33. Enheduanna: The Tortured Poet's Department

Exploring the World's First Known Author: Enheduanna

In this episode of 'She Change History,' hosts Cara and Vicky delve into the remarkable life and contributions of Enheduanna, the world's first known named author and poet. An ancient Taylor Swift if you will! Set against the backdrop of ancient Mesopotamia, they explore Enheduanna's role as a high priestess, her pioneering use of written language for storytelling, and her emotional and political influence. The episode also covers her temporary fall from grace, her eventual reinstatement, and the legacy of her literary works. With insights into Mesopotamian society, religion, and early innovations, this episode showcases the profound impact of one woman on the history of literature and beyond.

Other eps mentioned Grace O'Malley and Octavia Butler

Sources
1 https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20221025-enheduanna-
the-worlds-first-named-author
2 TedEd video
http://facebook.com/watch/?v=1258413257681012
3 https://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/the-struggle-
to-unearth-the-worlds-first-author
4 She Who Wrote exhibition notes
https://www.themorgan.org/blog/she-who-wrote-enheduanna-
and-women-mesopotamia
5 https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2022/was-
enheduanna-the-worlds-first-author

00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter
01:04 Weekend Plans and Early Morning Adventures
03:03 Ancient History: Setting the Stage
04:00 Introducing Enheduanna: The First Author
10:23 The Role of Women in Mesopotamia
14:05 Enheduanna's Literary Contributions
19:34 The Roaring Storm: A Passionate Priestess
20:46 Mesopotamian Marvels: Gods and Warriors
22:04 The First Comic Book: Ishtar's Story
23:23 Exile and Return: Anana's Desert Journey
26:48 Rediscovering Anana: From Ancient Texts to Modern Translations
28:49 The Legacy of Anana: Literature and Humanity
35:47 Fun Facts and Final Thoughts

Transcript

audio1175815303: 0:08

That's a no, that's a no. If ever I've heard one. I'll keep building like a Jenga tower. Do you do that? I do that with books and boxes. And like you're currently food box at the minute. That is, I've got a jewelry box, a little stationary box, and now my phone, which might, I don't know, maybe if I do this. I'm going to do podcast. It's not like I can't podcast. Well, no, but you know, we want it to be quality. Hmm. Oh, here we go. I will use the choir Social fund. What? Petty cash. Oh yeah, babe. I've got like. All the money. Literally dozens of pounds. Nice. Are you ready? I sure am. Let me get this word document front and center, and I am ready to go when you are. Ooh. Hi Cara. Hi Vicki. How are you? I am doing well. Thank you. I am doing very well. Looking forward to an exciting weekend, starting bright and early tomorrow. Oh my gosh. Um, so welcome to She Change History listeners. Um, me and Kara are going on a little expedition tomorrow morning at 4:30 AM and we are hoping it will cleanse our souls and I think be the answer to all our problems. I, I'm, my ambitions are less high than that. Oh, I just hope you're still speaking to me.'cause you might see a side of me that I try to keep hidden. I am not an early morning person. I will be nauseous and gray. Gray. Yeah. But it's worth it. Yeah. It's worth it. Where are we going? We're going to like, um, an RSPB reserve, which is where the birds live. Um, and we're going into nature to listen to the dawn chorus. So the morning chorus, um, because may apparently is the perfect time. Tomorrow's the last day of May, and apparently we've got one of the best spots in the country to do this in. So we were like, we have to go and do this. So that's what we're doing. Absolute quality. I didn't realize the May thing. That's wow. Apparently I'll show you the magazine. Um, maybe I'll bring the magazine with me. It's one of my, um, new thing. I've told you about this, haven't I? You have? Yeah. Yeah. That it's like one of my lifelines for my mental health right now. So I'm just chuckling'cause you're offering to provide documentary evidence. I trust you. I believe you. No, I care about my sources. You know this, you know this. Sure. Cite your sources. So we're hanging out on Friday night and then we'll be hanging out in a good seven hours. Yeah. And then Vicki will never speak to me again'cause I'll be so grumpy. She'll be like, why do I know this person? What is happening? No, no, no. It's gonna be beautiful. We're gonna enjoy it. It will be, it will be. Um, but Kara's got story for us today, so off you I sure have. So today we are going to be going into a period of history that I have largely avoided up till now in that we're talking ancient history, not even like 19th, 18th century. We're going way, way back. But, um, say proud of you. I've got a little, a little