Around the end of the 3rd millennium BC. in the New Sumerian era (2111-2003) or at the beginning of the Issin-Larsa era (2003-1792), probably in the time interval 2100-1900. BC. an interesting literary monument was designed and recorded, which can be considered a pseudo-historical source. In its structure, it somewhat resembles a chronicle. This work was named in the Sumerian science "Tsarskoe List".
Of the many incredible artifacts unearthed from the once-thriving Sumerian cities in Iraq, few can match this list. In an ancient manuscript, originally written in the Sumerian language, which indicates the kings of Sumeria (an ancient state in the south of modern Iraq) from the Sumerian and neighboring dynasties proper, their estimated terms of rule and the location of the "official" monarchy. The uniqueness of this artifact lies in the fact that it unites apparently mythical pre-dynastic rulers with rulers whose historical existence has been confirmed.
The first fragment of this rare and unique text on a 4,000-year-old cuneiform tablet was found in the early twentieth century by German-American scholar Hermann Hilprecht at the site of ancient Nippur and published in 1906. Since the discovery of Hilprecht, at least 18 other copies of the List of Kings have been discovered, most of which date from the second half of the Isin dynasty (c. 2017-1794 BC). None of these documents are copies of the other. However, there is enough common content in all variants of the list to be confident that they are related to one common "standard" presentation of Sumerian history.
Let's find out more about this artifact:
Sumer (sometimes also called Sumeria) is the site of the earliest known civilization and is located in the southernmost part of Mesopotamia between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in an area that later became Babylonia and is now southern Iraq, stretching from the outskirts of Baghdad to the Persian Gulf …
By the 3rd millennium BC, Sumer was an area containing at least twelve separate city-states: Kish, Uruk, Ur, Sippar, Akshak, Larak, Nippur, Adab, Umma, Lagash, Bad- Tiber and Lars. Each of these states was a walled city with nearby villages and lands, each such city-state worshiped its own deity, whose temple was the central structure of the city. Political power initially belonged to the citizens, but as the rivalry between the various city-states intensified, the institution of royal power was adopted.
According to the records of the List of the Kings of Sumer, eight rulers reigned before the great flood. After the Flood, the various city-states with their royal dynasties temporarily took over and established their dominance over others.
Promotional video:
Of all the copies of the List of the Kings of Sumer, the Veld-Blundell prism, which is part of the cuneiform collection of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, is the most voluminous version, as well as the most complete copy of the List of Kings.
The prism is 8 inches high and has four sides with two columns on each side. It is believed that it was originally equipped with a wooden rod running through its center so that it could be rotated and read from all four sides. Prism contains a list of rulers ranging from the antediluvian dynasties to the fourteenth ruler of the Ising Dynasty (circa 1763-1753 BC).
The list is of immense value as it reflects very ancient traditions, while at the same time being an important chronological scale, referring to various periods of the reign in Sumer, and even showing remarkable coincidences with the contents of Genesis.
Sumer's mythical past
"The list of the kings of Sumer" dates back to the very birth of the monarchy, which is seen as a divine institution: "the kingdom descended from heaven." The rulers of the earliest dynasties reigned for fantastically long periods:
“After the descent of the kingdom from heaven, the monarchy was located in Eriduga. Alulim, who ruled for 28,800 years, became king there. Then Allalgar ruled for 36,000 years. 2 kings; they ruled for 64,800 years."
Some of the rulers mentioned in the early list, such as Etana, Lugalbanda, and Gilgamesh, are mythical or even legendary characters whose heroic deeds became the subject of a number of Sumerian and Babylonian tales.
The early list mentions eight kings who ruled for a total of 241,200 years from the time when the royal power "descended from heaven" until the time when the wave of the "Flood" swept the earth, and again "the kingdom was descended from heaven" after Flood.
The "Tsar's List", however, is not a consistent chronicle, where events are chronologically set forth, but just a list of different rulers who allegedly ruled one by one and consistently from the beginning of the world in different cities of Mesopotamia. Moreover, the likelihood that a dynasty that ruled earlier than another could be placed later is quite high. The rulers who ruled in succession in the same city, conditionally constituted one "dynasty", but at the same time they did not necessarily have family relations. It should also be borne in mind that we call a number of kings "dynasty" rather conditionally. Those. as a rule, these are rulers from one city-state who ruled in shifts until this city-state fell into decay or was not conquered from the outside. This list includes, as well as historical (i.e., existing in reality),and mythical legendary characters. Most of the rulers mentioned in the "List" bore the titles of en-priests (noise en), lugal or "big people", "military leaders!" (noise. lú-gal) or ensi - priests-builders, priest-city leaders (ensí).
