Christie Carr

I have a BA in English and MA in Classics & Ancient History from the University of Exeter, and an MPhil in Cuneiform Studies from the University of Oxford. I specialise in languages and literature from ancient Mesopotamia, looking particularly at Sumerian literature from the Old Babylonian period (2000-1600 BC). My DPhil research applies conceptual metaphor theory to the OB literary corpus known as the Sumerian "Love Songs", the world's earliest known erotic texts. These depictions of the erotic are amongst the earliest in written history and give one of the fullest and extended representations of sexual domains of experience from the ancient Mesopotamian world. My research aims to understand how concepts such as desire, pleasure, allure, eroticism, and the gendered human body were conceptualised at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC.