I’m a sucker for translations into Scots (see my encomium to MacDiarmid’s version of Blok), so how could I resist Robert Crawford’s “Enheduanna’s Song” (LRB, Vol. 47 No. 19 · 23 October 2025; archived):
A version in Scots of a Sumerian hymn to the goddess of love and war, attributed to the priestess Enheduanna of Ur (fl. 2255 BCE), the world’s earliest identifiable author. As well as praising the nurturing but also terrifying and vengeful goddess, daughter of the moon, the poem inveighs against the rebel King Lu-gal-an-ne, who has flung Enheduanna out of the goddess’s temple.
Leddy o aa the airts, aye-bleezin licht,
Gracie and lowin, luved by Heivin and Erd,
Gaird o the Heich Shrine, wi yir lang braw robe,
Fain o the richt gowd circlet o the priesthuid,
Wha’s haun has won aa o the seivin airts,
My Leddy, gaird o ivry unco airt!
Ye’ve gaithered the airts, ye’ve held them in yir haun,
Ye’ve braided the airts, smooricht thaim tae yir breist.Draigon-lik ye’ve pushionit the merse,
Yir thunnery rair wedes aa the flooirs awa,
Fleet wattir hurlygushin fae the muntain,
Foremaist Muin-Dochter, Queen o Heivin an Erd.
Ootpoorin fluffed flames doon aa ower the laund,
Graced wi the Heich God’s airts, baist-muntit Leddy,
Ye gie deliverances as the Heich God bids;
Ye awn grand rites – and wha can ken whit’s yours?O malafoosterer o launds, scowe-weengit,
Enlil’s beluivit, ye flichter ower the merse,
Meenister o the Heich God’s strang decreets,
O Leddy, at your soun the launds boo doon.
Whan mankind passes unnerneath yir een,
Frichtit and tremmlin at yir roilin bleeze,
Frae ye they get the upcome they deserve:
Wi sangs o scronach they brak doon and greit;
They trek tae ye alang the peth o souchs.
It goes on for many more stanzas; most of the vocabulary is decipherable with a bit of squinting, but I had to look up the wonderful malafooster ‘To destroy, wreck, ruin’ ([Mal(e)-, badly, + ? Ir. dial. fuster, to bustle, fuss.]; citation: “The big laddie’s malafoostered oor snowman”). (Enheduanna previously on LH.)
“Ir. dial. fuster” — now usually fooster; e.g. LH 2017
… or LH Sep 2025
I am struck by the reference to “aa o the saivin airts,” which evokes for me a decidedly post-Sumerian list (the Trivium + Quadrivium), but may have meant something else in initial context. Unless the 7 is a translational flourish not explicitly present in the original?
As to “the world’s earliest identifiable author,” see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enheduanna#Authorship_debate. Although “world’s earliest pseudonymous-or-false attribution” might itself be an achievement not to be scoffed at?
@J.W.: I first thought of “arts”, but “airt” can be “direction” or “quarter”.
Maybe seven directions: N, S, E, W, up, down, and in? Or seven regions?
Or not: “seven powers” here.
I note that “malafoosterer” seems rather semantically similar to the more elevated-register (because more transparently Latinate) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maleficent
Information on the Seven Powers of Inanna at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descent_of_Inanna_into_the_Underworld#Mythological_narratives
Don’t skip the note. Which is not to say I understood it. Maybe you have to be Sumerian.
Meh, which only shows once again that the Sumerians were the first to subvert religion that we know of.
@jf, jwb
The wikipedia does not try to enumerate the seven “divine powers” and the footnote 1 seems to imply there is no such enumeration. However,
—
The sign m e ( ) (also read as ĝ a r z a in Sumerian or parṣu in Akkadian)
can be translated with the meaning of “divine powers / ordinances”, “office”, “(cultic) ordinance” (Farber 1987-1990:610), which were systematised into lists with a prescriptive and liturgical scope (Oberhuber
1963; Farber-Flügge 1973; Rosengarten 1977; Emelianov 2009). The term also means “being” (Farber1987-1990:611).
—
https://www.aacademica.org/rodrigo.cabrera.pertusatti/16.pdf
I would guess the choice of 7 is in line with the 7 cities:
Uruk, Badtibira, Zabalam, Adab, Nippur, Kiš, and Akkad
Schwa de vivre could clarify, maybe?
Yes, I’m hoping he’ll show up.
Surely the powers correspond to the classical seven spheres/planets?
Understanding Planets in Ancient Mesopotamia
@pp: Yes, the powers are not enumerated at that article. I took the objects listed in this excerpt to be those through which the powers are “integrated into reality”.
LIne-breaks added.
A somewhat belated mathematical analysis suggests that the list comprises nine objects, but the Lazulite Module looks like a part of the Lazulite Necklace, especially since she “grabbed” it but put on the necklace and all the other ornaments.
The OED doesn’t have a specific lapidary sense of “module”, so maybe the translators used it to mean an unknown component of a necklace. “More generally: any more or less self-contained unit which goes to make up a complete set, a finished article, etc.”
And maybe the eye make-up isn’t one of the objects through which the powers etc. Or maybe the ornaments don’t correspond to the powers. Clarification would help indeed.
The reference I linked to actually explains that planetary ideas were more complicated than that, because folklore about the planets/stars changed over time, and the gods that mapped to the planets had priesthoods whose social standing and power changed over time as well. So, maybe the mapping is less obvious than I thought.
Malafooster is a wonderful word and is in my west-of-Ireland dialect, usually with the sense “beat up” and with a comical connotation. It’s been a while since I heard or used it, though.
