Mount Nisir (also spelled Mount Niṣir, and also called Mount Nimush), mentioned in the ancient

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia ''Mesopotamíā''; ar, بِلَاد ٱلرَّافِدَيْن or ; syc, ܐܪܡ ܢܗܪ̈ܝܢ, or , ) is a historical region of Western Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the F ...

n ''

Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic poem from ancient Mesopotamia, and is regarded as the earliest surviving notable literature and the second oldest religious text, after the Pyramid Texts. The literary history of Gilgamesh ...

'', is supposedly the mountain known today as Pir Omar Gudrun (elevation 2588 m (8490 ft.)), near the city

Sulaymaniyah Sulaymaniyah, also spelled as Slemani ( ku, سلێمانی, Silêmanî, ar, السليمانية, as-Sulaymāniyyah), is a city in the east of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, not far from the Iran–Iraq border. It is surrounded by the Azmar, Go ...

Iraqi Kurdistan Iraqi Kurdistan or Southern Kurdistan ( ku, باشووری کوردستان, Başûrê Kurdistanê) refers to the Kurdish-populated part of northern Iraq. It is considered one of the four parts of "Kurdistan" in Western Asia, which also incl ...

. The name may mean "Mount of Salvation". According to the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', Mt. Nisir is the resting place of the ship built by

Utnapishtim Ut-napishtim or Uta-na’ishtim (in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh''), Atra-Hasis, Ziusudra ( Sumerian), Xisuthros (''Ξίσουθρος'', in Berossus) ( akk, ) is a character in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. He is tasked by the god Enki (Akkadian: ...

. Despite the precise descriptions in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', those curious have never attempted to search for the remains of the giant ship on Mount Nisir. An alternative translation of "Mount Nisir" in the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' XI,141a is based on the ambiguous words: "KUR-ú ^KUR ''ni-sir'' held tight the boat." The Sumerian word KUR can mean land or country or hill, but not mountain. In Akkadian, KUR with the

phonetic complement A phonetic complement is a phonetic symbol used to disambiguate word characters (logograms) that have multiple readings, in mixed logographic-phonetic scripts such as Egyptian hieroglyphs, Akkadian cuneiform, Japanese, and Mayan. Often they re ...

-ú is read as ''shadû'' which can mean hill or mountain. The second KUR is a

determinative A determinative, also known as a taxogram or semagram, is an ideogram used to mark semantic categories of words in logographic scripts which helps to disambiguate interpretation. They have no direct counterpart in spoken language, though they may ...

indicating that ''nisir'' is the name of a hill or land or country (or in Akkadian a mountain). But Thompson read this determinative as ''matu'', an Akkadian word for country. The country Nisir may have got its name from ''nisirtu'' which means a locality that is hidden, inaccessible, or secluded. Hence the boat may have grounded on an inaccessible hill.R. M. Best, page 277.

References

{{coord, 35.5000, N, 45.4167, E, source:wikidata, display=title Assyrian geography Mythological mountains