Enki and Sumerian Immortality

There is a wide variety of types and genres in these compositions, which are as startling as it is revealing, given the age of the culture involved. In Sumer, nearly a millennium before the Hebrews wrote their Bible, or the Greeks their Iliad and Odyssey, we find a growing body of literature (here and throughout this paper, the term literature is used in the more restricted sense of belles-lettres) that includes such diverse genres as epic tales and myths, hymns and laments - as well as man...