Talk:Enheduanna

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ENHEDUANNA WAS ONE OF THE GREATEST WRITERS OF HER TIME —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.196.0.155 (talk • contribs)

... probably. The only one now known, in fact. And rew D alby 10:33, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to rename page En-hedu-ana
Proposal to rename page En-hedu-ana, with all appropriate redirects. Breaking up agglutinative Sumerian words into component parts is pretty standard (e.g. see Cuneiform_script). Sumerophile (talk) 00:43, 28 March 2008 (UTC)


 * OK I will move the page tomorrow. Sumerophile (talk) 01:37, 31 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Moved. Sumerophile (talk) 21:04, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

Change it back to "Enheduanna"
Could I propose we change it back to 'Enheduanna'? That is the form most commonly used (along with Enḫeduanna) in scholarly and general publications (In fact i cannot recall it ever being written 'En-hedu-ana'. Breaking up Sumerian words is generally only done in transliterations, not translations. Furthermore 'Enheduanna' is transliterated 'en-ḫe2-du7-an-na' in the ETCSL, the main linked source for translations and transliterations of her work. The transliterated form is generally only used when dealing with a transliteration and NOT a translation, but as no transliteration apart from the titles of some of her works is used here I see no reason for it and feel it is confusing for a general audience unfamilair with the Sumerian language, especially as if En-hedu-ana is intened to be taken as a transliteration when it is incorrect. 3mbc (talk) 00:56, 28 November 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll vote for that. At the moment it looks rather ridiculous. Rothorpe (talk) 23:09, 13 June 2011 (UTC)

May your heart cool off for me
I was wondering about this expression, does it mean something like "may your heart rejoice"? For most modern readers cold and its synonyms would mean something negative, "cool heart" being an antonym of "warm heart" etc., but in my Egyptology classes I've learned that a similar expression was used in Egypt as a synonym for joy (it's easy to see cool as a positive thing if we think of the hot climate of those places). – Alensha   talk  01:47, 31 January 2010 (UTC)

Bold statement deleted
== As a priestess and religious figure, En-hedu-ana came to honor Inanna above all the other deities of the Sumerian pantheon and greatly assisted in the merging of the Akkadian Ishtar with the Sumerian Inanna among Sumerian theology and religious thought. Thus she greatly changed common religious practices in Sumerian religion.[citation needed] ==, I have deleted this as whilst it is tagged citation needed (I can find nothing to back it up and feel personally it is untrue) I feel it is best being removed as it makes such a bold statement on a very important issue with absolutely nothing to back it up. If anyone wishes to reinstate it feel free to if you can find a reliable citation. As it stands I feel it too bold a statement, and potentially misleading to be left up with no citation as it is essentially opinion. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 3mbc (talk • contribs) 22:54, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

general clean up
I have expanded the article, adding more on the archaeological and textual evidence for Enheduanna and general cleaning up. 3mbc (talk) 00:09, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation Needed
I removed the Pronunciation-needed tag because not only is there nobody on this planet who could provide such a pronunciation, it is not even possible for us to properly pronounce the Akkadian language. Without any native speakers as a frame of reference, we can only guess as to what the language sounds like. While we have a fairly good idea what it sounded like, there are numerous letters represented in Akkadian for which we don't have a pronunciation, and there are numerous letters present in Akkadian but not represented in cuneiform for which we have no clue how they interacted with the spoken language. Ultimately, it would not be feasible to produce a pronunciation of Enheduanna's name, and as such this tag is just providing misinformation. -- 04:27, 20 November 2014‎ Ashur-bani-apla

Weight given to "first named author"
Why is this, her contribution as a writer, in fact the first known writer, not the first information posted about her? She is introduced not as a writer, but as a daughter. This is a sexist convention of the age-old patriarchal narrative, in which women are possessions either of their fathers or husbands, or are mothers to the people(men) whose deeds are acknowledged without such a demeaning qualification. Why is this convention perpetuated here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vtigli (talk • contribs) 13:37, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I agree that Enheduanna's identity as the first poet should be the first thing mentioned in the article and her status as the daughter of Sargon should come later. I have already implemented these changes. You may review the revised lead paragraph and make any further changes you think are necessary. --Katolophyromai (talk) 13:51, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Lol, a tiny minority of humans want to run away from the biological fact they are daughters and sons, to the point they would try to make all opposing voices disappear to give themselves the illusion of "consensus" (such as by censoring dissent, banning accounts or other repression). Anyone in Sargon's day would find that comical, or indeed the majority of people in the 4000 years since then up to the present find it comical. 172.56.2.172 (talk) 15:00, 16 September 2017 (UTC)
 * I have no idea what you are talking about. The article still clearly states that Enheduanna was the daughter of Sargon; in fact, it still says so in the very first paragraph. All I changed was I made it so that the article says she was the first recorded poet before stating that she was the daughter of Sargon, since her status as a poet is more historically significant than her status as the daughter of Sargon. --Katolophyromai (talk) 15:25, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Planned changed to Enheduanna page
I am planning to bring in some more information from the chapter by Roberta Binkley on how Enheduanna can be viewed as early rhetorical theorist. Dr. Vetter (talk) 15:26, 27 January 2021 (UTC)

