zoroastrian and sometimes women too. And Babylon was where the Great Whore had lived.

The Christians in 1951 were very upset by this suggestion.

The Song of Songs itself was not written down until 500 BCE, when it was transcribed in Hebrew, for God, by an uncredited ancient Jew (once again, you can see that God’s working practice leaves something to be desired). But if this was the case, if God didn’t write his song until 500 BCE, then what were bits of it doing on ancient Sumerian and Babylonian tablets? The rogue academics hypothesised that the kiss in The Song of Songs had in fact been passed down for many centuries before it ever reached chapter and verse - passed from mouth to mouth to mouth, through what they called the oral tradition (my favourite tradition!).

Let me explain.

In the very earliest days of humanity, when there was no writing, we relied on our mouths for everything. All contracts. All law. All poetry. All song. And even when writing began (in Sumeria, around 3400 BCE), many poets and musicians didn’t get on with the new technology and did not bother learning to use it. They preferred this oral tradition, and who can blame them? Singing worked just fine and the sound quality was unarguably superior. So even many years after the invention of writing, the oral tradition was still going strong. It would prove to be the generative engine for many of humanity’s greatest works of poetic art such as The Odyssey and Sleeping Beauty and Sometimes I Feel like a Motherless Child.

Some artists ditched the tradition, of course, and came to rely almost entirely on writing. They wrote down the great Greek epic of the Trojan war but then lost loads of it. Can you imagine? The sick feeling at the pit of your stomach and the rosy dawn of shame in your cheeks as you realise that something precious was put in your charge and it is now lost forever.

Brrrruuurghhh.

Of course, written versions of songs are allowed to exist within the oral tradition, but the wise man understands that these versions are by no means definitive. They should rather be seen as captured moments in the life of the song - a bit like taking a snapshot of a skier.

Istanbul #2461 is one such snapshot.

The Song of Songs is another. A very beautifully composed snapshot.

But the Christians in 1951 were having absolutely none of it.

They said the The Song of Songs was the Word of God and that was that - their God by the way, not some weird fire god from a dead empire. And they said their sexy Christian kiss was special because it was Christian sexy which was different from pagan erotic art which was the work of the Devil. History said it was all rather more complicated than that but the Christians said:

‘History, you are wrong. God is good. Have you read his book? It’s really good.’

History said, ‘Of course I’ve read it and yes, it’s great, but -’

‘God’s a creative genius,’ they said.

…

The Tower of Babel

Let me tell you a story about God.

It takes place some time in the second millenium BCE in Babylonia, during the last days of an immensely popular nightclub : The Tower of Babel. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d heard of it, as The Tower of Babel has garnered practically mythic status over the years, very similar to the Hacienda in Manchester or the Cotton Club in New York.

Here is a picture, painted by Pieter Bruegel.

Looks good, doesn’t it.

The Tower of Babel was we call a scene - a club where artists from all over the world would gather and hang out, sharing their dreams and making stuff happen. It was exactly the kind of environment where ancient traditions from various cultures could fuse and transform into new projects. On a typical night, denizens of this demi-monde would drift through the seemingly infinite rooms - the air thick with smokes and jokes and big ideas. In the stairwell, perhaps you’d find a couple of students, serious as judges, chipping away at a meticulously detailed mural intended to cover the whole building. Or you might stumble through a firedoor into the tiny kitchen and discover the Great Whore herself, sipping a cup of tea, surrounded by admirers - the legendary practitioner of the truest of the arts. And of course no night would be complete without a climb to the infamous roof, which was only half-built but already had that incredible view. In the early hours of morning, you’d doubtless find a few musicians up there - say a three-piece of harp, pipe and drums - throwing an impromptu gig for the crowd, improvising a new sound around an old favourite from the Great Sumerian Songbook - Man of my Heart or Lullaby for a Son. On just such a night, you could hope to hear some dreamy alto seep through the chatter - Kiss me with the kisses of your mouth - and maybe Solomon (still a kid really but already a precocious talent) would shout out - Hey that’s my song! - an in-joke and - everyone’s laughing and now his voice is joining hers and if they really get it going on, the old geezer with the harp will kick off, taking it to a whole a new level, sending the song spinning through the night, round and round, variation upon variation, accompanied by the strains of the sounds of love seeping up from the rooms below under the hot, dark, Babylonian sky. Until, of course, the sun begins to rise, the men in hard hats arrive, the winches start to turn, and the tower once again begins to climb.

