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“Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: A young woman did not fart in her husband’s embrace.”

As quoted in Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History (W.W. Norton, 2025), by Moudhy Al-Rashid.  This is an excellent introduction to how much we can learn about ancient Mesopotamia from the thousands of cuneiform stamped tablets often just tossed away as building fill.

Searching in The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature for the proverb quoted by Al-Rashid, I found it here:

#15-16:  15-16. Something which has never occurred since time immemorial: a young woman did not fart in her husband's embrace.

Exacting exegesis by Phil Jones, masterful Penn Sumerologist:

15.   nij2 ud-bi-ta la-ba-jal2-la
    – niĝ ud.bi=TA la.ba.ĝal.a
    -thing days.those=from not.SEPARATIVE.to be.RELATIVIZER
    – A thing that has not existed from those (primordial) days:
    
    16. ki-sikil tur ur2 dam-ma-na-ka ce10 nu-ub-dur2-re
    – kisikil tur ur dam.an(i).ak=A še nu.b.dur.e
    – maiden young lap spouse.her.of=in fart not.3rd non-sapient singular.to vent.3rd sapient singular
    – a young woman will not be farting in the lap of her husband
    
    The usual negative verbal prefix is nu-, but in line 15, it is replaced by la- when it precedes -ba-
    
    Some of the grammatical terminology is idiosyncratically mine and I use . to separate parts of words or phrases and = to separate phrases from case post-positions

The j and the c in the transliterations hark back to the days of using ASCII in typing Sumerian translits: as j does not appear in Sumerian it could be used for a nasalized g (̂g in my normalization) while c was not needed for /k/ or /s/ sounds and could therefore be used for /sh/; š in my normalization.

The use of c for /sh/ was actually a convention dreamed up by researchers into Sumerian literature; in contrast, those studying Sumerian admin texts used sz (as that combination never occurs in Sumerian). The latter tradition has proven more robust, so if you use the ePSD, you use sz when searching for words with /sh/.

Mirabile dictu!

Selected readings

• "Sumerian and Sinitic" (12/17/23)
• "Pleiades: From Sumer to Subaru" (4/5/22)
• "Sumerian beer" (4/4/22)
• "From Fart Gods to Farting Out One’s Soul: The Historic Ritualization of Farts", Ancient Origins (3/5/18) — this article barely mentions the world's oldest (fart) joke (ca. 1900 BC), about which there are numerous references online, but it does have many citations to fart lore, legend, and learning in antiquity around the world, and it begins with the hilarious masterpiece Hegassen scroll detail. Fart Battle, 1864 (public domain), which powerfully reminds me of the video showing a lone skunk defeating a pack of shocked hyenas (make sure to have your sound turned on and up) with its visible spray (I watched it a dozen times), as in the Japanese painting.

He-gassen (Japanese: 屁合戦, lit. 'Fart competitions'), or Hōhi-gassen (放屁合戦, lit. "Fart fight"), are titles given to a Japanese art scroll, created during the Edo period (1603–1868) by an unknown artist or several unknown artists depicting flatulence humor.

He-gassen is a subject occasionally depicted in Japanese art, first attested at the end of the Heian Period (794–1185). Toba Sōjō (1053–1140), in addition to his famous Scrolls of Frolicking Animals, is also mentioned as having painted scrolls on themes such as "Phallic Contest" and "He-gassen".

(Wikipedia — The entire Wikipedia article is fascinating and well documented, including reference to a digitized scroll of a fart contest held by the Waseda University Library, with courtiers and commoners in attendance.

[Thanks to Keith Barkley]

November 10, 2025 @ 8:17 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Humor, Misnegation

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