It seems that the place of origin of sumerian gods was Gobeklitepe. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Du-Ku Du-Ku or dul-kug [du6-ku3] is a Sumerian word for a sacred place Divine The location is otherwise alluded to in sacred texts as a specifically identified place of godly judgement.The hill was the location for ritual offerings to Sumerian god(s). Nungal and the Anunna dwell upon the holy hill in a text written from Gilgamesh.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe << Schmidt also engaged in speculation regarding the belief systems of the groups that created Göbekli Tepe, based on comparisons with other shrines and settlements. He presumed shamanic practices and suggested that the T-shaped pillars represent human forms, perhaps ancestors, whereas he saw a fully articulated belief in deities as not developing until later, in Mesopotamia, that was associated with extensive temples and palaces. This corresponds well with an ancient Sumerian belief that agriculture, animal husbandry, and weaving were brought to humans from the sacred mountain Du-ku/Ekur, which was inhabited by Annuna deities, very ancient deities without individual names. Schmidt identified this story as a primeval oriental myth that preserves a partial memory of the emerging Neolithic.>> From https://enenuru.proboards.com/thread/176/du-ku-cosmology << Next, Black addresses the ḫursag̃ and the Holy Mound (dul) and something new emerges in this excellent discussion: “Now the terms ḫursag̃ “hill” and dul “mound” are known from administrative field plans dating from the Third Dynasty of Ur, which conveniently demonstrate the use of these terms as part of the everyday vocabulary of vernacular speech, not restricted to a purely literary lexicon. The plans use ḫursag̃ for the “hilly” parts of fields, which are difficult to cultivate (so the ḫursag̃ can be translated as “hill(s)”), and dul for areas of fields which are unproductive because they are tell-ground (that is, ground untillable because it is the site of ruined habitations). The word translated here as “mound” is Sumerian dul, Akkadian tillu (which is, of course, Arabic tell). A hill known as the Holy Mound, then, was the birthplace if the Anuna, and the other gods, at the time before sky and earth were separated. They lived up on it, and mankind lived down below. The imagination stimulus for the idea of a single Holy Mound -a dul or tell– must have been the numerous ruin mounds that dot the surface of the Mesopotamian plain, with evidence of ancient habitation. Nobody lived on them, but you only have to investigate them cursorily- if your village is next to one and you stroll up there of an evening- to realize, from the ceramic remains and the occasional skull and bone, that they had been inhabited in the past. But by whom? The mythic imagination tells us that this is where the gods lived in the most distant past, with their feet on the ground but close to the sky. A mythic image or metaphor such as the Holy Mound, then, is a single cosmic location derivable from generalized elements of the landscape, such as uninhabited ruin mounds, that are multiple and ubiquitous. “ Summing: From a survey of different cosmological material we can see that the du-ku seems in large to be absent from Sumerian imaginings in regards creation. …….. Cohen on Sheep and Grain/ The author notes the occurrence in the debate poem Sheep and Grain of an instance of the cosmological du-ku as we have above – he briefly recaps the views of other scholars, namely van Dijk’s suggestions of a the du-ku (sacred mound) as situated on a sort of world mountain on which the gods come from (as Black said, hursag). He mentions Jacobsen’s n. 27 from page 371 from his “the Harps….”. This is an important hint Jacobsen contributes: “Duku, “the holy mound,” was a sacred locality. Originally and basically the term designated the plastered-over pile of harvested grain, but it was extended to underground storage generally. Enlil’s ancestors- powers for fertility in the earth- were located in Duku.” ….. En-me-šar2-ra “Lord All Essences” In the OB and later lists [Enmešara] is treated in the context of Enlil’s ancestors, but not as one of them. Very little is known about him from other late third and early second millennium sources, and the few facts there are must be enriched by scattered information from late cultic commentaries and theological texts heavily influenced by the mythology of Enūma Eliš. ….. The meaning of this conflict for cosmogony lies in the tension between essences, me, and divine government, nam-tar, “decreeing the fates”. The essences are by nature part of existence, they came into being with what was created, but they are not created themselves. Enlil, An and Enkig represent active rulership, they distribute the essences over the gods and assign each his task, nam-tar. The essences are made subservient to the purposes of just rule. The