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.