June 3, 2025 • 38 mins
Exploring the World's First Known Author: Enheduanna
In this episode of 'She Change History,' hosts Cara and Vicky delve into the remarkable life and contributions of Enheduanna, the world's first known named author and poet. An ancient Taylor Swift if you will! Set against the backdrop of ancient Mesopotamia, they explore Enheduanna's role as a high priestess, her pioneering use of written language for storytelling, and her emotional and political influence. The episode also covers her temporary fall from grace, her eventual reinstatement, and the legacy of her literary works. With insights into Mesopotamian society, religion, and early innovations, this episode showcases the profound impact of one woman on the history of literature and beyond.
Other eps mentioned Grace O'Malley and Octavia Butler
Sources
1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20221025-enheduanna-
the-worlds-first-named-author
2 TedEd video
http://facebook.com/watch/?v=1258413257681012
3 https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-struggle-
to-unearth-the-worlds-first-author
4 She Who Wrote exhibition notes
https://www.themorgan.org/blog/she-who-wrote-enheduanna-
and-women-mesopotamia
5 https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2022/was-
enheduanna-the-worlds-first-author
00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter
01:04 Weekend Plans and Early Morning Adventures
03:03 Ancient History: Setting the Stage
04:00 Introducing Enheduanna: The First Author
10:23 The Role of Women in Mesopotamia
14:05 Enheduanna's Literary Contributions
19:34 The Roaring Storm: A Passionate Priestess
20:46 Mesopotamian Marvels: Gods and Warriors
22:04 The First Comic Book: Ishtar's Story
23:23 Exile and Return: Anana's Desert Journey
26:48 Rediscovering Anana: From Ancient Texts to Modern Translations
28:49 The Legacy of Anana: Literature and Humanity
35:47 Fun Facts and Final Thoughts
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
audio1175815303 (00:08):
That's a no, that's a no.
If ever I've heard one.
I'll keep building like a Jengatower.
Do you do that?
I do that with books and boxes.
And like you're currently foodbox at the minute.
That is, I've got a jewelry box,a little stationary box, and now
my phone, which might, I don'tknow, maybe if I do this.
(00:31):
I'm going to do podcast.
It's not like I can't podcast.
Well, no, but you know, we wantit to be quality.
Hmm.
Oh, here we go.
I will use the choir Socialfund.
What?
Petty cash.
Oh yeah, babe.
I've got like.
All the money.
Literally dozens of pounds.
(00:55):
Nice.
Are you ready?
I sure am.
Let me get this word documentfront and center, and I am ready
to go when you are.
Ooh.
Hi Cara.
Hi Vicki.
How are you?
I am doing well.
Thank you.
I am doing very well.
Looking forward to an excitingweekend, starting bright and
early tomorrow.
(01:15):
Oh my gosh.
Um, so welcome to She ChangeHistory listeners.
Um, me and Kara are going on alittle expedition tomorrow
morning at 4:30 AM and we arehoping it will cleanse our souls
and I think be the answer to allour problems.
I, I'm, my ambitions are lesshigh than that.
Oh, I just hope you're stillspeaking to me.
(01:37):
'cause you might see a side ofme that I try to keep hidden.
I am not an early morningperson.
I will be nauseous and gray.
Gray.
Yeah.
But it's worth it.
Yeah.
It's worth it.
Where are we going?
We're going to like, um, an RSPBreserve, which is where the
birds live.
(01:57):
Um, and we're going into natureto listen to the dawn chorus.
So the morning chorus, um,because may apparently is the
perfect time.
Tomorrow's the last day of May,and apparently we've got one of
the best spots in the country todo this in.
So we were like, we have to goand do this.
So that's what we're doing.
Absolute quality.
I didn't realize the May thing.
(02:17):
That's wow.
Apparently I'll show you themagazine.
Um, maybe I'll bring themagazine with me.
It's one of my, um, new thing.
I've told you about this,haven't I?
You have?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That it's like one of mylifelines for my mental health
right now.
So I'm just chuckling'causeyou're offering to provide
documentary evidence.
I trust you.
I believe you.
(02:38):
No, I care about my sources.
You know this, you know this.
Sure.
Cite your sources.
So we're hanging out on Fridaynight and then we'll be hanging
out in a good seven hours.
Yeah.
And then Vicki will never speakto me again'cause I'll be so
grumpy.
She'll be like, why do I knowthis person?
What is happening?
No, no, no.
It's gonna be beautiful.
We're gonna enjoy it.
It will be, it will be.
(02:59):
Um, but Kara's got story for ustoday, so off you I sure have.
So today we are going to begoing into a period of history
that I have largely avoided uptill now in that we're talking
ancient history, not even like19th, 18th century.
We're going way, way back.
But, um, say proud of you.
(03:19):
I've got a little, a littlethank you.
Outside of my comfort zone, I'vegot a little intro to kind of
get us there, which is firmlyrooted in the 20th century.
So bear with a woman uses hergift for communication to
solidify her father's grip onthe innovative business he
managed to create.
Her success rests on her insightinto what it is that people
(03:42):
want, what they love, and sheloves it too.
But when her father dies, aninterloper hungry for power,
threatened by her popularitymoves to banish her forever.
It reads like a plot line fromsuccession.
The tale is so much older.
Meet and Ana High priestess ofthe world's first known empire
(04:05):
and the first known author tocapture storytelling with the
written word.
I am sorry.
The first empire and the firstauthor.
Yeah, we got all the firststoday.
There's Oh, there's more.
But wait, there's more.
We're gonna bang in a few morefirsts before the episode is
over in love already.
So, citing by sources.
(04:26):
Taking my cue from you.
The BBC had an article, uh,called Nana, the World's first
named author.
There's an.
Excellent Ted Ed video, which isa, a gorgeous little animation.
Maybe I can find a way to linkto it.
An article from The New Yorker,which is called The Struggle to
Unearth the World's FirstAuthor.
(04:47):
There was an exhibition abouther called She Who Wrote, and
that was, cited on the MorganMuseum website.
And there's an website calledAramco World.
I dunno the first thing aboutit, but it talks about En Ana
and whether she was in fact thefirst author.
So there we have it.
(05:08):
Um, yeah, reading about her hasbeen exciting because, you know,
we love stories.
We love books, and I neverthought before my friend Phil,
Hey, Phil, suggested that thismight be a good topic that.
Someone was the first, and Icertainly did not dream that it
(05:29):
would've been a woman that wasthe first author.
So to kind of pinpoint her inhistory and in the timeline of
literature, there's a quote hereif you are happy to go for it.
Anne Hada.
Ana lived 1500 years beforeHomer, 1700 years before Sappho,
(05:49):
and 2000 years before Aristotle.
So they chose those, examplesbecause they are the answers
that people will give if they'reon the spot in a pub quiz and
asked, okay, who's the firstauthor?
These are the people that cometo mind, but she's.
Massively predating them.
Yeah, we're going way back, um,over 4,000 years ago, around
(06:12):
3,400 to 2000 BCE.
Wow.
Somewhere in that timeframe.
This is the earliest I thinkwe've ever done.
This is very exciting.
It's a cradle of civilizations.
Stuff and it shows.
So we are literally cradle ofcivilization.
The region between the Tigrisand the Euphrates Rivers, and
it's the area where on a modernmap we would see Iraq.
(06:34):
So it's that kind of region.
Historically that was known asMesopotamia and.
In, in Ana's time, the goingmust have been pretty good
because it was enjoying one ofthose periods of history where
novel things, all these firstsare popping up left, right, and
center, which is usually a signof prosperity or.
(06:58):
Diabolical warfare, but in thiscase largely prosperity with a
coin.
Um, yeah, sometimes both.
Uh, so this, this period of timecoincides with the world's first
cities and new trade routes Wereopening up between these cities
to sort of facilitate theirgrowth, to support that trade
(07:20):
network.
People started needing to recordinformation in a new way.
And the new tool that wasdeveloped to accommodate that
was writing.
