"When excavators began to uncover the princess’s palace in the 1920s, they found a seemingly ordinary chamber with an eroded but otherwise intact brick floor. That floor was so covered in layers of dust and ancient rubbish that the diggers initially doubted they would find a single relic of its long-gone inhabitants. But over the course of several days, they managed to clear away enough of the rubble to reveal an extraordinary collection of artefacts. To their confusion, though, each object they found was from a different era in Ur’s past, rather than all of them dating to the time when the palace was built. Why would this apparently random mix of objects, with hundreds of years between them, all be together in one room? The excavators were facing an archaeological puzzle. (...)
The 1920s archaeologists were of course aware of this long history, and likely had this in mind when they eventually found a clue amid the rubble that would help make sense of the mysterious collection. A cylindrical lump of clay covered in cuneiform script, like a little drum small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, gave them the answer they needed. They were convinced that they had found the world’s first ever exhibition label and, by extension, the world’s first museum.
We know precious little about Ennigaldi-Nanna herself; we don’t even know her real name, only that she got renamed as such when she was christened high priestess. Ennigaldi-Nanna means ‘the high priestess requested by the god Nanna’, a reference to the Sumerian name for Sîn. Grammatically, the name is a sentence modelled on the names of the high priestesses who preceded her, like Enheduanna and Enanedu. Even without knowing any Sumerian, at least one shared element emerges: the names begin with en, the Sumerian word for the role of high priestess that they each fulfilled.
The technical term for Ennigaldi-Nanna’s role was the en in Sumerian or entu in Akkadian, a word that must remain untranslated because no modern equivalent can capture the unique constellation of responsibilities involved in the job. We know its history reaches all the way back to the third millennium bce and Enheduanna’s time, and possibly even earlier to a woman named Ninmetabarri. She may be the earliest en-priestess to leave behind her name – in this case, on a dedicatory cup shaped a bit like a (broken) gin glass made of cream-coloured calcite. Every high priestess to the moon god had to hail from royal stock, and they also had to be chosen by an omen. A handful of such priestesses leave behind enough traces of their tenure for us to understand just how important this role was and just how much was expected of these royal women.
Enheduanna might just be the most famous of them given her status as the first named author in history. A lot of her surviving poetry was written in praise of the power of the goddess Inana. Enheduanna subjugates even the most powerful gods in a male-dominated pantheon (a mantheon, perhaps) to the will of this goddess. Her roar makes the gods tremble with fear, and her fury makes mortals quake. (...)
In Enanedu’s version of events, the en-priestess was like a deputy of the Babylonian king, an extension of his political might in a major city of his realm. The purpose of her role was to serve as an important instrument of royal authority, akin to that of a bishop in seventeenth-century England. Enanedu might even be the only non-reigning royal to have a section of a praise hymn devoted to her, celebrating her ‘rejoicing heart’ and wishing her ‘years of joy’. (...)
At the time of Ennigaldi-Nanna’s tenure, Nabonidus mentions a lengthy list of domestic staff, fields, orchards, cattle, sheep, and goats, all attached to the temple that Ennigaldi-Nanna served. The priestess, in effect, was the head of an extensive, wealthy household that needed daily maintenance and administration. Given the extent of the temple’s holdings, it is easy to imagine that she had a full schedule, especially if she had to meet the same ritual expectations as her forebears like Enheduanna and Enanedu. Although her father may have elevated her to the priestesshood for political or ideological reasons, her role was far from just titular. Indeed, royal women from all periods of ancient Mesopotamian history exercised vast administrative powers, sometimes equivalent to those of the king.
The stories of these women offer us a vast backdrop to Ennigaldi-Nanna’s busy life in Ur and allow us to imagine the versatility, and credibility, of her working life as princess, priestess, divine wife, and administrator. But what about her role as curator? Could she have been the visionary behind the ‘museum’ of ancient objects? There is no way to prove that Ennigaldi-Nanna deliberately curated the collection because there is no single source that definitively tells us this. The clay drum – the smoking gun – that supports the museum hypothesis was composed almost a century before her father ascended the throne and renovated the palace. But the clay drum, along with the other older things, were found on the unbroken brick floor of her home, which makes it hard to dismiss her role completely in bringing these old things together in some way. The collection of artefacts under one roof – if perhaps not in a single room – also fits nicely with the academic and political interest in the distant past shared by Neo-Babylonian kings and scholars. Digging up the past was an essential element of her dynasty’s strategy for royal legitimation, and Ennigaldi-Nanna’s presence in Ur was an extension of that strategy. Her life was an embodiment of her past."
Between Two Rivers: Ancient Mesopotamia and the Birth of History, Moudhy Al-Rashid
Ennigaldi-Nanna was the daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, who ruled in the sixth century BC. Her father was not of royal blood, and had come to the throne in a time of political turmoil. He was a devotee of the moon god, Sin, and he named Ennigaldi-Nanna as Sin’s high priestess, or Entu, making her one of the empire’s most prominent religious figures. She continued serving in the office even after her father’s overthrow and exile, leading public rites, managing the temple, and educating noblewomen.
The position of Entu was an ancient one; in fact, prior to Ennigaldi’s appointment, there had been no high priestess of Sin for the last six hundred years. Naming Ennigaldi to the office was not just part of Nabonidus’ religious reforms, but reflective of his deep interest in history, an interest his daughter was raised to share.
Ennigaldi was the founder of the first recorded public museum, filled with artifacts from millennia of Mesopotamian history. They were cleaned, preserved, and labeled - which came as a great boon two thousand years later, when her modern counterparts excavated the complex.
and if i tell you that one of the world's first known curators of archaeological finds was a babylonian princess called ennigaldi-nanna? that she created the first (known to us) public museum?
brief overview on wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ennigaldi-Nanna%27s_museum
How far can we trace back that which we would recognize as archaeology? Well, if we use the wide definition of archaeology, that being the study of the human past through material culture, we can trace it all the way to Bel-Shalti-Nana, a Babylonian princess and priestess who curated and ran the world’s oldest recognizable... Continue Reading →
Ennigaldi-Nanna is largely unknown in the modern day. But in 530BC, this Mesopotamian priestess worked to arrange and label various artefacts in the world's first museum.
By Louise Pryke
“It belongs in a museum.” With these words, Indiana Jones, the world’s best-known fictional archaeologist, articulated an association between archaeologists, antiquities, and museums that has a very long history. Indeed, even Jones himself would likely marvel at the historic setting of the world’s first “museum,” and the remarkable woman who is believed to have been its curator, the Mesopotamian princess, Ennigaldi-Nanna.”
“Ennigaldi-Nanna was the priestess of the moon deity Sin, and the daughter of the Neo-Babylonian king, Nabonidus. In the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur, around 530BCE, a small collection of antiquities was gathered, with Ennigaldi-Nanna working to arrange and label the varied artefacts.”
Ennigaldi-Nanna is largely unknown in the modern day. But in 530BC, this Mesopotamian priestess worked to arrange and label various artefacts in the world's first museum.
The museum, over 2,500 years old, was centred on cultural heritage, and it is thought to have perhaps had an educational purpose. Along with her other roles, Ennigaldi-Nanna is believed to have run a scribal school for elite women.
