Dialogue of Pessimism

The Dialogue of Pessimism is an ancient Mesopotamian dialogue between a master and his servant that expresses the futility of human action. It has parallels with biblical wisdom literature.

The Dialogue is a loosely poetic composition in Akkadian, written soon after 1000 BC in Mesopotamia. It was discovered in five different clay tablet manuscripts written in the cuneiform script. The text is well-preserved, with only 15 of its 86 lines being fragmentary. Two textual versions seem to survive, as a Babylonian tablet is substantially different from Assyrian versions. Its likely Akkadian title was arad mitanguranni, the repeated phrase at the beginning of every stanza.

The Dialogue of Pessimism takes the form of a dialogue between a master and his slave valet. In each of the first ten stanzas the master proposes a course of action, for which the slave provides good reasons. Each time, however, the master changes his mind and the slave provides equally good reasons for not pursuing that course of action. The courses of action are:

I. Driving to the palace

II. Dining

III. Hunting

IV. Marriage (“building a house” in Speiser)

V. Litigation (this is the most fragmentary stanza)

VI. Leading a revolution (“commit a crime” in Speiser)

VII. Sexual intercourse

VIII. Sacrifice

IX. Making investments (“plant crops” in Speiser)

X. Public service

A sample of the Dialogue is (Master Slave):

Slave, listen to me! Here I am, master, here I am!
I want to make love to a woman! Make love, master, make love!
The man who makes love forgets sorrow and fear!
O well, slave, I do not want to make love to a woman.
Do not make love, master, do not make love.
Woman is a real pitfall, a hole, a ditch,
Woman is a sharp iron dagger that cuts a man’s throat.
(Stanza VII, lines 46–52)

Stanza XI is substantially different:

Slave, listen to me! Here I am, master, here I am!
What then is good?
To have my neck and yours broken,
or to be thrown into the river, is that good?
Who is so tall as to ascend to heaven?
Who is so broad as to encompass the entire world?
O well, slave! I will kill you and send you first!
Yes, but my master would certainly not survive me for three days.
(Lines 79–86)

The dialogue is limited to two people (unlike, for instance, Plato’s dialogues), as is common in ancient Middle-Eastern wisdom literature. In the scribal tradition of Mesopotamian literature, one learns by verbal instruction and reflective reading, not by debate. It has been suggested that it may have been a dramatic text, performed publicly. Rather than a set of abstract or universal principles to be applied to every situation, the slave employs concrete images and instances.

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