ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the use of speech and communication in overcoming obstacles for sexual and marital unions between divine partners in poetry. Communication plays a central role in Sumerian poetry involving pre-marital love or sexual relations between deities. Although honest communication is necessary for building trust and consolidating new familial ties, as well as for bridging the divide between divine lovers, the boundary between truth and lies is frequently explored, transgressed and blurred in divine courtship. The process of developing communication and increased knowledge and intimacy between the courting pair leads them from an exterior knowledge of one another (looking; second-hand advice) to an interior one (sexual and sometimes marital union). This transition is symbolically presented in the geographical locations of the divine pair; several divine partnerships feature the movement of the goddess to the home of the god.
