Aratta

The sorcerer travels to Eresh where he bewitches Enmerkar's livestock, but a wise woman outperforms his magic and casts him into the Euphrates; En-suhgir-ana then admits the loss of Inanna, and submits his kingdom to Uruk.

When Enmerkar's army is faced with a setback, Lugalbanda volunteers to return to Uruk to ask the goddess Inana's aid.

Early 20th century scholars initially took Aratta to be an epithet of the Sumerian city Shuruppak related to its local name for the god Enlil;[21] however that is no longer seen to be the case.

[27] Other speculations referred to the early gem trade route, the "Great Khorasan Road" from the Himalayan Mountains[28] to Mesopotamia, which ran through northern Iran.

[32] However, when Anshan[33] was identified as Tall-i Malyan in 1973,[34] it was found to be 600 km south-east of Uruk, far removed from any northerly routes or watercourses from Uruk, and posing the logistical improbability of getting a 27th-century BC Sumerian army through 550 km of Elamite territory to wage war with Aratta.

By 1973, archaeologists were noting that there was no archaeological record of Aratta's existence outside of myth,[22] and in 1978 Hansman cautions against over-speculation.