The article is devoted to the poetics of describing calendar festivals in the Sumerian and Akkadian texts of the III-I millennium BC. Six ways of presenting information about the festival in cuneiform are considered. It was established that at first in the information about the festival the main points were the list of nomenclature and the number of offerings. Since the beginning of the second millennium, texts have appeared with food and ritual prohibitions. Individual elements of the festivals are also described in the literary texts. With the advent of menologies and explanatory texts, the main content of the festivals is set out in the explanation to the names of the months of the calendar. This trend is replaced in I millennium BC primarily with texts on the monthly worship of the gods, and then with scenarios of rituals, which are fully recorded only towards the end of the cuneiform civilization.