Enheduanna
The first named author was...a woman.
Around 2012, I was looking to diversify my English curriculum. I was woefully aware that my own knowledge of female authorship was limited to the Western European standards: the Brontës, Austen, Rossetti perhaps. I had little sense of the history of female authorship.
So I started digging.
Digging is an important concept when you are sifting through the sands of time. Archaeologists delve through layers of history in order to find artefacts and I have always argued that this is a useful metaphor for how teachers should approach knowledge, and in particular, decolonised knowledge. We have to dig through layers of colonisation to see what was there before.
Archaeologists discovered the existence Enheduanna in 1927 when they found artefacts bearing her name. Who was this mysterious figure, so important that she was named the ‘Ornament of Heaven’? She was a prominent religious and political figure in Ancient Mesopotamia1, a high priestess of a moon deity. She was the daughter of Sargon the Great (what a name!), a man credited with founding the very first empire.
As high-priestess, she held semi-divine status for nearly 40 years
Enheduanna wrote 42 temple hymns, bringing together for worshippers two deities in Mesopotamian culture, Inanna and Ishtar. What is most remarkable is that she was declarative about her authorship. It was common for authorship to be unknown at the time, and yet, she named herself within ‘The Exaltation of Inanna’ (2300-1800BCE) and other prominent pieces. There was no shying away. Look at her words here: “the person who bound this tablet together is Enheduanna / my king something never before created / did not this one give birth to it”.
In the 42 temple hymns, there are nods towards Mesopotamian mathematical thinking. In one study, we are told: “in Temple Hymn 42: the number of lines in the hymn is 14 (2x7); the first seven address the temple, and the latter seven describe the role and responsibilities of the ‘‘true woman.’’ The number of the hymn himself is a multiple of 7, as is the number of hymns in the entire collection. The number 7 runs like a thread through Enheduanna’s temple hymns.”2 This relates to the possible significance of 7 as a divine number in Mesopotamian culture.
Her temple poems brought a sense of unity between factions within Mesopotamia and blended cultures. Through her writing, she engaged in the political, bringing together Mesopotamian northern and southern regions. There is some debate amongst scholars of her work, but she is widely regarded as a highly influential literary figure. Not only this, she is seen as an early scientist in her observations of space, so much so that a crater on Mercury was named in her honour in 2015 by Carnegie Science.
Paul Kriwaczek notes that she is significant in our study of religious and mythological texts: “Her compositions, though only rediscovered in modern times, remained models of petitionary prayer for [nearly 2,000 years]. Through the Babylonians, they influenced and inspired the prayers and psalms of the Hebrew Bible and the Homeric hymns of Greece”.3
So why should our children know about her? Firstly to combat the idea that authorship is a masculine trait. Children are told that the Brontë’s couldn’t publish under their own female names - and while this is true, we cannot leave children to assume that the erasure of female voices has always been the case. Enheduanna claiming her authorship and remaining influential for many years after her death is testament to the fact that some pre-Christian societies embraced women’s voices. We ought to know, too, from where the traditions of Bible prayer might stem. Culture, religion, history all connect through many avenues.
Move over Sappho. There’s an older woman in town.
Where you might teach about her:
English - the concept of authorship and female voices
History - Ancient Mesopotamian culture
RE - Prayer and its origins
International Women’s Day
Finding out more:
Roberta Binkley - Full Text: https://www.cddc.vt.edu/feminism/Enheduanna.html
London Review of Books Article: https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n03/anna-della-subin/wreckage-of-ellipses
Hallo, William W., and J. J. A. Van Dijk. The Exaltation of Inanna. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968.
Helle, Sophus. Enheduanna, 2024.
Pritchard, James B., ed. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament. 3rd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
A name that means ‘between the two rivers’ - namely the Tigris and the Euphrates
Glaz, S, Enheduanna: Princess, Priestess, Poet and Mathematician, The Mathematical Intelligencer, Volume 42, Number 2.
Kriwaczek,P. Babylon. Thomas Dunne Books, 2010.