Alulim

Alulim (; transliterated: ) was a mythological Mesopotamian ruler, regarded as the first king ever to rule. He is known from the Sumerian King List, Ballad of Early Rulers, and other similar sources which invariably place him in Eridu and assign a reign to him lasting tens of thousands of years. The tablet of Old Babylonian period (c. 1900–1600 BC) from Ur describing the divine appointment of Alulim by the gods notes that he was chosen among "vast and many people," and appointed by gods for the "shepherdship of the entirety of the many people". Another myth describing his appointment by the gods and incantations treating him as the creator of insects are also known. He is absent from Early Dynastic sources, and he is considered fictional by Assyriologists. His name was preserved in later Greek, Arabic and Persian works.

==Name== Alulim's name was written in cuneiform as A2-lu-lim or A-lu-lim and can be translated from Sumerian as either "horn of the red deer" or "seed of the red deer" depending on the variable first sign. Jeremiah Peterson suggests that it might reflect the Mesopotamian belief that at the dawn of history, when Alulim was believed to live, humans behaved in animal-like manner, as attested in texts such as Sheep and Grain or How Grain Came to Sumer. A further attested spelling, Alulu, written A-lu-lu, might represent an Akkadianized form. The name Ayalu, known from the Uruk List of Kings and Sages (Paired with Apkallu Adapa) where it is written A-a-lu, appears to be another variant, resulting from reinterpretation reliant on the partially homophonous word ayyalu, 'deer' or 'stag'.