Real life in Sumer, as in the marshlands of Iraq today, centered on the relationship of salt and fresh waters, the relationship between sky and earth, the presence of the sun, and, above all, given the complex agricultural society created by the Sumerians, on fertility and established “civilized” rules. The latter are represented in mythology by the me. The gods themselves, as we have seen, are personifications of natural elements of most concern in the marshlands, beginning with An (Heaven) and Ki (Earth) and Nammu (the primordial waters).