The two Irish English dictionaries I have nearby (Dolan and Share) give the same etymology, with mal- from French, but when I wrote about fooster in 2015, I learned via the vox hiberionacum blog that this mal- was an established pattern in Irish, thanks to Latin, so it need not have been imported from French.
Thanks for lighting the schwa-signal, LH!
Sevens show up everywhere in Sumerian culture. In Inanna’s Descent, there are seven “me” (divine powers),* seven gates to the underworld (at each of which Inanna removes one aticle of clothing/me), seven judges (the Anunak, “the foremost ones of An”), and seven gala demons that tear apart Dumuzid.
The seven demons may be related to seven demons or warriors associated with the Pleiades. These “The Seven” appear in Mesopotamian culture as fierce beings who vary in their degree of bene/malevolence over the centuries. These warriors accompany Gilgamesh and Enkidu in their quest to defeat Humbaba.
Incidentally,the Etymological Dictionary of Akkadian includes “parṣu” in its first volume. I don’t have it on hand for the specifics, but they claim that Sumerian “ĝarza” is a loan of “parṣu,” which is certainly plausible, but the sign transcribed as “ĝ” is usually understood to be a velar nasal, and it’s odd that a Sumerian would hear an unvoiced (and probably unaspirated) Akkadian “p” as a velar nasal when Sumerian already has unaspirated and aspirated bilabial stops in its inventory. Emesal dialect pronounces “ĝarza” as “marza,” which is only slightly less weird as a loan of “parṣu,” but still doesn’t explain the main dialect form. Others have independently suggested that there’s something bilabial going on with the sign “ĝ,” but so far I haven’t seen any coherent theories about what exactly that something is.
* “Me” are abstract concepts related to “the proper order of things.” They include kingship, strength, strife, the craft of the fuller, etc. In the Descent of Inanna, they’re related to seven items of clothing (aparently the wig and mascara/kohl don’t count). In Inanna and Enki, they’re physical things that can be given away and stored in a specific place.
Thank you very məch!
Is the wig what the translation I quoted referred to as a turban?
The translation on Wikipedia refers to the wig as “heart-catchers,” whatever that means. The word in question is “hili,” which usually means “attractive(ness)” or “luxuriant,” sometimes sexually but also not (it is, for example, in different texts used to describe both a lover and a barge laden with grain at harvest). It also has “wig” as a secondary meaning, which might not have been discovered before the 1989 translation.
The CDLI has the original with a line-by-line translation (with the Wikipedia translation as a comparison):
17. tug2-szu-gur-ra men edin-na sag-ga2-na mu-un-gal2
(cdli) She put a turban, headgear for the open country, on her head.
(wiki) She donned the Turban, Crown-of-the-steppe;
18. hi-li sag-ki-na szu ba-ni-in-ti
(cdli) She took a wig for her forehead.
(wiki) Fixed the Heart-catchers on her forehead;
19. {na4}za-gin3 di4-di4-la2 gu2-na ba-an-la2
(cdli) She hung small lapis-lazuli beads around her neck.
(wiki) Grabbed the Lazulite Module; Adjusted the Lazulite Necklace around her neck
20. na4-nunuz tab-ba gaba-na ba-ni-in-si
(cdli) She placed twin egg-shaped beads on her breast.
(wiki) Elegantly arranged the Coupled Pearls on her throat;
21. {tug2}pala3 tug2 nam-nin-a bar-ra-na ba-an-dul
(cdli) She covered her body with a pala dress, the garment of ladyship.
(wiki) Wrapped her body in the pala, Royal Mantle,
22. szembi lu2 he2-em-du he2-em-du igi-na ba-ni-in-gar
(cdli) She placed mascara “Let a man come, let him come” on her eyes.
(wiki) And painted her eyes with the “Come! Come!” makeup.
23. tu-di-da lu2 ga2-nu ga2-nu gaba-na ba-an-gid2
(cdli) She pulled the pectoral “Come, man, come” over her breast.
(wiki) Spread the “Man! Come! Come!” Breastplate on her chest;
24. har ku3-sig17 szu-na ba-an-du8
(cdli) She placed a golden ring on her hand.
(wiki) Put on the Gold Bracelets on her hands;
Thanks, an interesting comparison, and I’m glad to see an up-to-date translation.
(To the best of my memory, the Song of Songs missed “My beloved is as luxuriant as a barge laden with grain at harvest.”)
“She’s a Brick House,” however, is datable to Presargonic times.
Are we sure that the ornament for the forehead is not a diadem?
Not very sure, but I’m also not sure how much English’s existing vocabulary for high-status headgear illuminates or obfuscates what any given culturally specific headgear would have meant to a Bronze Age Mesopotamian. “Men” is maybe the most common word for “crown,” although “aga” might be more closely connected to headgear for sovereign rulers (“aga” is the kind of headgear with seven horns that the gods wear).
As far as “hili” go, they’re variously described as being worn on the forehead (as here), the face, or the head — and foreheads and faces are odd places for a wig. This dissertation, I think, is pretty convincing that a hili is not a wig, but some kind of high-status head ornament associated with sexual attractiveness. The author points out that Inanna always puts her hili on after she puts her turban on,which wouldn’t make sense if the hili was a wig.
It is a mark of divine powers to be able to put your underpants on after your trousers.
It is a mark of divine powers to be able to put your underpants on after your trousers
Ah!!! À la Superman?
Superman notoriously fails the test of true divinity here.