Ancient Mesopotamia: Enheduana

“I, who am I among living creatures? With your strength, my lady, teeth can crush flint. Your princess, the silencing princess, the true and great lady of Heaven -- when she talks Heaven trembles, when she opens her mouth there is devastation.”

Art: Tablet, copy of the hymn Inanna B/Ninmesharra/Exaltation of Inanna, written by Enheduana. Found in Nippur, Old Babylonian period 1900-1600 BC. Penn Museum CBS7847.

Before jumping into our first big epic of the term, Homer’s Odyssey, I like to set the stage and remember that we’ve been thinking about our mortality, and immortality, for a very long time—in fact, as far back as when we think human beings adopted writing to record their stories. So for our first class, my students are reading two of the earliest surviving examples of writing preserved in Mesopotamia. The first, a hymn to the Sumerian goddess Inanna written by the high priestess Enheduana—the world’s first named author—and the second, the anonymous Epic of Gilgamesh.

Click on the drop-down “Read and Watch” menu on the right for links to readings and other resources.