[Author’s Note: This story is based on the writing of Enheduanna, the world’s first named author. Enheduanna lived in ancient Sumer 2285-2250 BCE and was the daughter (either literally or figuratively) of the war-like empire-builder Sargon of Akkad. Enheduanna wrote of Inanna in distinctly different ways at different times. The following short story imagines the events behind those differences.]
For man without woman there is no heaven in the sky or on earth. Without woman there would be no sun, no moon, no agriculture, and no fire. Arab Proverb
In 1922, archaeologists from the University of Pennsylvania and the British Museum began a joint venture in southern Iraq to uncover the ancient city of Ur. In their third season, members of the expedition unearthed pieces of a small, round alabaster disc. On the mended disc they found these words:
Enheduanna, true lady of Nanna, wife of Nanna, Daughter of Sargon, king of all, in the temple of Inanna . . .
The leader of the expedition, Sir Leonard Woolley, wrote: . . .now we have En-he-du-an-na, and she is a very real person; she lived at Ur and she had her court there as beseemed a princess.[i]
#
Two millennia before Woolley translated the disc, Enheduanna walked the tiled floors of the Harbour Palace built on the banks of the Buranun at the Eastern side of the city of Urim. The mud-brick walls whispered secrets, and the tiled floors echoed with the swish of purple-trimmed robes . . .
Enheduanna walked those floors for forty years, High Priestess of Urim at her father’s command. Daughter of Sargon, Warlord and King, Enheduanna had come to the Temple later than most, a haughty, fine-boned girl, resentful at her banishment from the King’s Halls. The Priests and Priestesses of Urim whispered that Sargon’s daughter had only been placed there to strengthen his hold on the land. Enheduanna knew the truth of that herself. What she did not know in her early days in the Temple was the full power of the Great Ones honoured by the people of Urim.
Three years after her appointment, Enheduanna sat in the reception-room of the Temple, awaiting the arrival of her father. The room was resplendent with painted pillars, woven rugs, and stone statues; Sargon’s rule had seen the land of Ki-en-gir thrive, the trade routes open all the way to Harappa in the West.
But what brought the mighty Sargon to the Harbour Palace? Enheduanna sat tall in her raised chair and calmed her racing heart with measured breaths. What did she have to fear from her own father?
Sargon strode into the hall alone and dismissed the attendants with a flick of his bejewelled hand. They ran like frightened goats at the smell of a lion. Enheduanna inclined her head; a High Priestess, closest to the Great Ones, did not bow, even to a King.
Sargon’s booming laugh echoed from the walls. Enheduanna flinched. She had forgotten how big he was: tall as a young date palm, broad as an ox, with gleaming eyes and a great, oiled beard that covered his chest. With three great strides Sargon crossed the room and lifted her into his arms.
Enheduanna was three-years old again, wrapping her arms around his neck, breathing in frankincense and sweat. Her chest tightened as if the life were being squeezed from her. A scream rose to her throat . . .
The King placed her back down. Confused and dizzy, Enheduanna swallowed the scream and held tightly to the carved arms of the chair, all the composure of a High Priestess lost. Which, she thought ruefully, was probably the King’s intention.
“It is time for the High Priestess to shape the future of Urim,” said Sargon, voice booming like a drum.
That made no sense, but Enheduanna knew better than to ask a question. She had made that mistake once when she was younger, and the subsequent public humiliation had made Sargon’s views about women and power quite clear.
“You will compose a song of praise for the most holy Inanna,” said the King.
Enheduanna waited, throat tight, barely breathing.
“You will celebrate her as warrior, fierce defender of the King, bloodthirsty Queen of Heaven who ensures victory over those who rebel.”
Enheduanna shivered. She may not have entered the Temple willingly, but even she knew this was a travesty. She also knew that she would do exactly as her father commanded.
“You will elevate her to the highest place among the Great Ones. I want the people to see Her power strengthening what I am building. I want them to honour me as they do Her.” His voice rumbled like thunder.
Enheduanna had a fleeting glimpse of herself at three, a child standing alone at the edge of the Palace gardens.
Sargon turned to leave, and Enheduanna’s memory dissolved like a dream.
#
That night, as Enheduanna pressed her stylus into a fresh clay tablet to write the first lines of a new verse for Inanna, she recalled the image of the child at the edge of the gardens . . .
. . . It had been a hot day, high in the Emesh season, and they had all been there: her father, her mother, her brothers and their mothers, the King’s advisors, and a retinue of attendants . . .
The men clustered around her father, waving their hands in the air, buzzing like bees. Enheduanna slipped her hand free from her mother’s to follow a line of ducklings waddling along the edge of an irrigation canal. She may even have walked all the way to the river, but the mother duck suddenly leapt into the air, flapping and squawking. The ducklings scattered.
Enheduanna found herself alone at the edge of the gardens, facing a great, tawny creature with eyes like carnelian stones. A warm, musky smell wrinkled Enheduanna’s nose, and she reached out to touch the lioness.
An attendant ran along the canal, screeching and flapping like the mother duck. With a shake of its great head, the lioness turned and ran into the trees.
The attendant lifted Enheduanna off her feet and carried her back to her father.
Sargon was furious. “How did the child come to be there alone?” he demanded of the people around him.