thank you. Outside of my comfort zone, I've got a little intro to kind of get us there, which is firmly rooted in the 20th century. So bear with a woman uses her gift for communication to solidify her father's grip on the innovative business he managed to create. Her success rests on her insight into what it is that people want, what they love, and she loves it too. But when her father dies, an interloper hungry for power, threatened by her popularity moves to banish her forever. It reads like a plot line from succession. The tale is so much older. Meet and Ana High priestess of the world's first known empire and the first known author to capture storytelling with the written word. I am sorry. The first empire and the first author. Yeah, we got all the firsts today. There's Oh, there's more. But wait, there's more. We're gonna bang in a few more firsts before the episode is over in love already. So, citing by sources. Taking my cue from you. The BBC had an article, uh, called Nana, the World's first named author. There's an. Excellent Ted Ed video, which is a, a gorgeous little animation. Maybe I can find a way to link to it. An article from The New Yorker, which is called The Struggle to Unearth the World's First Author. There was an exhibition about her called She Who Wrote, and that was, cited on the Morgan Museum website. And there's an website called Aramco World. I dunno the first thing about it, but it talks about En Ana and whether she was in fact the first author. So there we have it. Um, yeah, reading about her has been exciting because, you know, we love stories. We love books, and I never thought before my friend Phil, Hey, Phil, suggested that this might be a good topic that. Someone was the first, and I certainly did not dream that it would've been a woman that was the first author. So to kind of pinpoint her in history and in the timeline of literature, there's a quote here if you are happy to go for it. Anne Hada. Ana lived 1500 years before Homer, 1700 years before Sappho, and 2000 years before Aristotle. So they chose those, examples because they are the answers that people will give if they're on the spot in a pub quiz and asked, okay, who's the first author? These are the people that come to mind, but she's. Massively predating them. Yeah, we're going way back, um, over 4,000 years ago, around 3,400 to 2000 BCE. Wow. Somewhere in that timeframe. This is the earliest I think we've ever done. This is very exciting. It's a cradle of civilizations. Stuff and it shows. So we are literally cradle of civilization. The region between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers, and it's the area where on a modern map we would see Iraq. So it's that kind of region. Historically that was known as Mesopotamia and. In, in Ana's time, the going must have been pretty good because it was enjoying one of those periods of history where novel things, all these firsts are popping up left, right, and center, which is usually a sign of prosperity or. Diabolical warfare, but in this case largely prosperity with a coin. Um, yeah, sometimes both. Uh, so this, this period of time coincides with the world's first cities and new trade routes Were opening up between these cities to sort of facilitate their growth, to support that trade network. People started needing to record information in a new way. And the new tool that was developed to accommodate that was writing. It was, a form of language, a form of notation called CUNY form, which it's like. Pictographic symbols that represent sounds, and they press them into a wet clay tablet with a little reed stylus, which sounds charming. You can smell it, you know, like you can just imagine, as well as those sort of like hands-on technical advances, Mesopotamia was the first. Example of ruler, he would probably have said, unifying the people who he unified would probably say conquering. Oh, I know all the surrounding lands. Yeah. It's, a story depending on their perspective. It's a very different story, but he, at any rate. Was credited with bringing about the world's first empire and the ruler that did that was sargon of a cad. And as it happens, this fella is Anne Ana's father. Nice. So pretty, quite a, uh, quite a lot to live up to, if that should have Yeah. Super high born and just for him to have the notion. To kind of throw over the nation state, the ambition and the drive and the vision. That's that. Yeah. That's a lot to live up to. In my head. I'm picturing like tribes, I don't know. I think, yeah, I think that's it. I think he was quite successfully running a CAD and. Thought, well, this is, this is going all right. Okay, great. Let's see what else begins Do. So, in their time in Mesopotamia, religion was inseparable from politics. Mm-hmm. It was. The temples were all through the city. They were linked to the Royal Courts