Aug 07, 2023 08:00:00

Who is the world's oldest writer 'Enheduanna'?

The world's oldest script is known to be the cuneiform script used by ancient Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago. On the other hand, the world's oldest writers who used letters to create stories are famous figures of ancient Greece such as

Homer , known for 'Iliad' and ' Odyssey ,' female poet Sappho , and historian Herodotus. There may be differences of opinion. Erhan Tamur, a postdoctoral researcher at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, said that ``Enheduanna,'' who was more than 1,000 years before the person who is often named, is ``the world's oldest writer.'' .

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Mr. Tamur cites the name of Akkadian shrine maiden Enheduanna , who is said to be a person from 2285 to 2250 BC, as the world's oldest writer. Tamur is co-curator of the exhibition She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. I was.

She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400–2000 BC-YouTube


Benjamin Foster, who studies ancient Assyria at Yale University, said of the ``oldest writer in the world'', ``The first author is someone whose name we know and who can be linked to existing texts. It means the oldest person possible.' According to Foster, there is a lot of literature in Mesopotamia, but most of it is unknown who drew it. The only exception is Enheduanna, whose works and names have survived.

Enheduanna was the daughter of Sargon, king of Akkad, and when Akkad conquered the Sumerians in southern Mesopotamia, Sargon brought most of Mesopotamia under his rule. This paved the way for the Akkadian Empire , 'the world's first empire,' Tamur points out.

As part of his efforts to consolidate his new empire, Sargon appointed his daughter Enheduanna as High Priest of Nanna, the Moon God, in the Sumerian city of Ur. The name 'Enheduanna' is a Sumerian word meaning 'high priest, decoration of the heavens', and it is said that it was the name given when she assumed this role. Enheduanna assumed important responsibilities as high priest of Nanna and representative of her father the king, and began writing poetry as a priestess.

Enheduanna is known for the disc excavated in Ur in 1927 by the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley. A woman dedicated to Nanna's daughter Inanna is drawn on the disk, and the name Enheduanna is written on the back, so the name of the shrine maiden of Ur, Enheduanna. As a result, the name of the author of the poem, which is said to have been written by a priestess of Ur, has been revealed as 'the world's oldest writer.'

Enheduanna's poems tend to praise not only Nanna but Inanna more. According to Tamur, there are glimpses of the nature that Enheduanna identified with Inanna as Ishtar , the Akkadian goddess of love and war.

In addition, Enheduanna's poems contain many autobiographical details, such as the struggle against the King of Ur, Lugalanne, who tried to force her out. “Enheduanna is, as far as we know, the first author to incorporate autobiographical details into her stories, and the first to tell us how she created these poems,” Tamur said. 'She likens the act of creation to childbirth, but this metaphor is arguably the first to be used, and such a metaphor will continue to be used in world literature for thousands of years.' I'm here.