Agriculture in Syria runoff most of the year. The river flows southeastward across the arid Syrian Plateau into Iraq, where it joins the Tigris River shortly before emptying into the Persian Gulf. In addition to Syria, both Turkey and Iraq use dams on the Euphrates for hydroelectric power, water control, storage, and irrigation. In the mid-1980s, about a half of the annual Euphrates River flow was used by these three countries. Syrians have long used the Euphrates for irrigation, but, because the major systems were destroyed centuries ago, they now make only limited use of the river's flow. In the mid-1980s, the Euphrates
Euphrates unrecorded substrate language. Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Vyacheslav Ivanov suggest the Proto-Sumerian *burudu "copper" (Sumerian "urudu") as an origin, with an explanation that Euphrates was the river by which the copper ore was transported in rafts, since Mesopotamia was the center of copper metallurgy during the period. 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 KIB.NUN, with the prefix "" indicating