Inanna, Lady of Largest Heart: Poems of the Sumerian High Priestess Enheduanna

Betty De Shong Meador is a scholar and translator, and this University of Texas Press book is her scholarly translation and study of poems attributed to Enheduanna, the Sumerian high priestess traditionally credited as history's earliest named author, addressed to the goddess Inanna. Its strength is that it presents these ancient poems in careful scholarly translation alongside analysis of their religious and literary significance, making a genuinely foundational text of world literature accessible with critical apparatus. Its limit is that questions of exact authorship and dating for texts attributed to Enheduanna remain subjects of ongoing Assyriological discussion, so a claim resting on precise authorship attribution should note that scholarly uncertainty rather than treat it as fully settled.