I Am Enheduanna

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago, in lands far, far away, there lived a woman named Enheduanna.

And yes, we could call her a princess, because technically she was one. But she wasn’t the kind of princess whose story begins in a humble cottage and ends when she meets Prince Charming. Enheduanna didn’t need rescuing, and she definitely didn’t inherit power through romance.

She was born royal and regal.

Her father was Sargon of Akkad, a king who ruled over the ancient city of Ur in ancient Mesopotamia, a place that sits in what we now call southern Iraq. This was a world of temples, burning incense, and gods who were treated as seriously as kings.

Enheduanna grew up surrounded by ritual and authority, in a household where words mattered, prayers mattered, and silence could be dangerous. From an early age, she would have understood that power wasn’t just held with swords. It was held with symbols, stories, and belief.

Enheduanna didn’t grow up waiting for destiny to find her. She inherited circumstance, not a script. Yes, she was born into power, but she would later decide how to wield it.

As she grew older, her father placed her in one of the most powerful positions a woman could hold at the time: high priestess of Nanna, the moon god. This was not a ceremonial title. As high priestess, Enheduanna stood at the centre of religious and political life in Ur. The temple was not just a spiritual space. It was economic, cultural, and deeply political. Through her, the gods legitimized the state.

For a while, everything held together.

Then, like many stories from the ancient world, war arrived — on the back of men on horses with swords. And of course they showed up uninvited and unapologetic.

Ur was overtaken by a military general named Lugal-ane. By all accounts, he was ruthless. I don’t know him personally, of course, but history does not paint him gently. He attacked the city, overthrew Enheduanna’s father, and fought off her brothers one by one until the kingdom was no longer theirs. Power changed hands quickly, and when it did, Enheduanna’s position became a problem for him.

She represented the old order. The divine legitimacy Lugal-ane wanted to erase.

He didn’t stop at the throne.

Lugal-ane entered Enheduanna’s temple, something that was considered deeply transgressive even in a brutal, war-driven world. Especially for a high priestess. In her own writing, Enheduanna describes acts of violence and tyranny committed against her. Scholars understand these passages as testimony of extreme violation—of her body, her sanctity, and her role. Whatever the exact details, the message is clear. She was stripped of protection, dignity, and power.

Oh and he wasn't done there. After all the atrocities, he exiled her.

According to her own account, she was sent away with a weapon, a dagger placed in her hands, as if to suggest that survival was optional and death i.e. her unaliving herslef, was always within reach. Exile, in this sense, was not just banishment from her city. It was an attempt to erase her completely.

This is where most stories would end.

But Enheduanna’s does not.

She left Ur with almost nothing. No temple. No title. No army. Just a dagger, her relentless faith, and an inner strength that refused to disappear. During her exile, she turned to Inanna, the goddess of love, war, and transformation. Inanna was not a gentle deity. She ruled contradiction. Desire and destruction. Creation and chaos. If any goddess understood power taken and reclaimed, it was her.

Enheduanna prayed and prayed and I imagine, cried her tears away.

But plot twist, she also wrote. Or at least, for that era, etched her whole story onto clay tablets.

As she carved her suffering into clay tablets, she wrote hymns and poems about exile, grief, fear, and rage. She wrote about what had been done to her and what had been taken away, like her family, her temple, her home, her passions, and pretty much her life. And in doing so, something extraordinary happened.

Because hers is far from a sob story.

Writing, which had been used for records, rituals, and administration, became a place for lived experience.

"I am Enheduanna, I am the high priestess"she wrote.

By naming herself, she refused to vanish.

With pain pressed into clay, Enheduanna became one of the earliest known authors in the world, the first one to reveal her self in literature. Contrary to the popular belief that the origins of authorship belong to Greek men, gods or later male philosophers, it was a woman in exile who first placed her inner life into the historical record.

Eventually, the political tides shifted. Lugal-ane was removed from power, and Akkadian authority was restored under later rulers, including Naram-Sin. Enheduanna’s exile ended.

And then came the ultimate plot twist.

And the greatest comeback of all time.

Enheduanna didn’t just survive exile, she returned. After her nephew, King Naram-Sin of Akkad, defeated the rebel leader Lugal-Ane, Enheduanna was restored to her rightful place as high priestess of the moon god Nanna in Ur.

Whether she physically returned to the temple or saw her authority reinstated through changing regimes, her voice had already done its work.

This is the return.

Her hymns survived her. They were copied, studied, and taught for centuries in scribal schools. Her language shaped religious thought long after empires rose and fell. Even when her name faded, her voice kept traveling forward through time.

History nearly lost her anyway.

The tablets we have are copies of copies, and some are originals. Archaeologists are still arguing over the meanings and interpretations of her poems—even now, in 2025.

As attribution blurred and Institutions continued to dominate the narrative, Enheduanna’s voice refused to disappear completely. Scholars eventually traced the authorship back to her and recognized what had always been there: a woman who turned exile into authorship and survival into story.

Enheduanna’s life follows a hero’s journey, not with dragons or swords, but with language. She is called into power, stripped of everything, cast into exile, and returns transformed — not by conquest, but by voice.

Thousands of years later, her story still feels familiar. Being removed. Being violated. Being told your voice no longer belongs where it once did.

Enheduanna answered that moment the only way she could.

She wrote.

And the world is still reading.way