Finding Our Missing Pieces—Women Technical Writers in Ancient Mesopotamia

Abstract

Contrary to current scholarship in technical communication, which places the first women technical writers in the period of 1641-1700 AD, the first technical documents were written by women in 2400 BCE-eight centuries earlier. Enheduanna-the first woman writer and the first nonanonymous author ever identified-wrote many of the period's great poems, including A Hymn to Inanna. Her work calls into question our discipline's belief that persuasive writing began with Homer and was conceptualized largely by men. This fact has the potential to completely revise the history of both technical and persuasive writing, and women's role in that history.