No one spoke. No one breathed. Sargon, King of Urim, King of all the lands between the rivers and beyond the rivers, West and East, had a reputation for swift and brutal action when wronged.
Enheduanna reached for her father, wanting to tell him that she had been safe, that the lioness had only been smelling her.
Still glaring at the bent heads around him, Sargon took her into his arms. “Whosoever risks my blood, also puts me at risk. Who was attending the child?” His voice thundered in Enheduanna’s body like a storm wind. “The child shivers. She was saved by a whisker. Who had her care?”
Enheduanna tried to speak, to tell him that she had been safe, but he pulled her closer, smothering her face against his chest. Through the drumbeat of his heart, she heard her mother’s voice, small and frightened.
“I had her hand, my Lord. She slipped away.”
“Beat her,” came the command from the rumbling chest.
Enheduanna heard the first blow fall, heard her mother gasp. She fought against her father’s arms, but he crushed her face into his chest. A horrible burning seared her throat. Silently she screamed and screamed for them to stop.
“Enough,” said her father and handed Enheduanna to an attendant.
Enheduanna struggled free and crawled over to her mother, who lay still as death.
Silent workers carried her mother back to the Palace, her blood-soaked linens trailing on the ground. She was tended by the finest physicians, but she did not recover. An accident, they said. How unfortunate.
#
Flinging off the memories, Enheduanna rose from her chair, shattering the night with twenty years of anguish and grief.
Worried faces appeared at the door.
Enheduanna sent her attendants away, crossed her arms over her chest, and paced to and fro. How could she have forgotten the bitter truth of her mother’s death?
She wept for the child she had been, and for the mother she could barely remember. The face of Inanna appeared through the tears, reminding Enheduanna of the lioness she had seen that terrible day. There had been something in the great beast’s carnelian eyes, a look ancient and implacable.
Guided by that look, Enheduanna took a small, private room for her own use. She instructed attendants to clear the room of sleeping mats and baskets, and Enheduanna had altars built to honour the four faces of the Great Lady of Heaven and Earth: Lover, Warrior, Priestess, Mother. It was there she went to hear Inanna’s voice.
Eneheduanna also wrote the songs her father required. Stylus gripped so tight her knuckles showed white against her dark skin, she wrote for the King, speaking aloud the words as she marked the wet clay.
Great Ones of the fearsome powers, clad in terror, Inanna . . .drenched in blood.[ii]
. . .Great lady, knowing well how to plan battles, you destroy mighty lands . . . you pacify the insubordinate and unsubmissive with your gall.
At first it seemed that she had complied exactly with Sargon’s wishes, portraying the holy Priestess as a bloodthirsty warrior who destroyed those who did not submit. As time passed, however, the verses began to change. Once she had established Inanna as the most powerful Great One, mightier even than An, Enheduanna began to praise her in ways more suited to the fullness of her place in the hearts and souls of the people of Urim, more suited to balance.
To build a house, to create a woman’s chamber, to possess implements, to kiss a child’s lips are yours, Inanna.
She spoke the new words out loud and imagined her Mother hearing them. To interchange the brute and the strong and the weak and the powerless is yours, Inanna. To interchange the heights and the valleys . . .is yours, Inanna.
Like the people of Urim had done for thousands of years, Enheduanna sang to Inanna as if the Goddess were her very own mother listening to the lament of her soul.
. . .grief, bitterness . . .’alas’ . . .My lady, . . .mercy . . .compassion . . .I am yours! This will always be so! May your heart be soothed towards me! May your understanding . . .compassion . . .May it be my offering . . . My body has experienced your great punishment. Lament, bitterness, sleeplessness, distress, separation . . .mercy, compassion, care, lenience and homage are yours, and to cause flooding, to open hard ground and to turn darkness into light.[iii]
In this way, Enheduanna opposed her father, composing songs and writing poetry to honour the true nature of the first daughter of the Moon – not the battle-hungry warrior Sargon called forth, but the protectress of women and children, the mighty lioness whose fierceness defended those who were threatened.
For forty years, Enheduanna served as High Priestess of Nanna and Inanna, singing praises to the holy Priestess of Heaven and Earth, kneeling before the Great Lady, calling on Her to look down in sweet wonder from Heaven.
#
In another Age, four thousand years after Enheduanna met a lioness by the river, visionaries came to the desert looking for the lost city they now called Ur, sifting the sands for signs of the past.
The ancient songs were silent, and the river no longer flowed there. In the sand, the visionaries found fragments of the wonder that had been. They found the poems and songs of Enheduanna, written by hand on clay tablets and baked to a hardness that had endured for two millennia. Scholars developed theories to explain the shift in the verses from the glorification of war to a more compassionate dialogue with the Goddess, but none of them were able to tell the story of the girl who had met a lioness one day at the edges of her world.
i Leonard Woolley cited in B De Shong Meador and J Grahn (2001) Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart : Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna. Austin, TX, University of Texas Press. p.39.
ii B De Shong Meador and J Grahn (2001) Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart : Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna. Austin, TX, University of Texas Press.
See also:
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/enheduanna/
http://www.angelfire.com/mi/enheduanna/Ninmesara.html/
iii ibid.
Meet MAGO Contributor KAALII CARGILL