Word Weavers: Enheduanna

Enheduanna was a high priestess, poet, and princess of ancient Mesopotamia. She is widely considered the world’s first known author by name. Her deeply personal hymns and poems, many dedicated to the goddess Inanna, mark the first time an author writes using the pronoun I. 

For Further Reading:

• World History: Enheduanna
• The Earliest Known Author Was a Woman from Mesopotamia
• The World’s First Named Author Was a Woman

This month, we’re talking about Word Weavers — people who coined terms, popularized words, and even created entirely new languages. These activists, writers, artists, and scholars used language to shape ideas and give voice to experiences that once had no name. 

History classes can get a bad rap, and sometimes for good reason. When we were students, we couldn’t help wondering... where were all the ladies at? Why were so many incredible stories missing from the typical curriculum? Enter, Womanica. On this Wonder Media Network podcast we explore the lives of inspiring women in history you may not know about, but definitely should.

Every weekday, listeners explore the trials, tragedies, and triumphs of groundbreaking women throughout history who have dramatically shaped the world around us. In each 5 minute episode, we’ll dive into the story behind one woman listeners may or may not know–but definitely should. These diverse women from across space and time are grouped into easily accessible and engaging monthly themes like Educators, Villains, Indigenous Storytellers, Activists, and many more. Womanica is hosted by WMN co-founder and award-winning journalist Jenny Kaplan. The bite-sized episodes pack painstakingly researched content into fun, entertaining, and addictive daily adventures.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello from Wonder Media Network. I'm Jenny Kaplan and this
is Womanica. This month we're talking about word weavers, people
who coined terms, popularized words, and even created entirely new languages.
These activist writers, artists, and scholars used language to shape
ideas and give voice to experiences that once had no name.

(00:31):
More than five thousand years ago, in the cradle of civilization,
people in a place called Sumer began doing something that
would shape the course of humanity. They wrote things down.
At first, it was just an accounting system, lists of
grain and goods presedento clay tablets using a script called cuneiform.
But then a woman came along and changed everything. That

(00:54):
woman was en Hedwana, the first known author to use
the first person perspective, and Hedwana was born in Mesopotamia
in the twenty third century BCE. Her father was Sargon
the Great. By uniting Mesopotamia's independent city states, he became
the first person to build an empire. The resulting a

(01:15):
Kadian Empire, was home to history's first cities in high cultures,
but military force wasn't enough to hold his patchwork of
cultures together. The conquered city states frequently revolted in an
effort to regain autonomy. So Sargon turned to something more
enduring than conquest, belief. To forge that belief and mend

(01:35):
his fractured empire, he made his daughter the high priestess
of the most important temple in Sumer. The temple was
in the city of Er, one of Sumer's oldest and
most important cities. Upon her appointment, she took the name
at Hedwana, which translates to something like high Priestess ornament
of Heaven. Her appointment was not a mere ceremonial role.

(01:58):
Her temple was the religious heart of a city of
thirty four thousand people, and Hadwana oversaw temple workers, sacred
moon festivals, dream interpretation, and even the management of grain.
Her most critical responsibility was creating stability in the region
by uniting the old Sumerian gods with the new gods
of the Acadian Empire. And Hedwana was taught to read

(02:20):
and write in Sumerian and Akadian. She used this knowledge
to transform Cuneiform from an accounting system into a form
of literature. She wrote forty two religious hymns that combined
the mythologies of the two cultures, and three epic poems.
She dedicated her hymns to each major city's ruling god,
and she not only explained the connection between various deities,

(02:42):
but she also humanized them. While the gods had once
felt like distant entities, and Haduana showed the people that
these gods suffered, fought, and loved. Through her work, the
moon god Nana became sympathetic and emotional. The goddess Inana,
who was the god of war and desire, turned into
the fierce, all powerful queen of heaven, and Haduana united

(03:06):
the empire under Inana. Her father's planned a forged belief
and meant his fractured empire worked. But when he died,
a rebel general let a coup and targeted the ruling family,
and Hadwana was exiled, stripped of her title, and forced
out of the temple into the desert. She expressed her

(03:27):
grief and pain about this time through writing in her
poem The Exaltation of Inana. There's something no piece of
writing had featured before the word I, and had Wanta
introduced the first person voice into literature. She claimed authorship
and poured her personal feelings into the clay tablets she
wrote on. She pleaded with the goddess for justice. She

(03:52):
asked Inana to ask for help from the god On
who's known as the Father of the gods, and had
Wanta told of her suffering and isolation, her hope for restoration,
and her devotion to the Goddess, Great Queen of Queens.
I will recite your holy song, true goddess, fit for

(04:12):
divine powers. Your splendid utterances are magnificent, deep hearted, good
woman with a radiant heart. I will enumerate your divine
powers for you. These weren't just religious texts. They were poetry,
they were political, they were propaganda in prayers, and they
changed the perception of the gods themselves. Because of her words,

(04:35):
the divine seemed to grow closer to the people eventually
and had won as nephew squashed the rebellion, He restored
his aunt to her temple, and had want To continued
to serve as the high priestess for more than forty years.
Some scholars have questioned whether she truly wrote the poems
bearing her name. When some of her work was discovered

(04:56):
in nineteen twenty seven by European male scholars, they wavered
on credit her as the author because it was hard
to believe a woman of this era would be literate,
but at Hedwana's name appears in the works themselves. The
emotions are undeniably personal, and for nearly two thousand years
her poems were copied, performed, and taught inscribal schools, and

(05:16):
Hadwana became more than a priestess. She was a cultural
force and eventually a minor deity after her death, and
Hadjana's influence stretched far beyond her life. Some scholars say
her writing helped shape the structure of Hebrew psalms, the
epics of Homer, and Christian hymns. The clay tablets that
bear her words are more than four thousand years old,

(05:37):
yet they still speak. And Hedwana didn't just use language,
she gave voice to the inner life of a woman
in an empire. All month, we're talking about word beavers.
For more information, find us on Facebook and Instagram at
Wamanica Podcast special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister

(05:57):
and co creator. Talk to you tomorrow.