nobility, were responsible for performing some of the rituals to try to win the God's favor for their nation. Wow. And when things were going well, a lot like that, like ancient Greek model, you sort of think, oh, the gods Gods are smiling. It's, it's probably the most familiar example to me as well. So with those sort of thoughts in mind, an EDA born as a noble woman is expected. To enter the religious service, there's there that is what she is going to have to do. Okay. Um, so with that in mind, she's given an education and she's, educated in both the language of her father's city and the first city that he went and colonized effectively. So Sumerian and Acadian, she's learning both at the same time. She's also learning mathematics. She's learning how to write thisfor language. It's only been knocking around for 300 years, but they're giving her. You know, everything, the keys to the castle. So immense privilege of being an elite person. But I don't want to give the impression that it was only because of her status that she enjoyed everything that she enjoyed. Because it seems that in that time, in Sumaria, in a cad, women were. Productive members of society. It wasn't an equal society by any stretch. It definitely was a patriarchy. However, if you look at the artifacts from the time, they, oh, they loved a vase. Love to carve some stuff on a vase. Putting it right on there, these cylinder seals. Britishness. Oh, falls, sorry. Yes. I immediately copied you. That's what I was laughing at. I couldn't believe how like floppy I was immediately I was like, be, be. Yeah. You've been growing up listening to American TV shows. It's what we do. That's our empire. But any rate, so the vows, the, the v cylinder seals, the tablets, you see these images. Of just ordinary women and they're playing flutes with their hair flying. Ooh, they're weaving. They're farming. They could own land. Contributing. Yeah. Yeah. They were traitors and they were able to own property and pass it to their descendants, so they also, oh god, this is a diversion, but it's one. I will enjoy. So you're going to have to, here we go. Indulge me. Sorry. The fashion as I'm, as I'm scrolling through trying to find very serious and focused things, I did get slightly distracted by the image that I've included in which I will put on the socials. Oh my gosh, yes, please. How stunning is that? Yes. That this is the funerary ensemble of Queen pbi and it's, it's absolutely opulent. So there's a head drops in a half. I just throw, I thought I'd throw that in there. I don't know that people walking around doing their day-to-day, you know, like milking the. Cow or whatever are wearing this. If I had access to it today, I would be putting it on right now. Damn right. But anyway, and also kind of like Anna LEAs kind of hairstyle thing going on. It's like their in. And some African vibes. Yeah, like a mai like capelet sort of vibe. It's, it's really beautiful and shiny. So, so, so shiny. Anyway, love. Sorry. Went down a little bit of a rabbit hole there. No, I think more of this, more fashion history. I know we're, that would be an amazing pun. Uh, back in the room, women are out there, they're doing jobs that the city needs. They are also the major stakeholders in the religion kind of at every level. And that in turn is part of the apparatus of the state. And that brings us back neatly to EDA and her role within Sargon Empire. So his seat of leadership, the place where he's from is the city state of a cad. When EDA becomes of age, she is appointed as the high priestess in the next most important city state of his empire, which is called ur. It's spelled URI don't know how to pronounce it properly. I'm going with Ur. That's fine. So that's like almost prince of Wales vibe, I imagine. Yeah, yeah. Like a regent being sent out to solidify. This is, you're exactly right. It wasn't an accident. He was a clever cookie and he knew that having this respected religious figure who had his interests at heart in probably quite a testy situation, was. A fortifying move. So that is what he did. He's smart. Yeah. Good decision. He was smart and, and it was right because she was so into it. She loved being my priest. Thrive. She absolutely did. So she had the vision once in this position to take writing, which you know, was a tool for business. It was like the excel of its day and. She transformed it into something that could glorify and humanize the gods. And I've got a little like, so she like applied it to something else. Yeah. She took this technology and went, we can use this for more. Like when we all got emails and it was supposed to be to say, dear Mrs. Smith, have you received the parcel it? Now it's like. We use it for very different things. So she's sort of doing that for her. Purview. And she's taking these gods and the stories have always been