It was, a form of language, aform of notation called CUNY
form, which it's like.
Pictographic symbols thatrepresent sounds, and they press
(07:41):
them into a wet clay tablet witha little reed stylus, which
sounds charming.
You can smell it, you know, likeyou can just imagine, as well as
those sort of like hands-ontechnical advances, Mesopotamia
was the first.
Example of ruler, he wouldprobably have said, unifying the
(08:05):
people who he unified wouldprobably say conquering.
Oh, I know all the surroundinglands.
Yeah.
It's, a story depending on theirperspective.
It's a very different story, buthe, at any rate.
Was credited with bringing aboutthe world's first empire and the
ruler that did that was sargonof a cad.
(08:26):
And as it happens, this fella isAnne Ana's father.
Nice.
So pretty, quite a, uh, quite alot to live up to, if that
should have Yeah.
Super high born and just for himto have the notion.
To kind of throw over the nationstate, the ambition and the
drive and the vision.
(08:47):
That's that.
Yeah.
That's a lot to live up to.
In my head.
I'm picturing like tribes, Idon't know.
I think, yeah, I think that'sit.
I think he was quitesuccessfully running a CAD and.
Thought, well, this is, this isgoing all right.
Okay, great.
Let's see what else begins Do.
So, in their time inMesopotamia, religion was
(09:11):
inseparable from politics.
Mm-hmm.
It was.
The temples were all through thecity.
They were linked to the RoyalCourts nobility, were
responsible for performing someof the rituals to try to win the
God's favor for their nation.
Wow.
And when things were going well,a lot like that, like ancient
Greek model, you sort of think,oh, the gods Gods are smiling.
(09:32):
It's, it's probably the mostfamiliar example to me as well.
So with those sort of thoughtsin mind, an EDA born as a noble
woman is expected.
To enter the religious service,there's there that is what she
is going to have to do.
Okay.
Um, so with that in mind, she'sgiven an education and she's,
(09:53):
educated in both the language ofher father's city and the first
city that he went and colonizedeffectively.
So Sumerian and Acadian, she'slearning both at the same time.
She's also learning mathematics.
She's learning how to writethisfor language.
It's only been knocking aroundfor 300 years, but they're
(10:15):
giving her.
You know, everything, the keysto the castle.
So immense privilege of being anelite person.
But I don't want to give theimpression that it was only
because of her status that sheenjoyed everything that she
enjoyed.
Because it seems that in thattime, in Sumaria, in a cad,
(10:36):
women were.
Productive members of society.
It wasn't an equal society byany stretch.
It definitely was a patriarchy.
However, if you look at theartifacts from the time, they,
oh, they loved a vase.
Love to carve some stuff on avase.
Putting it right on there, thesecylinder seals.
Britishness.
Oh, falls, sorry.
(10:58):
Yes.
I immediately copied you.
That's what I was laughing at.
I couldn't believe how likefloppy I was immediately I was
like, be, be.
Yeah.
You've been growing up listeningto American TV shows.
It's what we do.
That's our empire.
But any rate, so the vows, the,the v cylinder seals, the
tablets, you see these images.
Of just ordinary women andthey're playing flutes with
(11:21):
their hair flying.
Ooh, they're weaving.
They're farming.
They could own land.
Contributing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They were traitors and they wereable to own property and pass it
to their descendants, so theyalso, oh god, this is a
diversion, but it's one.
I will enjoy.
So you're going to have to, herewe go.
Indulge me.
Sorry.
The fashion as I'm, as I'mscrolling through trying to find
(11:45):
very serious and focused things,I did get slightly distracted by
the image that I've included inwhich I will put on the socials.
Oh my gosh, yes, please.
How stunning is that?
Yes.
That this is the funeraryensemble of Queen pbi and it's,
it's absolutely opulent.
So there's a head drops in ahalf.
I just throw, I thought I'dthrow that in there.
(12:05):
I don't know that people walkingaround doing their day-to-day,
you know, like milking the.
Cow or whatever are wearingthis.
If I had access to it today, Iwould be putting it on right
now.
Damn right.
But anyway, and also kind oflike Anna LEAs kind of hairstyle
thing going on.
It's like their in.
And some African vibes.
Yeah, like a mai like capeletsort of vibe.
(12:27):
It's, it's really beautiful andshiny.
So, so, so shiny.
Anyway, love.
Sorry.
Went down a little bit of arabbit hole there.
No, I think more of this, morefashion history.
I know we're, that would be anamazing pun.
Uh, back in the room, women areout there, they're doing jobs
that the city needs.
They are also the majorstakeholders in the religion
(12:51):
kind of at every level.
And that in turn is part of theapparatus of the state.
And that brings us back neatlyto EDA and her role within
Sargon Empire.
So his seat of leadership, theplace where he's from is the
city state of a cad.
When EDA becomes of age, she isappointed as the high priestess
(13:15):
in the next most important citystate of his empire, which is
called ur.
It's spelled URI don't know howto pronounce it properly.
I'm going with Ur.
That's fine.
So that's like almost prince ofWales vibe, I imagine.
Yeah, yeah.
Like a regent being sent out tosolidify.
This is, you're exactly right.
It wasn't an accident.
(13:36):
He was a clever cookie and heknew that having this respected
religious figure who had hisinterests at heart in probably
quite a testy situation, was.
A fortifying move.
So that is what he did.
He's smart.
Yeah.
Good decision.
He was smart and, and it wasright because she was so into
(14:00):
it.
She loved being my priest.
Thrive.
She absolutely did.
So she had the vision once inthis position to take writing,
which you know, was a tool forbusiness.
It was like the excel of its dayand.
She transformed it intosomething that could glorify and
(14:22):
humanize the gods.
And I've got a little like, soshe like applied it to something
else.
Yeah.
She took this technology andwent, we can use this for more.
Like when we all got emails andit was supposed to be to say,
dear Mrs.
Smith, have you received theparcel it?
Now it's like.
We use it for very differentthings.
So she's sort of doing that forher.
(14:45):
Purview.
And she's taking these gods andthe stories have always been
quite highbrow and inaccessibleand dry.
And she's creating storieswherein, and this is a little
inline quote, they suffered,they fought, they loved, and
they responded to humanpleading.
So she was creating what OctaviaButler would've described as a
(15:07):
good story compellingly told.
So.
She knew by marking them down ontablets that the written poems,
just like the orders for goodsor receipts, could easily be
distributed throughout theentire empire.
Mm-hmm.
At the newspaper.
Yeah.
And she had the foresight tounderstand that the best way to
(15:33):
win around the people of thesedisparate cities was to.
Call those gods interchangeablyby the names that they knew them
by.
So classic.
Love it.
Right?
She was, she was bringingeveryone in and combining these
mythologies of all of thesedifferent cities.
Kind of taking on the role ofthe PR face.
(15:55):
Yes.
Spoke of the empire.
Oh, it's so clever.
'cause that's what they do evenin movies and stuff, isn't it?
They change some of the jokes orsome of the, oh, I dunno.
The food on the table.
So it matches the culture sothey to like it a bit more.
To make you feel included.
Yeah.
And so she had, I think, I thinkshe had a great deal of
(16:15):
emotional intelligence tounderstand the need for that, to
achieve it and.
To think, to write the storiesin such a way that they
resonated emotionally withpeople, and people knew what she
was up to.
There's a note here, a quote foryou to read from a scribe who
was transcribing a copy of herpoems for her father to read,
(16:36):
and he added a little postscript.
Oh, isn't it weird as well thatthey've managed to translate it?
Mm.
Because like, obviously I'mreading English, isn't that
fascinating that it's survived?
Yeah, we'll talk a little bitabout that and, and how that
came to pass because there arecertainly, like in the Ashmolean
(16:57):
Museum in Oxford, there aretablets written infor or
similar, pictographic language,which simply have not been
translated.
So it literally could sayanything, anything.
But in this case, we.
Possibly because of these traderoutes and the cross pollination
of different cultures.
