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Enheduanna: Princess, Priestess, Poet, and Mathematician

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  • Jemma Lorenat, Editor
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Acknowledgments

The author gratefully acknowledges permission to use poems and high-resolution images from Oxford University, The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature for excerpts from “The Herds of Nanna”; the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology for the Enheduanna Disk (Figure 1); Yale University’s Peabody Museum of Natural History for YBC 7289 (Figure 3); Columbia University’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library for Plimpton 322 (Figure 5). Many thanks to Kevin Marinelli and Claudine Burns Smith for help with enhancing the images and to David Kramer for valuable editing suggestions. Also, thanks are due to the anonymous reviewer for the careful reading of the manuscript and the many helpful suggestions, which improved the content and presentation of this paper.

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  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, USA

    Sarah Glaz

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Correspondence to Sarah Glaz.

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Years Ago features essays by historians and mathematicians that take us back in time. Whether addressing special topics or general trends, individual mathematicians or "schools" (as in schools of fish), the idea is always the same: to shed new light on the mathematics of the past. Submissions are welcome.

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Appendix: Mesopotamia Timeline

Appendix: Mesopotamia Timeline

The timeline below shows the major events and the literary and mathematical accomplishments of the Mesopotamian civilization discussed in this paper (whose time frame is approximately 5400–400 BCE). In addition to the sources cited in the text for each accomplishment or event, I have used the historical timelines from [7], [25, Mesopotamia Timeline], and [29]. The last dateable cuneiform tablet is believed to have been written about 500 years after the end of this stretch of time, ca. 70 CE.

Periods (all dates are BCE)

Selected events, works, and people

ca. 7600–3500

First shrine to the god Enki in Eridu (ca. 5400).

Irrigation and agriculture begin in earnest (ca. 5000).

Building of the first walled city, Uruk (ca. 4500).

Late Uruk

(ca. 4100–2900)

First city-states.

Building of Ur (ca. 4000).

Invention of writing by the Sumerians (proto cuneiform, ca. 3500).

The Flood (ca. 2900).

Early Dynastic

(ca. 2900–2350)

Gilgamesh, king of Uruk (ca. 2750).

Cuneiform writing fully developed.

Earliest literary text: tablets from The Epic of Gilgamesh (ca. 2100).

Metrological numeration systems.

Earliest tablets of mathematical problem sets.

Old Akkadian

(ca. 2350–2200)

Sargon of Akkad (2323–2278) founded the first empire and dynasty.

Enheduanna (ca. 2300), the world’s first author known by name.

Dating of the Enheduanna Disk, B16665 (ca. 2300).

Composition of The Temple Hymns of Enheduanna and her other poems.

Ur III or Sumerian Renaissance

(ca. 2100–2000)

The sexagesimal place-value number system becomes the standard numeration system (ca. 2000).

The construction of the Ur-Nammu Ziggurat (ca. 2100).

Old Babylonian

(ca. 2000–1600)

Composition of The Herds of Nanna (ca. 1800).

Dating of the majority of mathematical tablets.

YBC 7289 (ca. 1600–1800).

Plimpton 322 (ca. 1820–1762).

Kassite

(ca. 1600–1100)

Standard version of The Epic of Gilgamesh, compiled by the Uruk scribe Sin-liqe-unninni (ca.1300–1000).

Water clocks used for administrative purposes (ca. 1300).

Middle and Neo-Assyrian

(ca. 1400–610)

Astronomical tablets: Astrolabes (ca. 1100 or older), MUL.APIN (ca. 687 or older).

Neo-Babylonian

(ca. 625–539)

Astronomical tablets: Enuma Anu Enlil (seventh century; some tablets in the collection are believed to be much older), the Venus Tablet of Ammizaduga (ca. 612 or older).

The construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon (ca. 580).

Persian and Macedonian

(ca. 539–300)

Standardization of calendrical intercalation practices (ca. 383–367).

Nabu-rimanni (fifth century), first mathematical astronomer whose name is known.

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Glaz, S. Enheduanna: Princess, Priestess, Poet, and Mathematician. Math Intelligencer 42, 31–46 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00283-019-09914-7

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