quite highbrow and inaccessible and dry. And she's creating stories wherein, and this is a little inline quote, they suffered, they fought, they loved, and they responded to human pleading. So she was creating what Octavia Butler would've described as a good story compellingly told. So. She knew by marking them down on tablets that the written poems, just like the orders for goods or receipts, could easily be distributed throughout the entire empire. Mm-hmm. At the newspaper. Yeah. And she had the foresight to understand that the best way to win around the people of these disparate cities was to. Call those gods interchangeably by the names that they knew them by. So classic. Love it. Right? She was, she was bringing everyone in and combining these mythologies of all of these different cities. Kind of taking on the role of the PR face. Yes. Spoke of the empire. Oh, it's so clever.'cause that's what they do even in movies and stuff, isn't it? They change some of the jokes or some of the, oh, I dunno. The food on the table. So it matches the culture so they to like it a bit more. To make you feel included. Yeah. And so she had, I think, I think she had a great deal of emotional intelligence to understand the need for that, to achieve it and. To think, to write the stories in such a way that they resonated emotionally with people, and people knew what she was up to. There's a note here, a quote for you to read from a scribe who was transcribing a copy of her poems for her father to read, and he added a little post script. Oh, isn't it weird as well that they've managed to translate it? Mm. Because like, obviously I'm reading English, isn't that fascinating that it's survived? Yeah, we'll talk a little bit about that and, and how that came to pass because there are certainly, like in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, there are tablets written infor or similar, pictographic language, which simply have not been translated. So it literally could say anything, anything. But in this case, we. Possibly because of these trade routes and the cross pollination of different cultures. Those symbols had to be more broadly understood. So there would've been like the Rosetta Stone type of idea, a commonality with a language that still exists now. So therefore we get to read her actual words or their actual words. Oh, this is so cool. I love it. Kind of cool. So the quote that has made it through the years says, my king, something has been produced that no person had produced before, which. I think as well as just being a cool thing to say, highlights that these men were not particularly adverse to having a powerful woman. Yeah. You know, doing cool meritocracy stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So for all of the political side of her work, which I'm sure was not accidental, she genuinely did seem to be devoted to her gods. She was a high priestess of Nana, who was the moon God, but her, her real heart was with his daughter Inana, who was also known as Ishtar and. Anana is the goddess of love, sex, and war. I'm like, cool. Funny how they're linked. Yeah. I mean, this is not a, you know, shrinking violet. She's Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's, she's a lot, she's a bad bitch and she doesn't mind. Mm-hmm. Right. So the passion that EDA felt comes through. Because in her poems, her hymns to Anana, it contains the first written use of the word I and the first literature that represents human emotion. I felt. I thought I did. Oh my God. Yeah. So there's another first for you. Wow. It. There's, I think there's like 40, 45, 49, 42 poems altogether. We're not gonna read them all, but I just plucked a quote out that I think gives you a flavor of her devotion and the badassness of Anana. So if you're happy to read this poem, yes. Poem. Try and embody the Badass. Yes. I dunno. Get in there. I dunno. I don't think I've ever done that like a charging storm. You charge like a roaring storm. You roar, you thunder in thunder. Snorting rampaging winds. Your feet are continually restless. Carrying your harp of size. You breathe out the music of morning. It was in your service that I first entered the Holy Temple. IE, n Ana, the highest priestess. I carried the ritual basket. I sang the hymns of joy. Oh wow. She's into it. Yeah, she's so into it. You can't help but be excited. Also, this is just as passionate and as just as driven and just as heart hitting as those Octavia Butler quotes that we spoke about last week, which is so recent history, isn't it? Like, you know, 50, 60 years ago. And, that passion, I would say is matched. It's wild that that recognizable strand of. Being human and excited about your job. Like who's that excited about their job. But she really is. She loves it. She loves, she loved the spreadsheet, that's all. She loved it, absolutely loved