The ultimate source is the Sumerian word gamun.

In the epic Enki and Ninhursag, Enki, as lord of Ab or fresh water ( also the Sumerian word for semen ), is living with his wife in the paradise of Dilmun where

In the past the favoured derivation of the name " Eden " was from the Akkadian edinnu, itself derived from a Sumerian word meaning " plain " or " steppe ", but it is now believed to be more closely related to an Aramaic root meaning " fruitful, well-watered.

The Sumerian word for universe is an-ki, which refers to the god An and the goddess Ki.

* The Sumerian word NIN, EREŠ in Akkadian, is the sign for " lady.

Although Habiru ( a Sumerian ideogram glossed as " brigand " in Akkadian ), and sometimes ( an Akkadian word ) had been reported in Mesopotamia from the reign of the Sumerian king, Shulgi of Ur III, their appearance in Canaan appears to have been due to the arrival of a new state based in Asia Minor to the north of Assyria based upon Maryannu aristocracy of horse drawn charioteers, associated with the Indo-Aryan rulers of the Hurrians, known as Mitanni.

This novel word order is due to the influence of the Sumerian substratum, which has an SOV order.

In Sumerian, the single word kur had two meanings: ' hill ' and ' country '.

The word also appears in Sumerian texts ; for instance, in the lost book, when Enki tells his master scribe ( Edubsar ) to write down all that he says, the text mentions a stylus of electrum with a crystal at the tip that glowed.

Depending on the context, a cuneiform sign can be read either as one of several possible logograms, each of which corresponds to a word in the Sumerian spoken language, as a phonetic syllable ( V, VC, CV, or CVC ), or as a determinative ( a marker of semantic category, such as occupation or place ).

The Sumerian / Babylonian word " šár " was one of the ancient Mesopotamian units of measurement and as a number appears to have had a value of 3600.

Dossein compares Κάβειροι to the Sumerian word kabar, copper.

That word may come from the Central Semitic word * kittan, the Akkadian words kitû or kita ’ um, meaning flax or linen, and the Sumerian word gada or gida.

The Sumerian pentagrams served as pictograms for the word " UB " meaning " corner, angle, nook ; a small room, cavity, hole ; pitfall ", suggesting something very similar to the pentemychos ( see below on the Pythagorean use for what pentemychos means ).

The Greek word " khitōn " can be traced to the Central Semitic word "* kittan ", which is from the Akkadian words " kitû " or " kita ’ um ", meaning flax or linen, and originally the Sumerian word " gada " or " gida ".

The Hebrew word shekel is based on the verbal root for " weighing " ( sh. q. l ), and is derived from the Akkadian šiqlu or siqlu, a unit of weight equivalent to the Sumerian gin2.

Ma is a Sumerian word meaning " land " that in Sumerian mythology was also used to designate the primeval land.

When Sumerian cuneiform was adapted for writing Akkadian, this was ambiguous because both words were written with the same character ( conventionally transcribed KUR, after its Sumerian pronunciation ).

Her temple, the Esagila ( from Sumerian E ( temple ) + SAG ( head ) + ILA ( lofty )) was located on the KUR of Eridu, although she also had a temple at Kish.

" This newly-recovered final line upset Samuel Noah Kramer's former interpretation, as he allowed: " my conclusion that Dumuzi dies and " stays dead " forever ( cf e. g. Mythologies of the Ancient World p. 10 ) was quite erroneous: Dumuzi according to the Sumerian mythographers rises from the dead annually and, after staying on earth for half the year, descends to the Nether World for the other half ".

One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, which first appears in Akkadian during the Old Babylonian period as a circa 1, 000 line epic known by its incipit, šūtur eli šarrī, ‘‘ Surpassing all other kings ,’’ which incorporated some of the stories from the five earlier Sumerian Gilgamesh tales.

Ziusudra being a king from Shuruppak is supported by the Gilgamesh XI tablet ( see below ) making reference to Utnapishtim ( Akkadian translation of the Sumerian name Ziusudra ) with the epithet " man of Shuruppak " at line 23.

* Samuel Noah Kramer, Gilgamesh and the Huluppu-Tree: A reconstructed Sumerian Text.