(17:17):
Those symbols had to be morebroadly understood.
So there would've been like theRosetta Stone type of idea, a
commonality with a language thatstill exists now.
So therefore we get to read heractual words or their actual
words.
Oh, this is so cool.
I love it.
Kind of cool.
So the quote that has made itthrough the years says, my king,
(17:40):
something has been produced thatno person had produced before,
which.
I think as well as just being acool thing to say, highlights
that these men were notparticularly adverse to having a
powerful woman.
Yeah.
You know, doing cool meritocracystuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
(18:00):
So for all of the political sideof her work, which I'm sure was
not accidental, she genuinelydid seem to be devoted to her
gods.
She was a high priestess ofNana, who was the moon God, but
her, her real heart was with hisdaughter Inana, who was also
(18:25):
known as Ishtar and.
Anana is the goddess of love,sex, and war.
I'm like, cool.
Funny how they're linked.
Yeah.
I mean, this is not a, you know,shrinking violet.
She's Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's, she's a lot, she's a badbitch and she doesn't mind.
(18:46):
Mm-hmm.
Right.
So the passion that EDA feltcomes through.
Because in her poems, her hymnsto Anana, it contains the first
written use of the word I andthe first literature that
represents human emotion.
I felt.
I thought I did.
(19:07):
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So there's another first foryou.
Wow.
It.
There's, I think there's like40, 45, 49, 42 poems altogether.
We're not gonna read them all,but I just plucked a quote out
that I think gives you a flavorof her devotion and the
badassness of Anana.
So if you're happy to read thispoem, yes.
(19:30):
Poem.
Try and embody the Badass.
Yes.
I dunno.
Get in there.
I dunno.
I don't think I've ever donethat like a charging storm.
You charge like a roaring storm.
You roar, you thunder inthunder.
Snorting rampaging winds.
Your feet are continuallyrestless.
Carrying your harp of size.
You breathe out the music ofmorning.
(19:52):
It was in your service that Ifirst entered the Holy Temple.
IE, n Ana, the highestpriestess.
I carried the ritual basket.
I sang the hymns of joy.
Oh wow.
She's into it.
Yeah, she's so into it.
You can't help but be excited.
Also, this is just as passionateand as just as driven and just
(20:14):
as heart hitting as thoseOctavia Butler quotes that we
spoke about last week, which isso recent history, isn't it?
Like, you know, 50, 60 yearsago.
And, that passion, I would sayis matched.
It's wild that that recognizablestrand of.
Being human and excited aboutyour job.
(20:37):
Like who's that excited abouttheir job.
But she really is.
She loves it.
She loves, she loved thespreadsheet, that's all.
She loved it, absolutely lovedit.
And to be fair to her, the godswere pretty cool.
Mesopotamia was rock The spicydays worst to have, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
If you're, if you are happy to,there is another quote here it
(20:58):
describes Ishtar, the fearsomewarrior.
Are you good?
Yeah.
In scenes carved on cylinderseals from the Acadian period,
Ishita is often showndominating, formidable lines and
gods while turning towards theviewer.
Maces and sickle axes are seenaround her shoulders as well as
branching bearing fruit.
(21:20):
Spring it a little snack fightin a lion.
A snack.
I love her.
I mean, uh, if you are gonnafight a line, you're gonna need
a, a feast, you're gonna want alittle Absolutely.
I need a little, yeah.
So are you prepared for anotherfirst, because that.
Set of writings, talking aboutAnana and her, her many, her
(21:45):
many acts include this storyabout her destroying a mountain
range as a punishment when itwouldn't bow before her.
What.
Yeah, the mountain wouldn't bowto her.
So she tore it down to punishit.
I think she tore it down byyelling at it that that's who
we're dealing with here.
Okay.
And that story contained thefirst illustration of a written
(22:09):
text.
So she invented comic books.
There you go.
And, um, it mentioned it in thequote, it's a time when most
depictions as I.
Picture Egyptian, drawing.
Mostly people are seen inprofile like 2D.
This is her.
Yeah.
Like side on.
Yes.
Yeah.
(22:30):
The goddess is looking straightat you and like flea bagg, she's
breaking the fourth wall.
Yeah.
And you can imagine to theseviewer how thrilling and.
And new and exciting and new andexciting.
And an Adriana understood theenergy that these things were
bringing.
She was bringing the drama.
(22:51):
So drama.
I love it.
We've got another little microquote here.
Yes.
Um.
Let them know that you grindschools to dust.
Let them know that you eatcorpses like a lion.
Oh, it's gross.
It's gross.
But that ferocity is part of themesopotamian ideal of
(23:14):
femininity.
It's okay.
It's what it takes to survive inthe kind of world and landscape
that they are living in.
And unfortunately for Ana, shefound that out the hard way
herself because her fatherhaving extended the empire out,
died and.
(23:34):
Her position, as we've talkedabout, really was quite
political.
So it wasn't a massive surprisethat the incoming would be King,
wanted to move her along.
A general named Lou Garla.
Took advantage of the powervacuum and.
Saw an ana as a threat, didn'twant, I think, to assassinate
(23:58):
her because she had some broadsupport.
So instead banished her to thedesert.
And of course she wrote a poemabout it like you do when you're
banished to a desert.
So if you're happy to readanother poem for us.
Yeah, of course.
Why, um, what was the Power Sstricture that meant that this,
(24:19):
uh, lui.
Came in, was it, I think it wasa straight up Cota.
He rolled in with an army, sawthat a CAD had died and things
were in chaos and thought, I'mgonna get in there.
But had enough sense to see thatWan had some support and had
enough, uh, religious faith tobe frightened of transgressing
(24:43):
against a high priestess.
Like he could kind of deal withkicking her out, but he
couldn't.
Deal with the possibility ofkilling someone who was favored
by the desk.
Right?
Yeah.
Got it, got it, got it.
That makes perfect sense.
This is her in the desert.
This is her.
Yeah.
Oh.
I went towards the light.
It felt scorching to me.
I went towards shade.
It shrouded me in swirling dustwhen look.
(25:07):
I stood power paramount.
He expelled me from the temple.
He made me fly out the windowlike a swallow.
I had my taste of life.
He made me walk a land ofthorns, like a swallow.
That still happens today.
That's quite exciting.
Land of thorns.
These are all things that westill experience.
(25:28):
Isn't that fascinating?
Yeah, you can sense herdevastation because those
images, oh my gosh, arerelatable to us.
So she's now out on her ear andthinking, what next?
Scary.
And she starts praying.
She prays to nana.
The moon, God.
And he does not help her.
(25:48):
And so she begins to address herprayers to inana.
Okay?
And very soon thereafter, herposition as high priest and your
is restored.
Mm.
And yeah, so I mean credit whereit's due, her nephew Rasen,
turfed out.
Lue.
Okay.
And made himself king and thenreinstated an Edwina.
(26:11):
I dunno.
He must have sent somebody outinto the desert to find her, her
popped her back into the templein her and she continued on in,
in that position.
And in total, she was the highpriestess for 40 years.
So 40.
It's long career.
It's a long career of highpriestessing, especially when
you have some desert wanderingin the middle.
(26:32):
So having done.
Those 40 years of and the 40 oddpoems and hymns.
Was enough that her writingbecame a kind of cultural
monument, and it was studied andcelebrated for centuries.
They had these schools calledDupa, where scribes would train
(26:53):
and priests would train and polipoliticians would and.
That was the text that theywould copy out, like, you know,
when you're in school kind ofdoing lines or memorizing poems.
It was her work that was, thatwas what that was all based on.
But like many things, her workwas still eventually lost in
(27:15):
time.
And the poems, the, the tablets.
It sort of disappeared untilthere was an archeologist called
Sir Leonard.
I'm sure that's supposed to sayLeonard Woolley.
Leonard Woolley.
Leonard Woolley.
Maybe it was Leonard, but Ithink it might've been Leonard
(27:35):
excavated some of her claytablets.