Copyright problem removed
Prior content in this article duplicated one or more previously published sources. The material was copied from: https://jacket2.org/commentary/enheduanna-2300-bce-seven-sumerian-temple-hymns. Copied or closely paraphrased material has been rewritten or removed and must not be restored, unless it is duly released under a compatible license. (For more information, please see "using copyrighted works from others" if you are not the copyright holder of this material, or "donating copyrighted materials" if you are.)

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Major Reworking of Page
Hey all,

I've made a number of substantial updates to this page that may merit some discussion, which I'll outline below:
 * replaced all non-academic sources and sources from outside assyriology with reliable, secondary sources based in assyriology. The only exceptions were to note that someone had said something, I otherwise suppressed primary sources when no quote or reference to their work was made (Woolley, mostly), as well as replacing tertiary sources with secondary ones. I think this is probably a good rule to keep for the whole page outside of the modern relevance section as there seems to be a lot of misinformation on Enheduanna outside of academic sources originating in Assyriology.
 * I've added a large amount of discussion around the academic debate around Enheduanna's authorship. This was the main reason for the full sandbox rewrite rather than incremental updates - this topic was not discussed at all! I've attempted to present this in as neutral a manner as possible as I understand the idea that Enheduanna may not have written the works may be contentious - but I hope that any discussions around that will remain focused on the sources rather than any personal opinions. I've also expanded a but of information from the referenced BBC interview with Robson - which should give a quick, freely available background of the topic to anyone reading this.
 * I've altered any language about "Enheduanna's works" or similar and replaced it with "works attributed to Enheduanna" which is how the majority of the sources cited refer to them, regardless of the author's position on the debate - and appears to be more neutral language. I didn't use anything like "definitively ascribed" outside of a quote because that does not appear to reflect consensus.
 * I've restructured the page to match pages for other poets, which seemed like the most appropriate format. I also added the writer infobox instead of just having an image.
 * I standardized the reference style to use short footnotes, matching the style of a few other ANE pages.
 * I've removed a few of the modern references to Enheduanna - I couldn't figure out if Betty de Shong Meador was a notable translation or not, and the Spirits podcast didn't seem notable? If either of those should be notable enough for a wiki page though I have no objection to adding them back. I also removed the part about Kramer and Wolkstein because as far as I can tell, none of the Inanna poems they translated or inspired other reworkings of are attributed to Enheduanna. Mostly it seems to be about "The Descent of Inanna" which may have been confused for another poem.
 * I was on the fence about Roberta Binkley - but decided to keep her comments on rhetoric because they were cited by Hallo, an assyriologist. I removed citations from her Enheduanna biography as those do not seem to be published research, and they contradict a lot of published sources.
 * I removed a few sources detailing Enheduanna's life (Franke, mostly) that were constructed using literary sources. Based on the introduction to Franke's paper, I don't think her assumptions were intended to necessarily be historical as it's mostly a survey of Sargon of Akkad's family as they were understood in later times, as legendary figures. They can probably be added back in given the right caveats, potentially in the context of the poems that were being analyzed. Westenholz and Winter might be better sources for that, though.
 * I added a few more images, and removed a template that only Enheduanna was added to.

