This is the fifth Q&A for History of Mankind. Paid subscribers received an email soliciting questions and I got some.
This time, I picked four that I think I can shed the most light upon. And I will also comment briefly upon a pretty interesting, recent long essay in the New Yorker magazine, about Enheduanna, a daughter of the fearsome King Sargon of Akkad and perhaps the first literary author known by name in human history.
As I wrote in “Sargon & the Pax Akkadiana,” the great king founded a dynasty that is remembered, if at all, because of Enheduanna, a local priestess who left behind several poems whose authorship appears pretty well settled, including a collection of religious hymns.
I didn’t add much detail on Enheduanna, beyond her role in political shenanigans that threatened her position, largely because very little is known about her long life and her work; the New Yorker story is helpful in that it’s a great way to get up to speed on recent scholarship on a rare female figure from deep antiquity, and one that of course has been garnering more attention in recent years.
I have some quibbles with the story: Enheduanna is described as the “world’s first recorded author,” but she is not. The world’s first recorded author, as I wrote in “The Golden Era of Egypt's Pyramids,” is Cheops' son Hardjedef/Djedefhor, who lived 300 years earlier than Enheduanna and achieved fame as a wise man and alleged author of a non-literary book providing advice to his sons, known as “The Instruction of Hardjedef.” This book was read, transmitted down on papyri, throughout the rest of Egyptian history.
In addition, the story does make some daring interpretations of Enheduanna that may or may not be right, and may suggest that she was once raped and urged to commit suicide by one of the throne’s claimants, in the convulsed years after her passing. We don’t need dramatic details about her lifetime to appreciate her role as the world’s (likely) first literary author, and thus her importance in history.
The overall tone in the New Yorker’s story is that Enheduanna and her works should be better known, and I can only agree. Now, for the readers’ questions:
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