Sumerian King List

Langdon1923 WB444 study, printedpage 1

THE SUMERO-ACCADIAN SYSTEM OF LEGENDARY AND ‘HISTORICAL CHRONOLOGY. _(W-B., 1923, 444.) In the Cuneiform Collection founded and supported by Mr. H. Wenp-BuunpeEtn for the Ashmolean Museum I have found a large perforated prism which carries two columns of. closely written text on each of its four faces. It purports to give the dynastic lists of the kings of Sumer and Accad from the ante-diluvian period to the end of the reign of Sin-magir, thirteenth king of Isin. It is in reality a complete duplicate of the same chronological scheme written on one huge tablet (in 12 columns) from Nippur, which PRroressor Arno Porsen published in Publications of the Babylonian Section of the University Museum, Philadelphia, Vol. V No. 2. The Nippur tablet was fragmentary, and although Dr. Leon Learain succeeded in joining a large fragment to the ~ Poebel fragment (PBS. Vol. 18, No. 1), the real nature of the document could not be detected. Undoubtedly this Nippur tablet also carried the entire chronological system preserved on W. B. 1923, 444. P. No..2 was written immediately after the 159 year of the dynasty of Isin; that tablet agrees with P. No. 5 in that it did not omit the 10 king of Isin who reigned only 6 months. For the summary at the end says that it was written in the reign of the 11 king, which must be Enlil-bani; for if the 24 years of Enlil-bani be included as the 10 king, the total to the end of his reign is 179 years. On W-B. 444, Enlil-bani is the 10" king, for this text omits the short reign of the 10% king on P. No. 5. The Nippur tablet P. No. 2 was, therefore, written in the 4th oy 5h year of Enlil-bani or about 42 years before W-B. 444. Small fragments of three other large tablets with similar complete chronological records were discovered in the Nippur Collection and published by PorBzn, ibid., Nos. 8, 4, 5. The Reverse of No. 5 was first published by Hruprecut, B. E. 20, No. 47. From the summaries on P. Nos. 2 and 4 it is evident that these four huge Nippur tablets began immediately after the Flood and did not include the pre-diluvian kings. For these tablets state that the list contained the names of eleven cities, and in fact eleven different cities were the capitols of Sumer and Accad after the Flood, beginning with Kish. But W-B. 444 and W-B. 62, published in JRAS. "" 1928, 256, both begin the system of chronology with the pre-diluvian kings and both were written at Ellasar. These include 5 and 6 other cities which never became the seat of an historical dynasty and hence the Nippurian chronology probably did not have the pre-diluvian kings. The Nippurian theologians regarded the pre-diluvian period as an Utopian age, and their views are repr resented in the Epical poems on the Flood and Paradise published by Poxszn, PBS. V, No. 1, and by myself in Le Poeme Sumérien du Paradis. On the other hand the Ellasar texts regard the pre-diluvian period as profane history. W. B. 62 is a small tablet containing only the period before the Flood and agrees with Berossus and Hebrew tradition in the number of 10 kings or patriarchs who lived before the Deluge. W-B. 444 has only 8 ante-diluvian kings, the two last kings, Aradgin and his son Ziisuddu who reigned at Suruppak, are omitted, and in their place this prism has only a brief reference to the Flood. This would seem to imply that at Ellasar the Flood was regarded as a long ‘geological period equal to 22.800 years (Aradgin) -- 36.000 years (Zitisuddu) == 58.800 years.