Ennigaldi lived in the 6th century BCE. She had 3 careers. One was as a school administrator, running a school for priestesses that was already over eight centuries old when she took over. Another was as a museum curator. And still another was as a high priestess (the en-priestess). Archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley notes in his work that her father king Nabonidus called her Belshalti-Nannar when she became the High Priestess of Nannar at Ur. Ennigaldi became high priestess in 547 BCE.
“Princess Ennigaldi-Nanna, daughter of Nabonidus, where are you going at this early hour? Even the snow-breasted eagles beloved of Zu have not yet stirred from their nests in the swamp. What business have you abroad?”
An exasperated sigh came from the darkened corner as the sacred incense of Ninlil tumbled to the ground. “By the seven gods who decree, Barossus! You scared me, as even Thoth of Diltat was scared unto death by the white-headed snake of the Snakelands.”
“Sorry, Princess. I — you’re not going out like that, are you?”
A pair of long, brown hands flew to her face. “Going out like what?”
Barossus gestured toward the mirror. “Speaking of the white-headed snakes of the Snakelands…”
The princess groaned. “Oh, Lords. My hair.” She sat down in front of the mirror.
“Why do you steal forth from your chambers in practically the dead of night, hair all in disarray? You should be asleep, dreaming the dreams that Zaqar breathes into your ear.”
“I know,” Ennigaldi said, exchanging her pinstriped tunic for a slightly less showy version in navy blue before pinning her locs over her right ear. “It’s just that there’s been so much extra work going on at the school now that we’re trying to open before the rainy season, and all of my docents still don’t understand what a museum is yet or what “no flash photography” means — Goddess of the plains, I still have to invent flash photography — and I’m not even ready to think about how many cattle I have to slay at the steps of the temple of Lahar for the cattle-slaying festival this afternoon. Did you get my cattle scythe sharpened this week like I asked?”
Uncomfortable silence.
“Another thing to do myself, then,” she said. “Sometimes I wonder if you have any idea, the pressure I’m under. Do you realize that none of my professors know how to write cuneiform? They’ve all been teaching with pictographs. Pictographs! Like a bunch…like a bunch of Chaldeans. So now I have to teach everyone cuneiform, on top of all of my other many duties. And there are only about fifty pieces of papyrus in the whole kingdom. So I have about twenty-five chances to teach nine Hittite idiots how to write, and then get them to write down everything meaningful in our entire culture in another twenty-five pages.”
“I’m so sorry, princess,” Barossus said, although it didn’t quite feel like enough.
“It’s fine,” she said. “I’ll be near the scythe-sharpener anyhow. I’m chairing the PTA meeting next door.”
“PTA?” Barossus asked.
“The Phrygian-Thrace Assault. We’re conquering the armies of Thrace and Phrygia next week. Expanding our borders to the west and to the east, even unto the gates of the dawn.”
“That’s great news.”
Another sigh. “How I’m supposed to govern the lands east and west even unto the gates of the dawn, I have no idea. You know what they do in the lands of the west, Barossus?”
“I fear I don’t, Majesty.”
“Yeah, well. Neither do I. So that makes two of us equally qualified to rule the peoples of the lands of the west. By Hendursaga, I hope they have some papyrus. Or at least astronomy. I’ve been meaning to invent astronomy, you know. It’s been on my to-do list since forever.” A pause. “At least I invented to-do lists.”
“You seem unhappy, Princess.”
“I am unhappy, Barossus. I don’t know what made me think I could be high priestess and invent and run the first museum and open a school for women and expand the borders of my father’s empire. Maybe I was just trying to have it all.” She stood at the window and looked out at the first bleary fingers of the sunrise as they combed through the barley fields.
“But you do have it all, Princess. You literally own everything that the eye can see. The sheep and the goats that graze in the hills are yours. The temples and the ziggurats and the flesh-houses of the city are yours. The looms and the weavers and the silks and the spice-masters are yours. The people are yours. The roads are yours. The fields and the irrigation systems and the bathhouses are yours. Everything belongs to you, and to you alone. What is it that you lack?”
