Enheduanna
Enheduanna | |
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Occupation | EN priestess |
Language | Old Sumerian |
Nationality | Akkadian Empire |
Genre | Hymn |
Subject | Nanna, Inanna |
Notable works |
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Relatives | Sargon of Akkad (father) |
Literature portal |
Notable Sumerians |
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Pre-dynastic kings |
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1st Dynasty of Kish |
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1st Dynasty of Uruk |
1st Dynasty of Ur |
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2nd Dynasty of Uruk |
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1st Dynasty of Lagash |
Dynasty of Adab |
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3rd Dynasty of Kish |
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3rd Dynasty of Uruk |
Dynasty of Akkad |
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2nd Dynasty of Lagash |
5th Dynasty of Uruk |
3rd dynasty of Ur |
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Enheduanna (Sumerian: 𒂗𒃶𒌌𒀭𒈾[1] Enḫéduanna, also transliterated as Enheduana, En-he2-du7-an-na, or variants) was the entu (high) priestess of the moon god Nanna (Sīn) in the Sumerian city-state of Ur in the reign of her father, Sargon of Akkad (r. c. 2334 – c. 2279 BCE). She was likely appointed by her father as the leader of the religious group at Ur to cement ties between the Akkadian religion of her father and the native Sumerian religion.
Enheduanna has been celebrated as the earliest known named author in world history, as a number of works in
The cultural memory of Enheduanna and the works attributed to her were lost some time after the end of the First Babylonian Empire. Her existence was first rediscovered by modern archaeology in 1927, when
Background
Enheduanna's father was Sargon of Akkad,[2] founder of the Akkadian Empire. In a surviving inscription Sargon styles himself "Sargon, king of Akkad, overseer (mashkim) of Inanna, king of Kish, anointed (guda) of Anu, king of the land [Mesopotamia], governor (ensi) of Enlil".[3] The inscription celebrates the conquest of Uruk and the defeat of Lugal-zage-si, whom Sargon brought "in a collar to the gate of Enlil":[3][4] Sargon then conquered Ur and "laid waste" the territory from Lagash to the sea,[5] ultimately conquering at least 34 cities in total.
Rebellion of Lugal-Ane
Toward the end of the reign of Sargon's grandson Narām-Sîn, numerous former city-states rebelled against the Akkadian central power. From hints in the song Nin me šara ("the Exaltation of Inana"), the events can be reconstructed from the point of view of Enheduanna: A certain Lugal-Ane came to power in the city of Ur, who as the new ruler invoked the legitimacy of the city god Nanna. Lugal-Ane is probably identical with a Lugal-An-na or Lugal-An-né, who is mentioned in ancient Babylonian literary texts about the war as king of Ur. Apparently Lugal-Ane demanded that the high priestess and consort of the moon god Enheduanna had to confirm his assumption of power. En-ḫedu-anna, as representative of the Sargonid dynasty, refused, whereupon she was suspended from her office and expelled from the city. The mention of the temple E-ešdam-ku indicates that she then found refuge in the city of Ĝirsu. In this exile, she composed the song Nin me šara, the performance of which was intended to persuade the goddess Inanna (as Ištar the patron goddess of her dynasty) to intervene on behalf of the Akkadian empire.[9]
King Narām-Sîn succeeded in putting down the rebellion of Lugal-Ane and other kings and restored the Akkadian central authority for the remaining years of his reign. Probably Enheduanna then returned to her office in the city of Ur.[citation needed]
Archaeological artifact
In 1927, as part of excavations at
Two of the works attributed to Enheduanna, "The Exaltation of Inanna" and "Inanna and Ebih" have survived in numerous manuscripts due to their presence in the
Attributed works
The first person to connect the disk and seals with literary works excavated in
Temple hymns
These hymns have been reconstructed from 37 tablets from Ur and
The first translation of the collection into English was by Åke W. Sjöberg, who also argued that the mention of a "subscript" or colophon of two lines near the end of the composition appear to credit her with composition of the preceding text.[19] However, Black shows that in the majority of manuscripts, the line following this colophon, which contains the line count for the 42nd and final hymn, demonstrates that the preceding two lines are part of the 42nd hymn. Black concludes that: "At most... it might be reasonable to accept a claim for (Enheduanna)'s authorship or editorship"[20] for only Hymn 42, the final hymn in the collection.
