Ziusudra of Shuruppak is listed in the WB-62 Sumerian King List recension as the last king of Sumer prior to the Great Flood. He is subsequently recorded as the hero of the Sumerian creation myth and appears in the writings of Berossus as Xisuthros.
In Sumerian and ancient Mesopotamian religion, gallûs were great demons or devils of the ancient Mesopotamian Underworld.
Atra-Hasis is an 18th-century BC Akkadian epic, recorded in various versions on clay tablets, named for its protagonist, Atrahasis. The Atra-Hasis tablets include both a creation myth and one of three surviving Babylonian flood myths. The name "Atra-Hasis" also appears, as king of Shuruppak in the times before a flood, on one of the Sumerian King Lists.
Alulim was a mythological Mesopotamian ruler, regarded as the first king ever to rule. He is known from the Sumerian King List, Ballad of Early Rulers, and other similar sources which invariably place him in Eridu and assign a reign lasting thousands of years to him. The tablet of Old Babylonian period from Ur describing the divine appointment of Alulim by the gods notes that he was chosen among "vast and many people," and appointed by gods for the "shepherdship of the entirety of the many people". Another myth describing his appointment by the gods and incantations treating him as the creator of insects are also known. He is absent from Early Dynastic sources, and he is considered fictional by Assyriologists. His name was preserved in later Greek, Arabic and Persian works.
Aratta is a land that appears in Sumerian myths surrounding Enmerkar and Lugalbanda, two early and possibly mythical kings of Uruk also mentioned on the Sumerian king list.
Eleanor Robson, is a British Assyriologist and academic. She is Professor of Ancient Middle Eastern History at University College London. She is a former chair of the British Institute for the Study of Iraq and a Quondam fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. She is a Fellow of the British Academy.
Ubara-tutu of Shuruppak was the last antediluvian king of Sumer, according to some versions of the Sumerian King List. He was said to have reigned for 18,600 years. He was the son of En-men-dur-ana, a Sumerian mythological figure often compared to Enoch, as he entered heaven without dying. Ubara-Tutu was the king of Sumer until a flood swept over his land.
Jeremy Allen Black was a British Assyriologist and Sumerologist, founder of the online Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature.
Sumerian literature constitutes the earliest known corpus of recorded literature, including the religious writings and other traditional stories maintained by the Sumerian civilization and largely preserved by the later Akkadian and Babylonian empires. These records were written in the Sumerian language in the 18th and 17th centuries BC during the Middle Bronze Age.
The earliest record of a Sumerian creation myth, called The Eridu Genesis by historian Thorkild Jacobsen, is found on a single fragmentary tablet excavated in Nippur by the Expedition of the University of Pennsylvania in 1893, and first recognized by Arno Poebel in 1912. It is written in the Sumerian language and dated to around 1600 BC. Other Sumerian creation myths from around this date are called the Barton Cylinder, the Debate between sheep and grain and the Debate between Winter and Summer, also found at Nippur.
En-sipad-zid-ana appears as the second king of Larak in some versions of the Sumerian King List (SKL). According to that literary composition, En-sipad-zid-ana ruled for 28,800 years. The kings on the early part of the SKL are usually not considered historical, except when they are mentioned in Early Dynastic documents. En-sipad-zid-ana is not one of them.
The Gudea cylinders are a pair of terracotta cylinders dating to c. 2125 BC, on which is written in cuneiform a Sumerian myth called the Building of Ningirsu's temple. The cylinders were made by Gudea, the ruler of Lagash, and were found in 1877 during excavations at Telloh, Iraq and are now displayed in the Louvre in Paris, France. They are the largest cuneiform cylinders yet discovered and contain the longest known text written in the Sumerian language.
The "Debate between sheep and grain" or "Myth of cattle and grain" is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC.
The Debate between Winter and Summer or Myth of Emesh and Enten is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC.
Enlil and Ninlil, the Myth of Enlil and Ninlil, or Enlil and Ninlil: The begetting of Nanna is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets in the mid to late 3rd millennium BC.
The Kesh temple hymn, Liturgy to Nintud, or Liturgy to Nintud on the creation of man and woman, is a Sumerian tablet, written on clay tablets as early as 2600 BCE. Along with the Instructions of Shuruppak, it is the oldest surviving literature in the world.
The Decad is a name given to a standard sequence of ten scribal training compositions in ancient Sumer.
The Song of the hoe or the Creation of the pickax is a Sumerian creation myth, written on clay tablets from the last century of the 3rd millennium BCE.
Du-Ku or dul-kug [du6-ku3] is a Sumerian word for a sacred place.
Iddin-Dagan, fl.c. 1910 BC — c. 1890 BC by the short chronology or c. 1975 BC — c. 1954 BC by the middle chronology) was the 3rd king of the dynasty of Isin. Iddin-Dagan was preceded by his father Shu-Ilishu. Išme-Dagān then succeeded Iddin-Dagan. Iddin-Dagan reigned for 21 years He is best known for his participation in the sacred marriage rite and the sexually-explicit hymn that described it.
