Lengthy overshadowed through the canonical figures of the Western custom, Enheduana is nonetheless the primary well-known creator in historical past. Greater than 4,000 years in the past, in Mesopotamia, this top priestess signed her texts, blending poetry, energy and spirituality, and left a founding paintings.
Once we ask who was once the primary author in historical past, we frequently recall to mind Homer. The picture of the blind poet of historic Greece occupies the top of the pantheon of the Western literary custom.
However in truth, we should return a lot additional, past Greece, even past the letter, and switch our gaze to the cradle of writing: historic Mesopotamia. There, greater than 4,000 years in the past, a girl signed her paintings along with her personal title: Enheduana.
Who was once Enheduana?
Enheduana lived round 2300 BC, within the town of Ur, in present-day southern Iraq. Her determine sticks out in different tactics: she was once a top priestess of the lunar god Nana, a place that gave her substantial political and non secular energy. She was once additionally the daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, the founding father of the primary Mesopotamian empire, and above the entire creator of a literary paintings of significant theological, political and poetic intensity.
“Enheduana” was once no longer her private title, however a spiritual identify that may be translated as “high priestess, ornament of heaven”. His actual title stays unknown. What’s past doubt, alternatively, is its historic importance: Enheduana wrote, signed her texts, and claimed highbrow authorship, making her the primary recognized individual, male or feminine, to go away a literary paintings in her personal title.
Writing, energy and spirituality
The cuneiform script existed already from the center of the 4th millennium BC. It was once born as an administrative instrument, helpful for holding financial data, tax keep an eye on or cattle counting. However by the point of Enheduana, it had additionally come for use to precise spiritual, philosophical and aesthetic concepts. It was once a sacred artwork, related to the goddess Nisaba, patroness of scribes, grains and data.
On this context, the determine of this creator is especially revealing. His paintings combines deep spiritual devotion with an specific political message. His poetry is a part of an imperial technique: legitimizing Akkadian dominance over Sumerian towns via the usage of a not unusual language, a not unusual faith, and a unified theological discourse.
A super paintings
A number of of Enheduana’s compositions have come all the way down to us. A number of the maximum essential is the Exaltation of Inanna, a protracted hymn celebrating the goddess of affection and conflict Inanna, and during which the creator implores her assist all over a length of exile. This article is frequently thought to be his maximum private and robust paintings.
Additionally preserved are the Temple Hymns, a number of forty-two hymns devoted to quite a lot of Sumerian temples and deities. Via them, Enheduana creates an actual religious map of the territory, emphasizing the shut connection between faith and political energy.
On the finish, different fragmentary hymns are added, certainly one of which is devoted to his god Nana.
Those examples don’t seem to be easy spiritual texts: they’re built with nice sophistication, charged with symbolism, emotion and an actual political imaginative and prescient. Enheduana seems there as a mediator between gods and males, between her father, the emperor, and the conquered towns.
Why do not we all know that?
It’s sudden that Enheduan is absent from faculty textbooks and maximum college literature classes. Aside from for experts in historic historical past or gender research, his title stays in large part unknown.
Plate, reproduction of the hymn Inanna B/Ninmesharra/The Ekaltation of Inanna, attributed to Enheduana. Maša Stojanova/Pen Museum
It’s reputable to invite whether or not the forgetting of Enheduana is a part of the systemic invisibility of ladies in cultural historical past. As artwork historian Anna Valtierra Lacal issues out, the presence of ladies scribes or artists in antiquity was once denied for hundreds of years, regardless of archaeological proof that they knew the best way to learn, write and arrange sources.
Enheduana was once no longer an remoted exception: its lifestyles displays that girls actively participated within the building of Mesopotamian civilization, each within the spiritual and highbrow spheres. The truth that she is the primary individual recognized to have signed a textual content along with her title must give her a unique position in human historical past.
She no longer most effective represents a seminal second in literary historical past: she additionally embodies, with uncommon energy, girls’s talent to create, assume, and workout authority for the reason that break of day of written tradition. His voice, engraved on clay drugs, reaches us intact throughout the millennia. Along with her, the tale starts no longer most effective with phrases, however with a singular voice, a lived revel in and an acute consciousness of the act of writing – all components that absolutely need to be identified.
Additionally preserved are the Temple Hymns, a number of forty-two hymns devoted to quite a lot of Sumerian temples and deities. Via them, Enheduana creates an actual religious map of the territory, emphasizing the shut connection between faith and political energy.
On the finish, different fragmentary hymns are added, certainly one of which is devoted to his god Nana.
Those examples don’t seem to be easy spiritual texts: they’re built with nice sophistication, charged with symbolism, emotion and an actual political imaginative and prescient. Enheduana seems there as a mediator between gods and males, between her father, the emperor, and the conquered towns.
Why do not we all know that?
It’s sudden that Enheduan is absent from faculty textbooks and maximum college literature classes. Aside from for experts in historic historical past or gender research, his title stays in large part unknown.
Plate, reproduction of the hymn Inanna B/Ninmesharra/The Ekaltation of Inanna, attributed to Enheduana. Maša Stojanova/Pen Museum
It’s reputable to invite whether or not the forgetting of Enheduana is a part of the systemic invisibility of ladies in cultural historical past. As artwork historian Anna Valtierra Lacal issues out, the presence of ladies scribes or artists in antiquity was once denied for hundreds of years, regardless of archaeological proof that they knew the best way to learn, write and arrange sources.
Enheduana was once no longer an remoted exception: its lifestyles displays that girls actively participated within the building of Mesopotamian civilization, each within the spiritual and highbrow spheres. The truth that she is the primary individual recognized to have signed a textual content along with her title must give her a unique position in human historical past.
She no longer most effective represents a seminal second in literary historical past: she additionally embodies, with uncommon energy, girls’s talent to create, assume, and workout authority for the reason that break of day of written tradition. His voice, engraved on clay drugs, reaches us intact throughout the millennia. Along with her, the tale starts no longer most effective with phrases, however with a singular voice, a lived revel in and an acute consciousness of the act of writing – all components that absolutely need to be identified.