In the Early Dynastic era, the title of "king" (lugal) did not even exist, and some of the dynasties mentioned in the "List" ruled not one after the other, but synchronously with each other. “Lugal” in the concept exactly as “king” began to be used only in the era of the Akkad dynasty, and then in the era of the III dynasty of Ur, when the “lugal” was no longer a simple mayor or an elected military leader, but a tsar, to whom tens or even hundreds formerly independent cities, formerly ruled by the Enami or Ensi. However, this radical change in state ideology fell on the period of time 2300 to 2000 BC, when the first ancient Eastern despotisms were created with despotic, powerful kingdoms with unlimited monarchs at their head. And these kingdoms were: the kingdom of Akkad (2334-2154), founded by Sargon the Ancient,and then the kingdom of the III dynasty of Ur (2112-2004), also often called the New Sumerian kingdom.
The "List" mentions both the legendary semi-mythological kings of Sumer living before the flood, such as Enmeduranna or Ziusudra, and real historical figures like En-Mebaragesi, Lugalzagesi or Sargon the Ancient. The text of the "List" itself is of a propagandistic sense. Its compilers (apparently, the New Sumerian or the first Issin kings) aimed to show the continuity and legitimacy of their dynasties from the previous ones. According to I. M. Dyakonov, “the purpose of compiling the List was to suggest that a single royal power, exercised over the entire country by the deified kings of the III dynasty of Ur (2111-2003 BC), was of divine origin, that it was supposedly at the beginning of time descended from heaven as a kind of emanation and, through a continuous sequence of dynasties, each of which was the only one every time,finally passed on to the king under whom the "List" was drawn up. The "list" begins with the words about kingship that descended from heaven:
1-3. After kingship descended from Heaven, there was kingship in Eridu, in Eridu, Alulim was king
Conventionally, the "List of Kings" can be divided into two parts. 1.) The first part narrates about the mythical rulers and dynasties who allegedly ruled Sumer before the Flood. 2.) In the second part, we are talking about those rulers and dynasties that ruled after the Flood, along with the legendary (early) rulers, there were a number of historical figures - rulers who really ruled in Sumer in the Early Dynastic era (2900 / 2800- 2330 BC), the era of the Akkad dynasty (2330-2150), the Kutian and New Sumerian period (22-21 centuries BC).
In this essay we are interested not so much in the "antediluvian kings", but in the "historical figures", as well as such legendary kings as Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Gilgamesh - heroes of Sumerian epic legends, legendary kings of the 1st dynasty of Uruk who lived probably ca. 2700 BC, as well as such rulers of Kish as En-Mebaragesi and his son Akka, and the kings of Akkad such as Sargon and Naram-Su'en.
The second part of the list begins with the first post-Flood dynasty and this dynasty received its name in the scientific literature of the I Kish dynasty, to which, among others, En-Mebaragesi and his son Akka belonged. En-Mebaragesi is the first historical witness of the ruler of the Middle East, from whom his own inscriptions have survived. We have no inscriptions from Akka, but he is also, most likely, a historical person. In the epic song "Gilgamesh and Akka" he is called the son of En-Mebaragesi and is handed over by the king of Kish and the main opponent of Gilgamesh in the struggle for hegemony over Sumer.
Kings of various other cities and kingdoms such as Avan, Ur, as well as the kings of Akkad, the Kutian conquerors, the New Sumerian rulers also got into the "Tsar's List". But for ideological reasons, the compilers of the "List" did not specifically include the rulers of the kingdom of Lagash, as if the ancient Lagash did not exist at all. There is a logical explanation for this. I. M. Dyakonov explains this by political motives - since there was a feud between Ur and Lagash at the beginning of the reign of the III dynasty of Ur, but we do not know anything about the reasons.
However, the "Tsar's List" was compiled from scratch, and, apparently, the scribe or scribes who wrote it down in the New Sumerian era were based on the early written evidence from which they got the names of the early Dynastic rulers. Apparently, the "List" was based on more ancient inscriptions from Ur, Nippur, and other cities, temple archives at sanctuaries, and the compiler of the "List" could be based on lists of "dating formulas".
Versions of the explanation for long reigns
The startlingly long reigns of the early kings prompted numerous attempts at interpretation. One extreme point of view is a complete rejection of such astronomical values as “completely contrived,” and the claim that they are not worthy of serious consideration. At the other extreme is the belief that the numbers do have real reasons, and that the early kings were indeed gods, able to live much longer than ordinary people.
