Bride of Inanna: The First Recorded Poet Was a Powerful Priestess in Mesopotamia
All about Enheduanna, the first-ever recorded poet, with surprising facts re: cuneiform, the labrys, and mooncakes. Plus an otherworldly writing prompt!
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Poet, Priestess, Politician
In Mesopotamia circa 2300 B.C.E., there was a high priestess of the moon named Enheduanna. Her primary temple was in the southern Sumerian city of Ur, a cultural hot spot. Ceremonially, Enheduanna tended to the moon god Nanna and his wife Ningal. But in her heart of hearts, she was devoted to Nanna’s divine daughter, the wild goddess Inanna.
Over the forty years she held the office of high priestess, Enheduanna converted her role into THE most important religious office in Sumer, while also enhancing Inanna’s position, setting her above all others in the pantheon. Enheduanna accomplished this, in part, via the world’s very first poetry, imprinted on clay tablets.
Enheduanna’s achievements were extraordinary. For context, she lived eleven hundred years before Homer—around five hundred before Abraham—and inscribed her poetry about three hundred years after the cuneiform vocabulary had developed to a point where poetic phrase was even possible.
The first form of writing, cuneiform was made through impressions in clay. The system was first deciphered by an Irish clergyman named Edward Hincks. His work was later plagiarized by British officer Sir Henry Rawlinson.
Inanna: the horny, mercurial goddess of your dreams and nightmares
It’s hard to sum up Inanna. In simplest terms, she’s the goddess of war and sex, violence and transformation. Jungian psychologist Sylvia Brinton Perera characterizes Inanna as representing the “liminal, intermediate regions, and energies that cannot be contained or made certain and secure.” She’s seductive, but also scary AF. Flanked by lions and scorpions, she has wings, talons for feet, and a horned crown. In Enheduanna’s poem “Lady of Largest Heart,” as translated by Betty De Shong Meador, the goddess sings “and soaks her mace/in blood and gore.” She “smashes heads” and “pours blood on offerings/so who she feeds/dines on death.” Yikes! …I love it.
Then there’s Inanna’s mythology, which is soap-opera-good: she gets Enki (god of water) drunk and absconds with the powers of the universe in the boat of heaven. She also travels to the underworld where her sister Ereshkigal reigns, gets killed, then comes back to earth to sentence her carefree consort to his doom.
Inanna
godly maiden ripened on earth
YOU ARRIVE
your spread-out arms
wide as the Sun King
when you wear fearsome dread in heaven
crystal brilliance on earth
when you unfold from the mountains
your woven net of blue lapis cord [...]
when you wear
the robes
of the old, old gods
when you slice heads
like a scythe cuts wheat swaths RAM is the cuneiform sign for love. It depicts a human form with a flame within.
How do you worship a goddess like Inanna?
In “Inanna-Ishtar as Paradox and a Coincidence of Opposites,” Rivkah Harris describes Inanna’s cultic celebrations as rowdy affairs that included some bloody rituals and sacrifices. Her devotees were known to ceremonially don androgynous clothing and carry objects symbolizing the opposite gender: for example, a priestess with a double-edged ax, aka the labrys. And did I mention one of Inanna’s powers is the ability to change a person’s sex?
The labrys became a symbol of lesbian pride in the 70’s, but that’s more about Amazons, not so much Inanna.
over the maiden's head she makes a sign of prayer hands then folded at her nose she declares her manly/woman in sacred rite she takes the broach which pins a woman's robe breaks the needle, silver thin consecrates the maiden's heart as male gives her a mace for this one dear to her
How Enheduanna became Enheduanna
Enheduanna’s father was Sargon, a Semitic, Akkadian-speaking king who forged the first empire in history when he conquered the Mesopotamian city-states around 2334 B.C.E. But keeping them all together was like yoking wild bulls. Still, Sargon ruled for an impressive fifty-five years. Then his sons ruled for another twenty five, followed by his grandson, who was in power for thirty-six year… You get the picture.
Enheduanna’s role as high priestess in Sumer’s cultural center was intended to help Sargon control the formerly peaceful region through ideological and cultural assimilation. Her father also encouraged the merger of Sumerian Inanna with the Akkadian goddess Ishtar (today, barely anyone has heard of Inanna), and decreed Akkadian the official language. Likewise, Enheduanna composed temple hymns for many different cities to promote shared ideology. Her hymns were addressed to the gods and the shrines they inhabited. (The gods were provincial; each city had patron deities.) Yet, many are noteworthy for their obviously female-centered perspective.
