For other uses, see Kur (disambiguation)

Kur (disambiguation)

Kur, KUR or kur can refer to:* Kur, a mountain in Sumerian mythology* Kür, a village in Azerbaijan* Kurdish language ISO 639 code* Pulau Kur, one of the Tayandu Islands, Maluku, Indonesia...

In Sumerian mythology, Kur was primarily a mountain or mountains, and usually referred to the Zagros mountains to the east of Sumer

Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....

. It is possible that this name for the area coincides with the still present modern day Kurds who inhabit much of the Zagros mountains. The cuneiform for "kur" was written ideographically with the cuneiform sign 𒆳, a pictograph of a mountain. It can also mean "foreign land". Although the word for earth was Ki

KI

Ki or KI may refer to:* .ki, the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code top level domain for Kiribati*Ki., an abbreviation for the Book of Kings in Judaeo-Christian religious texts* Ki * Ki , a Japanese syllabic character...

, Kur came to also mean land, and Sumer

Sumer

Sumer was a civilization and historical region in southern Mesopotamia, modern Iraq during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age....

 itself, was called "Kur-gal" or "Great Land". "Kur-gal" also means "Great Mountain" and is a metonym for both Nippur

Nippur

Nippur was one of the most ancient of all the Sumerian cities. It was the special seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil, the "Lord Wind," ruler of the cosmos subject to An alone...

 and Enlil

Enlil

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

 who rules from that city. Ekur

Ekur

Ekur is a Sumerian term meaning "mountain house". It is the assembly of the gods in the Garden of the gods, parallel in Greek mythology to Mount Olympus and was the most revered and sacred building of ancient Sumer.-Origin and meaning:...

, "mountain house" was the temple of Enlil

Enlil

Elizabeth Barrett Browning was one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era. Her poetry was widely popular in both England and the United States during her lifetime. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, Robert Browning, shortly after her death.-Early life:Members...

 at Nippur

Nippur

Nippur was one of the most ancient of all the Sumerian cities. It was the special seat of the worship of the Sumerian god Enlil, the "Lord Wind," ruler of the cosmos subject to An alone...

. A second, popular meaning of Kur was "underworld", or the world under the earth.

Kur was sometimes the home of the dead, it is possible that the flames on escaping gas plumes in parts of the Zagros mountains would have given those mountains a meaning not entirely consistent with the primary meaning of mountains and an abode of a god. The eastern mountains as an abode of the god is popular in Ancient Near Eastern mythology.

The underworld Kur is the void space between the primeval sea (Abzu

Abzu

The abzu also called engur, literally, ab='ocean' zu='to know' or 'deep' was the name for fresh water from underground aquifers that was given a religious quality in Sumerian and Akkadian mythology...

) and the earth (Ma).

Kur is almost identical with "Ki-gal", "Great Land" which is the Underworld (thus the ruler of the Underworld is Ereshkigal

Ereshkigal

In Mesopotamian mythology, Ereshkigal was the goddess of Irkalla, the land of the dead or underworld. Sometimes her name is given as Irkalla, similar to the way the name Hades was used in Greek mythology for both the underworld and its ruler.Ereshkigal was the only one who could pass judgment and...

 "Goddess of The Great Land". In later Babylonian myth Kur is possibly an Anunnaki

Anunnaki

The Anunnaki are a group of Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian deities...

, brother of Ereshkigal

Ereshkigal

In Mesopotamian mythology, Ereshkigal was the goddess of Irkalla, the land of the dead or underworld. Sometimes her name is given as Irkalla, similar to the way the name Hades was used in Greek mythology for both the underworld and its ruler.Ereshkigal was the only one who could pass judgment and...

, Enki

Enki

Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians...

, and Enlil

Enlil

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. In the Enuma Elish

Enûma Elish

The is the Babylonian creation myth . It was recovered by Austen Henry Layard in 1849 in the ruined Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh , and published by George Smith in 1876.The Enûma Eliš has about a thousand lines and is recorded in Old Babylonian on seven clay tablets, each holding...

 in Akkadian tablets from the first millennium BC, Kur is part of the retinue of Tiamat

Tiamat

In Babylonian mythology, Tiamat is a chaos monster, a primordial goddess of the ocean, mating with Abzû to produce younger gods. It is suggested that there are two parts to the Tiamat mythos, the first in which Tiamat is 'creatrix', through a "Sacred marriage" between salt and fresh water,...

, and seems to be a snakelike dragon. In one story the slaying of the great serpent Kur results in the flooding of the earth. A first millennium BC cylinder seal

Cylinder seal

A cylinder seal is a cylinder engraved with a 'picture story', used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary site of Susa in south-western Iran and at the early site...

 shows a fire-spitting winged dragon—a nude woman between its wings—pulling the chariot of the god who subdued it, another depicts a god riding a dragon, a third a goddess.

KUR, as a word, can also refer to a variety of other things. Cuneiform

Cuneiform

Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...

  historically means "mountain" but came to refer to "land" in general and as a determiner is placed before the name of a state or kingdom (see also URU

Cities of the ancient Near East

The largest cities in the Bronze Age ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands. Memphis in the Early Bronze Age with some 30,000 inhabitants was the largest city of the time by far...

). The Assyrian

Akkadian language

Akkadian is an extinct Semitic language that was spoken in ancient Mesopotamia. The earliest attested Semitic language, it used the cuneiform writing system derived ultimately from ancient Sumerian, an unrelated language isolate...

pronunciation is mât.