Hymns dedicated to Inanna
The Exaltation of Inanna
Nin me šara ("Mistress of the innumerable me"; modern also The Exaltation of Inana / Inana B) is a hymn to the goddess Inanna of 154 lines. According to Claus Wilcke, the text "belongs to the most difficult that exists in the literary tradition in Sumerian".[21] The first complete edition of Nin me šara was produced by Hallo / van Dijk in 1968.[22] A fundamentally new edition based on a broader textual foundation as well as recent linguistic research and textual criticism was published by Annette Zgoll in 1997,[23] with further improvements in Zgoll 2014[24] and 2021.[25]
The work refers to the rebellion of Lugal-Ane and Enheduanna's exile. Probably composed in exile in Ĝirsu, the song is intended to persuade the goddess Inanna to intervene in the conflict in favor of Enheduanna and the Sargonian dynasty. To reach this, the text constructs a myth: An, the king of the gods, endows the goddess Inanna with divine powers and has her execute his judgment on all the cities of Sumer, making her herself the ruler of the land and most powerful of all the gods. When now the city of Ur rebels against her rule, Inanna passes her judgment over it and has it executed by Nanna, the city god of Ur and her father. Inanna has thus become the mistress of heaven and earth alike - and thus empowered to enforce her will even over the originally superior gods (An and Nanna), which results in the destruction of Ur and Lugal-Ane.[26]
Hymn to Inanna
Also called The Great-Hearted Mistress or The Stout-Hearted Mistress (incipit in-nin ša-gur-ra), this hymn, which is only partially preserved in a fragmentary form, is outlined by Black et al. as containing three parts: an introductory section (lines 1-90) emphasizing Inanna's "martial abilities"; a long, middle section (lines 91-218) that serves as a direct address to Inanna, listing her many positive and negative powers, and asserting her superiority over other deities, and a concluding section (219–274) narrated by Enheduanna that exists in a very fragmentary form.[27]
Black et al. surmise that the fragmentary nature of the concluding section makes it unclear whether Enheduanna composed the hymn, the concluding section was a later addition, or that her name was added to the poem later in the
The first English translation of this work was by Sjöberg in 1975.[28]
Inanna and Ebih
This hymn (incipit in-nin me-huš-a) is characterized by Black et al. as "Inanna in warrior mode." The poem starts with a hymn to Inanna as "lady of battle" (lines 1–24) then shifts to a narration by Inanna herself in the first person (lines 25–52), where she describes the revenge she wants to take on the mountains of Ebih for their refusal to bow to her.[29]
Inanna then visits the sky god An and requests his assistance (lines 53–111), but An doubts Inanna's ability to take revenge (lines 112–130). This causes Inanna to fly into a rage and attack Ebih (lines 131–159). Inanna then recounts how she overthrew Ebih (lines 160–181) and the poem ends with a praise of Inanna (lines 182–184).[29] The "rebel lands" of Ebih that are overthrown in the poem have been identifiedwith the Jebel Hamrin mountain range in modern Iraq.[29] Black et al. describe these lands as "home to the nomadic, barbarian tribes who loom large in Sumerian literature as forces of destruction and chaos" that sometimes need to be "brought under divine control".[29]
Hymns dedicated to Nanna
These two hymns, labeled by Westenholz as Hymn of Praise to Ekisnugal and Nanna on [the] Assumption of En-ship (incipit e ugim e-a) and Hymn of Praise of Enheduanna (incipit lost). The second hymn is very fragmentary.[16]
Authorship debate
The question of Enheduanna's authorship of poems has been subject to significant debate.
