Anna Glenn
Office Hours: Thursdays, 1:00pm - 3:00pm
Mailing Address: Harvard - NELC, #106, 6 Divinity Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02138
Anna Glenn is an Assyriologist specializing in the Sumerian language. Her work focuses on Sumerian literature, religion, and scribal culture of the early second millennium BCE. Starting from a strong philological basis, her research explores topics concerning Mesopotamian kingship, ritual practice, musical performance, and the societal context of Sumerian writing.
Her current project investigates the role of Sumerian hymns in royal ritual during the first half of the second millennium BCE (ca. 2000–1600). Using an innovative interpretive framework, she demonstrates how the textual content of such hymns could have served to contribute to the overall effect of a performed piece, inseparable from other hymnic components such as musical setting and instrumental accompaniment, ritual framing and accompanying ritual acts, and the material setting of the intended performance. This approach, focused on reconnecting the preserved texts to their original context of use, allows us to reanalyze the texts not just as (fairly simple) works of literature but as carefully crafted pieces designed to help achieve specific ritual aims, particularly those involving the king and his relationship to the divine realm.