Mountains in Sumerian Creation Myths
Archaeologists at the University of Pennsylvania excavated the ancient Sumerian city Nippur, in present-day Iraq, between 1889 and 1900. Near Nippur’s most important temple, Ekur (lit. “mountain house”), they unearthed a cache of clay tablets.1 Archaeologists estimate that these cuneiform tablets date as far back as the 3rd millennium BCE. They are humanity’s earliest extant written records. One of the tablets contains a creation myth, the so-called Debate between Sheep and Grain....