THE EXALTATION OF INANNA in Sumerian

THE EXALTATION OF INANNA was written in Sumerian by the daughter of Sargon The Great, the High Priestess of Inanna in the city of Ur, a woman by the name of Enheduanna. What you hear in this video, are the first twelve lines of the EXALTATION, sung in Sumerian, and accompanied on a scale replica of the remarkable “Gold Lyre of Ur”, discovered in the 1920’s by British archaeologist Sir Leonard Woolley.

Enheduanna was born more than 4,000 years ago, and she is the first named author of a literary work that we know of. Her writings and her history are well documented on the internet, and if you are interested in learning more about her, I refer you to a wonderful website called “enheduana ‘dot’ net”.

The “Gold Lyre of Ur”, which I play in the video, is a drone instrument whose lowest note is the same as the lowest note on a concert piano keyboard (A-0 or 27.500 Hz). These large Sumerian lyres were not appropriate for playing melodies, and according to ancient Sumerian writers, the sound of them was like the “roaring of bulls”! The instrument is highly resonant, and there are overtones that exist within it that add unusual effects to the timbre. I tried to get rid of some of these overtones, but they seem to be a built-in part of the instrument.

There are 153 lines in the EXALTATION OF INANNA. I sang only the first 12 lines in this video (with no repetition) and that took me six minutes. At that rate, it would probably take about one and a half hours, give or take, to sing the entire work. By comparison, Handel’s MESSIAH is about two and a half hours, and much of the text is repeated.

The smaller “Silver Lyre” which you see next to me in the video, is the cow-headed “mate” of the bull-headed “Gold Lyre”, and the two instruments were found together during the excavations at Ur. Sumerians liked to juxtapose opposites: sun/moon, male/female, gold/silver, bull/cow, etc. It is probable that the much larger “Gold Lyre” was played by a man, while the smaller “Silver Lyre” was played by a woman. In fact, the remains of what are thought to be those of a female musician were found clutching the “Silver Lyre” in the “royal death pit” at Ur.

There are some words and concepts that Enheduanna used in her EXALTATION that are not well understood by modern scholars. Most notably, the word “mé” which seems to refer to something we know nothing about. The goddess INANNA is described as holding the “mé”, and the word is mentioned several times in the first lines of the work, always referring to some kind of mysterious power or force that the goddess possesses.

At 3:21 into the video, I have included a photo of the three cuneiform Sumerian clay tablets on which the entire EXALTATION was written, and at 1:24 there is a Sumerian cylinder seal impression of the goddess Inanna herself. The final image at the end of the video is ISHTAR GATE in the reconstructed city of Babylon, which sits not far from the city of Baghdad, in modern Iraq. The Sumerian goddess INANNA was adopted by the later Babylonians and Akkadians and given the name “Ishtar”.

Видео THE EXALTATION OF INANNA in Sumerian канала Peter Pringle