The Exaltation of Inanna
nin-me-sara
The earliest work in world literature to close with its author's own name turns personal exile and political crisis into praise of a goddess who holds order and violence in the same hand.
- earliest authorial name-claim in surviving world literature
- personal voice inside public liturgy
- Inanna's dual nature: order and violence
- attribution contested: all manuscripts are Old Babylonian copies six centuries later
The text credits Enheduanna, high priestess of Ur and daughter of Sargon of Akkad, with composing this hymn to Inanna after being driven from her temple office during a political uprising. She pleads for restoration through the goddess directly, closing with her own name as author, the earliest such personal claim to authorship in world literature, though every surviving manuscript is an Old Babylonian school copy dating some six centuries after Enheduanna's own lifetime, and scholars are split on what the attribution means: Hallo defends it as genuine authorship, while Civil and Delnero argue 'Enheduanna' may denote a temple office or a later scribal school's authority-claim rather than a historical woman's signature. The poem itself yokes intimate distress to cosmic praise, casting Inanna as a deity who unmakes cities as readily as she blesses them.
Commentary
Readers' notes on this work. No account needed - be scholarly, or at least civil.
Loading commentary…