%0 Journal Article
%T Finding Our Missing Pieces¡ªWomen Technical Writers in Ancient Mesopotamia
%A Kathryn R. Raign
%J Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
%@ 1541-3780
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0047281618793406
%X Contrary to current scholarship in technical communication, which places the first women technical writers in the period of 1641¨C1700 AD, the first technical documents were written by women in 2400 BCE¡ªeight centuries earlier. Enheduanna¡ªthe first woman writer and the first nonanonymous author ever identified¡ªwrote 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
%K women
%K ancient
%K Mesopotamia
%K technical
%K instrumental
%K independent
%K instructional
%K ancient Near East
%K writing
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0047281618793406