it. And to be fair to her, the gods were pretty cool. Mesopotamia was rock The spicy days worst to have, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. If you're, if you are happy to, there is another quote here it describes Ishtar, the fearsome warrior. Are you good? Yeah. In scenes carved on cylinder seals from the Acadian period, Ishita is often shown dominating, formidable lines and gods while turning towards the viewer. Maces and sickle axes are seen around her shoulders as well as branching bearing fruit. Spring it a little snack fight in a lion. A snack. I love her. I mean, uh, if you are gonna fight a line, you're gonna need a, a feast, you're gonna want a little Absolutely. I need a little, yeah. So are you prepared for another first, because that. Set of writings, talking about Anana and her, her many, her many acts include this story about her destroying a mountain range as a punishment when it wouldn't bow before her. What. Yeah, the mountain wouldn't bow to her. So she tore it down to punish it. I think she tore it down by yelling at it that that's who we're dealing with here. Okay. And that story contained the first illustration of a written text. So she invented comic books. There you go. And, um, it mentioned it in the quote, it's a time when most depictions as I. Picture Egyptian, drawing. Mostly people are seen in profile like 2D. This is her. Yeah. Like side on. Yes. Yeah. The goddess is looking straight at you and like flea bagg, she's breaking the fourth wall. Yeah. And you can imagine to these viewer how thrilling and. And new and exciting and new and exciting. And an Adriana understood the energy that these things were bringing. She was bringing the drama. So drama. I love it. We've got another little micro quote here. Yes. Um. Let them know that you grind schools to dust. Let them know that you eat corpses like a lion. Oh, it's gross. It's gross. But that ferocity is part of the mesopotamian ideal of femininity. It's okay. It's what it takes to survive in the kind of world and landscape that they are living in. And unfortunately for Ana, she found that out the hard way herself because her father having extended the empire out, died and. Her position, as we've talked about, really was quite political. So it wasn't a massive surprise that the incoming would be King, wanted to move her along. A general named Lou Garla. Took advantage of the power vacuum and. Saw an ana as a threat, didn't want, I think, to assassinate her because she had some broad support. So instead banished her to the desert. And of course she wrote a poem about it like you do when you're banished to a desert. So if you're happy to read another poem for us. Yeah, of course. Why, um, what was the Power S stricture that meant that this, uh, lui. Came in, was it, I think it was a straight up Cota. He rolled in with an army, saw that a CAD had died and things were in chaos and thought, I'm gonna get in there. But had enough sense to see that Wan had some support and had enough, uh, religious faith to be frightened of transgressing against a high priestess. Like he could kind of deal with kicking her out, but he couldn't. Deal with the possibility of killing someone who was favored by the desk. Right? Yeah. Got it, got it, got it. That makes perfect sense. This is her in the desert. This is her. Yeah. Oh. I went towards the light. It felt scorching to me. I went towards shade. It shrouded me in swirling dust when look. I stood power paramount. He expelled me from the temple. He made me fly out the window like a swallow. I had my taste of life. He made me walk a land of thorns, like a swallow. That still happens today. That's quite exciting. Land of thorns. These are all things that we still experience. Isn't that fascinating? Yeah, you can sense her devastation because those images, oh my gosh, are relatable to us. So she's now out on her ear and thinking, what next? Scary. And she starts praying. She prays to nana. The moon, God. And he does not help her. And so she begins to address her prayers to inana. Okay? And very soon thereafter, her position as high priest and your is restored. Mm. And yeah, so I mean credit where it's due, her nephew Rasen, turfed out. Lue. Okay. And made himself king and then reinstated an Edwina. I dunno. He must have sent somebody out into the desert to find her, her popped her back into the temple in her and she continued on in, in that position. And in total, she was the high priestess for 40 years. So 40. It's long career. It's a long career of high priestessing, especially when you have some desert wandering in the middle. So having done. Those 40 years of and the 40 odd poems and hymns. Was enough that her writing became a kind of cultural monument, and it was studied and celebrated for centuries. They had these schools called Dupa, where scribes would train and