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111 and kingdoms in Mesopotamia. It compresses the data in the Sumerian King Lists wherein Kingship, having begun in Kish (that the Bible calls Kush), indeed shifted to Uruk (Erech in the Bible) and after some meandering to Akkad, and in time to Babylon (Babel) and Assyria (Ashur). They all emanated from Sumer, the biblical Shine'ar. The Sumerian "first" in Kingship is further evidenced by the biblical use of the term "Mighty Man" to describe the first king, for this is a literal rendering of the Sumerian word for king, LU.GAL—"Great/ Mighty Man." There have been many attempts to identify "Nimrod." Since according to Sumerian "myths" it was Ninurta, the Foremost Son of Enlil, who was given the task of instituting "Enlilship" in Kish, Nimrod might have been the Hebrew name for Ninurta. If it is a man's name, no one knows what it was in Sumerian because the clay tablet is damaged there. According to the Sumerian King Lists, the Kish dynasty con- sisted of twenty-three kings who ruled for "24,510 years 3 months and 3 1/2 days," with individual reigns of 1,200, 900, 960, 1,500, 1,560 years and the like. Assuming the misposi- tioning of "1" as "60" in transcribing over the millennia, one arrives at the more plausible 20, 15, and so on individual reigns and a total of just over four hundred years—a_ period that is supported by archaeological discoveries at Kish. The list of names and lengths of reign is deviated from only once, in respect to the thirteenth king. Of him the King Lists state: Etana, a shepherd, he who ascended to heaven, who consolidated all countries, became king and ruled for 1,560 years. This historical notation is not an idle one; for there does exist a long epic tale, the Epic of Etana, that describes his Divine Encounters in his efforts to reach the Gates of Heaven. Although no complete text has been found, scholars have been able to piece together the story line from fragments of Old Babylonian, Middle Assyrian, and Neo-Assyrian recen- sions; but there is no doubt that the original version was The Gates of Heaven