'Sex, politics and beer topped daily life of Mesopotamians'

Sex, politics and beer-drinking appear to be among the top day-to-day activities of people in ancient Mesopotamia, according to a newly translated tablet dating back more than 3,500 years ago.

The tablet, which seems to be written by an inexperienced hand, possibly a student, reveals a series of riddles about the lifestyle of Mesopotamian civilisation widely considered to be the cradle of civilisation.

The text was written in Akkadian, using cuneiform script, a language commonly used by the Babylonians along with other ancient kingdoms in the Middle East, said the researchers who decoded the tablet.

"This is a relatively rare genre -- we don't have many riddles," study researcher Professor Nathan Wasserman of the Institute of Archaeology of Hebrew University was quoted as saying by LiveScience.

Some of the decoded riddles are crude and sexual, while others are complex and metaphorical. One of them reveals what appears to be a bit of political humour, albeit with a dark, violent twist, said Wasserman.

"He gouged out the eye: It is not the fate of a dead man. He cut the throat: A dead man," reads one riddle which may mean a governor, the researchers said.

"This riddle describes the power of a governor namely to act as a judge who punishes or sentences to death," Wasserman and co-author Michael Streck of University of Leipzig wrote in an article published in the journal 'Iraq'.

Another riddle that says, "... the measuring vessel of your lord", could be meaning beer, they explained.

Politics and beer were not the only things the scribe commented on. Two of the riddles, now in a fragmentary state, are sexual, crude and difficult to understand, they said.

One of them, whose translation is uncertain, reads: "The deflowered (girl) did not become pregnant. The undeflowered (girl) became pregnant."

The answer appears to be "auxiliary forces", a group of soldiers that tend not to be reliable, Wasserman added.

The researchers are not sure where the tablet originates, but suspect that its scribe lived in the southern part of Mesopotamia, near the Persian Gulf.

They emphasised that the number of surviving Akkadian riddles from this time period is "very small" and, overall, this tablet provides a rare opportunity to explore this genre of ancient writing.

Unfortunately, the researchers are not certain where the tablet is presently located. In 1976, it was housed in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad. At that time, a scholar named J J van Dijk published a copy of the Akkadian inscription, which the researchers used for their translation.

Since 1976, Iraq has been through three wars and, during the 2003 invasion, the museum was pillaged.

"We tried to figure out where the tablet is now, [but] I don't know," Wasserman said. He added that the tablet is small and not very impressive-looking, something that a looter may take a pass on, "I very much hope that it is still there," Wasserman said.