Originally specialists in singing
lamentations, gala appear in temple records dating back from the middle of the 3rd millennium BC.[1] According to an old Babylonian text,
Enki created the gala specifically to sing "heart-soothing laments" for the goddess Inanna.[2] Cuneiform references indicate the gendered character of the role.[3] Lamentation and wailing may have originally been female professions, so that the men who entered the role adopted its forms. Their hymns were sung in a Sumerian dialect known as eme-sal, normally used to render the speech of female gods,[4] and some gala took female names.[5]
Homosexual proclivities are implied by the Sumerian proverb which reads, "When the gala wiped off his anus [he said], ‘I must not arouse that which belongs to my mistress [i.e., Inanna]’".[6] In fact, the word gala was written using the sign sequence UŠ.KU, the first sign having also the reading giš3 ("penis"), and the second one dur2 ("anus"), meaning that might be a pun involved.[7] Moreover, gala is homophonous with gal4-la "vulva".
In spite of all their references of their effeminate character (especially in the
Sumerian proverbs), many administrative texts make mention of heterosexual gala priests who had children, wives, and large families.[8] In addition, some gala priests were women.[9]
Al-Rawi, F. N. H. 1992. "Two Old Akkadian Letters Concerning the Offices of kala'um and närum." In Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 82.
Bottéro, Jean, and H. Petschow. 1975. "Homosexualität." In Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie 4:459b–468b.
Cohen, Mark. 1974. Balag-Compositions: Sumerian lamentation liturgies of the second and first millennium B.C.Sources from the Ancient Neat East, volume 1, fasc. 2.
Carl S. Ehrlich (2009). From an Antique Land: An Introduction to Ancient Near Eastern Literature. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.
ISBN978-0742563476.
Gelb, I. J. 1975. "Hono ludens in early Mesopotamia." In Haec studia orientalia professort Assyriologia, et filologiae Semiticae in Universitate Helsingensi Armas I. Salonen, S.Q.A.: Anno 1975 sexagenario, 43–76. Studia Orientalia 46.
Gordon, Edmund. 1959. Sumerian proverbs: Glimpses of everyday life in ancient Mesopotamia.
Hartmann, Henrike. 1960. Die Musik der Sumerischen Kultur.
Henshaw, Richard A. 1994. Male and female, the cultic personnel: The Bible and the rest of the ancient Near East. Princeton Theological Monograph Series 31.
Kramer, Samuel N. 1981. History begins at Sumer: Thirty-nine firsts in man's recorded history. Rev. ed.
Krecher, Joachim. 1966. Sumerische Kultlyrik.
Lambert, Wilfried G. 1992. "Prostitution." Xenia 32:127-57.
Michalowski, Piotr et al. (eds.). 2006. Approaches to Sumerian Literature: Studies in Honor of Stip (H. L. J. Vanstiphout).
Stephen O. Murray; Will Roscoe, eds. (1997). Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature. NYU Press.
ISBN0814774687.
Renger, Johannes. 1969. "Untersuchungen zum Priestertum der altbabylonischen Zeit, 2. Teil." Zeitschrift zur Assyriologie 59 (n.f. 25).
Steinkeller, Piotr. 1992. Third-millennium legal and administrative texts in the Iraq Museum, Baghdad.
Ann Suter (2008). Lament: Studies in the Ancient Mediterranean and Beyond. Oxford University Press.
ISBN978-0199714278.