I wrote my bachelor about imagery in Sumerian love songs between Inanna and Dumuzi so I have some insight into Sumerian love poetry.

The short answer is that this is a common way to write love songs/texts in Sumerian.

Sumerian love poetry tends to be very metaphorical in nature and has many layers. The same metaphors can be used with different meaning in different contexts, but they can also refer to many levels; the literal, the metaphorical and the erotic. Joan Goodnick Westenholz wrote "It is also difficult to read love lyrics without sensing that the distinction between the metaphorical and the literal meanings of the words vanish like smoke - the scents and colors of the lands and its trees and fruits blend with the descriptions of the beloved's charms into an indissoluble whole". (Joan Goodnick Westenholz, “Metaphorical Language in the Poetry of Love in the Ancient Near East”, 383.)

Love in Ancient Mesopotamia was more than a feeling towards someone and could describe a feeling between two people, between god and worshipper and ruler and ruled. You did not separate pure love from the vulgar and sexual. They were considered 2 aspects of the same relation. While you might be careful to draw a line to what we today call sex positive, sexual remarks was not unheard of in poetry when discussing love, even when discussing love for family, but it would not necessarily mean that they literally wants to be involved with that family member. Though you can never know the actual intent of the author of course since the texts are so old and we lack many of the cultural nuances that would be needed to have full understanding of the texts. What seems evident is that sex was a central part of conveying affection and it has been so throughout history. The Sumerians did not shy away from it in their art and it was a fairly common motif.

I highly recommend reading:

Goodnick Westenholz, Joan, “Love Lyrics from the Ancient Near East”, in Civilizations of the Ancient Near East 4, ed. Jack M. Sasson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1995), 2471-2484.

Goodnick Westenholz, Joan, “Metaphorical Language in the Poetry of Love in the Ancient Near East” in La circulation des biens, des personnes et des idées dans le Proche-Orient ancien: Actes de la XXXVIIIe Rencontre assyriologique internationale (Paris, 8-10 juillet 1991), Dominique Charpin and Francis Joannès ed. (Paris: Éditions Recherches sur les civilisations), 381-387.

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I don't write answers on askhistorians that often so I hope I did so well and at least gave some more context to Sumerian love songs that can help you understand them better!

Well, they certainly weren't puritans, there's no doubt of that.

/u/CaptainHotbun did a great job covering love poetry, but for more on those you can consult "Love songs in Sumerian literature: critical edition of the Dumuzi-Inanna songs" by Yitschak Sefati, or read them online at the ETCSL, section 2.4: https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/catlist.htm

The French Assyriologist Jean Bottero posited a Mesopotamian concept of "free love" in his 1980 paper, "'L'amour libre' à Babylone et ses ‘servitudes'' In that, he wrote:

(ils) n’avaient pas du tout, de la sexualité et de son exercice, les mêmes appréhensions et censures que nous, héritiers du discrédit et du soupçon dans lesquels le christianisme pastoral traditionnel nous a durablement appris à les tenir

Translated by Gwendolyn Leick in ch. 5 of "Sex in Antiquity: Exploring Gender and Sexuality in the Ancient World" as:

“They did not have any of the fear and censure when it comes to sexuality and its practice that we have, heirs to the discredit and suspicion which traditional Christian teaching has so lastingly instilled in us.”

Jerrold S. Cooper responded to Bottero's argument in his 2009 "Free Love in Babylonia?" I don't really agree with either of their positions on prostitution (I follow Julia Assante and Stephanie Budin's skeptical interpretations of that topic, but that's for another thread) but there's some good discussion there.

Leick has written one of the most authoritative sources on Mesopotamian sexuality, Sex and Eroticism in Mesopotamian Literature, 1994, with Part I pertaining mainly to the Sumerian tradition. That's really what you'll want to read.

