Mohsin Hamid's Idea | Reading From Back To Front Historically Speaking
The first named author in human history was a woman, Enheduanna
Our household gets one print newspaper, the New York Times arrives each Sunday morning on our driveway.
My favorite section is the Book Review, and in that section my favorite column is By the Book, interviews with writers on literature and the literary life.
This past week the interview was with Pakistani novelist Mohsin Hamid. In the interview when he is asked about what classics he has recently read for the first time (a standard question asked each week, he replies:
I began with the Sumerian “Instructions of Shuruppak,” first written in cuneiform on clay tablets around 4,600 years ago (it opens: “In those days, in those far remote days, in those nights, in those faraway nights…”), made my way through Egypt’s “The Maxims of Ptahhotep” and various of the Pyramid Texts, including the “Cannibal Hymn,” reached the Sumerian poems referred to as “Enheduanna’s Hymns” (I was struck by the fact that the first named author in human history was a woman, Enheduanna, and that I did not know this, and indeed that I had never heard of her or her poems before, which raised all sorts of questions in my mind, as it is perhaps now doing in yours), and eventually read “Gilgamesh,” written over 4,000 years ago, and while “Gilgamesh” is not exactly a novel (it is an epic told in verse), it certainly has much to teach us about narrative fiction, and I wish I had read it before and alongside the “Odyssey,” which I read in my first semester of college. They make for quite a pairing.
This led me down a rabbit hole and I went and found “Enheduanna’s Hymns.” They’re amazing, and you can read some selected translations here.
https://jacket2.org/commentary/enheduanna-2300-bce-seven-sumerian-temple-hymns
That’s it. That’s the whole post for today. Just some Sumerian poetry by Enheduanna for your first August Monday.
Pete Enns is an authority on Gilgamesh.