Who’s Jennifer Falkner Reading?
When I feel grim around the mouth or the world is too much with me, I find escape reading about the ancient world. I read as far back in time as I can go. Iron Age is great, but Bronze Age is even better. (Neolithic is best of all, but rather harder to find primary sources.) Sometimes it’s accounts of trade routes or wars, the archaeology around standing stones or the philology of dead languages. (I am far from an expert in any of these things. I just like the calm spaces they open in my head.) But, of course, it is the stories I return to most. The myths and the epic tales. The poetry.
I discovered Sophus Helle’s translation of Gilgamesh last year, and it led me inevitably to his translation of the poems of Enheduana (Yale University Press, 2023). The tag line on the cover calls Enheduana the world’s first author. Well, no. Certainly stories and poems exist that are far older than those attributed to her. But she is the earliest named author we know of.
Enheduana lived in the city of Ur (which lies in modern Iraq) around 2300 BC. As Helle points out in his introduction, it’s hard to fathom how long ago this really was. Julies Caesar lived closer in time to us than he did to Enheduana. She was the daughter of the emperor Sargon and appointed as high priestess to Nanna, the moon god. Her poems are hymns, mostly composed to the god she served.
Hymns are a powerful form. They seek to invoke the gods, usually by praising their strength and recalling their mighty deeds. They often then turn to beseeching the god for aid. Enheduana, living during a period of political upheaval, when her father’s continued rule is uncertain and she herself is threatened by a political rival, she begs Nanna for aid. Nanna, though, is silent. In the hymn known as the Exaltation, she calls on Inana (Nanna’s daughter, also known as Ishtar) in desperation. Inana is a powerful goddess to invoke, being tthe deity of war and sex, of destruction and transformation. The hymn itself depicts a moment of emergency, of war and impending exile. It is also a rare glimpse into considerations of authorship itself, as Enheduana must overcome her own self-doubt (“My honey-mouth is full of froth, my soothing words are turned to dust”) and use her command of language to create the very hymn we are reading, the tool she will use to save herself.
Enheduana’s hymns explode with a torrent of images. Metaphor piles upon simile in a way that can be bewildering on first reading. But this is an attempt of capturing the nature of the ancient gods in words. These are not the simple, sanitized gods we see in Disney cartoons. They are fathomless and dark, largely composed of contradictions. Their power is capricious and even a high priestess must harness her full ability to seize their attention.
…. As if
you were a basilisk,
you pour poison
upon the enemy,
as if you were the
Storm God, grain
bends before your
roar. You are like
a flash flood that
gushes down the
mountains, you
are supreme in
heaven and earth:
You are Inana.
Enheduana presents her position as if it were a court case, testifying against her enemies. In her closing statement, she says:
…. Let
them know that you
are as mighty as the
skies. Let them know
that you are as great
as the earth. Let them
know that you crush
every rebel. Let them
know that you deafen
the enemy. Let them
know that you grind
skulls to dust. Let
them know that you
eat corpses like a lion.
Let them know that
your gaze is terrifying,
and that you lift your
terrifying gaze. Let
them know that your
eyes flash and flicker.
Who could return to the world without feeling refreshed after an invocation like that?
Jennifer Falkner is the author of Susanna Hall: Her Book (Ottawa Book Award finalist) and the short story collection Above Discovery. She lives in Ottawa.