Barton Cylinder in the context of University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology

Eridu Genesis, also called the Sumerian Creation Myth or Sumerian Flood Myth, offers a description of the story surrounding how humanity was created by the gods, the circumstances leading to the origins of the first cities in Mesopotamia, how the office of kingship entered this probably neolithical civilisation, and the global flood.

Other Sumerian creation myths include the Barton Cylinder, the Debate between sheep and grain, and that between Winter and Summer, also found at Nippur. Similar flood myths are described in the Atra-Hasis and Gilgamesh epics, where the former deals with the internal conflict of an organisation of Sumerian gods, which they try to pacify by creating the first couples of humans as labour slaves – followed by a mass reproduction of these creatures and a great flood triggered by Enlil (master of the universe). The narrative of biblical Genesis shows some striking parallels (however, excluding all references to a civilisation before Adam and Eve's creation), so that scientific research has long assumed prehistoric influences on the emergence of Mosaic religion.