Sumerian Shakespeare
Enheduanna
This votive statue was originally placed in a temple. It now resides
in the Louvre Museum (AO 4754).
(Click on any image. If an enlargement is available it will display in a separate tab)
Here are the notes from the Louvre website:
Bust of a seated orant [female worshiper], dressed in a kaunakès cloak, hair styled in a bun and held by a headband, the eyes and eyebrows were formerly inlaid.
Height: 22 cm [8.66 inches] Material: Limestone
Date: Akkadian (2350-2200 BC) and Neo-Sumerian (?) (c. 2112–2004 BC)
Place of discovery: Djokha = Umma (?)
In case you’re wondering...
There’s no way this statute dates to the Neo-Sumerian period (c. 2112–2004 BC).
Artistically speaking, it is unlike anything else in the Neo-Sumerian period, which was
the absolute end of Sumerian civilization. This statute clearly dates to the beginning of
the Old Akkadian Period (c. 2350–2150 BC).
In other words, it dates to the time of Sargon the Great and the beginning of the
Akkadian Empire.
The “?” after Umma, indicates that the provenance of the statue isn’t known for certain.
Umma is a Sumerian city. If this statue was indeed found in Umma, it means the statue was placed in a temple after Sargon conquered the city. Conversely, the Sumerians placed votive statues in the temples of the Akkadian cities they conquered. Despite their constant warfare, the Sumerians and the Akkadians practiced the same religion. See The Standard of Mari.
Profile views: Enlarge left, right.
This statue is important for a number of reasons:
First, depictions of Akkadian women are exceeding rare. When the Akkadian empire finally fell,
it was completely destroyed, and very few artifacts remained.
Second, and most important, the woman is wearing a kaunakes, a garment of woolen
leaf petals that was worn by Sumerian and Akkadian royals during ceremonial occasions. This means she wasn’t merely a titled noblewoman, she was a member of the royal family, the ones who ruled the kingdom. In other words, she was either a royal princess or a reigning queen.
By extension, she was probably a high priestess, since royal women usually served in temples
to keep the secular and religious power of the kingdom “all in the family.” The kaunakes was most often used in temple settings. See Sumerian Queens.
Third, she wears her hair in a royal knotted bun with a simple headband.
It looks like knotted bun is wrapped four times by a ribbon (more about this later).
Notice that Sargon has the same kind of bun and headband. He is also wearing
a royal kaunakes. Detail of a religious procession where he celebrates his victory
over the Sumerians.
This leads us to a very interesting question.
Who is the woman portrayed on the statue?
She could easily be one of many unknown royal women who lived in the Akkadian empire.
Maybe so, but I think she is much more important than that.
The surviving fragment, which only includes her body above the waist, is 8.66 inches.
This means the entire seated statue was about 18 – 20 inches high. This is quite large compared to most (if not all) votive statues, which were usually displayed on an altar.
She is obviously a very important woman, one of the most important women in all of Akkad.
By contrast, this complete statue of the Sumerian Queen of Queens is only 7.5 inches tall.
It seems highly probable that the statue in the Louvre is a female relative of Sargon – perhaps
his wife, mother, sister, or daughter.
It’s entirely possible that she is actually the wife of Sargon, and thus the Queen of all Akkad.
There is yet another, more intriguing possibility – that she is Enheduanna, the daughter of Sargon.
In the modern world, Enheduanna is perhaps more famous than her father.
Enheduanna is the first author in world history that we know by name (Mesopotamian scribes didn’t sign their literary compositions). Not too many people know about Sargon the Great,
but lots of people (mostly women) know about his illustrious daughter, Enheduanna.
There has been some academic debate on whether Enheduanna actually wrote all of the literature that has been ascribed to her. That’s because the earliest known Babylonian copies of her work are dated centuries after her death. Personally, I think it means something
that the very best Akkadian literature is credited to Enheduanna. She is noticeably better
than the Babylonian writers.
Like all royal Akkadian women, Enheduanna was also a high priestess. Sargon assigned her
to the temple of Nanna, the moon god, in the Sumerian city of Ur. This was one of the most important cities that Sargon had conquered.
The Enheduanna disk. It shows the high priestess Enheduanna performing a
religious ceremony in the temple of Inanna, the goddess of war.
She wears the royal kaunakes, but her hair is loose and she has a different headdress
that conforms to the appropriate attire for the Sumerian temple.
The back of the disk included a heavily damaged inscription that originally stated,
“Enheduana, zirru priestess (of Nanna), the wife of Nanna, daughter of Sargon,
king of the world, built an altar in the temple of Inanna-Zaza, at Ur, and named it
‘The Table of Heaven.’”
Enheduanna’s father Sargon had a great affinity for the goddess of war.
Profile view of Enheduanna.
During the preceding Early Dynastic period, human portraits were rather crude. The faces were generic, without any attempt to make them resemble the people they portrayed. Portraits became more natural and realistic during the Neo-Sumerian revival (like the
statues of Gudea and Ur-Namma, for instance) but until now there has never been
a realistic portrait of a person from Akkad.
This is a realistic portrait of Enheduanna. Her profile (with her slight double chin)
is done precisely. It very much resembles the profile of Enheduanna that is shown
on her disk. The frontal view, with the exception of the ubiquitous joined-eyebrows
of Mesopotamian statues, is also done precisely.
It's inevitable that a statue of Enheduanna was made to look like this – with the
royal kaunakes, the headband, the hairstyle, the knotted bun, the inlaid eyes, and
all the rest of it.