For the Inanna and Nanna poems, Black et al. argue that at best, all of the manuscript sources date from at least six centuries after when she would have lived, and they were found in scribal settings, not ritual ones, and that "surviving sources show no traces of Old Sumerian... making it impossible to posit what that putative original might have looked like."[14]
Despite these concerns, Hallo says that there is still little reason to doubt Enheduanna's authorship of these works. Hallo, responding to Miguel Civil, not only still maintains[33] Enheduanna's authorship of all of the works attributed to her, but rejects "excess skepticism" in Assyriology as a whole, and noting that "rather than limit the inferences they draw from it" other scholars should consider that "the abundant textual documentation from Mesopotamia... provides a precious resource for tracing the origins and evolution of countless facets of civilization."[34]
Summarizing the debate, Paul A. Delnero, professor of Assyriology at Johns Hopkins University, remarks that "the attribution is exceptional, and against the practice of anonymous authorship during the period; it almost certainly served to invest these compositions with an even greater authority and importance than they would have had otherwise, rather than to document historical reality".[35]
Influence and legacy
Enheduanna has received substantial attention in feminism. In a BBC Radio 4 interview, Assyriologist Eleanor Robson credits this to the feminist movement of the 1970s, when, two years after attending a lecture by Cyrus H. Gordon in 1976, American anthropologist Marta Weigle introduced Enheduanna to an audience of feminist scholars as "the first known author in world literature" with her introductory essay "Women as Verbal Artists: Reclaiming the Sisters of Enheduanna".[36] Robson says that after this publication, the "feminist image of Enheduanna... as a wish fulfillment figure" really took off.[37] Rather than as a "pioneer poetess" of feminism,[37] Robson states that the picture of Enheduanna from the surviving works of the 18th century BCE is instead one of her as "her father's political and religious instrument".[38] Robson also stresses that we have neither "access to what Enheduanna thought or did"[37] or "evidence that (Enheduanna) was able to write",[39] but that as the high priestess and daughter of Sargon of Akkad, Enheduanna was "probably the most privileged woman of her time".[39]
Enheduanna has also been analyzed as an early rhetorical theorist. Roberta Binkley finds evidence in The Exaltation of Inanna of invention and classical modes of persuasion.[40] Hallo, building on the work of Binkley, compares the sequence of the Hymn to Inanna, Inanna and Ebih, and the Exaltation of Inanna to the biblical Book of Amos, and considers these both evidence of "the birth of rhetoric in Mesopotamia."[41]
See also
- Adad-guppi – Assyrian priestess of the moon god Sin
- Anna Komnene – Byzantine historian (1083–1153)
- Diotima of Mantinea – Ancient Greek woman or fictional figure in Plato's Symposium
- Hypatia – Alexandrian astronomer and mathematician (died 415)
- Kushim – Sumerian person, c. 3400–3000 BC
- Puabi – Queen of Ur
- List of female poets
- List of archaeologically attested women from the ancient Mediterranean region
Notes
- ^ Ebeling 1938, p. 373.
- ^ Black et al. 2006, pp. 315–316.
- ^ a b Kramer 2010, p. 324.
- ^ Kuhrt 1995, p. 49.
- ^ Frayne 1993, pp. 10–12.
- ISBN 978-90-04-17499-3.
- ^ Westenholz 1989, p. 549.
- ^ Godotti 2016, p. 137.
- ^ Zgoll 1997, pp. 38–42.
- ^ a b Winter 2009, p. 69.
- ^ Winter 2009, p. 68.
- ^ Weadock 1975.
- ^ Black et al. 2006, p. 299.
- ^ a b Black et al. 2006, pp. 334–335.
- ^ Falkenstein 1958.
- ^ a b c Westenholz 1989.
- ^ Roberts 1972, pp. 145–147.
- ^ Black 2002.
- ^ a b Sjöberg & Bergmann 1969.
- ^ Black 2002, p. 3.