One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sin-liqe-unninni, and arranged upon an astronomical principle.

The earliest Sumerian Gilgamesh poems date from as early as the Third dynasty of Ur ( 2100 – 2000 BC ).

Poetry has a long history, dating back to the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh.

One of the most famous of these was the Epic of Gilgamesh, in twelve books, translated from the original Sumerian by a certain Sin-liqi-unninni, and arranged upon an astronomical principle.

Deucalion is parallel to Biblical Noah and to Utnapishtim, the survivor of the Sumerian flood that is told in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five independent Sumerian poems about ' Bilgamesh ' ( Sumerian for Gilgamesh ), king of Uruk.

Tablet 12 is a near copy of an earlier Sumerian tale, a prequel, in which Gilgamesh sends Enkidu to retrieve some objects of his from the Underworld, and he returns in the form of a spirit to relate the nature of the Underworld to Gilgamesh.

Just before a break in the text there is a suggestion that a river is being dammed, indicating a burial in a river bed, as in the corresponding Sumerian poem, The Death of Gilgamesh.

This tablet is mainly an Akkadian translation of an earlier Sumerian poem, Gilgamesh and the Netherworld ( also known as " Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld " and variants ), although it has been suggested that it is derived from an unknown version of that story.

There are five extant Gilgamesh poems in Sumerian.

* Translations of the legends of Gilgamesh in the Sumerian language can be found in Black, J. A., Cunningham, G., Fluckiger-Hawker, E, Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford 1998 –.

The semi-mythical king Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian king list, ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC.

The Chronicle lists successive early Sumerian rulers who kept up intermittent ceremonies at the temple: Aga of Kish, son of Enmebaragesi ; Mesannepada of Ur ; his son Meskiang-nunna ; Gilgamesh of Uruk ; his son Ur-Nungal ; Nanni of Ur and his son Meskiang-nanna.

In the possibly mythical pre-dynastic period, the Sumerian king list portrays the passage of power from Eridu to Shuruppak in the south, until a flood occurred, from where it relocated to the northern city of Kish at the start of the Early Dynastic period.

He is subsequently recorded as the hero of the Sumerian flood epic.

The earliest version of the flood myth is preserved fragmentarily in the Eridu Genesis, written in Sumerian cuneiform and dating to the 17th century BC, during the 1st Dynasty of Babylon when the language of writing and administration was still Sumerian.

The city of Kish flourished in the Early Dynastic period soon after an archaeologically attested river flood in Shuruppak ( modern Tell Fara, Iraq ) and various other Sumerian cities.

Among the interesting features of this version of the flood myth, are the identification, through interpretatio graeca, of the Sumerian god Enki with the Greek god Cronus, the father of Zeus ; and the assertion that the reed boat constructed by Xisuthros survived, at least until Berossus ' day, in the " Corcyrean Mountains " of Armenia.

In the eleventh tablet of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, Utnapishtim " the faraway " is the wise king of the Sumerian city state of Shuruppak who, along with his unnamed wife, survived a flood sent by Enlil to drown every living thing on Earth.

* ETCSL-Text and translation of the Sumerian flood story ( alternate site )

The " flood " described in the Sumerian King List, is believed to have a historical basis, and has been dated 2900 BC.

Dilmun, sometimes described as " the place where the sun rises " and " the Land of the Living ", is the scene of some versions of the Sumerian creation myth, and the place where the deified Sumerian hero of the flood, Utnapishtim ( Ziusudra ), was taken by the gods to live forever.

He was one of the few kings who could read the cuneiform script in Akkadian and Sumerian, and claimed that he even read texts from before the great flood.

In the Sumerian King List, it relies on the flood motif to divide its history into preflood and postflood periods.

The Sumerian flood myth found in the Deluge tablet was the epic of Ziusudra, who heard the Divine Counsel to destroy humanity, in which he constructed a vessel that delivered him from great waters.

An " Atra-Hasis " appears on one of the Sumerian king lists as king of Shuruppak in the times before the flood.

According to the Sumerian King List, Bad-tibira was the second city to " exercise kingship " in Sumer before the flood, following Eridu.

In the Sumerian King List a king Ubara-Tutu is listed as the ruler of Shuruppak and the last king " before the flood ".