euphrates river

The Euphrates ⁽/juːˈfreɪtiːz/; Arabic: الفرات‎: al-Furāt, Hebrew: פרת‎: Prat, Turkish: Fırat, Kurdish: Firat) is the longest and one of the most historically important rivers of Western Asia. Together with the Tigris, it is one of the two defining rivers of Mesopotamia. Originating in eastern Turkey, the Euphrates flows through Syria and Iraq to join the Tigris in the Shatt al-Arab, which empties into the Persian Gulf.

The Ancient Greek form Euphrátēs was borrowed from Old Persian Ufrātu, itself from Elamite ú-ip-ra-tu-iš. In Akkadian the river was similarly called Purattu, which has been perpetuated in Semitic languages (cf. Syriac P(ə)rāṯ, Arabic al-Furrāt) and in other nearby languages of the time (cf. Hurrian Puranti, Sabarian Uruttu). The Elamite, Akkadian, and possibly Sumerian forms are from an unrecorded substrate language.
The earliest references to the Euphrates come from cuneiform texts found in Shuruppak and pre-Sargonic Nippur in southern Iraq and date to the mid-3rd millennium BCE. In these texts, written in Sumerian, the Euphrates is called Buranuna (logographic: UD.KIB.NUN). The name could also be written KIB.NUN.(NA) or ^dKIB.NUN, with the prefix "^d" indicating that the river was deified. In Sumerian, the name of the city of Sippar in modern-day Iraq was also a written UD.KIB.NUN, indicating a historically strong relationship between the city and the river.