I was delighted to find a quotation from my favourite ancient epic in G2 (15 May). Arifa Akbar’s review of the Ovalhouse’s new show, Rejoicing at Her Wondrous Vulva the Young Woman Applauded Herself, praises the “glittering poetry” of the script, but nowhere is its title identified as a quote from one of the world’s oldest epics, the Mesopotamian story of the goddess Inanna. Various translations from Sumerian into English exist, including a scholarly version in the online Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, but this wording surely comes from the collaboration of an expert Sumerologist and an extraordinary storyteller – Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth, by Samuel Noah Kramer and Diane Wolkstein.
It is wonderful that this ancient epic is still seen as relevant – and indeed outrageous. I am over the morning and the evening star (one of the goddess’s epithets)!
Fiona Collins
Carrog, Sir Ddinbych
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