She waved him aside. “You know what I mean.” Another silence. “Maybe you really do need a man to have it all,” she said, more to herself than anyone else.
“Princess — please — do rip this head from its unworthy body and feed it to the razor-beaked hawks of Thoth if I have failed to understand you, but you have many men. Just outside the door to this chamber sleep seventeen of the choicest laborers of the field, any one of whom would gladly give their life for you. Many of them are raising your twelve children.”
Princess Ennigaldi shook her head. “I knew you wouldn’t understand.”
Tags: babylonia, ennigaldi-nanna, history, mesopotamia, the first museum curator
My love for the badassery of the ladies of Sumer and Akkad know no bounds. Do Enheduanna next!
I am delighted that this is a real thing! I think you are missing a Wikipedia link up there, though.
Here’s an article at io9 from a few years ago about the museum.
I would read an entire book about this. I’m sure your publishers would not mind if instead of Texts From you just turned in a 1000 page novelization of the life of Ennigaldi.
I was JUST thinking there should be more historical fiction about ancient Mesopotamia. I would read the shit out of that.
There’s Shirley Graetz’s She Wrote On Clay, which I have not yet read but which is apparently meticulously researched and written with love.
Try “The Assyrian”, by Nicholas Guild. One of the best books I’ve ever read. It continues and concludes in “The Blood Star”.
I inexplicably died laughing at “Pictographs! Like a bunch…like a bunch of Chaldeans.”
THANKS MALLORY NOW I’M DEAD
It is killing me that I can’t find any modern commentary on her museum– it’s all pop archaeology/pop history or biographies of Woolley, no one examining the museum itself. Or her. LIke, at all. Am I looking for the wrong thing on JSTOR? Is there some other romanization of her name? C’mon, you guys, who’s the Akkadian expert around here?
Yeah, it’s generally really hard to search for Assyriological stuff online, but you could try also writing her name “En-nigaldi-nanna” or doing what Anne suggested. I actually do have access to the Oriental Institute, and I tried to find out some stuff about the museum this afternoon, and all I could find so far was Woolley’s description, so maybe it’s just not respected at all as an idea and therefore not written about by Assyriologists? But it was weird, you’d expect someone to have written something since it’s such a cool idea. However, I am really bad at using the database, so I’ll keep looking since I don’t know that much about the field and could have been searching in the completely wrong places.
Weirdly, I read the text where Nabonidus consecrates her as the entu-priestess only last week for my Akkadian class, and it’s really great and an example of how interested Neo-Babylonian royalty was at the time in placing themselves within the narrative of the history of Babylonia, particularly Ur. So if you’re interested in her and that idea in general, you could read the translation and commentary on it in Erica Reiner’s book on Poetry from Babylonia and Assyria.
It's almost impossible to search on JSTOR for Akkadian or Sumerian names, as it's really hard to predict how the name will have been transliterated (and Assyriologists will generally use special characters in transliterating the names, making it even harder because at least when I was in grad school I don't think JSTOR supported using them in searches, at least not easily). Also many, if not most, major Assyriological publications aren't on JSTOR or on any kind of online database. It is a nightmare field full of literal dusty old books, very little scholarship on women in the first place, very little recent scholarship on the Neo-Babylonian period at all, sooooooo basically sorry to be a wet blanket but yeah, trying to find anything legit on her is going to be rough if you don't have access to the library at, like, Yale or the Oriental Institute at Chicago.
(I'd recommend trying a bunch of searches that don't use her name, like, "Nabonidus daughter" or "Neo-babylonian women", and hope you get lucky.)
This is everything.
Is this a safe space to geek out about my homegirl Enheduanna too?
I just have to say how excellent your avatar is.
Why thank you! It is an excellent direction.
Nabonidus’ mother was a high priestess of Nanna who got booted out of Haran by the Medes/Scythians. It’s one of the main reasons Nabonidus moved to Tema (in Arabia) and left his son Belshazzar running things in Babylon. Tema was also a center of moon worship.