Edin (Sumerian term)

Edin (Eden in the Bible) is a sumerian term meaning "steppe" or "plain", written ideographically with the cuneiform sign EDIN .[1] It is featured on the Gudea cylinders as the name of a watercourse from which plaster is taken to build a temple for Ningirsu. "Clay plaster, harmoniously blended clay taken from the Edin canal, has been chosen by Lord Ningirsu with his holy heart, and was painted by Gudea with the splendors of heaven, as if kohl were being poured all over it."[2] Thorkild Jacobsen called it the "Idedin" canal, suggesting it was an as yet unidentified "Desert Canal", which he considered "probably refers to an abandoned canal bed that had filled with the characteristic purplish dune sand still seen in southern Iraq."[3] Friedrich Delitzsch was the first amongst numerous scholars to suggest the Jewish and Christian term Eden traced back to this term. The later Babylonian term is "edinu".[4]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Konrad Volk; Annette Zgoll (1997). A Sumerian reader. GBPress Pont. Ist.Biblicum. pp. 82–. ISBN 978-88-7653-610-6. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
  2. ↑ The building of Ningirsu's temple., Cylinder A, Lines 738-758, Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E., and Zólyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford 1998-.
  3. ↑ Thorkild Jacobsen (23 September 1997). The Harps that once--: Sumerian poetry in translation, p. 423. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-07278-5. Retrieved 21 June 2011.
  4. ↑ Dexter E. Callender (April 2000). Adam in myth and history: ancient Israelite perspectives on the primal human, p. 42. Eisenbrauns. ISBN 978-1-57506-902-9. Retrieved 27 June 2011.
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