Humanities

Among the Sumerian texts attributed to the priestess Enheduana—who lived and presumably wrote over four thousand years ago and is often called history’s first named author—two are dedicated to the glory of the goddess Inana. As the most prominent female deity in Mesopotamia, Inana was powerful and marvelously complicated. The goddess of love and war, among other things, her heart was described as a raging storm, a fury of emotions. Although Enheduana was herself a high-ranking servant of the moon god, her poems known as the Exaltation and the Hymn to Inana appeal to the goddess instead, as Enheduana pleads...