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It was an adventure tracking down this poem. There was another ancient Akkadian poem I had originally picked for this page, one that would go well with the next chapter, but when I picked it Wikipedia had it incorrectly listed as written by Enheduana. When I went back to go find it again and found out it was written much later and by somebody else, I decided it was more important to me to have something from the world’s first known author than to have one with more detail about the fall of a civilization. This part of this poem certainly suits where Maida is at in the story right now. So in the end I think it works just as well. I kept the title of the other poem as the title for my next chapter. Anyways, please enjoy this opportunity to commune with a writer who lived 4300 years ago.
Also I want to say that the translator who wrote the English version of this poem did a great job, and you should buy his book (like I did, to find this). He’s doing exactly the creative gymnastics with language that an excellent translator should.
swooping through a
window— my life is
all spent. The thorns
of foreign lands— is
that what you have
decreed for me? He
took the crown of
the high priestess
from me, giving me
a knife and dagger
instead: “These suit
you better,” he said.
From The Exaltation of |nana, by Enheduana, circa 2300 BCE. Enheduana was the high priestess of Ur. This poem was a lament to her exile during a rebellion of the nobility against her father, Sargon of Akkad, founder of the first empire in history. Translation by Sophus Helle, 2023 in The Complete Poems of Enheduana: The World’s First Author.
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