First, I must will explain about the Dilmun (the Sumerian paradise) and its creation. As some of us know, Enki is in charge of creating Dilmun’s fresh water supply. The land is “pure”, “clean” and “bright”. It is a “land of the living” and knows no sickness or death. The only thing lacking in the wonderful place is fresh water which is essential to healthy animals and plants. Therefore, Enki is brought in and charges the sun-god Utu to bring fresh water from the earth to fill the place. He does so and Dilmun is turned into a divine garden. It becomes filled with fruit-laden fields and meadows.

Eight plants are made to sprout from Ninhursag (the mother-goddess) in this paradise. “She succeeds in bringing these plants into being only after an intricate process involving three generations of goddesses, all conceived by the water-god and born - so our poem repeatedly underlines - without the slightest pain or travail.” (“The Sumerians” page 148 by Samuel Noah Kramer © 1963 by the University of Chicago) Enki, was obsessed with wanting to eat these plants. So, his messenger, the two-faced god Isimud, takes the newly grown plants and gives them to Enki to consume. He does so, and when Ninhursag finds out, she pronounces a curse of death on him. After pronouncing her curse, she leaves, seemingly not wanting to have a chance to change her mind.

Enki begins to become ill; eight of his organs become sick. As his health fails, so does the water in Dilmun and the other gods sit in its dust wishing they knew what they can do to make it paradise once more. A fox approaches the Sumerian’s supreme deity, Enlil, and tells him he will find Ninhursag for a reward. Somehow the fox manages to bring her back and Ninhursag decides to help the ailing god. She seats him by her vulva and inquires which organs hurt. He tells her and she brings into being eight corresponding healing deities. One of which is Nin-ti, the goddess who heals Enki’s rib.

As Eve, means approximately, “she who makes live”, Nin-ti also means either “the Lady who makes live.” or “Lady of the rib”. According to Kramer: “perhaps the most interesting result of our comparative analysis of the Sumerian poem is the explanation which it provides for one of the most puzzling motifs of the Biblical paradise story, the famous passage describing the fashioning of Eve, ‘the mother of all living,’ from the rib of Adam - for why the rib?” (“The Sumerians” page 149 by Samuel Noah Kramer © 1963 by the University of Chicago). Studying the word, Ti (Nin-ti), which has a dual meaning in Sumerian, may make things clearer. This word can mean either “rib” or “to make live”. Therefore, “the Lady of the rib” became identified as “the Lady who makes live”. Once we come to the Hebrew translations, however, the literary pun loses its validity. In Hebrew, there is no word that means both “rib” and “who makes live”, therefore the literary pun is lost in Eve’s name.