What a scene.

God, don’t you wish you’d been there.

God, of course, was there, lucky fucker. He saw it all and he said : Behold, the people is one and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do. And so he scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth. 

And that was the end of that.

Until a few years later when - quelle surprise - God told everyone that he’d just written a brand new song called The Song of Songs. And it was an instant hit.

This is the story of the Tower of Babel.

Perhaps it is the story of art.

Conclusion

We have sought the origin of the kiss in many places over this past year. We have sought it in cuneiform and in hieroglyphs. In Latin and in Greek. We have sought it in The Bible. But the honest truth is that the kiss has not been passed down via the written word, or even by pictures. It has been passed from mouth to mouth. It has come to us though the oral tradition and in oral tradition there is no single origin - no single moment of creation.

In the oral tradition there is no beginning.

Imagine.

No wonder the Christians were so upset in 1951.

But let us not get upset. Let us enjoy wondering, seeking, yearning even, while never finding. And at the end of the day, (which is where we find ourselves) let us remember that our very ancient ancestors in the ancient ocean were only mouths. They had no hands, no gods and no pencils, yet they were happy enough. It is a humbling thought.

I would like to thank these, our ancient ancestors, for perhaps the most important lesson I have learned all year.

And now all that is left is for us to say goodbye, for me to wish you well, and for the university to play a valedictory song.

The university doesn’t have its own valedictory song yet, but (amazingly) some ancient Sumerian poets have stepped in and offered to share their work with us. And I can’t tell you how thrilled I am.

I should warn you, I suppose, that the songs are very, very old and the technology by which they reach you is flawed… so they might arrive with you in less than perfect condition. Nevertheless, even if you experience some glitches, I’m confident that there will be much to enjoy from these masterful talents, so -

Good bye, my student.

Good speed and -

Take it away, ancient Sumeria!

A Sumerian Valedictory Song

Fetch my scribe,
who knows the writings,
Fetch my sister!

Fetch my singer,
who knows the songs
Fetch my sister!

Fetch my wise one,
who knows the heart of things,
Fetch my sister!

Fetch the one who can interpret my dreams!

O

He is there, precious sweet, lying by her heart,
One by one, tongue-making, one by one,

Set me free, my Beloved
Set me free, my Beloved
Set me free

O

Come, my Beloved
We will go to the palace

Fetch my wise one
who knows the heart of things,
Fetch my sister!

Fetch the one who can interpret my dreams!

O

my lips are too small
they know not how to kiss

O

For him,
I put kohl on my eyes,

my head
was tangled.
I straightened it

The my head
were loose.
I combed them,
and let them fall

and let them fall

Fetch my wise one,
who knows the heart of things,
Fetch my sister!

Fetch the one who can interpret my dreams!

Man of my heart

O my Beloved
Your beauty is good
It is honey to me

Of my free
will I come to you

Of my own free will
I come

I come

tra la la

Fetch my singer,
who knows the songs
Fetch my sister!

Fetch the one who can interpret my dreams!

O my lushest one! My est one!
My lushest one!
My most beguiling one! ost beguiling one!

lord
or
pleasing

my like a boxwood tree

Fetch one who my dreams!

(scroll down gently)



Ancient grave. Mesapotamia.
Excavated 1972.

Date of publication : 1.07.2021

Music : Kasor - Sattar Al-Saadi & Ahmed Mukhtar