Debate between bird and fish

A Sumerian disputation poem in which Bird and Fish argue their worth before the god Enki. Composed some four thousand years ago by unnamed scribes.

Original byline

Anonymous

Published

Date not recorded

Form

Poems

Authorship

Still unknown

Reason for anonymity

Unrecorded

Copyright

Public domain

Reference

Wikipedia · Wikidata

The authorship story

The Debate between Bird and Fish is one of the Sumerian disputation poems, a genre in which two rivals argue their usefulness until a god renders judgment. Composed in the scribal schools of Mesopotamia around the early second millennium BCE, it survives on clay tablets recovered from sites such as Nippur. Like the rest of Sumerian literature, it names no author. These compositions were school texts, copied by students and shaped by generations of scribes, and the tradition recorded no individual poets. Its anonymity is the ordinary condition of the world's oldest literature.

Questions readers ask

Related works

• Still unknown

  Beowulf

  Date unrecorded · poem

  The Old English epic of the hero's fights with Grendel, Grendel's mother, and the dragon. Its poet is unknown, and the single surviving manuscript names no author.

• Still unknown

  Book of Dede Korkut

  Date unrecorded · poem

  The epic story cycle of the Oghuz Turks, framed around the legendary bard Korkut Ata. Its compilers are unknown; the bard is the frame, not a documented author.

• Still unknown

  Cantar de Mio Cid

  Date unrecorded · poem

  The Castilian epic of Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the Cid, composed around 1200. The poet is unknown; only the copyist Per Abbat's name survives in the manuscript.

• Still unknown

  Hurrian hymn to Nikkal

  Date unrecorded · poem

  The oldest surviving notated music in the world, a hymn to the goddess Nikkal from Ugarit, around 1400 BCE. Composer unknown.

More works like Debate between bird and fish