by Rev. Caryn MacLuan, originally read during a Cedarlight Grove Sunday morning service.
I’ve recently started reading a book called “Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author” by Sophus Helle. It’s about a high priestess who served in the city of Ur around 2300 BCE and wrote hymns to the gods that have been found. For context, Ancient Sumer is described as the earliest known civilization that existed in the region of southern Mesopotamia from roughly 5000-1700 BCE. In researching I found various dates but they were around the same periods. Enheduana lived around 2300 BCE. Now for the sake of context and possible apologetics, Abraham, of the bible, is thought to have been born mid 1800 BCE, again the dates vary.
I read the first small hymn in the book at CedarLight’s Sunday morning service 1/21 and it was well received. Here is a small hymn to Inanna an as the author points out, she “conveys the terrifying and unpredictable power of Inanna.” (p ix)
To destroy and
“Enheduana: The Complete Poems of the World’s First Author” by Sophus Helle
to create, to plant
and to pluck out
are yours, Inanna.
To turn men into
women, to turn
women into men
are yours, Inanna
[……………………..] (unreadable)
To step, to stride,
to strive, to arrive
are yours, Inanna.
To turn brutes
into weaklings
and to make the
powerful puny
are yours, Inanna
To reverse peaks
and plains, to raise
up and to reduce
are yours, Inanna.
I assign, allot
the crown, throne
and staff of kings
are yours, Inanna
What caught my eye and caused me to present it is that she attributes Inanna with the inversion of the sexes which, in my opinion, it was something which was happening and thus is being attributed to the Queen of Heaven. This was approximately 4300 years ago and Inanna had been around back to ~4000 BCE so we could say that Inanna has probably been doing this for ~6000 years. Biblegateway.com tells me that the old testament was completed ~400 BCE. So in my mind, Inanna trumps Abraham and the OT by 1000 to 3000 years, and if nothing else it speaks to the fact that there were transgendered folks living as the opposite sex they were born as and thus inspired our priestess. Your milage may vary. At any rate, we all enjoyed it and now one of my grovemates wants to do perform a dark moon Sumerian rite to Inanna involving the underworld next October.
