Kristin Ann King

I’ve been fascinated by Mesopotamia ever since my tenth grade history class, when my outstanding teacher, Mr. Felt, taught me about the birthplace of writing. (Although I’ve since learned that it writing was developed in other places at around the same time, give or take a thousand years.) I’ve also been in love with the epic of Gilgamesh ever since I read the novelization Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg.

But I had absolutely no idea of how much Sumerian literature survives, nor the extent to which goddesses figured in Sumerian story, myth, and poem. And I also did not know that the first person ever to sign her name to a text was a woman.

Her name was Enheduanna. Her father, Sargon, came to Sumer from the nearby country of Akkadia, and conquered the city-states that had previously been warring. He appointed Enheduanna as high priestess. She collected all the temple hymns from all the city-states in one place. At the end of it, she wrote:

“The compiler of the tablets was En-edu-ana. My king, something has been created that no one has created before.”

I get chills when I read that.

I first learned about Enheduanna a year or so back I went to a reading by Cass Dalglish, who wrote Humming the Blues: Inspired by Nin-Me-Sar-Ra, Enheduanna’s Song to Inanna.. It’s a “jazz translation” rather than a literal one, which makes the text come alive with passion and music. Dalglish points out that most translations of the cuneiform fix a single meaning to the words, but multiple readings are possible. So for each line, she took all the possible readings and then wrote a verse of poetry.

Having read Humming the Blues, I couldn’t help but wonder: what does the more traditional translation look like? I wanted the “authentic,” “authoritative” reading of the text. But I wanted the impossible. Sumer vanished with the birth of the Babylonian empire, and what’s left of their culture comes to us in stories passed on to other peoples and fragments of broken clay tablets.

I also couldn’t help but wonder: when did Enheduanna live, relative to the epic of Gilgamesh?

And so I began a journey into the heart of Sumer.

In the next post, I’ll write about Inanna and Nanshe — the goddess of writing and the goddess of social justice.

My book group has shrunk in size, and I’m now facing a dilemma. Grow it or leave it? One of the members recently expressed dissatisfaction at the lack of seriousness – people showing up without having read the book, and showing up not ready for a good discussion. I realized I’ve been batting fifty/fifty for a little while now. Last year I read ’em all, but this year there’s a higher proportion of books that I don’t like. And really, if I don’t like a book, there’s no way I’m going to finish it.

Our most recent book group meeting was pretty unfortunate. I actually read the book – in fact, I spent weeks struggling through it. But my kid vomited that morning, my spouse was working overtime, and on top of that, we were expecting house guests. So I didn’t go, and neither did one of the other four – which left two people, one who had read the book and one who had only gotten part of the way through.

The two things we need, if book group is to keep going, is: 1) more serious members; and 2) one or more people to enforce our rules. I don’t want to be a rule-enforcer. Too burned out by life generally.

Am I really a book group person? I’m not sure. I wouldn’t be in book group if the selection of books, generally speaking, wasn’t so fabulous. I get exposed to books I would never otherwise read, like The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Affinity, and What is the What?

Here’s our list for the past three years:

2010-2011
> 1. other voices, other rooms – truman capote (august 3)
> 2. south of broad – pat conroy
> 3. affinity – sarah waters
> 4. tam lin – pamela dean
> 5. the housekeeper & the professor – yoko ogawa
> 6. logicomix: epic search for truth – apostolos doxiadis
> 7. the forgotten garden – kate morton
> 8. brick lane – monica ali

2009-2010
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis
Jamie Ford, Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet
Gwyneth Jones, Life: a novel
Junot Diaz, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao
Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time
May Sarton, A House By the Sea

List 2008-2009
June 17, 2008
Animal, vegetable, miracle : a year of food life
Kingsolver, Barbara

July 29, 2008
What is the what : the autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng : a novel
Eggers, Dave

September 9, 2008
The beautiful things that heaven bears
Mengestu, Dinaw

October 21, 2008
Moral disorder : stories
Atwood, Margaret Eleanor

December 2, 2008
Let the Northern Lights erase your name : a novel
Vida, Vendela

January 13, 2009
If on a winter’s night a traveler
Calvino, Italo

February 24, 2009
Cat’s Cradle
Vonnegut, Kurt

April 7, 2009
Oh pure and radiant heart
Millet, Lydia