Enheduana, the woman who wrote before the rest

In 1927, in the ruins of the ancient Sumerian city of Ur, in present-day Iraq, the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley uncovered an alabaster disc featuring the imposing figure of a high priestess. Over the past few years, I’ve often returned to that image from four millennia ago, fascinated by this remarkable woman — thought to be Enheduana, daughter of the Akkadian ruler Sargon the Great, a priestess, princess, poet, and the first named author in human history.

For many decades after the discovery of her portrait and the clay tablets believed to carry her poems, Enheduana (also spelt Enheduanna) was a name familiar chiefly to scholars of ancient Mesopotamia. More recently, however, this woman, who lived approximately between 2285–2250BC, has emerged into the public consciousness. Last year the Morgan Library & Museum in New York ran an exhibition titled She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, c 3400-2000BC, and this spring the writer and translator Sophus Helle has published Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author.

“In the annals of world literature, Enheduana marks the earliest known appearance of authorship: the idea that there is a person beyond the text, speaking to us across time,” Helle writes. “And yet, despite the exceptional beauty of her hymns, the world has forgotten about Enheduana.”

Helle is a Danish scholar and researcher, currently based in Berlin, and an expert on Enheduana’s stirring cycle of temple hymns and invocations to the Akkadian goddess Inana (also spelt Inanna). In this book, he builds on previous translations of Enheduana’s work but provides the first set of complete, accessible translations of all her available poems. The book is particularly useful for readers unfamiliar with the archaeological and historical debates over Enheduana, as it includes three long essays touching on her life, times, and ancient religion.

Since the 1960s, scholars have debated Enheduana’s verses (with some even questioning the attribution), but for lay readers like me, the return of her striking voice is an exciting revelation. While her poems appear in the form of hymns and invocations, she wields sweet words in the pursuit of lost power, and — remarkably — recognises the astonishing nature of creativity itself: “The weaver of the tablet is Enheduana./ My King! Something has been born which had not been born before.”

As Helle writes: ‘What would the history of Western literature look like if it began not with Homer and his war-hungry heroes but with a woman from ancient Iraq?’

Unlike some of the translations I’d read online, Helle’s translation feels urgent, incandescent, stripped of academic cladding. Inana is no gentle spirit; she is the “hawk of the gods” who “shreds up the sheepfold”, eats corpses like a lion, grinds skulls into dust. And Enheduana herself bristles with life as she raises her voice in exaltation: “You are like/ a flash flood that/ gushes down the/ mountains, you/ are supreme in/ heaven and earth:/ you are Inana / Fleeing sandstorms,/ terror, and splendor,/ humanity assembled/ to stand before you/ in silence, and of all/ the gods’ powers, you/ took the most terrible.”

Gradually, I begin to understand Enheduana’s story better through Helle’s book and other sources. Enheduana’s father, King Sargon, was the first ruler of the Akkadian empire, conquering Sumer, the Levant and parts of Mesopotamia. Enheduana served as high priestess to the moon god Nanna — a position of great divine and temporal authority — but was ousted by Lugal-Ane-Mundu, who led a rebellion of conquered territories against Sargon’s empire after his death. Refusing to serve the new king, or new gods, Enheduana was sent into exile. When her prayers to Nanna have had no effect, she turns to Inana: “I went to the light,/ but the light burned/ me; I went to the/ shadow, but it was/ shrouded in storms.”

You can’t help but marvel at Enheduana’s gift with words, her ability to invoke the force and majesty of this long-gone deity, but what makes her such a striking authorial figure is the fact that her humanity shines through. At one point in her invocation, Enheduana falters, loses her voice in a most human way: “My honey-mouth/ is full of froth, my/ soothing words are/ turned to dust.” Perhaps, as some scholars have suggested, this is the first recorded instance of writer’s block.

Aside from brief references to the ancient Greek poet Sappho or the 7th century Tamil poet-saint Andal, the literature I was taught in school and college centred on the history of male writers. As Helle writes: “What would the history of Western literature look like if it began not with Homer and his war-hungry heroes but with a woman from ancient Iraq, who sang her hymns to the goddess of chaos and change?”

The growing popularity of Enheduana gives all of us readers a chance to discover another lineage — and to bring this poet and her imagination flashing back to life again.

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