Ellen Rachlin: What Drew Me to Enheduanna, the World’s First Named Author
I encountered Enheduanna by chance while reading about her father, Sargon the Great, the world’s first emperor. She was little more than a footnote, a name on one of five branches of Sargon’s progeny. Two of them were kings who succeeded him. She was his only daughter, which made her a princess. I was curious about what had happened to her. I dug deeper.
Then I read four words that stopped me: world’s first named author. The first named author wasn’t a man? I was hooked. I had to know what she wrote. She certainly wasn’t included in any of my literature classes. She lived 4,300 years ago; I wanted to know how she could have vanished from our cultural memory. No one I knew had heard of her. This was a few years before the Morgan Library exhibit that emphasized her life and before the cover story about her in Archaeology magazine. So now, maybe history hasn’t completely erased her, but she still exists on its margins.
The Works of Enheduanna
Then I read the works: hymns and a narrative poem attributed to her were remarkable despite being incomplete. One, The Exaltation of Inanna (Nin-me-šara), tells the story of her exile at the cruel hands of a rebel king. Masterfully, she pleads her case to the god Inanna to be restored as High Priestess of Ur. The plea is urgent and humble, and Enheduanna identifies herself as the one making the entreaty. Inanna is the only god powerful enough to reinstate her, Enheduanna declares. In this world, the gods were responsible for every aspect of human life, from the heavens to the underworld.
In two of the other compositions, she also attests to Inanna’s powers. Her hymns helped push Inanna from a minor deity to a major one in the Mesopotamian god pantheon. The voice in these hymns is desperately alive. I had to find her and explore possible paths her life might have taken.
Either she authored these unforgettable works or she inspired them. We don’t know which. Either truth makes her compelling. There are compelling arguments for both points of view. We don’t have copies or an original tablet from her lifetime. And a seal dating to her lifetime seems to depict one of the works attributed to her, known as Inanna and Ebih. Seals depicting scenes of this nature didn’t appear before then.
High Priestess
Then I learned that a high priestess’s responsibilities rivaled those of a king but seemed to have in some ways even more influence. High priestesses and high priests were intermediaries between the people and the gods. They exercised control over political, business, and religious affairs. Ur, Enheduanna’s city, was the most powerful economic city-state in ancient Sumer. That meant she held one of the most powerful religious and economic roles in the ancient world, overseeing vast temple estates, personnel, and ritual life. I became fascinated by a woman who exercised this level of authority in a world I had assumed left little room for women to achieve this level of power. I was intrigued by the complications this raised and by how this woman rose to power in a patriarchal society.
So I wanted to create a plausible narrative about her life, which unfolded in a society that did not separate religion, commerce, and politics. Gaps in the historical records weren’t obstacles; they became my invitations to imagine the life behind the voice in the surviving hymns attributed to her. My imagination took hold as the myths became fuel for the fantasy elements in my novel.
Enheduanna’s Story
I was further drawn into Enheduanna’s story when I saw pictures of the Ziggurat of Ur, Enheduanna’s temple complex, on the outskirts of Nasiriya, Iraq, on the lower Euphrates, largely disconnected from modern life. I couldn’t stop thinking about how it once was the seat of power and a place of profound longing for her during her exile. It was not desert then but rich marshland fed by the river and surrounded by rich, fertile farmland. This was Enheduanna’s kingdom. This was where she wrote and served her followers.
I thought about how she was the daughter of Sargon the Great, the world’s first emperor and therefore in a position to be appointed to the role rather than having earned it, and how it must have been a mixed privilege. Ur was a politically sensitive, conquered region. She must have felt highly vulnerable, perhaps cut off from the empire’s seat of power, Agade. Uprisings were commonplace, and based on surviving literature, she was forced into exile by a usurper.
What if she wasn’t supported enough by her brothers? What did exile feel like to a woman whose identity might have been inseparable from the role of high priestess? These were the sort of questions I asked myself. Religious figures were thought to have been appointed by the gods and largely insulated from political upheaval. Yet she was exiled and fought her way back. In writing Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands, I wanted to give her back what modern history took away, a fuller picture of a remarkable woman’s life.
And these details were enough to draw me to Enheduanna. I had found my subject. I wasn’t looking for a feminist icon. But I found her and then imagined the extraordinary life behind the words.
(c) Ellen Rachlin
About Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands:
A high priestess dethroned. A rebel with a dangerous plan. One empire hanging by a thread. When Enheduanna is named High Priestess of Ur, her connection to the gods makes her a target. Lugalanne’s coup strips her of robes, power, and home, casting her into the perilous underworld. There, amid forests of shadows and treacherous trials, she discovers that divine favor alone won’t save her–only cunning, courage, and a willingness to embrace the ruthlessness of her enemies can restore her.
Drawing on history and myth, Enheduanna’s Song From the Sands follows the world’s first named author as she fights to reclaim her voice and her destiny. Political intrigue, betrayal, and divine tests collide as Enheduanna must decide whether to forgive, to fight, or to harness the power that could shake the foundations of an empire. For readers who love The Song of Achilles’s intimate heroism, Circe’s mythic depth, or The Daughters of Sparta’s fierce women, this is a mesmerizing dive into ancient Mesopotamia where courage and cunning are the only paths to survival.
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