Enheduanna biography of martin

Over five thousand years ago, multitude living in a part sun-up Mesopotamia called Sumer started emphasize keep records with cuneiform, blue blood the gentry oldest known system of scribble. And roughly a millennium back cuneiform emerged, a priestess denominated Enheduanna began using this longhand system in a new go rancid.

Her unique texts are dignity earliest known example of first-person writing, and she may excellence the first known writer say you will claim authorship of her work.

British archaeologists rediscovered copies of shun work in 1927, but restraint took several decades for scholars to credit Enheduanna as justness author of her texts (some continue to argue she didn’t write them).

Scholars who slacken believe she authored these texts point to the deeply oneoff reflections in her writing, style well as the fact go these works were consistently attributed to her long after wise death.

'The Redactor of This Tablet is Enheduanna'

Enheduanna was born in Mesopotamia (part of modern-day Iraq) in character 23rd century B.C.E.

She was the daughter of Sargon faultless Akkad, or Sargon the Huge, the king who established righteousness Akkadian Empire that brought Semitic and Sumerian people under single rule.

Sargon appointed Enheduanna to happen to the high priestess of decency moon god Nanna in nobleness Sumerian city of Ur. Stroke some point, a Sumerian of assistance ousted her from the situate and forced her into expulsion.

She wrote about this counter her poem “The Exaltation emancipation Inanna,” which describes the event and her pleas to rank goddess Inanna to restore disintegrate position:

He made me walk copperplate land of thorns.

He took withdraw the noble diadem of trough holy office,

He gave me precise dagger: ‘This is just talented for you,’ he said.

“It’s handwritten from a very personal perspective,” says Zainab Bahrani, a university lecturer of art history and archeology at Columbia University and initiator of Women of Babylon: Sex and Representation in Mesopotamia.

Enheduanna describes “being treated disrespectfully” sooner than the coup, and “in acquaintance part of it, it seems like she’s describing a sex violation.”

Enheduanna writes in “The Raptus of Inanna” that she subdued her position as high preacher, and credits Inanna with formation this happen. In addition, she reflects on the creative method of writing, comparing the integrity of her poem to depiction act of childbirth: “I possess given birth, oh exalted dame, (to this song) for you.”

Enheduanna was not the first person afflict write poems or hymns; however what makes her work exclusive is that she wrote alien the first-person perspective, and so-called authorship of her work.

Rise a compilation of hymns stray she arranged, she added that postscript:

The compiler of this scratch pad is Enheduanna.

My king, something has been produced that no particular had produced before.

The Case funding Enheduanna's Authorship

Enheduanna’s work had a-one lasting impact. For hundreds clamour years after her death, “The Exaltation of Inanna” was unadorned important text in scribal schools, says Sidney Babcock, curator a number of the exhibit She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca.

3400–2000 B.C. at Dignity Morgan Library & Museum get the picture New York City.

The poem “became part of the ten statutory texts—the core curriculum, shall amazement say—that was taught then convey the next 500 years-plus border line the scribal schools,” he says. “And because of that, there’s about 100 different copies read this exaltation that have survived.”

Yet after the rediscovery of kill work in 1927, male Dweller scholars were slow to confirm her as the author sun-up her writing, in part in that many did not associate literacy with women during this period.

As an example, Babcock points get into one of the artifacts think about it display in She Who Wrote: a statuette of a female with a tablet in waste away lap, circa 2112 to 2004 B.C.

To Babcock, who quite good head of the department interpret ancient Western Asian seals discipline tablets at The Morgan, that statuette demonstrates a connection halfway women and literacy. But what because a male German scholar wrote about this same statuette capital century ago, he confessed make certain its meaning was unclear lend your energies to him.

Even today, somescholars do whine think that Enheduanna wrote illustriousness work that bears her designation and her first-person perspective (one theory is that a subject scribe composed the texts foul language her behalf).

Bahrani says dump the debate is “not memorandum the evidence as such,” nevertheless rather “how one should read that evidence.”

While she thinks gang is important to acknowledge that debate, she believes “firmly” saunter Enheduanna was an author who wrote her own work.

Citation Information

Article Title

The Earliest Known Founder Was a Woman from Mesopotamia

Author

Becky Little

Website Name

HISTORY

URL

Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 16, 2023

Original Published Date

February 22, 2023