The World

The familial footsteps on Happisburgh beach were rapidly destroyed by the tides – but it would be several hundreds of thousands of years before the beginning of what we call history.

ACT ONE

WORLD POPULATION:

70,000 BC: 150,000

10,000 BC: 4 million

5000 BC: 5 million

2000 BC: 27 million

1000 BC: 50 million

Houses of Sargon and Ahmose: Ziggurats and Pyramids

POETESS, PRINCESS, VICTIM, AVENGER: ENHEDUANNA

Four thousand years ago, Enheduanna was at the height of her splendour when a raider invading the empire attacked her city, seized her and evidently raped her. Not only did she survive but she was restored to power – and recovered by writing about her ordeal. Enheduanna was the first woman whose words we can hear, the first named author, male or female, the first victim of sexual abuse who wrote about her experiences, and a female member of the first dynasty whom we can know as individuals. She was as privileged as you can get in the 2200s BC – a princess of the Akkadian empire (based in Iraq), high priestess of the moon goddess and favourite daughter of the first conqueror that we know of: Sargon. But like every empire, it all depended on power and violence – and when the empire tottered it was she, a woman, who endured that downfall in the form of sexual violence.

She was probably in her thirties, politically experienced as the long-serving high priestess of the moon goddess Nanna or Sin, and potentate of the city of Ur, but still young enough to bear children. Brought up at the court of her father, Sargon, king of the Four Quarters of the World, from the Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf, daughter of his favourite queen Tashlultum, she believed passionately in her patron goddess but she also enjoyed the luxury of royalty: she appears on a disk wearing a fluted robe and cap and tightly plaited hair, performing a ritual at her temple. She presided over a huge staff – as testified by the seals of ‘Adda, estate manager of Enheduanna’ and ‘Sagadu the scribe’ – but fashion and hairstyle were also important: one seal reads ‘Ilum Palilis hairdresser of Enheduanna child of Sargon’. In her temple complex, Enheduanna had her hair plaited by Ilum Palilis – the first named fashionista in history – as she dictated orders to Sagadu about her estates, the temple herds and her poetry. Her hymns praised the goddess – ‘when she speaks heaven shakes’ – and of course her father, ‘my King’. But then some time after his death, when his sons and grandsons struggled to hold the empire together, a raider, or a rebel known as Lugal (king), launched a coup and somehow seized the princess-priestess-poetess herself. Possessing her won him the prestige of Sargon the Great; if he could father a child by her, he might found a dynasty, ennobled by the blood of Sargon. Enheduanna knew what she faced: ‘Oh moon god Sin, is this Lugal my destiny?’ she wrote. ‘Tell heaven to set me free of it!’ It sounds as if she was raped by this upstart: ‘That man has defiled the rites decreed by holy heaven … Forcing his way in as if he was an equal, he dared approach me in his lust.’ She remembered it viscerally as any woman would: ‘a slobbery hand was laid across my honeyed mouth’. And he removed her from her beloved temple: ‘When Lugal stood paramount, he expelled me from the temple, flying out of the window like a swallow.’

But she was lucky: the empire struck back. Her brother or nephew routed Lugal and reconquered the Akkadian empire, thus liberating Enheduanna and restoring her as high priestess. How did she grieve for her pain and celebrate her survival? She did what writers do: she wrote. And she wrote proudly: ‘I am Enheduanna, let me speak to you! My prayer, my tears flowing like some sweet intoxicant. I went towards the shade. It shrouded me in swirling dust.’

The exact date and precise details of this episode are obscure but we know she existed and we know her words: in her survival as a woman, not to speak of her record as author and ruler, she represents the experience of women throughout history, as ruler, writer, victim, whose survival she herself celebrates unforgettably as a goddess ‘in a queenly robe … riding on leashed lions’, slashing ‘her enemies to pieces’ – quite an image and a voice both astonishingly modern and very much of the twenty-third century BC.