Parpola and Whiting's 2002 Sex and Gender in the Ancient Near East also has some excellent articles in it, but I've unfortunately never been able to get my hands on a copy of the whole book. I see it cited constantly however, and I know several of the contributors do consistently great work.

You'll notice a lot of this material is more about the later periods than the Sumerian era; that's a recurring thing in ANE studies because Assyriologists seem to outnumber Sumerologists 10:1 or more, and it's not like that's because there's an overabundance of the former. Akkadian has a reputation for being easier than Sumerian (though I'm not convinced of that) and there tend to be more tablets relating to matters of 'daily life' in the later periods, as textuality became more widespread, so it can sometimes be hard to find info specific to the Sumerians.

That said, much of Sumerian literature is relatively accessible, and if you spend a bit of time reading any of the text collections available online you'll quickly see that they were not shy at all about sex acts and genitalia, as you noticed in that love song.

The cuneiform symbols for "penis" and "vulva" were pretty common components of compound words, and a lot of things were described in metaphorical language relating to sex. For instance, the Sumerian for "water" (a, ea or e4) also meant "semen" and "progeny," and it was a compound component of the words for: irrigate, deflower, drown, impregnate, dedicate, urinate, and wash.

In the hymn "Enki and the World Order" there are lines describing rivers as the god's ejaculate, responsible for the fertility of the river basin. Rape is a motif in several stories, and there's a whole list of sexual puns in tales like Gilgamesh.

So sex wasn't avoided in literature, and there's that whole genre of love songs. But how much does that reflect the actual social norms of sexual activity? Were they really "sex positive"? I guess it depends on what we mean by that. There was a certain tendency by some authors in the late 20th century to interpret Mesopotamian material in the light of the ideals of the contemporary counterculture movement, feminism and the like. Older researchers had instead preferred a more conservative, patriarchal, biblically-influenced view of the material. Both of those trends are likely the result of uncritical projection of modern attitudes onto the past, and I'm doubtful of how much we can really say for certain about the lived experience of sexuality in ancient contexts. What I am confident in saying is that they weren't sex negative - that is, most of the negative, suppressive or avoidant attitudes towards sex which we might be familiar with simply hadn't been invented yet, and are a consequence of much later developments. They did, I believe, have certain sexual taboos, but I'm failing to find much info about that at the moment.

A good short overview of Mesopotamian sexuality is Budin's "Sexuality: ancient Near East (except Egypt)". It's very thorough for being only 5 pages, although a few of the things that paper touches upon could be greatly expanded upon if you start mucking about in the reeds of textual interpretation. Also, she ends by noting that there are no extant references to bestiality in Mesopotamian sources, but I'm not sure of that: in the Gilgamesh Epic, the hero recites a list of Ishtar's lovers which includes a bird, a lion and a stallion, and Roland Boer goes into more examples at length in chapter 4 of Sex in Antiquity, "From Horse Kissing to Beastly Emissions - Paraphilias in the Ancient Near East."

But if you're going to read anything on the topic of sexuality overall, Budin's paper is the one to check out.

There's also Julia Assante's even briefer "Sex and sexuality, ancient Near East," an entry in the Encyclopedia of Ancient History. Highlights from that one include the opening sentence:

Until recently, the study of sex and sexuality in the ancient Near East was dominated by nineteenth-century anthropological assumptions.

Which is a very important point in understanding how the past has been re-imagined by modern historians.

She also quotes one of the Inanna hymns as saying:

"My vulva is wet, Who will plow it?"

Besides that being a great line on its own, it reminded me of another good set of papers: "'Let me be your canal': Some Thoughts on Agricultural Landscape and Female bodies in Sumero-Akkadian Sources" appearing in The first ninety years; A Sumerian celebration in honor of Miguel Civil, 2017, and a followup titled "Politics of the Body Productive: Agriculture, Royal Power and the Female Body in Sumerian Sources" by M. Erica Couto-Ferreira, in Gender and Methodology in the Ancient Near East, 2018