THE FIRST BOOK ANYBODY LOVED

Eco-feminist BEVERLY FREDERICK explains why credit for the world's first author has been so slow: Early archaeologists first had to first figure out why an ancient woman had a tablet in her lap.

- BEVERLY FREDERICK

Omniscient Sage, lady of all the lands / Sustenance of the multitudes, Goddess / I have verily recited your sacred song, I Enheduanna

NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO, archaeologists unearthed these words by Akkadian priestess, princess, poet, and politician Enheduanna while excavating in Ur, where the fertile Tigris and Euphrates Rivers join.

Enheduanna is now believed by a growing number of scholars to be the world’s first author and poet, as it was she who committed these autobiographical sentiments into the original cuneiform tablets over 4,000 years ago.

Her offices as high priestess of Ur and princess of Akkadia (in the area presently known as Iraq) were chiseled into a limestone disk now referred to as “Enheduanna’s Disk” circa 2350-2300 B.C.E. Enheduanna presided over the rituals, rich endowments, and storehouses of Ur’s temple of Nanna, the Sumerian moon god.

However, it is her much reproduced poem “The Exaltation of Inanna,” which honors the Sumerian goddess of love, fecundity, and war, that has elevated Enheduanna to her place on the crossroads of world history.

The roughly 100 replicas of “The Exaltation of Inanna” on cuneiform tablets are believed to be “practice copies” created in Mesopotamian scribal schools by priests-intraining. The copies were made over a period of 500 years after her death.