The Temple Hymns
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A single collection of hymns to forty-two temples across Sumer and Akkad, closing with a claimed author's own name, argues that a unified authorship can bind a whole kingdom's scattered holy places into a single literary map.
- temple-by-temple survey of the empire's cult centers
- explicit authorial colophon
- literature as political unification
- Enheduanna's dual role as priestess and poet
A cycle of forty-two hymns, one for each major temple of Sumer and Akkad, closing with a colophon in which Enheduanna claims authorship of the whole collection, 'my king, something has been created that no one has created before.' Composed alongside the Exaltation of Inanna during her tenure as high priestess of Nanna at Ur, the collection reads as a literary counterpart to Sargon's political unification, binding the empire's cult centers into one authored text.
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