Remote Sensing of the European Seas

Princess Enheduanna, daughter of king Sargon of Akkad, lived around 2300 BC. She was a high priestess of the moon god Nanna in the ancient city of Ur. And an accomplished poet too. In fact, she is the author of a number of Sumerian hymns, and is generally considered to be the earliest author known by name. When she came to honor Inanna – the goddess of sexual love, fertility, and warfare, daughter of Nanna and often associated with the planet Venus (the one that the Akkadians called Ishtar) – above all the other gods of the Sumerian pantheon, she mentioned for the very first time, in her Hymn number 8, nothing less than the “Seven Seas”. . . Septem Maria, would call them the Romans centuries later, after inher- ing the concept from the Greeks (for whom seven probably just meant several), but perhaps applying it to the wrong place – i. e. the extensive system of coastal lagoons, which at the time dotted the northern Adriatic Sea – at least in the description of Pliny the Elder, Roman fleet commander and scholarly author of Historia Naturalis. Indeed, which seven seas are int- ded depends on the context. According to the historians, there are at least nine bodies of water in the medieval European and Arabic literature that can - pire to qualify as one of the famous seven.