Geography
In which city did Enheduanna, the first known named author, serve as priestess?
- Ur
- Thebes
- Knossos
The answer is Ur. Sargon's daughter, priestess and poet.

Enheduanna was high priestess of the moon god Nanna at Ur, appointed around 2300 BC by her father Sargon of Akkad, who had just conquered Sumer and needed the old religious establishment brought onside. She is the earliest person in history whose name is attached to their own writing. Everything older is anonymous - accounts, king lists, hymns by nobody.
What makes the attribution possible is that she put herself in the poems. In the hymn known as the Exaltation of Inanna she describes being driven from her temple during a rebellion, wandering, and appealing to the goddess to restore her - and she names herself while doing it. That combination of a signature and a first-person account of the author's own bad year is the thing that had never happened before.
The office itself was a political instrument. Sargon had just conquered Sumer, and installing his daughter as high priestess of the moon god at Ur bound the new Akkadian power to the oldest religious institution in the south. Her successors held the post for centuries, and several were also royal daughters.