Sumerian order

A sense of order, and the desire to see it established, were central concerns of almost all Sumerian literature. The Sumerians believed that the proper order of all things, both divine and human, was dependent on what they referred to as the me. The me were archetypally representative of culture and civilization elements in Sumerian thought and were of divine origin. Though divine, the me were not gods, and they were not personified. Nor were they a surrogate god of some sort, or any other numinous being. Much more often, G. Farber-Flügge explains, it was the gods who possessed the me, and it was their most-prized possession. — Toward a Poetics of Genesis 1-11, pages 167-168