Kestrell

Decades ago, archeologists discovered the work of Enheduanna, an ancient priestess who seemed to alter the story of literature. Why hasn’t her claim been affirmed?
By Elizabeth Winkler

November 19, 2022
Full article at
https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-struggle-to-unearth-the-worlds-first-author

Excerpt:

While Hallo and van Dijk were noting that Enheduanna might have written more than had been uncovered—Akkad, the capital of Sargon’s empire, has yet to be excavated—others were downplaying her claim. The British scholar W. G. Lambert raised the possibility of a ghostwriter, suggesting that at least one of Enheduanna’s texts could have been authored by a scribe. (Sumerian kings often had scribes compose for them.) “Our emotional response to ancient texts is not necessarily the best criterion of judgment,” he later wrote, in 2001. Other scholars questioned Enheduanna on the grounds that the surviving versions of her work, copied out by the students of the edubbas, date to five hundred years after her death; no copies from her own time survive, and, in a few instances, the texts contain place names and vocabulary that postdate her era. This could simply be the result of changes made in the process of scribal transmission—alterations commonly attend the reproduction of old narratives—but some see it as reason for skepticism. “She speaks in the first person, but that’s not the same as being the author,” Paul Delnero, a professor of Assyriology at Johns Hopkins University, told me. Enheduanna could be a cultic figure honored by later writers, her name invoked in the works to lend them authority.

For some in the field, these claims are quite a stretch. “Why would the scribes look back and find a high priestess and say she wrote the texts?” Benjamin Foster, a professor of Assyriology at Yale, asked me. “There were lots of high priestesses. Why choose her?” Foster is impatient with the skeptics. “There’s a tendency in our field to regard it as a sign of wisdom not to take ancient texts at their word,” he said. “It’s not cool to be excited and emotional. You should keep a detached skepticism. But we have more evidence for her than we have for any other author in ancient Mesopotamia.” Foster, who has “no doubt” about Enheduanna’s authorship, cites the autobiographical content of the poems, the deeply intimate quality of the narrative voice. And then there are the peculiarly female markers of “The Exaltation”—the language of sexual violation, the metaphor of writing as childbirth, even the preference for the goddess rather than the god.

In many ways, the debate has become a battleground for competing theoretical paradigms. In the seventies, when second-wave feminism was booming, there was a push to affirm Enheduanna’s authorship; a similar movement occurred in the nineties. (Erhan Tamur, a co-curator of the Morgan exhibit, told me that doubts about Enheduanna’s achievement flowed from the “patriarchal nature of modern scholarship.”) Meanwhile, postmodern thinking encouraged skepticism, uncertainty, and the irrelevance of the author. Consensus was never reached. Today, many see the priestess not as a vital female poet but, as the British Assyriologist Eleanor Robson has called her, a “wish-fulfillment figure.”

The Morgan exhibition presents Enheduanna without the shadow of these doubts. Specifically, it places her in the context of other Mesopotamian women of the late fourth and third millennia B.C.: workers, rulers, priestesses, scribes, and the female deities to which they all prayed. No major exhibition has focussed on women’s lives in ancient Mesopotamia, and the artworks gathered—from London, Berlin, Paris, and elsewhere—build a picture of the economic,

This is another American Ancestors lecture, but this one is in person.

October 12, 2022
American Ancestors Research Center, 99-101 Newbury Street, Boston, MA
Cost: $15
6:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m. ET
Presented by Peter O'Donoghue, York Herald
Sponsored by the Committee on Heraldry of the New England Historic Genealogical Society

Peter O'Donoghue has worked as an Officer of Arms at Her Majesty's College of Arms in London for 17 years, and currently serves as York Herald. He has an explore the history of heraldry and the heralds, from their beginnings in the twelfth century, to the present day. He will discuss how heraldry began and how it has evolved; and how the work of the heralds in England and Wales has developed and changed over the centuries. Reception to follow.
Register here
https://my.americanancestors.org/1879/2142

Ada Palmer and the Weird Hand of Progress
https://www.wired.com/story/ada-palmer-sci-fi-future-weird-hand-progress/

Safe Harbor: Boston's Maritime Underground Railroad
Tuesday, February 2, 2021
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Online event
Description
During the years preceding the American Civil War, Boston served as one of the most important stops on the Underground Railroad. Did you know that many of the fugitives escaping from enslavement came to Boston by stowing away on ships from southern ports? This program explores the untold stories of men and women making daring escapes to freedom through Boston Harbor.

This online program, co-presented by The National Park Service, will happen over Zoom. We kindly request that people who are interested in attending please see the REGISTRATION REQUIRED box on this page for more information.
Please visit
this link
https://boston-public-library.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZ0kdeyqqzgsHNxfPFj_ruc2z4B6qhOmkEbn
to register.

The
Repairing America Initiative
https://www.bpl.org/repairingamerica/?_ga=2.208365851.886702232.1612284554-216378013.1612284554
is the Boston Public Library's pledge to focus its 2021 programming and services on bridging the gaps that divide America. By prioritizing economic recovery, civic engagement, COVID-19 recovery, racial equity, workforce development, and youth engagement, the BPL is working to help Americans rise above the challenges they face.

The Salem Athenaeum
https://www.facebook.com/thesalemathenaeum/
is doing an amazing-sounding renovation, returning to the original paint colors. I'll post the description from their newsletter below (sorry, no pictures), along with the details for a tour of an old Salem farm, but encourage folks to check out the newsletter themselves: they are hosting many of their book and poetry groups online now (I'm planning on checking out the Incessant Pipe Poetry Salon).

Facelift at the Athenaeum
( stories below cut )

Also note that they will be starting a Patrion in order to raise money to provide more accessibility
http://www.medievalists.net/2019/02/disabilities-in-the-middle-ages-with-kisha-tracy/

I’ve always loved reading about Regency/Victorian gentlemen’s clubs, and have decided to create a gentlemen’s club cosplay. This will probably occur on the Sunday of January 21 (the weekend after Arisia). Details are still developing, but if others are interested in attending, please contact me.

Working on the period between the fall of Rome and the early middle ages, Fleming focuses on material remains, from skeletons to fashion knockoffs (I didn't realize that fashion knockoffs were period but, then, isn't just about everything period?) s
http://www.macfound.org/fellows/891/

...with fighting monks, no less; damn, how I want the historical novel version of this, especially as it makes the death toll of _The Name of the Rose_ look like a complete sissy-fight.
http://opensource.com/law/11/6/story-st-columba-modern-copyright-battle-sixth-century-ireland

I know that it's cool for scholarly types to bash the reliability of Wikipedia, but over the past two days it has won my heart by helping me comprehend to what extent the popes of the middle ages really were pulling the political and economic strings of Europe: everybody whose anybody links to all the other anybodies. It's like six degrees of Clement V.

Years ago I had scanned _The Key to the Name of the Rose_ but, last time I read NOTR, I couldn't find it on my computer, but I did manage to acquire a scanned etext from the Darknet. Unfortunately, hte entire middle section, which is a chronology failed to line up the dates with the actual people, places, and events which they were supposed to represent. Yesterday I finally got frustrated enough that I thought I would start reconstructing the chronology using Internet resources (yes, this is the sort of thing I do for fun). Much to my shock, _The Key_ left out a lot of the juicy details which really help to underscore why all the monks in NOTR are so paranoid.

_The Key_ is still a great resource for the Latin translations and a very superficial explanation of the connections, but I would definitely encourage readers who want to really dig into NOTR to use Wikipedia as a resource, also.