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Source: Akkadian disputations

The Akkadian disputation poem or Akkadian debate, also known as the Babylonian disputation poem, is a genre of Akkadian literature in the form of a disputation. They feature a dialogue or a debate involving two contenders, usually cast as inarticulate beings such as particular objects, plants, animals, and so forth. Extant compositions from this genre date from the early 2nd millennium BC, the earliest example being the Tamarisk and Palm, to the late 1st millennium BC. These poems occur in verse and follow a type of meter called 2||2 or Vierheber, which is the same meter found in some other Akkadian texts like the Enuma Elish.
None of the known Akkadian disputation poems are translations of works of the same, but earlier genre, in the Sumerian language, namely the Sumerian disputations; Akkadian disputations utilize different literary conventions and verse structure, debate different topics, and so on, although Tamarisk and Palm has one Sumerian loanword. Nevertheless, some remarkable phraseological continuity is attested, such as between Hoe and Plough with the Akkadian Palm and Vine, even though two millennia separate their composition. The disputants of some of the poems are also similar to the disputants of some Sumerian disputations. For example, Tamarisk and Palm and Palm and Vine both feature two plant contenders: this is alike the Sumerian Debate between tree and reed.
Akkadian disputations, despite being more recent than their Sumerian counterpart, have significantly more fragmentary manuscripts. A dozen lines survive of the Donkey Disputation and that less than a tenth is now known of the Series of the Poplar and the Series of the Fox, which, originally, would have been hundreds of verses in length.
Scholarly work on the Akkadian disputations was first synthesized by Wilfred Lambert.