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Enheduanna
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English 301 - Writing in the Professions English 217 - Writing Reflective Essays Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks Ornament of Heaven: The Book of Enheduanna
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CONTEXT: WHO WAS ENHEDUANNA? Mesopotamia, a definition of convenience
for an ancient historical area that includes present-day Iraq and north-eastern
Syria and some additional bordering areas, is in the general geographic
area defined by the term, Middle-East. Cuneiform script, writing characterized
by the use of a stylus and cross-hatching on clay, developed early in
this area and came to be used for the next 3,000 years as the script
for a number of languages. Its utility and flexibility as well as its
durability–much of the writing was done on small clay pillows and
cylinders allowed to harden in the sun or fired–created an enormous
number of artifacts. Unlike the papyrus and vellum of the Egyptians
and the Greeks, clay tablets are much more permanent. The huge number
of extant artifacts means that much remains to be translated. Because
of this abundance of material, scholars in Assyriology will continue
to catalog and translate much of this material for the next several
generations. The extensive existence of scribal schools, (the eduba) throughout the history of the ancient world insures that any important work will have numerous copies. For example, Hallo and van Dijk used 50 exemplars to translate The Exaltation of Inanna by Enheduanna in 1968. Recently German scholar Annette Zgoll completed a new translation and discussion of the text in which she mentioned that since the translation of Hallo and van Dijk in 1968 the text base has " increased by 49 pieces of documents, two of which have been joined together" (29). In addition Zgoll mentions that C. Wilcke has identified 10 further text documents from newly publicized texts at Istanbul (30). All of the artifacts upon which translations of Enheduanna's work are based come from the Old Babylonian period nearly a half-millennium after her existence. Enheduanna's works are complex rhetorically
sophisticated compositions, and they challenge the existence of the
traditional canon of rhetoric and thereby many of the origins stories
and foundational assumptions of the humanities. Yet she is barely known
outside of the discipline of Assyriology. Within the discipline of Assyriology
she has either largely been ignored or treated as a footnote. There
are many reasons for this. There are problems with this particular text.
According to German scholar Annette Zgoll2, "it belongs to the
category of one of the most difficult texts handed down in the literature
of the Sumerian language" (30). Other problems I treat here in
general terms of some of the disciplinary methodological assumptions
that operate in Assyriology, methodological assumptions that also appear
to be operative in rhetorical historiography. In The Exaltation of Inanna, Enheduanna begins
the 153-line hymn with carefully arranged epithets and descriptions
of the goddess Inanna to illustrate the characteristics of the goddess
that become part of the unfolding story carefully building to the declaration
that Inanna is the supreme deity. As she moves forward in the hymn she
interweaves cultural references to the myths of the goddess gradually
bringing the goddess closer. Then she steps forward in first person
to tell her own interweaving story of a political rebellion and her
ostracism. As a result of this rebellion she is driven from the temple
and exiled to the steppes. She calls on the moon god whom she directly
serves as high priestess and also the other gods to restore her to her
position. Only the goddess Inanna heeds her plea Near the conclusion
of the hymn, with the rebellion apparently quashed, she sings of her
restoration as high priestess and praises the goddess Inanna. This powerful
narrative combines strong elements of pathos. She clearly establishes
her own ethos by stepping forward in the first person to tell her own
story, deliberately naming herself. The argument, the underlying the
logos of the narrative, has variously been interpreted as political
(Hallo) and as a court case (Zgoll). Moving narratively from the third to first person,
Enheduanna also tells of her personal creative process. There is a strong
authorial presence, one that helps us to understand the ancient continuum
of female authorship that Jan Swearingen traces in this volume in her
article "Song to Speech." Enheduanna is self-consciously present
in the process of writing and in the poem. I read her description of
her creative process as a very purposeful receiving. The collaborative
"I" of the creatrixes, Enheduanna and Inanna, merge. Enheduanna
explains that she heaps the coals in the censer and prepares the lustration
to receive her greater self, her transcendent self, the goddess. For
a time in the middle of the night, they seem to become one, perhaps
in the ancient sense of the relationship with the muses, and out of
that union comes the song which will be performed before the audience
at noon. Her process of invention is further complicated
by the mention of the nuptial chamber alluding to the sacred marriage,
a cultic ceremony about which little is known and much has been speculated.
As Assyriologist Jerrold Cooper says it offers a "titllating scenario."
Some scholars believe that it was sexual.3 Enheduanna likely participated
in some such service as high priestess. However, it appears to have
a cosmic dimension in that the writer, as Enheduanna describes herself,
communes (receives) the sacred energies of the goddess or god. Thus,
the sacred marriage may primarily have been between the individual and
the sacred. Assyriologist Piotr Steinkeller reviewing the evidence for
the sacred ceremony quotes with approval, Copper's assessment that it
was "a way for the king and through him the people, to establish
personal social ties with the gods." (135). Certainly, in this
case Enheduanna, seems to imply that through her position as high priestess
she is communicating directly with the sacred when she talks about her
invention process:
She seems to be describing a process of invention that can be characterized as the "mystical enthyeme." As Ryan J. Stark describes it, the mystical enthymeme requires participation from the Audience/Cosmos to work.4 Authorship, then, becomes a tri-part communion among the writer, the audience and Cosmos (in this case Inanna as representative of the cosmos). Thus as Sappho, Plato and other ancient authors invoked the muse(s), so too Enheduanna invokes the muse in the form of the goddess Inanna. She calls Her, if not to participate in her invention process, at least to witness the birth of the song.
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