In 1927 and that, wow, that's,that brought them back into
modernity.
So who knows in between, butthat's where we next know about
them.
That's where she pops up again.
Yeah.
In 1968, the first translationof her writing from Sumerian
into English is published.
(27:55):
So there's almost what a.
A 40 year window to decipherwhere it's getting worked on.
So the translators weredefinitely mega fans.
There's a quote here from theirintro to their book, I love.
They did.
The quote says, we can nowdiscern a corpus of poetry,
(28:16):
which not only reveals itsauthor's name, but delineates
the author for us in.
Autobiographical fashion in theperson of n Ana, we are
confronted by a woman who isonce princess priestess and
poetess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They, they cannot get enough ofher.
So they were doing her PR forher.
(28:38):
Really?
They were puffing it up.
I mean, they did have a book tosell, so, you know, they might
have been like, you gocapitalism.
But yeah, I think it was genuinepassion.
Good.
That being said, that, you know,in the intervening time.
Since the publication of thatbook.
Scholars have disagreed abouther role because when you were
(29:02):
talking about this, I was like,how do we know?
Right.
How, it's a fair question, isn'tit?
It's not just you, it's it's,it's on everybody's mind.
We don't have the, um, sourcematerials.
We don't have her.
Personal documents.
We have the transcribed copies.
And so there's a woman calledEleanor Robson who's an expert.
(29:26):
Infor, what was that?
And she's, uh, that the written,the written pictogram system.
Right.
That these tablets were, werewritten in.
Yeah.
And she says that the Sumerianlanguage in Ana.
Work so-called.
Mm-hmm.
Is stylistically too modern tobeing from Wan herself?
(29:47):
So it would be like an originalShakespeare transcript being
written in modern English withslang.
So she's like, wait a minuteguys.
So she thinks that thetranscribers had more than a
copyist hand in it, and youknow, that's fair.
Another.
Don't you think that's true forall stories?
(30:08):
they get passed on generation.
Yeah, generation and you know, Iknow things are often word
perfect, aren't they?
Particularly fables and thingslike that.
Like we spoke about it a bit inthe Grace of Marley episode, but
you don't know.
You don't know who's grandad,granddad's, granddads said that
before.
Yeah.
And when things are intranslation, there's an added
(30:31):
layer of abstraction.
Of course, you do not know if Iinterpret something a certain
way, probably in good faiththinking this is exactly what
was meant.
That doesn't mean that you aregonna say the same.
Yes.
Hundred percent space and Bs.
And even the poems we'veincluded here, if you were to
Google them, you would finddifferent English, like the bit
where it says Youth thunder andthunder.
(30:53):
I think at one, another versionof it says you bellow in thunder
and it's, oh, that's thoselittle subtle, you and someone
might, someone might just think,oh, it sounds better like this.
And you know, yeah.
Little have a little tinker.
You don't know.
Um, on top of that, there is a,a scholar called Hader Alma
(31:14):
Maori that put it, that withcenturies of oral literature.
From hundreds of women before aneda, you cannot say that the
narrative of fiction is hersalone, because she's just
writing what has already beenhappening for all of human
(31:34):
existence.
Right, And I take all of that.
Onboard as I, as I say thesethings, but I'm leaning towards
this writer.
I've got a quote here from MeganBlythe.
But she took Edwina's, corpus,her body of poems and turned it
into a novela, which I thinksounds pretty fun.
Yeah.
Like, I'd like to read that.
But she talks about how shedecided to do that, and she says
(31:58):
that.
Reading the work and seeing itsrelevance.
It wasn't just some person 4,000years ago whose life is so
vastly different from mine, andEda wrote about how she got
kicked out of power and it wasreally bad and then she came
back and that's the experiences.
(32:19):
You can't say that you can't andyou can't.
You can understand it even froma modern perspective.
Don't worry.
And it's, it's what makes itlasting literature.
Um, yeah, it's, it's.
Echoing something familiar, eventhough it's from a time that's
(32:41):
completely unfamiliar.
Mm.
I kind of love that.
Don't you love that we have,yeah.
Strings of attachment tomillennia ago and civilizations,
because we talk about this withSimon sometimes, that it goes in
our, my head, in my verysimplistic mind, it goes
dinosaurs.
Um, ancient Tudor.
(33:03):
Yeah.
Um, then it goes TudorShakespeare, queen Victoria
today.
That's it.
It's, it's so cool to realizethat these are just people just
like us, just like this.
I used to work with this historyteacher who was so.
(33:23):
Terrifying.
He was really, I'm gonna use theword mean.
He was just straight up mean.
He was mean as a snake there.
I've said it one, but one thinghe always said that really
struck me was if you took aperson from ancient times, they
would survive in our world andwe would not survive in theirs
because they are equipped tosort of cope with threats.
(33:46):
Right.
We are not, but we have thiscommon thread of humanity and
emotion across all thosemillennia.
And we could survive.
We could you, you and me.
Yeah.
Or like in general, you and me.
You might wanna revise thatopinion.
If we go to the San Birdsanctuary at 4:00 AM See if you
(34:07):
still think I would survive inancient Mesopotamia, Well, all,
all that's left to say really islike the exhibition that some of
the source material was based onpresents an edana as the first
named author.
In fact, no doubts overshadowingit.
Oh, they say no doubt, no doubt.
They just went, they plowedstraight on as though it is an
(34:28):
established fact.
I think that.
The work that we've seen of hershas merit, even if we allow for
the uncertainty, because youstill get that sense of the
lives of Mesopotamian women.
Yeah.
Um, the way they lived, thethings they struggled with, and
(34:51):
they show the power ofliterature to move people and.
I've got a cheesy ending.
You know, I love a cheesyending, so, well, even this
isn't, I was just thinking whata beautiful insight that is for
you to conclude.
You're like, well, who cares?
Yeah.
That is my, thats my conclusionon most topics.
This, it's all good, whatever.
(35:13):
What else?
So I think you said it far moreelegant, elegantly.
You could, thank you.
You can trim this bit off if youwant, if you think it's, uh,
gilding the lily.
But I've, I've gone with, we canchoose to picture Ana not.
Only as a historical figure, butas a kind of stand-in for all of
(35:34):
the unnamed women who told thosestories.
No, I love it.
And maybe the first to lift, toread stylists and capture life
in the drying clay.
Nice.
Have you time for three funfacts, be you anything.
Thank you so much.
I'll keep them quick.
First one, Ana, it's not justme.
(35:56):
So my fellow gaming enthusiastshave popped her into.
Civ six.
Ah.
And in Seven Wonders, she's a,yeah, she's a, I think a
playable leader in Civ Six.
One of the expansions.
The second thing I will say isthat, the capital of the Acadian
Empire, a CAD has not yet beendiscovered.
(36:19):
So, okay.
Whereas the ruins of, I think,uh, and Sumer were.
A CAD still out there.
They think it might be nearBaghdad.
Nobody knows for sure.
So more of her tablets mightcome to light.
You never know.
Ooh, this is exciting.
And the final one, not abouteda, but again about just UNIFOR
tablets is there is a tabletfrom her.
(36:42):
Which a trader called Nani moansat a supplier called about the
quality of the order of copper.
He was sent.
We've spoken about this on thepod before, is hilarious things.
It's, I love that.
People I think you'll find,remember so cut deform right
from, right from jump, rightfrom the get go.
(37:04):
People are out there doing theirnegative trust pilot reviews.
I just find it hilarious thatsomeone sat there for hours.
Like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Yeah.
With their reed stylists.
Dear sir, we must, must havebeen the same.
We must be so on the samealgorithm or something for us
both.
Just you are probably how I knowthat.
Oh, really?
(37:25):
Yeah.
I just find it the mosthilarious thing about the
quality of copper.
Yeah.
Well, it's a serious businessactually.
Actually think you'll find I'mgonna spend most of my life.
It's the principle of the thing.
There will be a Sumerianequivalent of the phrase.
It's the principle of the thing.