priests would train and poli politicians would and. That was the text that they would copy out, like, you know, when you're in school kind of doing lines or memorizing poems. It was her work that was, that was what that was all based on. But like many things, her work was still eventually lost in time. And the poems, the, the tablets. It sort of disappeared until there was an archeologist called Sir Leonard. I'm sure that's supposed to say Leonard Woolley. Leonard Woolley. Leonard Woolley. Maybe it was Leonard, but I think it might've been Leonard excavated some of her clay tablets. In 1927 and that, wow, that's, that brought them back into modernity. So who knows in between, but that's where we next know about them. That's where she pops up again. Yeah. In 1968, the first translation of her writing from Sumerian into English is published. So there's almost what a. A 40 year window to decipher where it's getting worked on. So the translators were definitely mega fans. There's a quote here from their intro to their book, I love. They did. The quote says, we can now discern a corpus of poetry, which not only reveals its author's name, but delineates the author for us in. Autobiographical fashion in the person of n Ana, we are confronted by a woman who is once princess priestess and poetess. Yeah. Yeah. They, they cannot get enough of her. So they were doing her PR for her. Really? They were puffing it up. I mean, they did have a book to sell, so, you know, they might have been like, you go capitalism. But yeah, I think it was genuine passion. Good. That being said, that, you know, in the intervening time. Since the publication of that book. Scholars have disagreed about her role because when you were talking about this, I was like, how do we know? Right. How, it's a fair question, isn't it? It's not just you, it's it's, it's on everybody's mind. We don't have the, um, source materials. We don't have her. Personal documents. We have the transcribed copies. And so there's a woman called Eleanor Robson who's an expert. Infor, what was that? And she's, uh, that the written, the written pictogram system. Right. That these tablets were, were written in. Yeah. And she says that the Sumerian language in Ana. Work so-called. Mm-hmm. Is stylistically too modern to being from Wan herself? So it would be like an original Shakespeare transcript being written in modern English with slang. So she's like, wait a minute guys. So she thinks that the transcribers had more than a copyist hand in it, and you know, that's fair. Another. Don't you think that's true for all stories? they get passed on generation. Yeah, generation and you know, I know things are often word perfect, aren't they? Particularly fables and things like that. Like we spoke about it a bit in the Grace of Marley episode, but you don't know. You don't know who's grandad, granddad's, granddads said that before. Yeah. And when things are in translation, there's an added layer of abstraction. Of course, you do not know if I interpret something a certain way, probably in good faith thinking this is exactly what was meant. That doesn't mean that you are gonna say the same. Yes. Hundred percent space and Bs. And even the poems we've included here, if you were to Google them, you would find different English, like the bit where it says Youth thunder and thunder. I think at one, another version of it says you bellow in thunder and it's, oh, that's those little subtle, you and someone might, someone might just think, oh, it sounds better like this. And you know, yeah. Little have a little tinker. You don't know. Um, on top of that, there is a, a scholar called Hader Alma Maori that put it, that with centuries of oral literature. From hundreds of women before an eda, you cannot say that the narrative of fiction is hers alone, because she's just writing what has already been happening for all of human existence. Right, And I take all of that. Onboard as I, as I say these things, but I'm leaning towards this writer. I've got a quote here from Megan Blythe. But she took Edwina's, corpus, her body of poems and turned it into a novela, which I think sounds pretty fun. Yeah. Like, I'd like to read that. But she talks about how she decided to do that, and she says that. Reading the work and seeing its relevance. It wasn't just some person 4,000 years ago whose life is so vastly different from mine, and Eda wrote about how she got kicked out of power and it was really bad and then she came back and that's the experiences. You can't say that you can't and you can't. You can understand it even from a modern perspective. Don't worry. And it's, it's what makes it lasting literature. Um, yeah, it's, it's. Echoing something familiar, even though it's from a time that's completely unfamiliar. Mm. I kind of love that. Don't you love that we have, yeah. Strings of