◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

The First Voice Her name was Enheduanna. She lived in Ur in the twenty-third century before the common era — the daughter of Sargon of Akkad, the first empire builder. He made her high priestess of the moon god in the city of Ur. She wrote hymns to the goddess Inanna — the oldest signed literary works in human history. Not attributed. Signed. I, Enheduanna, the high priestess. Four thousand three hundred years ago. A woman. A priestess. The first author in the history of human writing to say: I made this. This is mine. I spent my life bringing her back. I was a Jungian analyst, born in Texan and practicing in California — not a professional Sumerologist — and I learned the language, learned the cuneiform, translated the hymns that had been sitting in museum collections unstudied because the scholars who could read them did not think they were important enough to translate with care. Because they were written by a woman. About a goddess. I translated them with care. And what came through — what Enheduanna said across forty-three centuries — was a voice of such power, such fury, such tenderness — that it shook the ground. Listen: You destroy what cannot be destroyed. You lift the great heavens with your power. Holy torch that fills the sky. You make the day brilliant. This is not the modest feminine. This is the goddess as the most powerful force in the universe — destroyer and creator, the one who descends into the underworld and rises again. Inanna descends. She is stripped of everything. She dies in the underworld. And she rises. The oldest myth at the foundation of Western civilization before Western civilization decided it didn't need it. I am watching a politics terrified of Inanna. The Dobbs decision — five justices declaring that the woman's body belongs to the state — is the sky god reasserting dominion over the body of the goddess. He has tried this before. It does not hold. Because Inanna is rising. She is rising in the specific fury of the women who came out after Dobbs — who had been told their anger was too much — and who said: no. Not quietly. Not politely. In the language of the body, the language of life that is generated and defended and will not be legislated away. She is rising in the women who have won every abortion rights ballot measure since Dobbs — in Ohio, in Kansas, in Kentucky — in the red states where the sky god thought he had secured the territory. He had not secured the territory. The territory is the body. The body is Inanna's. She is rising in the women of Iran who removed their hijabs at the risk of their lives — who said: this body is sacred and belongs to itself. She is rising in the Black women whose bodies have been most controlled, most exploited — and who have refused, generation after generation, to accept the terms of that exploitation. She is rising in the transgender women who insist on the reality of the feminine against every law designed to deny it — who carry the goddess energy most visibly, most vulnerably, most courageously. She is rising in every woman told she is too angry, too shrill, too much — who has decided that too much is exactly the right amount. The Dobbs decision is the underworld. The assault on the feminine body is the underworld. The United States — the wealthiest country in human history — with the highest maternal death rate in the developed world — that is the underworld. The sky god does not protect the woman in childbirth. He never has. But Inanna rises. She was buried in cuneiform on clay tablets in museum basements for four thousand years. I found her. I translated her. I gave her back. And what she said forty-three centuries ago — what she is saying now in every woman who refuses the terms the sky god is offering — is this: You have not defeated me. You have sent me underground. There is a difference. The underground is not the grave. It is where I gather my power. And when I rise — and I am rising — I make the day brilliant.