The principle.
(37:45):
So that's it.
That's what I've got for you.
Oh my gosh, what a gorgeousinsight into.
And the clay and the make andlike, I love how you call it
technology'cause it is yeah,it's weird to think of it that
way.
Wires and, microchips.
Is it, it's just things thatmake things automated or it
(38:05):
makes, it makes life easierquicker.
Yeah, exactly.
And that looks like differentthings at different times.
Yes, Kara, I loved it.
I smashed it.
Thank you so much.
I thought that was so Thank you.
Thanks for listening.
I thought it was so fun toresearch, so I'm glad that, uh,
out of your comfort zone,looking at you.
I know flexing.
Is there any further back to go?
(38:27):
I mean, what, where do I stop?
What do I stop?
I'm like a juggernaut.
Now.
Where am I going next?
Who?
Who knows?
That's a no, that's a no.
If ever I've heard one.
I'll keep building like a Jengatower.
Do you do that?
I do that with books and boxes.
And like you're currently foodbox at the minute.
That is, I've got a jewelry box,a little stationary box, and now
my phone, which might, I don'tknow, maybe if I do this.
(00:31):
I'm going to do podcast.
It's not like I can't podcast.
Well, no, but you know, we wantit to be quality.
Hmm.
Oh, here we go.
I will use the choir Socialfund.
What?
Petty cash.
Oh yeah, babe.
I've got like.
All the money.
Literally dozens of pounds.
(00:55):
Nice.
Are you ready?
I sure am.
Let me get this word documentfront and center, and I am ready
to go when you are.
Ooh.
Hi Cara.
Hi Vicki.
How are you?
I am doing well.
Thank you.
I am doing very well.
Looking forward to an excitingweekend, starting bright and
early tomorrow.
(01:15):
Oh my gosh.
Um, so welcome to She ChangeHistory listeners.
Um, me and Kara are going on alittle expedition tomorrow
morning at 4:30 AM and we arehoping it will cleanse our souls
and I think be the answer to allour problems.
I, I'm, my ambitions are lesshigh than that.
Oh, I just hope you're stillspeaking to me.
(01:37):
'cause you might see a side ofme that I try to keep hidden.
I am not an early morningperson.
I will be nauseous and gray.
Gray.
Yeah.
But it's worth it.
Yeah.
It's worth it.
Where are we going?
We're going to like, um, an RSPBreserve, which is where the
birds live.
(01:57):
Um, and we're going into natureto listen to the dawn chorus.
So the morning chorus, um,because may apparently is the
perfect time.
Tomorrow's the last day of May,and apparently we've got one of
the best spots in the country todo this in.
So we were like, we have to goand do this.
So that's what we're doing.
Absolute quality.
I didn't realize the May thing.
(02:17):
That's wow.
Apparently I'll show you themagazine.
Um, maybe I'll bring themagazine with me.
It's one of my, um, new thing.
I've told you about this,haven't I?
You have?
Yeah.
Yeah.
That it's like one of mylifelines for my mental health
right now.
So I'm just chuckling'causeyou're offering to provide
documentary evidence.
I trust you.
I believe you.
(02:38):
No, I care about my sources.
You know this, you know this.
Sure.
Cite your sources.
So we're hanging out on Fridaynight and then we'll be hanging
out in a good seven hours.
Yeah.
And then Vicki will never speakto me again'cause I'll be so
grumpy.
She'll be like, why do I knowthis person?
What is happening?
No, no, no.
It's gonna be beautiful.
We're gonna enjoy it.
It will be, it will be.
(02:59):
Um, but Kara's got story for ustoday, so off you I sure have.
So today we are going to begoing into a period of history
that I have largely avoided uptill now in that we're talking
ancient history, not even like19th, 18th century.
We're going way, way back.
But, um, say proud of you.
(03:19):
I've got a little, a littlethank you.
Outside of my comfort zone, I'vegot a little intro to kind of
get us there, which is firmlyrooted in the 20th century.
So bear with a woman uses hergift for communication to
solidify her father's grip onthe innovative business he
managed to create.
Her success rests on her insightinto what it is that people
(03:42):
want, what they love, and sheloves it too.
But when her father dies, aninterloper hungry for power,
threatened by her popularitymoves to banish her forever.
It reads like a plot line fromsuccession.
The tale is so much older.
Meet and Ana High priestess ofthe world's first known empire
(04:05):
and the first known author tocapture storytelling with the
written word.
I am sorry.
The first empire and the firstauthor.
Yeah, we got all the firststoday.
There's Oh, there's more.
But wait, there's more.
We're gonna bang in a few morefirsts before the episode is
over in love already.
So, citing by sources.
(04:26):
Taking my cue from you.
The BBC had an article, uh,called Nana, the World's first
named author.
There's an.
Excellent Ted Ed video, which isa, a gorgeous little animation.
Maybe I can find a way to linkto it.
An article from The New Yorker,which is called The Struggle to
Unearth the World's FirstAuthor.
(04:47):
There was an exhibition abouther called She Who Wrote, and
that was, cited on the MorganMuseum website.
And there's an website calledAramco World.
I dunno the first thing aboutit, but it talks about En Ana
and whether she was in fact thefirst author.
So there we have it.
(05:08):
Um, yeah, reading about her hasbeen exciting because, you know,
we love stories.
We love books, and I neverthought before my friend Phil,
Hey, Phil, suggested that thismight be a good topic that.
Someone was the first, and Icertainly did not dream that it
(05:29):
would've been a woman that wasthe first author.
So to kind of pinpoint her inhistory and in the timeline of
literature, there's a quote hereif you are happy to go for it.
Anne Hada.
Ana lived 1500 years beforeHomer, 1700 years before Sappho,
(05:49):
and 2000 years before Aristotle.
So they chose those, examplesbecause they are the answers
that people will give if they'reon the spot in a pub quiz and
asked, okay, who's the firstauthor?
These are the people that cometo mind, but she's.
Massively predating them.
Yeah, we're going way back, um,over 4,000 years ago, around
(06:12):
3,400 to 2000 BCE.
Wow.
Somewhere in that timeframe.
This is the earliest I thinkwe've ever done.
This is very exciting.
It's a cradle of civilizations.
Stuff and it shows.
So we are literally cradle ofcivilization.
The region between the Tigrisand the Euphrates Rivers, and
it's the area where on a modernmap we would see Iraq.
(06:34):
So it's that kind of region.
Historically that was known asMesopotamia and.
In, in Ana's time, the goingmust have been pretty good
because it was enjoying one ofthose periods of history where
novel things, all these firstsare popping up left, right, and
center, which is usually a signof prosperity or.
(06:58):
Diabolical warfare, but in thiscase largely prosperity with a
coin.
Um, yeah, sometimes both.
Uh, so this, this period of timecoincides with the world's first
cities and new trade routes Wereopening up between these cities
to sort of facilitate theirgrowth, to support that trade
(07:20):
network.
People started needing to recordinformation in a new way.
And the new tool that wasdeveloped to accommodate that
was writing.
It was, a form of language, aform of notation called CUNY
form, which it's like.
Pictographic symbols thatrepresent sounds, and they press
(07:41):
them into a wet clay tablet witha little reed stylus, which
sounds charming.
You can smell it, you know, likeyou can just imagine, as well as
those sort of like hands-ontechnical advances, Mesopotamia
was the first.
Example of ruler, he wouldprobably have said, unifying the
(08:05):
people who he unified wouldprobably say conquering.
Oh, I know all the surroundinglands.
Yeah.
It's, a story depending on theirperspective.
It's a very different story, buthe, at any rate.
Was credited with bringing aboutthe world's first empire and the
ruler that did that was sargonof a cad.
(08:26):
And as it happens, this fella isAnne Ana's father.
Nice.
So pretty, quite a, uh, quite alot to live up to, if that
should have Yeah.
Super high born and just for himto have the notion.
To kind of throw over the nationstate, the ambition and the
drive and the vision.
(08:47):
That's that.
