Enheduana by Sophus Helle

Author:Sophus Helle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2022-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE PRIESTESS RETURNS

“IT iS AN ODD QUESTION, ‘WHO WAS THE FIRST author?,’” as Andrew Bennett writes in his introduction to the theory of authorship, noting that the question “is itself immersed in what we might call an authorcentric or auteurist ideology.”1 Literary critics have for more than fifty years been pushing against this “authorcentric” ideology, which Bennett explains as the view that “literary culture is invariably based around isolated individuals, around the solitary figure of the genius.”2 Against this view, critics have argued that prose and poetry are not the product of “original” creators who pluck their verses out of thin air but are made and remade through networks of collaboration, as authors borrow each other’s words, create new texts within existing traditions, and rely on long chains of editors, scribes, and other intermediaries to reach their readers. In short, authors are embedded in and depend upon communities of words and people. To ask, “Who was the first author?” would seem to go against that critical tide by assuming that behind every concept stands a singular creator—that even authorship was authored.

That might be so in the abstract, but as I explored in the previous essay, it is not actually the case. The Exaltation gives us a very different account of authorship by portraying the text as emerging from dialogue and collaboration, as scribes and singers come together to create the text in a complicated interplay of voices. Time and again in this book it has become clear that Enheduana’s story is also the story of those who came after her. The story of the building in which she lived is also the story of the later high priestesses; the story of the disk that carries her name is also the story of Enanatuma, her successor in Ur; the story of her poems is also the story of the Old Babylonian scribes who copied, memorized, and translated them. Far from reinforcing an authorcentric myth, the history of Enheduana can help us rebut it by showing that literature can survive only within the communities that sustain and transform it. Enheduana’s poems point beyond themselves, inviting us to explore the connections that have sprung up around them. In the present essay I continue that “outward” movement by looking not at Enheduana herself but at some of the people who have been drawn into her circle: the high priestesses of Ur, the archaeologist who uncovered the few surviving traces of her historical life, and the modern scholars, writers, and poets who have engaged with her legacy.

THE WOMEN OF UR

On September 26, 554 BCE, a partial eclipse of the moon took place at around a quarter to five, Babylon time.3 In cuneiform culture, as in many other cultures from around the world, lunar eclipses were traditionally seen as an evil omen, spelling death for the reigning king. But the king who was reigning over Babylon in 554 was no ordinary ruler: King Nabonidus was a man unto himself.4 He was also the last Babylonian king to see himself as part of the cuneiform tradition.

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