Between these two extremes lies the hypothesis that numbers are relative values that reflect the degree of power, celebration, or importance of a particular government. For example, in ancient Egypt, the phrase “he died at the age of 110” referred to those who lived fulfilling lives and who made important contributions to the development of society. Likewise, the incredibly long reigns of the early kings could be interpreted as being of great importance to the people. This, however, does not explain why, at a later time, the terms of office were reduced to quite realistic ones.
In the same vein lies the belief that although the existence of early kings is not historically confirmed, this does not exclude the possibility that they were related to historical rulers who later turned into mythical characters.
Finally, some experts have sought to explain these meanings through the use of mathematical methods and representations (eg, Garrison, 1993).
Relationship to the Book of Genesis
Some scholars (eg Wood, 2003) have drawn attention to the fact that there are quite remarkable coincidences between the "List of the Kings of Sumer" and the plots of Genesis. For example, the Book of Genesis tells of the "great flood" and Noah's efforts to save all terrestrial animal species from destruction. Likewise, in the List of the Kings of Sumer we find a discussion of the great flood: "a wave of the flood swept across the earth."
In the "List of the Kings of Sumer" there are eight kings (in some versions 10) who were in power for long periods of time before the flood, from 18,600 to 43,200 years. This reminds us of Genesis 5, which lists the generations from the creation of the world to the flood. It is noteworthy that between Adam and Noah we count eight generations, just as there are eight kings between the beginning of reigns and the flood in the "List of the Kings of Sumer."
Regarding the time after the flood, rulers appear in the List of Kings, whose terms of government were much shorter. Thus, the "List of the Kings of Sumer" tells not only about the great flood at the beginning of human history, but it also reflects the same pattern of diminishing longevity as in the Bible - people lived surprisingly long before the flood and much less after it (Wood, 2003).
The List of the Kings of Sumer is said to be truly a great enigma. Why did the Sumerians have to combine mythical rulers with the personalities of real historical kings in one document? Why is there so much in common with Genesis? Why are ancient kings attributed to millennia of rule? These are just a few of the questions that still remain unanswered after more than a century of research.
But most likely, in fact, everything is very commonplace, here is one version of the explanation of this list:
When asking the question of the authenticity and historicity of Tsarskoe List, we must first of all keep in mind the following points:
1.) The creators of the "List" were not "historians", let alone chroniclers in the direct sense of these words, such as, for example, ancient Greek logographers or historians such as Herodotus, Fukdidil or Xenophon were later. They, unlike the Greek writers, did not "create" the history of Sumer and their goal, of course, was not to describe historical events and present them in chronological order. The creators of the "List" pursued a different goal, ideological and religious - they sought to legitimize the ruling dynasty - the III dynasty of Ur, and then the I dynasty of Isshin, which considered itself the heir of Ur, and also wanted to show the "continuity" of royalty, that the royal power is a kind of the divine substance, revealed from heaven, is a given by the gods and that it can be at a time only in one kingdom. And if the New Sumerian state of Ur-Namma was such a kingdom,Shulgi and their descendants, who called themselves "kings of the universe", "kings of the four cardinal points" and "gods", then all the parallel kingdoms were, as it were, outlawed, for they did not have that divine kingship of nam-lugal, which was at first in the dynasty of Ur, and then in Issin, this kingliness is very ancient, hundreds of thousands of years passed from one state to another by the will of the gods.
2.) In addition, the “List” included the real-life kings, but along with them the fantanistic and mythical rulers and sages of antediluvian Sumer, in addition, a number of post-Flood kings such as Gilgamesh, later became legendary and ruled for quite a long time. Gilgamesh ruled, for example, according to the "List" for 126 years, although, most likely, he was already a real person. Starting from about the second half of the Early Dynastic era - from the son of Gilgamesh Ur-Lugal, the rulers have been ruling for a plausible number of years. However, the sequence of their rule is sometimes severely disrupted and the king of Avana, for example, who ruled in parallel to another ruler from Mari, could be placed behind or after the ruler of Mari, and the years of reign, again, are far from always reliable.
3.) For ideological and political reasons, the important, key southern Sumerian city-state of Lagash and its rulers was not included in the "List", although Mari was immediately included, which was never a Sumerian city and was approximately separated from the farthest Sumerian city of Kish. 420 km to the northwest and the Eastern Semites lived there.