According to Wikipedia, En-men-dur-ana was a Sumerian king living before 2900 BC who has been identified by some with Enoch, the ancient patriarchal prophet of God / Allah, to whom is attributed the Book of Enoch. Enoch is chronicled in the book of Genesis and recorded in two books in the New Testament as 'seventh from Adam'.
Well this got me thinking, if this historically attested person, En-men-dur-ana, is linked to Enoch in the Bible, and even Wikipedia has it that he was in history recorded as "7th name in a list of ante-deluvian patriarchs with long lifespans" then maybe the first in the historical list of such patriarchs is actually identifiable with the man known as the first man, namely Adam. Cool!
OK so who was the first in this list of patriarchs, in the list of kings of Sumeria in the centuries before, what, 2500 BC? I'll have a look at the Wikipedia links ...
... En-men-dur-ana's first predecessor is En-sipad-zid-ana (the king of Larsa)
The predecessor of En-sipad-zid-ana = Dumuzid ('Shepherd' of Bad-tibira) - these guys were all kings but that term might just be what we sometimes call 'patriarch' or a head of tribe or family
Predecessor of Dumuzid = En-men-gal-ana (again of Bad-tibira) - these guys can have very similar names in Sumerian, the archetypal language
Predecessor of En-men-gal-ana = En-men-lu-ana (again of Bad-tibira)
Predecessor of En-men-lu-ana = Alalngar (of Eridu - which makes sense because Eridu was one of the first cities, it seems, and sometimes identified with part of the site of the Garden of Eden, where the tree of life was situated, as attested in the Epic of Gilgamesh who sought the tree of life from the then flooded area around Eridu where the tree had given the water healing powers)
...
I think we are getting warmer since I have it from Sumerian lexica that Adam is also written in Sumerian as Alam or even Alan and does indeed match the Biblical meaning of 'statue' related to his having been formed by God as a moulding from clay or mud (does the prophesy in the Qur'an say 'from a clot'? I think it's something like that, but it's the same kind of imagery of some matter formed into a statue-like object before being given the breath of life by God)
...
Now here we are:
predecessor of Alalngar = Alulim (again from Eridu and again a little like the name Alam equating to Adam so the kind of phonetics is consistent with scriptures) and there we have it - the first in the list and possibly the historical Adam (alias Alam, alias Alulim) and even Wikipedia reports the historical account regarding this person's predecessor as "new creation". Wow. Adam a historical person for real! Whatever next?! I love it!