attachment to millennia ago and civilizations, because we talk about this with Simon sometimes, that it goes in our, my head, in my very simplistic mind, it goes dinosaurs. Um, ancient Tudor. Yeah. Um, then it goes Tudor Shakespeare, queen Victoria today. That's it. It's, it's so cool to realize that these are just people just like us, just like this. I used to work with this history teacher who was so. Terrifying. He was really, I'm gonna use the word mean. He was just straight up mean. He was mean as a snake there. I've said it one, but one thing he always said that really struck me was if you took a person from ancient times, they would survive in our world and we would not survive in theirs because they are equipped to sort of cope with threats. Right. We are not, but we have this common thread of humanity and emotion across all those millennia. And we could survive. We could you, you and me. Yeah. Or like in general, you and me. You might wanna revise that opinion. If we go to the San Bird sanctuary at 4:00 AM See if you still think I would survive in ancient Mesopotamia, Well, all, all that's left to say really is like the exhibition that some of the source material was based on presents an edana as the first named author. In fact, no doubts overshadowing it. Oh, they say no doubt, no doubt. They just went, they plowed straight on as though it is an established fact. I think that. The work that we've seen of hers has merit, even if we allow for the uncertainty, because you still get that sense of the lives of Mesopotamian women. Yeah. Um, the way they lived, the things they struggled with, and they show the power of literature to move people and. I've got a cheesy ending. You know, I love a cheesy ending, so, well, even this isn't, I was just thinking what a beautiful insight that is for you to conclude. You're like, well, who cares? Yeah. That is my, thats my conclusion on most topics. This, it's all good, whatever. What else? So I think you said it far more elegant, elegantly. You could, thank you. You can trim this bit off if you want, if you think it's, uh, gilding the lily. But I've, I've gone with, we can choose to picture Ana not. Only as a historical figure, but as a kind of stand-in for all of the unnamed women who told those stories. No, I love it. And maybe the first to lift, to read stylists and capture life in the drying clay. Nice. Have you time for three fun facts, be you anything. Thank you so much. I'll keep them quick. First one, Ana, it's not just me. So my fellow gaming enthusiasts have popped her into. Civ six. Ah. And in Seven Wonders, she's a, yeah, she's a, I think a playable leader in Civ Six. One of the expansions. The second thing I will say is that, the capital of the Acadian Empire, a CAD has not yet been discovered. So, okay. Whereas the ruins of, I think, uh, and Sumer were. A CAD still out there. They think it might be near Baghdad. Nobody knows for sure. So more of her tablets might come to light. You never know. Ooh, this is exciting. And the final one, not about eda, but again about just UNIFOR tablets is there is a tablet from her. Which a trader called Nani moans at a supplier called about the quality of the order of copper. He was sent. We've spoken about this on the pod before, is hilarious things. It's, I love that. People I think you'll find, remember so cut deform right from, right from jump, right from the get go. People are out there doing their negative trust pilot reviews. I just find it hilarious that someone sat there for hours. Like tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Yeah. With their reed stylists. Dear sir, we must, must have been the same. We must be so on the same algorithm or something for us both. Just you are probably how I know that. Oh, really? Yeah. I just find it the most hilarious thing about the quality of copper. Yeah. Well, it's a serious business actually. Actually think you'll find I'm gonna spend most of my life. It's the principle of the thing. There will be a Sumerian equivalent of the phrase. It's the principle of the thing. The principle. So that's it. That's what I've got for you. Oh my gosh, what a gorgeous insight into. And the clay and the make and like, I love how you call it technology'cause it is yeah, it's weird to think of it that way. Wires and, microchips. Is it, it's just things that make things automated or it makes, it makes life easier quicker. Yeah, exactly. And that looks like different things at different times. Yes, Kara, I loved it. I smashed it. Thank you so much. I thought that was so Thank you. Thanks for listening. I thought it was so fun to research, so I'm glad that, uh, out of your comfort zone, looking at you. I know flexing. Is there any further back to go? I mean, what, where do I stop? What do I stop? I'm like a juggernaut. Now. Where am I going next? Who? Who knows?