Yeah.
That's a lot to live up to.
In my head.
I'm picturing like tribes, Idon't know.
I think, yeah, I think that'sit.
I think he was quitesuccessfully running a CAD and.
Thought, well, this is, this isgoing all right.
Okay, great.
Let's see what else begins Do.
So, in their time inMesopotamia, religion was
(09:11):
inseparable from politics.
Mm-hmm.
It was.
The temples were all through thecity.
They were linked to the RoyalCourts nobility, were
responsible for performing someof the rituals to try to win the
God's favor for their nation.
Wow.
And when things were going well,a lot like that, like ancient
Greek model, you sort of think,oh, the gods Gods are smiling.
(09:32):
It's, it's probably the mostfamiliar example to me as well.
So with those sort of thoughtsin mind, an EDA born as a noble
woman is expected.
To enter the religious service,there's there that is what she
is going to have to do.
Okay.
Um, so with that in mind, she'sgiven an education and she's,
(09:53):
educated in both the language ofher father's city and the first
city that he went and colonizedeffectively.
So Sumerian and Acadian, she'slearning both at the same time.
She's also learning mathematics.
She's learning how to writethisfor language.
It's only been knocking aroundfor 300 years, but they're
(10:15):
giving her.
You know, everything, the keysto the castle.
So immense privilege of being anelite person.
But I don't want to give theimpression that it was only
because of her status that sheenjoyed everything that she
enjoyed.
Because it seems that in thattime, in Sumaria, in a cad,
(10:36):
women were.
Productive members of society.
It wasn't an equal society byany stretch.
It definitely was a patriarchy.
However, if you look at theartifacts from the time, they,
oh, they loved a vase.
Love to carve some stuff on avase.
Putting it right on there, thesecylinder seals.
Britishness.
Oh, falls, sorry.
(10:58):
Yes.
I immediately copied you.
That's what I was laughing at.
I couldn't believe how likefloppy I was immediately I was
like, be, be.
Yeah.
You've been growing up listeningto American TV shows.
It's what we do.
That's our empire.
But any rate, so the vows, the,the v cylinder seals, the
tablets, you see these images.
Of just ordinary women andthey're playing flutes with
(11:21):
their hair flying.
Ooh, they're weaving.
They're farming.
They could own land.
Contributing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They were traitors and they wereable to own property and pass it
to their descendants, so theyalso, oh god, this is a
diversion, but it's one.
I will enjoy.
So you're going to have to, herewe go.
Indulge me.
Sorry.
The fashion as I'm, as I'mscrolling through trying to find
(11:45):
very serious and focused things,I did get slightly distracted by
the image that I've included inwhich I will put on the socials.
Oh my gosh, yes, please.
How stunning is that?
Yes.
That this is the funeraryensemble of Queen pbi and it's,
it's absolutely opulent.
So there's a head drops in ahalf.
I just throw, I thought I'dthrow that in there.
(12:05):
I don't know that people walkingaround doing their day-to-day,
you know, like milking the.
Cow or whatever are wearingthis.
If I had access to it today, Iwould be putting it on right
now.
Damn right.
But anyway, and also kind oflike Anna LEAs kind of hairstyle
thing going on.
It's like their in.
And some African vibes.
Yeah, like a mai like capeletsort of vibe.
(12:27):
It's, it's really beautiful andshiny.
So, so, so shiny.
Anyway, love.
Sorry.
Went down a little bit of arabbit hole there.
No, I think more of this, morefashion history.
I know we're, that would be anamazing pun.
Uh, back in the room, women areout there, they're doing jobs
that the city needs.
They are also the majorstakeholders in the religion
(12:51):
kind of at every level.
And that in turn is part of theapparatus of the state.
And that brings us back neatlyto EDA and her role within
Sargon Empire.
So his seat of leadership, theplace where he's from is the
city state of a cad.
When EDA becomes of age, she isappointed as the high priestess
(13:15):
in the next most important citystate of his empire, which is
called ur.
It's spelled URI don't know howto pronounce it properly.
I'm going with Ur.
That's fine.
So that's like almost prince ofWales vibe, I imagine.
Yeah, yeah.
Like a regent being sent out tosolidify.
This is, you're exactly right.
It wasn't an accident.
(13:36):
He was a clever cookie and heknew that having this respected
religious figure who had hisinterests at heart in probably
quite a testy situation, was.
A fortifying move.
So that is what he did.
He's smart.
Yeah.
Good decision.
He was smart and, and it wasright because she was so into
(14:00):
it.
She loved being my priest.
Thrive.
She absolutely did.
So she had the vision once inthis position to take writing,
which you know, was a tool forbusiness.
It was like the excel of its dayand.
She transformed it intosomething that could glorify and
(14:22):
humanize the gods.
And I've got a little like, soshe like applied it to something
else.
Yeah.
She took this technology andwent, we can use this for more.
Like when we all got emails andit was supposed to be to say,
dear Mrs.
Smith, have you received theparcel it?
Now it's like.
We use it for very differentthings.
So she's sort of doing that forher.
(14:45):
Purview.
And she's taking these gods andthe stories have always been
quite highbrow and inaccessibleand dry.
And she's creating storieswherein, and this is a little
inline quote, they suffered,they fought, they loved, and
they responded to humanpleading.
So she was creating what OctaviaButler would've described as a
(15:07):
good story compellingly told.
So.
She knew by marking them down ontablets that the written poems,
just like the orders for goodsor receipts, could easily be
distributed throughout theentire empire.
Mm-hmm.
At the newspaper.
Yeah.
And she had the foresight tounderstand that the best way to
(15:33):
win around the people of thesedisparate cities was to.
Call those gods interchangeablyby the names that they knew them
by.
So classic.
Love it.
Right?
She was, she was bringingeveryone in and combining these
mythologies of all of thesedifferent cities.
Kind of taking on the role ofthe PR face.
(15:55):
Yes.
Spoke of the empire.
Oh, it's so clever.
'cause that's what they do evenin movies and stuff, isn't it?
They change some of the jokes orsome of the, oh, I dunno.
The food on the table.
So it matches the culture sothey to like it a bit more.
To make you feel included.
Yeah.
And so she had, I think, I thinkshe had a great deal of
(16:15):
emotional intelligence tounderstand the need for that, to
achieve it and.
To think, to write the storiesin such a way that they
resonated emotionally withpeople, and people knew what she
was up to.
There's a note here, a quote foryou to read from a scribe who
was transcribing a copy of herpoems for her father to read,
(16:36):
and he added a little postscript.
Oh, isn't it weird as well thatthey've managed to translate it?
Mm.
Because like, obviously I'mreading English, isn't that
fascinating that it's survived?
Yeah, we'll talk a little bitabout that and, and how that
came to pass because there arecertainly, like in the Ashmolean
(16:57):
Museum in Oxford, there aretablets written infor or
similar, pictographic language,which simply have not been
translated.
So it literally could sayanything, anything.
But in this case, we.
Possibly because of these traderoutes and the cross pollination
of different cultures.
(17:17):
Those symbols had to be morebroadly understood.
So there would've been like theRosetta Stone type of idea, a
commonality with a language thatstill exists now.
So therefore we get to read heractual words or their actual
words.
Oh, this is so cool.
I love it.
Kind of cool.
So the quote that has made itthrough the years says, my king,
(17:40):
something has been produced thatno person had produced before,
which.
I think as well as just being acool thing to say, highlights
that these men were notparticularly adverse to having a
powerful woman.
Yeah.
You know, doing cool meritocracystuff.
Yeah, absolutely.
(18:00):
So for all of the political sideof her work, which I'm sure was
not accidental, she genuinelydid seem to be devoted to her
gods.
She was a high priestess ofNana, who was the moon God, but
her, her real heart was with hisdaughter Inana, who was also
(18:25):
known as Ishtar and.
Anana is the goddess of love,sex, and war.
I'm like, cool.
Funny how they're linked.
Yeah.
