Enheduana of Sumer

Leon, Vicki. "Enheduana of Sumer." Outrageous Women of Ancient Times. New York: Wiley, 1998. 49-53. Print.

Enheduana of Sumer was a remarkable and smart woman. She was a very important part in human history and the history of writing. She was the first ever author in the history of writing to write a book using her own name (the first non-anonymous author)! She wrote them almost 4,300 years ago. There are still signs of some of the poems she wrote al well.
She was the daughter of King Sargon, who established a great Akkadian empire and who appointed her as the High Priestess to Nanna, the moon-god of Sumer. She kept this spot for nearly twenty-five years before her evil nephew replaced her with his own daughter.

After she was replaced, she started writing her books on clay tablets with styli made out of reeds, and she wrote them in cuneiform. It is an ancient alphabet made up of triangles. She was a poet as well, and wrote a set of forty-two poems or hymns to the temples of Sumer and Akkad.

Her father, the King, was from a family of Mesopotamian farmers, and was “a humble cup-bearer for the king of Kish.” Nobody knows how he got have gotten the throne after being a cup-bearer, but he established a huge empire. He had twin sons and his daughter Enheduana, but his sons were terrible kings. A lot of this we know thanks to Enheduana’s stories that were found.

                                                             

Writing in Cuniform Reflection

In class we are learning about the first letters and alphabets. One of the first writing systems was Cuneiform. Many people in Mesopotamia used this system. So we also wanted to experience what it was like writing in Cuneiform. All of us translated a sentence in Cuneiform and painted it on brown paper.

Writing in Cuneiform was very hard. All those shapes took up a lot of time and space. I took a long time to even write one letter. By the time you write one word, a whole minute passed. I also realized that drawing shapes took up a lot of space on my paper. In my writing I made a mistake, I flipped two letters. I wonder what they did in the past when a mistake was made; of course they didn’t have white out like we do now.  But I think that Mesopotamians got used to it and didn’t make as many mistakes.

Right after we finished our sentence, we switched papers with someone else. Looks like just writing the sentence in Cuneiform, wasn’t enough, so we need to understand what it says as well (read Cuneiform). Once we switched we had to decode their sentence. This one also took up a long time but not space, since we were writing in our own language. It took up a lot of time since almost for every letter we had to look over and find what it is.

So that is how our writing Cuneiform experience went. Turns out writing in any typo of language is hard until you get used to it, even though all the answers are right in front of you, like t was for us.

Hammurabi's Code of Law Fair

What was Hammurabi’s Code of Law fair?

Today in class we read a very engaging article. I learned a lot of now interesting facts. It was about the first enforced laws made by the ancient ruler of Babylonia in Mesopotamia, Hammurabi.                                                                                                                                                                             Hammurabi wanted to make his civilization Babylonia just, which means he wanted to make it impartial for everyone. While Hammurabi was sitting on the throne of Babylonia, he made the civilization thrive. Hammurabi brought together all the different city-states, which were living upon their own rulers and own rules. Since Hammurabi combined the city states, he also combined the different laws of the city states creating what is now known as the “Hammurabi’s code”. It was a list containing 280 sections. Hammurabi wanted all other rulers of Babylonia/Mesopotamia, to fight for the same reasons and use the same punishments as he did.                                                                                                                                                                         The article gave us examples of some laws Hammurabi enforced, but I thought that most of them mean and unfair for people. Hammurabi made his code of laws following the phrase “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”. For example, If a person destroys a gentleman’s eyes, his eye may be destroyed in turn, or if he breaks a gentleman’s bone, his bone may also be cut off in turn. I don’t like this cruel way of punishing incent people, but I really do understand why Hammurabi thought that it is fair for everyone. Still, I am glad that in the countries we all live in, don’t have laws that work the same way. Another example of an unfair law is when a person gets killed, because his/her house collapses over them, the constructor of the house will be killed, too. If the person’s son or daughter dies, the constructor’s son or daughter will be killed, too. That rule is mostly unfair to the little kids who don’t have anything to do with it. It would be a shame if the constructor has a little baby child that needs to get killed. How is it a kids fault if his/her father made the building unstable? Even the part where the constructor of the house would be killed is unfair, from my point of view at least.                                                                                                                                                                                         Some of the laws of Hammurabi are fair to all people. For example “if a slave strikes at a free man, his ear may be cut of”. I think that this is fair because if the slave strikes at a person for no reason, there must be a punishment. This punishment is neither bad nor good. “If two equals engage in a fair fight and one is injured, the person causing the injury may have to pay for the others medical treatment. However he cannot be punished further for having caused the injury”. This is fair because the person causing the injury won’t need to be punished severely for what he had caused. After all the other person was also continuing the fight knowing he could get hurt. hurt.                                                                                                                                                                        Something that was mentioned as well, is that the punishment is different if a person strikes at a gentleman (upper-class people), a commoner (a worker of some kind) or a slave. It is unfair that the punishment is harder for killing a gentleman than for killing a slave or commoner. They are both people with the same fears, rights, dreams and bodies, just that one of them was born into a wealthier family and the other one into a normal family.                                                                                                                                                                   From my point of view Hammurabi’s is trying to make his laws fair, but most of them are unfair and really disgusting (e.x. one person’s hand or any other part of the body gets cut off if he/she does certain things). I really like that slaves can buy their freedom or even go to other families and work for them. Over all I think that Hammurabi’s code of law fair is fairer to the high class people compared to the slaves and commoners. I also think it has very harsh punishments for some little things that people have done.  

Landeau, Elaine. "Hammurabi's Babylonia." The Babylonians. Print.

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