Chapter Eighteen. Women In Public: The Disk Of Enheduanna, The Beginning Of The Office Of En-Priestess, And The Weight Of Visual Evidence

Abstract

Women are regarded favorably when they advise, nurture and encourage men in their struggles for success and fulfillment. Particularly valued is the mother-son relationship, and those situations in which women act to maintain the norms of society through ritual or through socially integrative action. Given the placement and delicate attention to detail of the figure of this central woman, she has been identified as Enheduanna. There are significant stylistic and compositional shifts from the Early Dynastic to the Akkadian periods particularly in the greater modelling and higher relief of the Enheduanna plaque, and the more sophisticated visual device of substituting slightly greater height for frontality in the chief female figure, such that her prominence is discernable without interrupting the narrative focus on cult activity.Keywords: Enheduanna; visual device; women

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