Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Plan your visit. 225 Madison Avenue at 36th Street, New York, NY 10016.

Disk of Enheduanna

Audio

The fragmentary inscription on this disk was recovered from a copy on an Old Babylonian (ca. 1894–1595 BC) tablet, recorded hundreds of years after the disk’s dedication by Enheduanna. The scene carved on the opposite side shows an open-air sacred precinct with a multistory edifice at left. Enheduanna occupies the center, depicted slightly larger than her attendants to reflect her status. Two priests behind her carry ritual paraphernalia; the one in front of her pours a libation on an altar. Enheduanna wears a tiered, flounced garment and a headdress in the form of a circlet, both of which became canonical for her successors. Her hand gesture sanctions the ritual. Her well-sculpted visage gazes upward, from the mortal world to the numinous realm of Inanna.

Disk of Enheduanna, daughter of Sargon
Mesopotamia, Akkadian, Ur (modern Tell el-Muqayyar), gipar
Akkadian period, ca. 2300 BC
Cuneiform inscription in Sumerian: En-h[e]du-ana, zirru priestess, wife of the god Nanna, daughter of Sargon, [king] of the world, in [the temple of the goddess Inan]na-ZA.ZA in [U]r, made a [soc]le (and) named it: ‘dais, table of (the god) An.’
Alabaster
University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Philadelphia, USA, Excavated 1926; B16665

Courtesy of the Penn Museum

Transcription

Sidney Babcock: Excavated in Enheduanna's sacred dwelling in Ur, this alabaster disk is the only surviving artwork that records both her name and image. On one side, there are traces of a cuneiform inscription identifying Enheduanna as the wife of the god Nanna and the daughter of King Sargon. This text was copied on a tablet centuries after her lifetime, confirming the longevity of her legacy. Thanks to that copy, we know that Enheduanna dedicated this enigmatic disk to a temple to commemorate the construction of a hallowed dais.

The carving on the other side shows a ritual taking place before a stepped edifice. Enheduanna is at the center, depicted taller than the priests accompanying her. She wears a flounced garment and a headdress in the form of a circlet, both of which became characteristic features of high priestesses for centuries to come. The priest before her is pouring a libation over an altar, while Enheduanna is overseeing this ceremony and sanctioning it with her hand gesture. By doing so, she is continuing a ritual established in the cult practices of the Sumerians as represented by the frontally depicted woman on the wall plaque described in Stop 10, exhibition object number 41. Her well-sculpted visage gazes upward, from the world of the mortals to that of the divine.