brainless old cosmos of essences had to go, but it did not give way without struggle, it rebelled: Enmešara, “Lord all Essences”, tried to know nam-tar and rule like Enlil, but he failed and was defeated. What there is was subordinated to divine government for good. Lb.Rom. Înțelesul acestui conflict pentru cosmogonie constă în tensiunea dintre esențe, Me și guvernul divin, nam-tar, „decretând soartele”. Esențele fac parte din natură a existenței, au apărut cu ceea ce a fost creat, dar nu sunt create ele însele. Enlil, An și Enki reprezintă o guvernare activă, distribuind esențele zeilor și atribuind fiecăruia sarcina sa, nam-tar. Esențele sunt subordonate scopurilor unei reguli juste. Vechiul cosmos fără esența esențelor a trebuit să meargă, dar nu a cedat fără luptă, s-a răzvrătit: Enmešara, „Doamna tuturor esențelor”, a încercat să cunoască nam-tarul și să conducă ca Enlil, dar a eșuat și a fost învinsa. Ceea ce există a fost subordonat guvernului divin pentru totdeauna. …….As well, a line from a hymn to Inanna also spells out the physical existence of the du-ku among the buildings of the E-kur temple complex: “Lady ……! Returning heroic youth, Inana ……. At the shrine, in Nibru, in the E-du-kug ……” M. Cohen, whose 1993 work Cultic Calendars of the Ancient Near East I will chiefly refer to below, adds that the du-ku is placed within the E-kur complex in 2 lamentations and also in an eršemma-hymn called “Dilmun”, which gives it as the du6-kù ki-kù “The Sacred mound, the sacred place.” He further isolates the du-ku as being positioned in whats known as the Tummal complex – a construct near the E-kur itself,>> From https://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/SignLists/protocuneiform/archsigns.html Sign ME
Sumerian proto-cuneiform sign KU:”sacred” https://cdli.ucla.edu/tools/SignLists/protocuneiform/archsigns.html
Sumerian proto-cuneiform sign Du:”mound”
From Elementary Sumerian Glossary – Cuneiform Digital Library …cdli.ucla.edu › pubs › cdlp › cdlp0003_20160104 · Pennsylvania Sumerian Dictionary on the … agrun-ků the goddess Ninlil’s sanctuary at Ur (LU 16) … ků(g) (kug) to be sacred, holy; to sanctify
Gobeklitepe sign ?? “sacred” ??
From https://www.facebook.com/TempleofSumer/posts/blessed-du-ku-from-temple-of-sumer-the-month-of-the-sacred-moundholy-hills-and-s/833633270129967/ Blessed Du-ku from Temple of Sumer! “The Month of the Sacred Mound” Holy Hills and Sacred Mountains – The Foundations of the Duku Festival Holy hills and sacred mountains permeate much of Ancient Near Eastern Literature, from the earliest cuneiform tablets, all the way to their central place in Biblical scripture. From the image of Moses, standing on top of Mount Sinai, receiving sacred cuneiform tablets from God, giving deified Hammurbian laws to mankind; to the image of the Prophet Elijah, standing on Mount Carmel, asking his God to prove himself more powerful than Baal; and all the way on to the image of Jesus giving the sermon on the Mount. Mountains have always had great significance in both Jewish and Christian literature, since they are seen as being “closer to God” who dwells where the Heavens meet the sky. As a result of this idea, we often see God bestowing his divine wisdom from a mountaintop in scripture. These are concepts and central motifs which stretch back to the earliest times, to long before the Bible was set to parchment, and long before the Patriarch Abraham first began his journey from the Sumerian City of Ur, all the way back to a time when civilization was just beginning. For it was said that upon this Scared Mound, “the ḫursag̃” (hill) of Heaven and Earth, that the ancestral Gods were created. In the earliest literature, the Sumerian poem ‘The Debate between the sheep and the Grain’, dated to the 3rd millennium BC, we are given the creation myth telling of the Sumerian ‘Edin’, meaning ‘steppe’, the place where the Anunna Gods were first created. This hill was situated at the point where the Heavens rested upon the Earth, and where mankind were given their first habitat. This sixty one line myth was set to stone over two thousand years before the Bible was even written, and before the “Garden of Eden” was even a concept. Later in time, from Third dynasty of Ur period (2200BC) onwards, we would find the term ‘Edin’ rephrased to ‘Hursag’ meaning ‘hill’, or in some cases ‘tillu’ in Akkadian, a term that was widely used to describe pre-historic tell mounds. In ‘Riches Hidden in Secret Places’ the acclaimed Assyriologist Jeremy Black noted that the Sumerians, unlike the scholars of today, had no interest in where their people had come from, and rarely wrote about it in their literature. Their Gods were Gods of civilisation, intent on bringing order to the universe, and civilisation to the society in which they served. Because of this, the Sumerians themselves were an incredibly forward looking people, focused on ingenuity and invention, and working towards