The page is by no means done yet, and there are a few sources (Winter, Wilcke, and Westenholz especially) that a significant amount of additional material can be added from. I'm planning to also keep adding material, but I thought that my revisions to the page had reached a state where it would be best to start letting other people work on it as well :). &#32;- car chasm (talk) 23:28, 13 December 2021 (UTC)


 * This is an incredibly biased change to make. After all, the Greek poet Homer is credited as the author of the Iliad, and yet there is still debate among his authorship. Still, his works are cited with his ownership over them. The same should apply to Enheduanna. She is the first un-anonymous author and you are doing her an incredible disservice by listing her without proper authority over her works. My suggestion is to return your wording to the proper 'her works.'
 * Also, nowhere in this wikipedia article is there any reference to her being the first author to reference oneself autobiographically: "Yes, I took up my place in the sanctuary dwelling, I was high priestess, I, Enheduanna." AO 6713 2603:7000:9E3A:244:1CF7:4B35:C2D1:8E93 (talk) 00:46, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If you find WP:RS from scholarship to back up your arguments, you're certainly welcome to present them here and we can weigh them against each other. But remember that changes are not biased simply because you disagree with them. The consensus viewpoint of assyriologists appears to be that these are antilegomena, and so that is the viewpoint represented on this page.
 * Remember that wikipedia follows WP:SCHOLARSHIP, not the other way around. If, lacking sources, you feel that you have arguments that can convince assyriologists such as Eleanor Robson that they have got it wrong, you need to convince them first, and when the scholarly consensus shifts, tertiary sources like wikipedia may follow. But changing the article because you personally disagree would be to introduce bias, not remove it. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 05:14, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Again, your own personal take on Enheduanna's authorship is your own bias, not the other way around. A historical figure's achievements, accomplishments, and other histories should be employed first rather than the debatable topic of 'ghost writers.' It is an article format, and diverging from it introduces your own personal disagreement. As the majority of assyriologists do not, in fact, believe your argument with consensus, your own interpretations distort the article. You yourself are contributing biased content that contradict doctors of Ancient Near Eastern curatorial fellowships, such as Andrew W. Mellon, and Jeannette Rosen. Scholars from the New York Metropolitan Museum and Morgan Museum and Library have recently exhibited 'She Who Wrote: Enheduanna and Women of Mesopotamia, ca. 3400-2000 B.C' and they would also probably need to be convinced of your argument. 74.66.193.186 (talk) 19:27, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The claims made in the article are supported by WP:RS, and are not my own personal opinions. You are citing a museum exhibit, not WP:SCHOLARSHIP. I apologize if something you learned at a museum exhibit appears to contradict what is on wikipedia, but it is common for questions of authorship or the finer points of scholarship to be suppressed in popular literature and presentations to the public, often in the name of telling a compelling narrative. When reliable sources disagree, scholarly monographs and subject-specific collections of academic literature curated professionally by editors, or that survey and synthesize the results and findings of decades worth of research, written by the leaders in the field, are to be preferred. These are what is considered WP:HQRS.
 * Moreover, Andrew Mellon and Jeannette Rosen do not appear to be assyriologists? These appear to be the names of wealthy philanthropists. Eleanor Robson, Jeremy Black, Miguel Civil, and Joan Goodnick Westenholz, who are all cited here, are all widely cited experts in the field. When I worked on this article I attempted to incorporate competing opinions, and found that there was broad consensus across WP:SCHOLARSHIP against the definitve ascription of authorship found in popular media. If you would like to learn more about the issue, I found the interview that Eleanor Robson did with BBC (still linked in the article, I believe) to be rather elucidating on the apparent mismatch between scholarly opinion and popular opinion on this issue. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 20:08, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * "I apologize if something you learned in at a museum exhibit appears to contradict what is on wikipedia." I ask that you do not insult me, as Wikipedia is not a space for that.
 * Again, the issue is with your formatting. You seem to want to use this space to debate the actual topic. I am sure you have many sources to support your opinion, well done. It also seems you would like me to list sources that are specifically assyriologists to support Enheduanna's authorship (as other sources of scholarship seem insignificant to you), which is trivial. Again, you've corrupted the article in its formatting throughout, not the inclusion for the section of the argument itself ('Authorship Debate' section). But as requested, Alhena Gadotti, Benjamin Foster, Annette Zgoll. There is no shortage of assyriologists who agree on Enheduanna's authorship.