- ^ Zgoll 1997, p. 30.
- ^ Hallo & van Dijk 1968.
- ^ Zgoll 1997.
- ^ Zgoll 2014.
- ^ Zgoll 2021.
- ^ Zgoll 1997, pp. 45–46.
- ^ a b c Black et al. 2006, pp. 98–99.
- ^ Sjöberg 1975.
- ^ a b c d Black et al. 2006, p. 334.
- ^ Glassner 2009.
- ^ Hallo & van Dijk 1968, pp. 1–11.
- ^ Civil 1980.
- ^ Hallo 2010, p. 673.
- ^ Hallo 1990, p. 187.
- ^ Delnero 2016.
- ^ Weigle 1978.
- ^ a b c Robson & Minamore 2017, 10:11-10:39.
- ^ Robson & Minamore 2017, 9:35-9:40.
- ^ a b Robson & Minamore 2017, 9:40-9:54.
- ^ Binkley 2004, pp. 47–49.
- ^ Hallo 2010, pp. 127–128.
References
- Binkley, Roberta A. (2004). "The Rhetoric of Origins and the Other: Reading the Ancient Figure of Enheduanna". In Lipson, Carol; Binkley, Roberta A. (eds.). Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks. Albany: State University of New York Press. pp. 47–59. ISBN 978-0-7914-6100-6.
- Black, Jeremy (2002). "En‐hedu‐ana not the composer of the Temple Hymns" (PDF). Nouvelles Assyriologiques Brèves et Utilitaires. 1: 2–4. Retrieved 10 December 2021.
- Black, Jeremy; Cunningham, Graham; Robson, Eleanor; Zólyomi, Gábor (2006). The Literature of Ancient Sumer. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-929633-0.
- Civil, Miguel (1980). "Les limites de l'information textuelle". Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
- Ebeling, Erich, ed. (1938). "Ezur und Nachträge". Reallexikon der Assyriologie und Vorderasiatischen Archäologie (in German). Vol. 2. Berlin: De Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-004450-8. Retrieved 11 December 2021.
- Delnero, Paul (1 July 2016). "Scholarship and Inquiry in Early Mesopotamia". Journal of Ancient Near Eastern History. 2 (2): 109–143. S2CID 133572636.
- JSTOR 23295714.
- Frayne, Douglas (1993). Sargonic and Gutian Periods, 2334-2113 BC. University of Toronto Press. pp. 10–12. ISBN 978-0-8020-0593-9.
- Godotti, Alhena (12 August 2016). "Mesopotamian Women's Cultic Roles in Late 3rd — Early 2nd millennia BCE". In Budin, Stephanie Lynn; Turfa, Jean Macintosh (eds.). Women in Antiquity: Real Women across the Ancient World. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-21990-3.
- Glassner, Jean-Jacques (2009). "En-hedu-Ana, une femme auteure en pays de Sumer au IIIe millénaire ?". Topoi. Orient-Occident. 10 (1): 219–231. Retrieved 12 December 2021.
- Hallo, William W.; van Dijk, J. J. A. (1968). The Exaltation of Inanna. Yale University Press.
- Hallo, William W. (1990). "The Limits of Skepticism". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 110 (2): 187–199. JSTOR 604525.
- Hallo, William W. (2010). The world's oldest literature : studies in Sumerian belles-lettres. Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-17381-1.
- Helle, Sophus, "Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World's First Author", New Haven: Yale University Press, 2023 ISBN 978-0300264173
- Kramer, Samuel Noah (17 September 2010). The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-45232-6.
- Kuhrt, Amélie (1995). The Ancient Near East, C. 3000-330 BC. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-16763-5.
- Liverani, Mario (4 December 2013). The Ancient Near East: History, Society and Economy. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-75084-9.
- Roberts, Jimmy Jack Mcbee (1972). The Earliest Semitic Pantheon. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-1388-3.