Enheduanna is one of the few women who was important enough in her lifetime
to warrant a large realistic portrait carved in stone.
This may not be the “glamor shot” of Enheduanna that many people would hope for,
but is shows us exactly how Enheduanna looked in real life. You would recognize
this woman if she walked into the room.
(p.s. I cannot say this statue is officially the first realistic portrait in history because
it does not have her name on it, and there are no other statues of Enheduanna
that I can compare it to.)
Enheduanna was a princess, a poet, and a priestess. She is one of the most fascinating women who ever lived.
Enheduanna. This is one of the most important statues in the world today.
Looking at this statue is just like looking at Enheduanna, the woman herself.
It’s hard to believe that it can be anyone else but her.
As explained on a separate page, this mother is an unknown Akkadian queen.
The cylinder seal is from a rich grave in the Tombs of Ur. It is dated in the Akkadian period
(ca. 2334–2154 BC). When I first saw it I thought, “Hmm... an Akkadian woman, in Ur,
at the time of the Akkadian occupation... I wonder if it is Enheduanna.”
Then I realized there was slight problem with this assumption.
Enheduanna was a priestess, a celibate. She didn’t have kids.
Nonetheless, this got me to thinking about Enheduanna in a whole different way:
Enheduanna’s personal life
Most people (myself included) tend to think of Enheduanna as a young woman, a princess.
We imagine her as a strong and independent “career woman” who busied herself with
her glamorous job being a priestess and a royal aristocrat. We don’t think of her as a wife,
a mother, or even a daughter (except for being descended from Sargon).
On the disk, Enheduanna calls herself “the wife of Nanna,” the moon god. I thought this
was merely a symbolic title, because most Mesopotamian priestesses were not celibate.
For instance, Sasha, the wife of king Urukagina, was a priestess in the temple of Baba.
(Temple of) Baba/ Shasha/ wife of Urukagina.
Royal women (queens/princesses) often served in temples. If they were celibates, then
it would spell the end of their dynasties (!)
I assumed that Enheduanna had a husband and children that we never heard about.
Every princess was expected to marry, to create an alliance with a powerful noble family.
Every princess was also expected to have children, hopefully many children, to provide
an heir, and to create even more future alliances. (For the record, the same expectations
were applied to a male prince: get married, have children, and thus provide for the safety
and stability of the realm.) It seems that Sargon would insist on Enheduanna having
many children, He had a vast empire to govern, so he wanted to staff it with many of his
loyal family members.
Instead Sargon decides his young daughter is going to be celibate priestess. Obviously Enheduanna didn’t have a say in the matter.
It wasn’t easy being the daughter of Sargon. Everyone was afraid of him, including Enheduanna no doubt. Sargon had to govern millions of people, so he didn’t have
a lot of time to be an attentive father to his daughter, even if he was so inclined.
Sargon was, to put it mildly, a hard-ass. He unleashed a violent civil war against
his rightful king (Ur-Zababa, the grandson of Ku-Baba). In so doing he created a
“river of blood.” Then he executed Ur-Zababa.
Sargon holds a net full of prisoners,
men he captured during the civil war.
Ur-Zababa struggles to escape from
the net. Sargon clubs him with a mace.
After Sargon defeated the Sumerian king Lugalzagesi, he paraded him through the streets
in a neck stock. Then he forced Lugalzagesi to watch the construction of a victory stele commemorating his own defeat. After the stele was completed, Lugalzagesi was executed. Then Sargon forced Lugalzagesi’s widow to marry him so he could unite Sumer and Akkad under a single dynasty.
Vultures and war dogs feed on the bodies of dead Sumerian soldiers.
Enheduanna, the woman
It wasn’t easy being the daughter of Sargon. Everyone was afraid of him, including Enheduanna no doubt. Sargon had to govern millions of people, so he didn’t have
a lot of time to be an attentive father to his daughter, even if he was so inclined.
Then Sargon shipped Enheduanna off to a foreign land, to be the benign face of his
military regime. The Sumerian were a proud people. They hated Sargon, positively
hated him, because had taken away their freedom. By extension they hated Enheduanna too. Being an apologist for her father (like she had any other choice) did not endear Enheduanna
to the Sumerians. It’s doubtful that she had a single Sumerian friend. She probably
socialized only with her Akkadian entourage, but even then she was isolated by being
the daughter of the dictator. She couldn’t be sure if anyone sincerely liked her, or if
they were merely trying to curry favor with her father.
I believe that Enheduanna was lonely, cut off from any real companionship. I think
the only time she felt truly content is when she was writing. It was the only time
when she could shut out the world, think her own thoughts, and just be herself.
Her face is an enigma. Is she looking at you with clear-eyed intelligence, or is she
staring into middle distance, keeping her opinions to herself. I will let you make up
your own mind about what you can see in her face.
To me, her face looks sad. Perhaps it’s because of the vacant eyes, or maybe it’s
because I think her life was not as fulfilling and glamorous as it is made out to be.
It was a stressful and demanding life, filled with onerous responsibilities. It was not
the life she chose, but the life that was forced upon her.
Yet she somehow persevered, and made herself famous – in her own right.
Now she is more famous than her father.
It is said that Enheduanna died young, when she was only 35 years old,
but now she lives forever.
Today, in the modern age, Enheduanna is a feminist icon. She certainly
deserves the proper recognition for her achievements, but let us not forget
the woman behind the myth.
January 9, 2026
