The Moon God’s Wife: A Novel of Enheduanna
Esh-tar-da-ri, daughter, sister, and aunt of kings in the sprawling Mesopotamian empire of Akkad, wants nothing more from her earliest childhood than to be a priestess of her family’s patron goddess, Inanna. Brought up in the palace as a royal princess, inquisitive, and eager to learn, Esh is indulged by her father, Sargon the Great, mostly ignored by her brothers, and disliked by her mother. It is over her mother’s objections that Esh’s father (who seems to be the enlightened one here) grants her an education, so she and her loyal lifelong friend, Ninsha, are tutored the same as her brothers. She puts all her energies into preparing for the priesthood and believes she is visited by Inanna in dreamlike visions. But King Sargon is forced to use his daughter for a political alliance, and Esh, grudgingly accepting her duty, journeys upriver to marry the king of Mari, and is made a priestess of the sun god Shamash. As a queen, she is instructed to further her father’s plans to expand and govern his empire, and to keep Mari allied with Akkad.
Spanning Esh’s lifetime, Roberts’ novel takes the reader into the chaotic atmosphere of ancient Mesopotamia, with bloody palace coups, constant rebellions, widespread brutality and slaughter, slavery, elaborate religious rites, and magnificent architecture. In a well-researched, engaging narrative, Roberts has made Esh—based on a real woman who would eventually become the Enheduanna, the human wife of the moon god and is credited with writing some forty-two hymns that have lasted centuries—a believable and courageous figure. She has the determination to survive oppression and danger, but finally also realizes that one can fulfill one’s destiny in unexpected ways.