- Robson, Eleanor; Minamore, Bridget (15 October 2017). Lines of Resistance. BBC Radio 4. Retrieved 9 December 2021.
- Sjöberg, Åke W.; Bergmann, Eugen (1969). The Collection of the Sumerian Temple Hymns. J. J. Augustin.
- Sjöberg, Åke W. (1 January 1975). "in-nin šà-gur4-ra. A Hymn to the Goddess Inanna by the en-Priestess Enḫeduanna". Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie (in German). 65 (2): 161–253. S2CID 161560381.
- Weadock, Penelope N. (1975). "The Giparu at Ur". Iraq. 37 (2): 101–128. S2CID 163852175.
- Weigle, Marta (Autumn 1978). "Women as Verbal Artists: Reclaiming the Sisters of Enheduanna". Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies. 3 (3): 1–9. JSTOR 3346320.
- Westenholz, Joan Goodnick (1989). "Enḫeduanna, En-Priestess, Hen of Nanna, Spouse of Nanna". In Behrens, Hermann; Loding, Darlene; Roth, Martha T. (eds.). DUMU-E-DUB-BA-A : Studies in Honor of Åke W. Sjöberg. Philadelphia, PA: The University Museum. pp. 539–556. ISBN 0-934718-98-9.
- Winter, Irene (2009). "Women In Public: The Disk Of Enheduanna, The Beginning Of The Office Of En-Priestess, And The Weight Of Visual Evidence". In Winter, Irene (ed.). On Art in the Ancient Near East Volume II: From the Third Millennium BCE. BRILL. pp. 65–84. ISBN 978-90-474-2845-9.
- Zgoll, Annette (1997). Der Rechtsfall der En-ḫedu-Ana im Lied nin-me-šara. Münster: Ugarit-Verlag. pp. 38–42. OCLC 37629393.
- Zgoll, Annette (2014). "Nin-me-šara – Mythen als argumentative Waffen in einem rituellen Lied der Hohepriesterin En-ḫedu-Ana". In Janowski, Bernd; Schwemer, Daniel (eds.). Weisheitstexte, Mythen und Epen. Texte aus der Umwelt des Alten Testaments Neue Folge 8. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus. pp. 5–67. S2CID 198766340.
- Zgoll, Annette (2021). "Innana and En-ḫedu-ana: Mutual Empowerment and the myth INNANA CONQUERS UR". In Droß-Krüpe, Kerstin; Fink, Sebastian (eds.). Perception and (Self-)Presentation of Powerful Women in the Ancient World, Proceedings of the 8th Melammu Workshop, Kassel 31 January - 1 February 2019. Melammu Workshops and Monographs. Vol. 4. Münster: Zaphon. pp. 13–56. ISBN 978-3-96327-138-0.
Further reading
- Pryke, Louise M. (2017). "Enheduanna and Ancient Literature." Ishtar: Gods and heroes. London and New York, Routledge, pp. 16-18. ISBN 978-1-138-86073-5
- Pryke, Louise (12 February 2019). "Hidden women of history: Enheduanna, princess, priestess and the world's first known author". The Conversation. Retrieved 6 March 2023.
- Wagensonner, Klaus (2020). "Between History and Fiction — Enheduana, the First Poet in World Literature". In Wisti-Lassen, Agnete; Wagensonner, Klaus (eds.). Women at the dawn of history. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale Babylonian Collection. pp. 39–45. ]
- Wilcke, Claus (1972). "Der aktuelle Bezug der Sammlung der sumerischen Tempelhymnen und ein Fragment eines Klageliedes". Zeitschrift für Assyriologie und Vorderasiatische Archäologie. 62 (1). S2CID 163266334.
- Winkler, Elizabeth (19 November 2022). "The Struggle to Unearth the World's First Author". The New Yorker. Retrieved 20 November 2022.
External links
- "Enheduanna: The world's first named author". BBC Culture. 25 October 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2022.
- English Translations of works attributed to Enheduanna at the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature
- Artifacts depicting Enheduanna