An ancient disk shows the priestess Enheduanna, third figure from the right, during a ritual. Mefman00/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY I teach writing and rhetoric, but my college students and I often overlook a surprisingly complicated question: What is writing? And can artificial intelligence really do it? Many people think of “writing” as putting words on a page. However, even from very early on, writers have seen their craft as something more. From Enheduanna, the first named author on record, to P