Sumer (Ki-en-gir)

Sumer (Ki-en-gir) Sumer was one of the first great civilisations, emerging slightly ahead of that of Ancient Egypt and up to a millennium before that of the Indus Valley culture. Located in southern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), by the late fourth millennium BC Sumer (or Ki-en-gir, 'Land of the Sumerian tongue'), was divided into approximately a dozen city states which were independent of one another and which used local canals and boundary stones to mark their borders. Many early events are found only in the Sumerian king list, which lists the rulers of the Mesopotamian city states, and one which was updated until about two centuries after the fall of Sumer. Ranging from legendary early names (backed in lilac and which may still have a basis in historical fact), to the later fully-historical dynasties which are confirmed by archaeology, the list records many names and lengths of rule (exceptionally long where the legendary rulers are concerned), but omits others. It also lists some contemporaneous dynasties as if they followed each other, suggesting that the kingship which was handed down by the gods could only be passed to another city through military conquest. There are at least four different translations which sometimes agree and sometimes disagree on the names of rulers and their (legendary) lengths of rule. Here, for kings listed after the flood, List 1 (Samuel Kramer) is primarily used. For the most part, List 2(JA Black, et al) and List 4 (LC Gerts) seem to agree with one another, so the latter is omitted here. Where List 2 and List 3 (Michael) provide a noticeably different translation from List 1, the data is shown here in the respective text colours. List 1 is used exclusively for pre-Flood kings. Some additional data comes from the WB-62 translation of the list. The Sumerian lugals (or kings, a title which long outlived the Sumerians themselves) exercised power in eleven cities in southern Mesopotamia (according to the Sumerian king list). This amounted to a total of 134 kings (MS P4+Ha has 139), who altogether ruled for 28,876 + X years (MS P4+Ha has 3,443 + X years). While the lengths of rule for the semi-legendary kings are calculated on a scale which makes them appear fanciful, the names themselves probably reflect real rulers.
Kings Before the Flood The Sumerians were a non-Semitic people who may have moved southwards into Mesopotamia in the mid-fifth millennium BC, although archaeological evidence suggests a cultural continuity that originates them in central Mesopotamia. From there they drifted into the south and gradually started to develop the area. The earliest document describing that Sumerian invention, the wheel, dates tocirca 3500 BC. It may have existed shortly before that, in a largely experimental fashion that did not initially generate a large-scale adoption, but the wheel certainly existed by this date, and its use exploded across the ancient world, even reaching the comparatively isolated proto-Indo-Europeans within a century or so. Something less obvious to many is that cannabis may have travelled in the opposite direction - from the Pontic-Caspian steppes to Mesopotamia. Greek kdnnabis and proto-Germanic *baniptx seem to be related to the Sumerian kuriibu. Sumerian died out as a widely spoken language after around 2000 BC, so the connection (probably with the Maikop culture and Yamnaya horizon) must have been a very ancient one. The international trade of the Late Uruk period (c.3300-3100 BC) provides a suitable context for this trade. The king list states that eight kings in five cities ruled for 241,200 years before the Flood swept over the land. Their reigns are measured in sars - periods of 3600 years - and in ners - units of 600, and one suggestion is that these should be converted into years and months (those calculations are shown in the list in brackets). A very different, and controversially non-scientific theory concerns the Diatonic G-Scale Factor 9 (via the link, right). (Additional information from The Horse, the Wheel, and Language: How Bronze-Age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes Shaped the Modern World, David W Anthony.)

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http://www.historyfiles.co.uk/KingListsMiddEast/MesopotamiaSumer.htm
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