Sargon was a conqueror. He invoked Inanna the warrior and revelled in her violent nature, as had many leaders before him. Meanwhile his daughter wielded her own power to her advantage. The temple she ran was a place of worship the gods literally inhabited, where food was cooked for them, as well as the mortal high priestess. The compound was surrounded by actively cultivated land, which Enheduanna oversaw. She was able to own property and had a sizable personal staff, who also lived in the community. Everyone depended on the priestess’s leadership, and her relationship with the divine.
You might have missed the scant, disapproving references to Hebrew women baking mooncakes for the Queen of Heaven (Inanna) in the Book of Jeremiah. In “Spirituality, Baking, and the Queen of Heaven,” Nina Mandel describes contemporary challah-baking by Jewish women as a stand-in for ancient sacrificial offerings.
Through her writing, Enheduanna the priestess granted Inanna the goddess greater power: she re-framed the deity as “the ebb and flow at the heart of the cosmic plan,” as De Shong Meador puts it, elevating her above all other gods. De Shong Meador also wonders if Enheduanna used Inanna to balance her father’s masculine aggression with “the reality of the forces of nature.”
In Enheduanna’s age, the concept of the divine was changing. The gods had developed distinct personalities and were less removed from individual humans. Artistic depictions from this period reveal worshippers pleading for divine intervention, while the gods symbolically take the mortals hands’ in theirs. This might seem like NBD from the perspective of our age, where the faithful regularly pray before football games. But in terms of the history of theology, these images represent a significant shift towards a personal relationship with the divine.
Enheduanna’s work itself exemplifies this shift. Hers is the first-ever diary-like narrative, detailing the particulars of her exile and disgrace when she was cast out of her temples by Lugalanne, an enemy of her nephew the king. The priestess responded by appealing to Inanna directly.
he wipes his spit-soaked hand on my honey sweet mouth my beautiful image fades under dust
Lugalanne demeaned the high priestess’s writing and desecrated the precincts of both Enheduanna’s temples. There’s a distinct possibility the priestess was sexually assaulted.
I plead with you
I say STOP
the bitter hating heart and sorrow
my Lady
what day will you have mercy
how long will I cry a moaning prayer
I am yours
why do you slay me
Enheduanna’s cry “I am yours, why do you slay me?” is echoed by Job about two thousand years later.
Enheduanna’s position as high priestess was eventually restored to her, for which she gave thanks to Inanna.
I don’t know exactly when or how the priestess’s life ended. She’s believed to have died during her nephew’s reign. Her body was likely buried outside the temple cloisters where she lived with the gods. Within the shrine to Ningal, the moon god’s wife, smaller shrines honoring certain high priestesses have been found. There was most certainly one for Enheduanna.
merely open your mouth and tables turn your glance clogs ears never to hear your frown blackens the light of noon your heart picks the moment of ruin the place you name trembles what is yours cannot be crushed who dares oppose your deeds Queen of Heaven and Earth
Postscript
The Sumerian language fell out of conversational use around 2000 B.C.E. However, over the next two thousand years, it remained the language of scholars and religious figures, much like Latin or Sanskrit.
By the seventh century B.C.E., all remaining images of Inanna in Hebrew temples had been destroyed.
Over the millennia following Enheduanna’s death, male gods became more prominent, often absorbing the aspects of female goddesses, thereby eliminating them from the pantheon. Eventually the city of Ur—once Inanna’s city—fathered Abraham, devotee of the Hebrew god Yahweh. Some scholars believe Yahweh also had a feminine counterpart, Asherah. Today, a subset of Jews (and non-Jews too), are rediscovering and reexamining the mythology of Asherah. For more, follow Rav Jericho Vincent.
Read More
Descent to the Goddess by Sylvia Brinton Perera
Inanna Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna by Betty De Shong Meador
Princess, Priestess, Poet: The Sumerian Temple Hymns of Enheduanna by Betty De Shong Meador
woman and nature: the roaring inside her by Susan Griffin
Gilgamesh translated by Sophus Helle
The Treasures of Darkness by Thorkild Jacobsen
Sumerian Mythology by Samuel Noah Kramer
The Descent of Ishtar by Timothy Stephany
Inanna: Queen of Heaven and Earth: Her Stories and Hymns From Sumer by Diane Wolkstein
Writing Prompt
You row across the heavens—what cargo do you bear?
Inanna, Ishtar, and Asherah are my very favorite goddesses. I’ve written poems to Asherah and there’s a mysterious “Queen of Heaven” in my upcoming novel that pays homage to them. Thanks for this rundown.