a better tomorrow, rather than looking back to their past. On the other hand, the Sumerians knew they had not inhabited the earth since the very beginning of time, and that there had been a time before civilisation, when the very first men had lived in an uncivilised state like the animals, which was possibly the inspiration for Gilgamesh’s Enkidu. The Sumerians understood that civilisation had been a much later development, and it fascinated them to speculate on how the world had come into being, and how things has been at the beginning of time. In ‘The Debate between the sheep and the Grain” we see the Holy Mound take centre stage, as it was set as the birthplace Of the Anuna Gods at the time before sky and earth were separated. The Anuna Gods were ancient Gods from a time before recorded history. They were Gods that during the Sumerian period, and into the late Akkadian period were portrayed as seven judges who sit before the throne of Ereshkigal in the Underworld, their primary function is to decree the fates of humanity. During the Old Babylonian period, the Anuna were believed to be the chthonic deities of the Netherworld. In the ‘Curse of Akkad’ the Sacred Mound is also described as the resting place where the great ancestors of the Great God Enlil, En-duku-ga the Lord of the Sacred Mound and Nin-duku-ga the Lady of the Sacred Mound. These primordial gods even predated Enlil himself, and Enlil is the first born son of An and Ki. They may be the parents of one of Enlil’s parents, or they may go even further back. Jeremy Black theorised that at the time of writing this myth, the Sumerians lived in a land surrounded by these tell mounds, and knew they were the ruined habitation of their most ancient ancestors, and possibly even the Gods themselves ancestors, which fuelled their mythic imaginations. Although Sumer emerged as a complex civilisation between 5500BC to 4500BC, it is clear that there had been inhabitants in the land between the rivers long before that point back to Neolithic times. We call these early inhabitants the proto-Euphrateans, or Ubaidians, and they had left many markers behind. Many of these early inhabitants were probably very ancient ancestors of the Sumerians themselves, although before that point in time they were not classed as ‘civilisations’. The term ‘civilisation’ only comes into play with ‘recorded history’, and when characterized by a series of set markers, of which include urban development, social stratification imposed by a cultural elite, a perceived separation from and domination over the natural environment, and symbolic systems of communication such as complex writing systems. So, while the Sumerians were the first true civilisation to fit all of those criteria, their ancestors had probably already lived in this area, and its surrounding areas, for millennia before this point. Jeremy Black went on to state that: “The imagination stimulus for the idea of a single Holy Mound -a dul or tell- must have been the numerous ruin mounds that dot the surface of the Mesopotamian plain, with evidence of ancient habitation. Nobody lived on them, but you only have to investigate them cursorily- if your village is next to one and you stroll up there of an evening- to realize, from the ceramic remains and the occasional skull and bone, that they had been inhabited in the past. But by whom? The mythic imagination tells us that this is where the gods lived in the most distant past, with their feet on the ground but close to the sky. A mythic image or metaphor such as the Holy Mound, then, is a single cosmic location derivable from generalized elements of the landscape, such as uninhabited ruin mounds, that are multiple and ubiquitous.”The acclaimed German archaeologist and pre and proto-historian Klaus Schmidt firmly believed the original ‘Duku’ that was written of in ‘The Debate between the sheep and the Grain’ was none other than Göbekli Tepe, the ancient Neolithic mountain sanctuary dating back to around 9130BCE. He believed that the poem itself was a cultural memory of ancient site, and a mythohistorical narrative from the time when mankind moved from being predominantly hunter gatherers to a time of permanent settlement. It’s worth considering that the site of Göbekli Tepe is situated in what would one day be classed as Northern Mesopotamia, and the site itself was only seven days walk on foot from what would one day become the Sumerian City of Ur in Southern Mesopotamia, and even closer than that when travelling by donkey, or by boat down the River Euphrates. It’s probably no coincidence that this buried and abandoned “ancient city” was situated in a hilly and mountainous environment just like in the Sumerian myth, and being what many believe to be birthplace of animal husbandry from the archaeological evidence at the site, fits the myth perfectly too. What is even more compelling however is the creation of grain that takes place in