 * I believe you are missing the point. You should really take a look at how Wikipedia articles featuring historical literary figures are written. Homer, Shakespeare, or even the biblical Ezekiel all have contradictory evidence regarding authorship, though their articles aren't peppered with their credibility throughout. Contradictory evidence is constrained to sections, or mentioned once. Ownership is accredited to them otherwise. By insistent inclusion of the opinion that works are merely 'attributed to Enheduanna' you are diverging from Wikipedia's formatting. 2603:7000:9E3A:244:10ED:F749:B3A3:30C (talk) 22:12, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * If you believe this is a formatting issue, please point to the part of the Manual of Style that supports your claims. If not, WP:OTHERCONTENT is irrelevant here, although I certainly doubt that you will find reliable sources claiming William Shakespeare did not write the plays attributed to him, I think the Ezekiel article should likely be updated if it ascribes authorship to him. Having looked at Homer, I believe that article is in dire need of a full rewrite as well, but I haven't personally invested enough time into it. &#32;- car chasm (talk) 22:32, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you for your riveting commentary. Now back to the topic, I've done my part. I can only hope that an editor will relieve some of the distortion you've gone added throughout the page, as surely if I try to edit, you will gate-keep the article (correct me if I am wrong) despite Wikipedia's open editing policy.
 * It's shame the page has been changed from neutral state to completely opinionated, though not surprising, as women's work is often contested. 2603:7000:9E3A:244:10ED:F749:B3A3:30C (talk) 05:17, 10 March 2023 (UTC)
 * The article is way better than it was before the rewrite. All the opinions are attributed to their sources, the article as a whole is perfectly neutral. I don't know why other editors even give the time of day to IP editors. Most likely you are 15 and living with your parents. If you can't even be bothered to create a username, why should we care what you think? Especially when you think that this is better than the current article. Skyerise (talk) 14:15, 11 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I hope that my replying after such a significant delay is not unwelcome, but I feel as though seeking your input before my potential edit would be a good idea, especially since it relates to something you specifically mention here.
 * I think that Betty De Shong Meador's translations of (work attributed to) Enheduanna do warrant mention:
 * Both of her books on the subject were published by the University of Texas Press
 * The translations in them were written with, by her account, significant input and guidance from Dr. Daniel Foxvog and, to a lesser extent, the late Dr. Anne Kilmer (plus two graduate students of hers)
 * Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart: poems of the Sumerian high priestess Enheduanna has 139 citations on Google Scholar
 * Princess, priestess, poet: the Sumerian temple hymns of Enheduanna only has 31, but that is still a solid showing for a popular book on ancient Near Eastern literature by someone who's PhD is in Jungian analysis and not anything related to history, you know?
 * Meador's work does, I feel, meet a decent standard of reliability and notability in a specific, limited context: the attention Enheduanna has received in relation to feminist and LGBT literature and criticism, which the article in its current iteration acknowledges, but doesn't really explain or engage with. Now, I am going to tread carefully and apolitically here; I think there is an important distinction between the historical reality of Enheduanna, which I feel is reasonably and fairly presented throughout the article; and her "Influence and legacy" which is influenced just as much, if not more, by Enheduanna as a mythologized figure who exists beyond the strict bounds of academic history. I do not mean that to sound quite so New Age-y, I mean more in the sense of... the Hamilton musical is part of the "influence and legacy" of Alexander Hamilton, but the historical figure may not have done quite as much rapping.
 * I think that section would be meaningfully improved by citing the thematic and literary line Meador draws from Enheduanna, to Sappho, to Dickinson, to H.D., and then extending it on from her to notable contemporary lesbian feminist poet Judy Grahn, who acknowledges Meador at length as inspiring and influencing her Eruptions of Inanna: Justice, Gender, and Erotic Power, which includes poetic reinterpretation of text attributed to Enheduanna. It won the Reginald Martin Award for Excellence in Criticism from PEN in 2022, which is not something especially worth bringing up in this article, but hopefully bolsters my general point a little bit. As, I hope, does my believing Grahn should be referenced explicitly in context as a poet, and not in a manner which would give undue scholarly weight to her position "teach[ing] women's mythology and ancient literature at the California Institute of Integral Studies".
 * Nothing I am suggesting would alter the overall tone of the article, and I am not remotely suggesting that Enheduanna's artistic legacy (as in, her legacy as re/interpreted and re/imagined by artists) should be presented as opposed to or competing with historical scholarship for validity or accuracy. It does deserve to be included, though, and Meador's translations offer a fairly ideal foundation for that in a way that would almost certainly take up less space than this comment. 𒆳𒄷 (kurmušen) 04:47, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Expanding "Influence and legacy" section
If you have a look just above this section header, you will see that I wrote a moderately detailed reply to someone who, it turns out, abandoned their account several months ago. This means I am, I fear, rather less likely to receive a constructive reply from them in the near future. Instead, I am just going to go ahead and start working on making the additions I detailed, which I will refrain from repeating since they are just right up there. I will correct a mistake I made, though: it was not Meador herself who placed Enheduanna alongside Sappho, Emily Dickinson, and H.D.; it was Grahn, in the foreword to Meador's first book of translations. 𒆳𒄷 (kurmušen) 08:27, 4 January 2024 (UTC)