En-men-dur-ana


En-men-dur-ana of Sippar was an ancient Sumerian king, whose name appears in the Sumerian King List as the seventh pre-dynastic king of Sumer. He was said to have reigned for 43,200 years.

Name

His name means "chief of the powers of Dur-an-ki", while "Dur-an-ki" in turn means "the meeting-place of heaven and earth".

City

En-men-dur-ana's city Sippar was associated with the worship of the sun-god Utu, later called Shamash in the Semitic language. Sumerian and Babylonian literature attributed the founding of Sippar to Utu.

Myth

A myth written in a Semitic language tells of Emmeduranki, subsequently being taken to heaven by the gods Shamash and Adad, and taught the secrets of heaven and of earth. In particular, Emmeduranki was taught arts of divination, such as how to inspect oil on water and how to discern messages in the liver of animals and several other divine secrets.
En-men-dur-ana, held significance among the Pre-Sumerians as he was the ancestor from whom all priests of the Sun God had to be able to trace descent.
He is sometimes linked to the Biblical patriarch Enoch, due to the following associations between Enoch in the Genesis genealogies and En-men-dur-ana in the Sumerian King List: Both people are the 7th name in a list of ante-diluvian patriarchs with long lifespans. En-men-dur-ana is associated with Sippar, while Enoch's lifespan is 365 years, which is the same as the number of days in a solar year.