cosmos-godsWe're still mapping where this idea was first discussed. Key passages and related ideas below.

The ME (Divine Offices of Civilization)

Kingship, craft, music, even strife — all of civilization handed down as objects the gods could carry off.

The me (pronounced 'may') are one of the most distinctive Sumerian ideas: the divine 'givens' that make ordered civilized life possible. They include kingship and priesthood, the crafts and the arts, the temple offices, music, sexual customs, and even darker realities like strife and deceit — a complete inventory of the institutions of culture, conceived as objects the gods possess and bestow. In one famous myth Inana carries the me off from Enki to her city Uruk. To hold the me is to hold the very building-blocks of an ordered world.