Enheduana of Sumer

http://phoenicia.org/art.html
Enheduana was the first non-anonymous author in the history known by name. I found this quite interesting, who knew the first author in the world would be an intrepid WOMAN?
This short story mainly talks about Enheduana's great experiences while she was a teenager, until her oldest age.
Enheduana's popular writings (in her day) tell us much about herself, the Sumerian religion, and politics. She kept on composing poetry and organizing her duties, even after her Father, Sargon died. Enheduana lived with her two twin brothers, Rimush and Manishtusu, and her father, Sargon the ruler of Mesopotamia, who later became the ruler of Kish and Akkhad.


Questions & Answers:

1. What did books look like during the time that Enheduana was writing? How were these books written?
Books looked like small clay pillows, not paperbacks. In her day, books were written on soft clay with a pointed tool called stylus.

2. Where did Enheduana and her family live? What did her father do?
Enheduana lived with her two twin brothers and her father. They lived in a spanking-new big palace, surrounded by the city-state of Akkhad in Sumer. Her father Sargon was an ambitious boy from a family of Mesopotamian farmers, began his rise to the top as humble cupbearer for the king of Kish, a nearby city-state. He managed to grabed the throne by himself, nobody could imagine how he did this remarkable thing. He then ruled over Kish and Akkhad and made them important cities of Sumer.
3. What was Enheduana’s job? List three of her duties. How did she lose her job?
Enheduana was a poet, and hymn writer and a priestess. Her most important duty was to annual New Year celebration every spring. She lost her job because of her nephew, he fired her and put his daughter in charge.
4. The author says that Enheduana’s poems were so popular that they were like bestsellers today. What evidence does she use to support this claim?
The author is trying to let us know that people today still talk about Enheduana even though she wrote poems and books a very long time ago.
5. Enheduana’s writings are hymns of praise, but they also tell us about the times she lived in. Describe one “current event” that Enheduana wrote about.
Enheduana was writing much about herself, religion and politics. One “current event” that she wrote was about her father, Sargon. It describes the city-states that Sargon had ruled over. They tried to capture Akkhad and banish Inanna from the temples. Sargon won, and Ianna's power new again.

From earliest times, people have changed their environments. How have people today changed their environment? Discuss both the good and the bad.

People today and long ago changed the environment similarly, however in different ways that is, in both good and bad. Today we do lots of things to harm the environment, including cutting down trees for money, eating canned food, and not recycle plastic packages. However, people long ago had different techniques to harm the environment. You know how we see people cut down trees when you pass through the park, with those mechanical machines used for cutting materials? In the earlier ages, they did it differently. They CREATED poorer tools for cutting because they didn’t have the expensive material to create such great machines, and also it was unusual for them to see such a machine even there WERE expensive materials.
Since the question asks me to answer what we do today in order to change the environment in a both negative and positive way, I should stop writing about what they did earlier.
I already mentioned what we did to harm the environment, but now I will go on with explaining what we change in the environment in a positive way. We can grow fruits and vegetables, which increases the population of food, but then it’s gone when we eat it, so it does nothing to the environment, but does something to us- feed us. It all goes in a cycological cycle, over and over until we die.
In conclusion, we change the environment in MANY different ways, even by making the easiest most ridiculous thing, like picking up a flower from its’ original growing place.

Catal Huyuk

Catal Huyuk is now considered to be one of the earliest known ‘cities’ in the world. The city is 8,000 – 10,000 years old, and it had a population of about 6,000.
Houses were made out of brick. They don’t have doors, instead they have entrances on roofs, so it was easier and safer for people to enter that way. In Catal Huyuk the dead were buried inside houses.
Some of the people in Catal Huyuk lived by farming. They grew wheat and barley and they raised sheeps’ fur and herds of goats, they also kept dogs. However, they hunted animals such as aurochs, wolves, foxes and leopards. People in this city wore clothes that were woven from wool, and also wore jewelry made out of stone, bone and shell. They wove baskets of reeds, they also made pottery and used obsidian, a hard volcanic rock to make tools and weapons, as I mentioned in my notebook.
Craftsmen made dishes of wood, they also carved wooden boxes of storage. I’m not quite sure that the textbook mentioned religion, however I think it is still unknown what religion they believed in.
In conclusion, I think it was an amazing discovery and I hope archaeologists today find another fascinating city.