I mean, this is not a, you know,shrinking violet.
She's Yeah, yeah, yeah.
She's, she's a lot, she's a badbitch and she doesn't mind.
(18:46):
Mm-hmm.
Right.
So the passion that EDA feltcomes through.
Because in her poems, her hymnsto Anana, it contains the first
written use of the word I andthe first literature that
represents human emotion.
I felt.
I thought I did.
(19:07):
Oh my God.
Yeah.
So there's another first foryou.
Wow.
It.
There's, I think there's like40, 45, 49, 42 poems altogether.
We're not gonna read them all,but I just plucked a quote out
that I think gives you a flavorof her devotion and the
badassness of Anana.
So if you're happy to read thispoem, yes.
(19:30):
Poem.
Try and embody the Badass.
Yes.
I dunno.
Get in there.
I dunno.
I don't think I've ever donethat like a charging storm.
You charge like a roaring storm.
You roar, you thunder inthunder.
Snorting rampaging winds.
Your feet are continuallyrestless.
Carrying your harp of size.
You breathe out the music ofmorning.
(19:52):
It was in your service that Ifirst entered the Holy Temple.
IE, n Ana, the highestpriestess.
I carried the ritual basket.
I sang the hymns of joy.
Oh wow.
She's into it.
Yeah, she's so into it.
You can't help but be excited.
Also, this is just as passionateand as just as driven and just
(20:14):
as heart hitting as thoseOctavia Butler quotes that we
spoke about last week, which isso recent history, isn't it?
Like, you know, 50, 60 yearsago.
And, that passion, I would sayis matched.
It's wild that that recognizablestrand of.
Being human and excited aboutyour job.
(20:37):
Like who's that excited abouttheir job.
But she really is.
She loves it.
She loves, she loved thespreadsheet, that's all.
She loved it, absolutely lovedit.
And to be fair to her, the godswere pretty cool.
Mesopotamia was rock The spicydays worst to have, isn't it?
Yeah, absolutely.
If you're, if you are happy to,there is another quote here it
(20:58):
describes Ishtar, the fearsomewarrior.
Are you good?
Yeah.
In scenes carved on cylinderseals from the Acadian period,
Ishita is often showndominating, formidable lines and
gods while turning towards theviewer.
Maces and sickle axes are seenaround her shoulders as well as
branching bearing fruit.
(21:20):
Spring it a little snack fightin a lion.
A snack.
I love her.
I mean, uh, if you are gonnafight a line, you're gonna need
a, a feast, you're gonna want alittle Absolutely.
I need a little, yeah.
So are you prepared for anotherfirst, because that.
Set of writings, talking aboutAnana and her, her many, her
(21:45):
many acts include this storyabout her destroying a mountain
range as a punishment when itwouldn't bow before her.
What.
Yeah, the mountain wouldn't bowto her.
So she tore it down to punishit.
I think she tore it down byyelling at it that that's who
we're dealing with here.
Okay.
And that story contained thefirst illustration of a written
(22:09):
text.
So she invented comic books.
There you go.
And, um, it mentioned it in thequote, it's a time when most
depictions as I.
Picture Egyptian, drawing.
Mostly people are seen inprofile like 2D.
This is her.
Yeah.
Like side on.
Yes.
Yeah.
(22:30):
The goddess is looking straightat you and like flea bagg, she's
breaking the fourth wall.
Yeah.
And you can imagine to theseviewer how thrilling and.
And new and exciting and new andexciting.
And an Adriana understood theenergy that these things were
bringing.
She was bringing the drama.
(22:51):
So drama.
I love it.
We've got another little microquote here.
Yes.
Um.
Let them know that you grindschools to dust.
Let them know that you eatcorpses like a lion.
Oh, it's gross.
It's gross.
But that ferocity is part of themesopotamian ideal of
(23:14):
femininity.
It's okay.
It's what it takes to survive inthe kind of world and landscape
that they are living in.
And unfortunately for Ana, shefound that out the hard way
herself because her fatherhaving extended the empire out,
died and.
(23:34):
Her position, as we've talkedabout, really was quite
political.
So it wasn't a massive surprisethat the incoming would be King,
wanted to move her along.
A general named Lou Garla.
Took advantage of the powervacuum and.
Saw an ana as a threat, didn'twant, I think, to assassinate
(23:58):
her because she had some broadsupport.
So instead banished her to thedesert.
And of course she wrote a poemabout it like you do when you're
banished to a desert.
So if you're happy to readanother poem for us.
Yeah, of course.
Why, um, what was the Power Sstricture that meant that this,
(24:19):
uh, lui.
Came in, was it, I think it wasa straight up Cota.
He rolled in with an army, sawthat a CAD had died and things
were in chaos and thought, I'mgonna get in there.
But had enough sense to see thatWan had some support and had
enough, uh, religious faith tobe frightened of transgressing
(24:43):
against a high priestess.
Like he could kind of deal withkicking her out, but he
couldn't.
Deal with the possibility ofkilling someone who was favored
by the desk.
Right?
Yeah.
Got it, got it, got it.
That makes perfect sense.
This is her in the desert.
This is her.
Yeah.
Oh.
I went towards the light.
It felt scorching to me.
I went towards shade.
It shrouded me in swirling dustwhen look.
(25:07):
I stood power paramount.
He expelled me from the temple.
He made me fly out the windowlike a swallow.
I had my taste of life.
He made me walk a land ofthorns, like a swallow.
That still happens today.
That's quite exciting.
Land of thorns.
These are all things that westill experience.
(25:28):
Isn't that fascinating?
Yeah, you can sense herdevastation because those
images, oh my gosh, arerelatable to us.
So she's now out on her ear andthinking, what next?
Scary.
And she starts praying.
She prays to nana.
The moon, God.
And he does not help her.
(25:48):
And so she begins to address herprayers to inana.
Okay?
And very soon thereafter, herposition as high priest and your
is restored.
Mm.
And yeah, so I mean credit whereit's due, her nephew Rasen,
turfed out.
Lue.
Okay.
And made himself king and thenreinstated an Edwina.
(26:11):
I dunno.
He must have sent somebody outinto the desert to find her, her
popped her back into the templein her and she continued on in,
in that position.
And in total, she was the highpriestess for 40 years.
So 40.
It's long career.
It's a long career of highpriestessing, especially when
you have some desert wanderingin the middle.
(26:32):
So having done.
Those 40 years of and the 40 oddpoems and hymns.
Was enough that her writingbecame a kind of cultural
monument, and it was studied andcelebrated for centuries.
They had these schools calledDupa, where scribes would train
(26:53):
and priests would train and polipoliticians would and.
That was the text that theywould copy out, like, you know,
when you're in school kind ofdoing lines or memorizing poems.
It was her work that was, thatwas what that was all based on.
But like many things, her workwas still eventually lost in
(27:15):
time.
And the poems, the, the tablets.
It sort of disappeared untilthere was an archeologist called
Sir Leonard.
I'm sure that's supposed to sayLeonard Woolley.
Leonard Woolley.
Leonard Woolley.
Maybe it was Leonard, but Ithink it might've been Leonard
(27:35):
excavated some of her claytablets.
In 1927 and that, wow, that's,that brought them back into
modernity.
So who knows in between, butthat's where we next know about
them.
That's where she pops up again.
Yeah.
In 1968, the first translationof her writing from Sumerian
into English is published.
(27:55):
So there's almost what a.
A 40 year window to decipherwhere it's getting worked on.
So the translators weredefinitely mega fans.
There's a quote here from theirintro to their book, I love.
They did.
The quote says, we can nowdiscern a corpus of poetry,
(28:16):
which not only reveals itsauthor's name, but delineates
the author for us in.
Autobiographical fashion in theperson of n Ana, we are
confronted by a woman who isonce princess priestess and
poetess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
They, they cannot get enough ofher.
So they were doing her PR forher.
(28:38):
Really?
They were puffing it up.
I mean, they did have a book tosell, so, you know, they might
have been like, you gocapitalism.
