I've only recently come across Enheduanna’s name. She is written of quite early in Belinda Jack’s The Woman Reader, a collection of studies in women’s literacy and its sociopolitical impact throughout time. I was immediately entranced by this priestess-turned-poetess, mortified that I hadn’t heard of her before, and pushed to cover her accomplishments with immediacy. Therefore, she is the first to be amplified this Women’s History Month, one of our ancient gals with progressive (or not? You decide-) prowess.
Enheduanna was born around 2285 BCE, in the Sumerian city-state of Ur. This was not her birth name—she had a Semitic one that has since been lost to history—but her ascension name. When she came of age, she assumed the title of High Priestess of Nanna, the Sumerian moon god: she was the first woman to hold such a position in Ur. The name she ascended with—Enheduanna—translates roughly to “High Priestess of An [the sky god]” or “En-Priestess, wife of the god Nanna.” With her rise, she was often written as the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, first ruler of the Akkadian Empire, though historians are unsure if she was a blood relation or if the title was a figurative one.
Enheduanna took her calling very seriously. She had quite the undertaking ahead of her, after all: with Sargon’s conquering of Sumerian city-states, he needed someone to unify the vastly different kingdoms under one household. Enheduanna’s task was to meld the Sumerian gods with the Akkadian ones; in doing so, she would keep coups and general unrest in check. She did so with much success for over 40 years.
But that isn’t even the most impressive thing about her. Enheduanna was the first author we know of to sign their own work, male- or female-identifying, inscribing her tablets with: “The compiler of the tablets was En-hedu-ana. My king, something has been created that no one has created before.” And she did, indeed, do just such a thing, in incredible number and to remarkable effect. She is credited with creating the standards for poetry, prose, and prayer that would be used for centuries after her death. As Paul Kriwaczek notes in Babylon, “Through the Babylonians, [her writing] influenced and inspired the prayers and psalms of the Hebrew Bible and the Homeric hymns of Greece.”
But how did we get there?
Enheduanna began, unsurprisingly, by writing hymns to her gods. She is known primarily for three: Inninsagurra (The Great-Hearted Mistress), Ninmesarra (The Exaltation of Inanna) and Inninmehusa (Goddess of the Fearsome Powers). This poeticism was markedly different from hymns of the time. Firstly, Enheduanna wrote frequently in first person, the first historians can find to respond with votive tradition as opposed to impersonal exaltation. She speaks directly to the gods as one, and, in some cases, personifies the gods as they appear on Earth. Secondly—and perhaps most importantly for her day—Enheduanna entirely redefined the gods, providing Sumerian homogeneity and ethereal androgyny. Where before the gods had typically been separated as masculine and feminine, dominant and submissive, she painted them as finding strength in both.
This is particularly striking in Ninmesarra. The poem—collated from 50 clay tablets, with 153 lines currently restored—acts as both exaltation of Enheduanna’s personal god and fictionalized memoir. For the former, Enheduanna casts Inanna as the goddess of war as well as the goddess of love and fertility, illustrating her as a great bird of love and destruction. For the latter, the priestess tells a devastating story of her own life.
Writing under the guise of a fictional poetess, Enheduanna recalls the events of the only attempted coup during her time as High Priestess. Lugalanne, the rebel (and possibly Enheduanna’s brother-in-law, dependent on translation), burns the temples of the gods in an act of violence against Sargon’s rule; Enheduanna is forced to flee, in exile in Uruk. Lugalanne follows her (he knows she is the real power in Akkad). He proclaims himself her equal. And, in his next act, he becomes the first documented case of sexual assault in human history: “He has wiped his spit-soaked hand/on my honey-sweet mouth,” writes Enheduanna as poetess. Following this heinous act, Enheduanna appeals to Inanna to crush this usurper. Inanna obliges, Akkad emerges victorious, and Enheduanna returns to her home. She remains unopposed for the rest of her days.
Enheduanna did not stop there, of course. She wrote 42 poems that we can find, reflecting her own frustrations, hopes, devotions, and her responses to war and the environment she lived within. Her writings demonstrate a firm grasp of mathematics, astronomy, and folklore. In fact, it’s possible she’s one of the earliest astronomers, as well: her descriptions of celestial movements have been demarcated by many scientists as fact. The structure of Ninmesarra suggests an education in and familiarity with the tales of her day, uncommon, it seems, for many women.
Enheduanna shared all of these writings, of course. Her temple was full of worshippers, acolytes, and clergy. In a wonderful state of affairs, Inanna’s followers were admitted from both sexes, and encouraged to dress as their personal gender identities. There is no doubt, then, that all loved and advocated Enheduanna’s work.
And then it was largely forgotten. Though her impact lived on in Greco-Roman times, stretching across the centuries to modern-day peoples, no one remembered her name. It wasn’t until 1927, when Sir Leonard Woolley uncovered the Enheduanna calcite disc, that her name was recovered. On the disc sits Enheduanna, her Estate Manager, her Dresser, and her Scribe; inscribed in the calcite is: “Enheduanna, zirru-priestess, wife of the god Nanna, daughter of Sargon, king of the world, in the temple of the goddess Innana.” Additionally, evidence was found at the burial site of years-worth of offerings. The people of Mesopotamia continued honoring her for hundreds of years after her death, that much is clear.
Today, over 4,000 years later, her literary structure is still used by poets and novelists alike. But guess what, y’all? Some question whether she wrote them at all, because “only men” were trained as scribes at the time.
Yeah. I say let’s challenge that.
"“I, En-hedu-ana the en priestess, entered my holy jipar in your service. I carried the ritual basket, and intoned the song of joy. But funeral offerings were brought, as if I had never lived there. I approached the light, but the light was scorching hot to me. I approached that shade, but I was covered with a storm. My honeyed mouth became venomous. My ability to soothe moods vanished.
Suen, tell An about Lugal-ane and my fate! May An undo it for me! As soon as you tell An about it, An will release me. The woman will take the destiny away from Lugal-ane; foreign lands and flood lie at her feet. The woman too is exalted, and can make cities tremble. Step forward, so that she will cool her heart for me.”
- Enheduanna, "The Exaltation of Inanna" -
Sources/For More Info: “Enheduanna” by Joshua J. Mark, The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, “Hidden women of history: Enheduanna” by Louise Pryke, The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack, Babylon by Paul Kriwaczek, Princess Priestess Poet by Betty De Shong Meador
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