An Office That Outlasted Its First Holder

The entu office continued well beyond Enheduanna's own lifetime, most notably at Sippar, where entu priestesses served the sun god Shamash and resided in a walled cloister called the gagu alongside other consecrated women, including the related class known as naditu. Old Babylonian legal and economic archives from Sippar document these women's property rights, business dealings and legal standing in considerable practical detail, showing the entu's installation opened onto a real, materially significant institutional life rather than a purely ceremonial or symbolic role.

Jeremy Black and Anthony Green's dictionary of Mesopotamian religion places the entu among the most senior ranks of Mesopotamian priesthood open to women, and Enheduanna's own writing, still read as a foundational text of Mesopotamian devotional literature, ensures that the installation rite which placed her in that rank remains one of the very few Mesopotamian religious ceremonies known partly through the words of the person who actually underwent it.