But yeah, I think it was genuinepassion.
Good.
That being said, that, you know,in the intervening time.
Since the publication of thatbook.
Scholars have disagreed abouther role because when you were
(29:02):
talking about this, I was like,how do we know?
Right.
How, it's a fair question, isn'tit?
It's not just you, it's it's,it's on everybody's mind.
We don't have the, um, sourcematerials.
We don't have her.
Personal documents.
We have the transcribed copies.
And so there's a woman calledEleanor Robson who's an expert.
(29:26):
Infor, what was that?
And she's, uh, that the written,the written pictogram system.
Right.
That these tablets were, werewritten in.
Yeah.
And she says that the Sumerianlanguage in Ana.
Work so-called.
Mm-hmm.
Is stylistically too modern tobeing from Wan herself?
(29:47):
So it would be like an originalShakespeare transcript being
written in modern English withslang.
So she's like, wait a minuteguys.
So she thinks that thetranscribers had more than a
copyist hand in it, and youknow, that's fair.
Another.
Don't you think that's true forall stories?
(30:08):
they get passed on generation.
Yeah, generation and you know, Iknow things are often word
perfect, aren't they?
Particularly fables and thingslike that.
Like we spoke about it a bit inthe Grace of Marley episode, but
you don't know.
You don't know who's grandad,granddad's, granddads said that
before.
Yeah.
And when things are intranslation, there's an added
(30:31):
layer of abstraction.
Of course, you do not know if Iinterpret something a certain
way, probably in good faiththinking this is exactly what
was meant.
That doesn't mean that you aregonna say the same.
Yes.
Hundred percent space and Bs.
And even the poems we'veincluded here, if you were to
Google them, you would finddifferent English, like the bit
where it says Youth thunder andthunder.
(30:53):
I think at one, another versionof it says you bellow in thunder
and it's, oh, that's thoselittle subtle, you and someone
might, someone might just think,oh, it sounds better like this.
And you know, yeah.
Little have a little tinker.
You don't know.
Um, on top of that, there is a,a scholar called Hader Alma
(31:14):
Maori that put it, that withcenturies of oral literature.
From hundreds of women before aneda, you cannot say that the
narrative of fiction is hersalone, because she's just
writing what has already beenhappening for all of human
(31:34):
existence.
Right, And I take all of that.
Onboard as I, as I say thesethings, but I'm leaning towards
this writer.
I've got a quote here from MeganBlythe.
But she took Edwina's, corpus,her body of poems and turned it
into a novela, which I thinksounds pretty fun.
Yeah.
Like, I'd like to read that.
But she talks about how shedecided to do that, and she says
(31:58):
that.
Reading the work and seeing itsrelevance.
It wasn't just some person 4,000years ago whose life is so
vastly different from mine, andEda wrote about how she got
kicked out of power and it wasreally bad and then she came
back and that's the experiences.
(32:19):
You can't say that you can't andyou can't.
You can understand it even froma modern perspective.
Don't worry.
And it's, it's what makes itlasting literature.
Um, yeah, it's, it's.
Echoing something familiar, eventhough it's from a time that's
(32:41):
completely unfamiliar.
Mm.
I kind of love that.
Don't you love that we have,yeah.
Strings of attachment tomillennia ago and civilizations,
because we talk about this withSimon sometimes, that it goes in
our, my head, in my verysimplistic mind, it goes
dinosaurs.
Um, ancient Tudor.
(33:03):
Yeah.
Um, then it goes TudorShakespeare, queen Victoria
today.
That's it.
It's, it's so cool to realizethat these are just people just
like us, just like this.
I used to work with this historyteacher who was so.
(33:23):
Terrifying.
He was really, I'm gonna use theword mean.
He was just straight up mean.
He was mean as a snake there.
I've said it one, but one thinghe always said that really
struck me was if you took aperson from ancient times, they
would survive in our world andwe would not survive in theirs
because they are equipped tosort of cope with threats.
(33:46):
Right.
We are not, but we have thiscommon thread of humanity and
emotion across all thosemillennia.
And we could survive.
We could you, you and me.
Yeah.
Or like in general, you and me.
You might wanna revise thatopinion.
If we go to the San Birdsanctuary at 4:00 AM See if you
(34:07):
still think I would survive inancient Mesopotamia, Well, all,
all that's left to say really islike the exhibition that some of
the source material was based onpresents an edana as the first
named author.
In fact, no doubts overshadowingit.
Oh, they say no doubt, no doubt.
They just went, they plowedstraight on as though it is an
(34:28):
established fact.
I think that.
The work that we've seen of hershas merit, even if we allow for
the uncertainty, because youstill get that sense of the
lives of Mesopotamian women.
Yeah.
Um, the way they lived, thethings they struggled with, and
(34:51):
they show the power ofliterature to move people and.
I've got a cheesy ending.
You know, I love a cheesyending, so, well, even this
isn't, I was just thinking whata beautiful insight that is for
you to conclude.
You're like, well, who cares?
Yeah.
That is my, thats my conclusionon most topics.
This, it's all good, whatever.
(35:13):
What else?
So I think you said it far moreelegant, elegantly.
You could, thank you.
You can trim this bit off if youwant, if you think it's, uh,
gilding the lily.
But I've, I've gone with, we canchoose to picture Ana not.
Only as a historical figure, butas a kind of stand-in for all of
(35:34):
the unnamed women who told thosestories.
No, I love it.
And maybe the first to lift, toread stylists and capture life
in the drying clay.
Nice.
Have you time for three funfacts, be you anything.
Thank you so much.
I'll keep them quick.
First one, Ana, it's not justme.
(35:56):
So my fellow gaming enthusiastshave popped her into.
Civ six.
Ah.
And in Seven Wonders, she's a,yeah, she's a, I think a
playable leader in Civ Six.
One of the expansions.
The second thing I will say isthat, the capital of the Acadian
Empire, a CAD has not yet beendiscovered.
(36:19):
So, okay.
Whereas the ruins of, I think,uh, and Sumer were.
A CAD still out there.
They think it might be nearBaghdad.
Nobody knows for sure.
So more of her tablets mightcome to light.
You never know.
Ooh, this is exciting.
And the final one, not abouteda, but again about just UNIFOR
tablets is there is a tabletfrom her.
(36:42):
Which a trader called Nani moansat a supplier called about the
quality of the order of copper.
He was sent.
We've spoken about this on thepod before, is hilarious things.
It's, I love that.
People I think you'll find,remember so cut deform right
from, right from jump, rightfrom the get go.
(37:04):
People are out there doing theirnegative trust pilot reviews.
I just find it hilarious thatsomeone sat there for hours.
Like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap.
Yeah.
With their reed stylists.
Dear sir, we must, must havebeen the same.
We must be so on the samealgorithm or something for us
both.
Just you are probably how I knowthat.
Oh, really?
(37:25):
Yeah.
I just find it the mosthilarious thing about the
quality of copper.
Yeah.
Well, it's a serious businessactually.
Actually think you'll find I'mgonna spend most of my life.
It's the principle of the thing.
There will be a Sumerianequivalent of the phrase.
It's the principle of the thing.
The principle.
(37:45):
So that's it.
That's what I've got for you.
Oh my gosh, what a gorgeousinsight into.
And the clay and the make andlike, I love how you call it
technology'cause it is yeah,it's weird to think of it that
way.
Wires and, microchips.
Is it, it's just things thatmake things automated or it
(38:05):
makes, it makes life easierquicker.
Yeah, exactly.
And that looks like differentthings at different times.
Yes, Kara, I loved it.
I smashed it.
Thank you so much.
I thought that was so Thank you.
Thanks for listening.
I thought it was so fun toresearch, so I'm glad that, uh,
out of your comfort zone,looking at you.
I know flexing.
Is there any further back to go?
(38:27):
I mean, what, where do I stop?
What do I stop?
I'm like a juggernaut.
Now.
Where am I going next?
Who?
Who knows?
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