Tamarisk and Palm is an Akkadian disputation poem written on clay tablets and dates to the 18th century BC from the reign of Hammurabi.
[4] There is one Sumerian topos and loanword from the Akkadian text that occurs during its cosmogonic prologue, rendered as "in those days", which refers to a primeval and mythical time outside of history.
(…) Both trees were enemies, and would constantly vie with each other.In the poem, they both seek to establish their superiority by describing their utility to and the commodities that they provide humans.
Provoked further, Tamarisk proceeds to list many appliances found in palaces that are made of its wood.
The last speech by Tamarisk and Palm is too fragmentary to reconstruct, and after that, the remaining text breaks off.
One suggestion holds that Palm may have won because in later Babylonian literature, it receives the epithet šar iṣṣī, "king of the trees".
[12] Lambert knew the work from three recensions (versions): one from Old Babylonian manuscripts discovered from Šaduppûm (Tell Harmal), a second from Middle Assyrian tablets, and a third (and lowest quality) manuscript that dates one or two centuries after the Middle Assyrian period.