Position in chronology
Disk of Enheduanna
Translation · reference
High confidenceLady of all the divine powers, resplendent light, righteous woman clothed in radiance, beloved of An and Uraš …
Source: ETCSL t.4.07.2 (Black, Cunningham, Robson, Zólyomi)
Translation · AI engine
read from photoLady of all the divine powers, resplendent in the light — Great lady, wise in the ways of heaven …
4 uncertain terms ↓
- u4 dalla è-a — 'u4' is polysemous: 'day,' 'sun,' 'light,' 'storm-wind.' 'dalla è-a' means 'to appear brilliantly' or 'to rise resplendent.' Some translators render the phrase as 'who appears gloriously in daylight' or 'blazing forth in light.' The storm interpretation is minority but not impossible given Inanna's martial aspects.
- gal-an-zu — Could be parsed as gal (great) + an-zu (one who knows heaven), yielding 'great one, wise in heaven.' Alternatively, Anzû is the mythological storm-bird, and the epithet might evoke that figure. Most translators prefer 'great in wisdom' or 'greatly knowing.' Zgoll reads 'great, wise one.'
- me-šár-ra — 'me' are the divine powers or cosmic offices; 'šár-ra' means 'in their totality / all.' The phrase thus means 'all the divine powers collectively.' The exact nuance of 'šár' (totality, 3600, universe) is debated.
- nin — Standard reading 'lady / mistress,' applied here to Inanna. No ambiguity in sign reading, but the theological weight of 'nin' as sovereign/divine lady deserves note.
Reasoning ↓
Visual examination of the photograph: this is the famous alabaster Disk of Enheduanna (Penn Museum B16665 / P356549), a circular relief plaque approximately 25 cm in diameter. The surface is cream-to-buff alabaster with considerable erosion and some ancient breakage, particularly in the upper register and lower half of the disk. The central carved relief band shows four figures in procession before a stepped ziggurat altar: a tall robed figure (likely Enheduanna herself in the characteristic flounced kaunakes garment with a distinctive headdress), a nude libation-pouring figure, and two attendants — one at far right carrying a vessel. The upper register shows faint traces of what may be cuneiform inscription, but the resolution and surface erosion make individual wedge signs impossible to read with confidence from this photograph; I cannot verify the transliteration visually. The transliteration 'nin-me-šár-ra u4 dalla è-a / nin gal-an-zu …' matches the well-known opening of Enheduanna's hymn 'Ninmešarra' (also called the 'Exaltation of Inanna'), the earliest attributed authored literary text in history. Standard scholarly readings (Zgoll 1997; Hallo & van Dijk 1968) give 'nin-me-šár-ra' as 'Lady of all the me (divine powers),' 'u4 dalla è-a' as 'rising brilliantly in light/day,' and 'nin gal-an-zu' as 'great wise lady' or 'great lady who knows heaven.' The partial transliteration provided aligns with the opening two lines of this hymn as reconstructed from multiple tablet sources.
Generated by claude-sonnet-4-6 · prompt 2026-05-11/v2 · May 11, 2026 · 2509 in / 852 out tokens
Why it matters
The literary tradition is no longer anonymous from this point. Authorship — the idea that a specific human voice composes a specific work — enters the historical record with her.
Transliteration
nin-me-šár-ra u4 dalla è-a / nin gal-an-zu …
Scholarly note
Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon and high priestess of Nanna at Ur, signs her hymns. The pictured calcite disk shows her presiding over a libation ritual — and bears her name. She is the first author in human history we can name, and she is a woman.
Attribution
Image: Penn Museum, via Wikimedia Commons. source
Translation excerpted from ETCSL t.4.07.2 (Black, Cunningham, Robson, Zólyomi).
Related tablets
Related sources
One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
Marks the boundary between proto-writing and writing. We can see signs being used systematically — but not yet phonetically. The leap to recording speech itself comes a few centuries later.
The earliest historical document in human history. Before this, we have lists, accounts, and dedications. Here, for the first time, a ruler tells us what happened — with names, places, and consequences.