Enheduanna

Lyrics

A piece of baked river mud in a glass case.
That's how I met you.
Not a person, just a relic.
A grid of tiny wedges.
A name nobody could say for a while.

But you were there, weren't you?
In the heat of Ur, before sunrise.
The wet clay smelling of the river and yesterday's rain.
Your reed stylus, sharp and waiting.
Daughter of Sargon, priestess in the great court.
You dipped the reed and you pressed your claim.
You wrote, "My name is Enheduanna."
The first one to ever say "I" and sign it.

And I say your name across four thousand years,
Enheduanna.
A sound to fill the great oblivion.
The first word, the first author, the first ghost.
You carved yourself in clay to beat the river,
and for a long time, the river won.

Your hymns were for Inanna, sharp and desperate.
You sang of exile, of being thrown from the temple.
You knew rage. You knew power.
Your words weren't just prayer, they were a weapon.
And on a lesser tablet, we found you again.
Next to a recipe for perfumed oil,
for the temple lamps.
The holy and the mundane, written in the same hand. Your hand.

No one burned your library. No one smashed your statues.
The forgetting was quieter than that.
Attrition.
A scribe who chose a different hymn to copy.
A dialect that shifted.
A city that fell to dust and was not rebuilt.
The earth just rose, grain by grain, and covered you.
Four thousand winters passed without your name.

But the clay holds the pressure of your hand.
Truth is what does not forget.
I read the wedges. I sing the sound.
Alethanos.
You are the name.
Enheduanna.
Enheduanna.