the myth, especially when you consider the ancient einkorn wheat, found in the hills surrounding the Göbekli Tepe, just happens to be the single genetic ancestor of every strain of wheat grown and eaten across the earth today. During the Third Dynasty of Ur period, and over seven millennia later, the Sacred Mound had taken on a symbolic representation during the Duku Festival, as a likeness of it was built in harvested grain in the lead up to the religious holiday. This new meaning for the term ‘Duku’ seems to have caused confusion among scholars, as while most academics held to the Sacred Mound as a historic locality, others such as Thorkild Jacobsen, who read texts detailing the construction of this symbolic depiction saw its origin as a “plastered-over pile of harvested grain”, and concluded that the Duku must have been some sort of underground storage. However as practitioners of the Sumerian religion we sometimes have the luxury of seeing hidden meanings where perhaps the academics are too focused on literal depictions in the text, and as any who are well versed in the concepts of sympathetic magic will attest, in this case the laws of similarity are obvious in their apparency. We can see from the method of construction of the walls of this grain ‘Duku’ are incredibly similar to the construction of ancestral tells, together with the harvest it contains, the offerings of milk it is given, and offerings of dozens of lambs prepared, all tie in intimately with the myth ‘Debate between Sheep and Grain’ and it’s links to the mythic Sacred Mound, on which the Gods were given life. Because of this I would say this grain Duku came later, and was the development of a symbolic construction originally created to be as part of the cultic activities, which then later developed from there to the idea of grain silos.In the Nippurian Calendar the month of Duku begins properly with the sighting of the new moon on the 20th of September, with the first day of the month beginning properly on the 21th. At this time the preparations would just be beginning to take shape for the Duku festival, which didn’t actually take place until much later in the month. During this time, a symbolic Sacred Mound is constructed in Tummal, a “sacred city” located middle-way along the canal between Šuruppak and Nippur, suggesting a possible identification with the site of Tell Dlihim. The cult centre of Tummal is sometimes defined in texts as a primeval city, much like Eridu, connected to reeds and abundance. The Duku Festival itself actually takes place on the 27th and 28th day of the month, or the 17th and 18th of October, during the time of the dark moon. As the Festival of the Sacred Mound began, the cult statues of Enlil and Ninlil, accompanied by the King, along with the cult statues of other Nippurian Gods, were taken from the Ekur Temple in Nippur, and transported by boat to the Tummal where the elite had gathered to begin the ceremony. During the festival large quantities of food and drink were distributed to the people after the rituals and offerings. The festival itself takes place just a few days before the new moon appears on the 19th of October. The new moon’s appearance no doubt marking the end of the festival, and signalling that the month of Apin Du-a is about to begin.A good myth to read on this day would be ‘The Debate between Sheep and Grain’ for much of the reasons we have covered in this piece, because the myth is intimately linked with the Duku. Offerings appropriate for this holiday are milk and grains, and many Sumerian Reconstructionists will bake them into cupcakes. Bread making is a fundamental building block of civilization and demonstrates the cultivation and refinement of grain. Cooking it into a cake, and frosting it shows a mound of grain being symbolically plastered over. The cupcake recipe should include milk, as this was one of the most common offerings to the mound.Although the Festival of the Sacred Mound was generally seen as a great time of celebration and feasting, we must also be mindful that is had sombre undertones, as it was also a time when the Gods of the underworld were paid homage, and the ancestors were remembered, so we should also remember to pay our respects to those we have lost in the past, and in doing so pay tribute to their achievements. Though those memories, those we have lost will never leave us.>> Du-Ku=Sacred place, among E-Kur complex in Hur-sag. Sacred place(pillar precinct), among E-kur complex. Pillar precinct (circular enclosure) among Göbeklitepe temple complex. < Ekur (É.KUR) 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. There is a clear association of Ziggurats with mountain houses. Duranki (Dur.An.Ki) was the Sumerian term for the people who were created by their Gods. Dur translates to Bond, An translates to Heaven or skies, Ki translates to Earth. >
Tartaria tablets 
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