Sumerian King List
c. 2100–1800 BCE · Ur III to Old Babylonian · Nippur; Larsa; Isin
The Sumerian King List records the succession of kings from the moment kingship first descended from heaven to the compiler's present day. It opens before the flood with eight antediluvian kings who ruled for impossibly long periods — the first king Alulim of Eridu reigned for 28,800 years; the last antediluvian king Ubara-Tutu ruled 18,600 years. Then the flood swept over the earth. After the flood kingship descended from heaven again, and the reigns of successive dynasties at Kish, Uruk, Ur, and other cities are recorded, with reign lengths gradually decreasing toward historical norms. Among the postdiluvian kings named is Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, who ruled for 126 years. As the list proceeds through historical time the figures become credible, and the text eventually aligns with independently verifiable records. The list served both as a legitimating document — demonstrating that kingship was a divine institution passing from city to city by divine will — and as a claim by its compiler's city to represent the current legitimate seat of kingship.
notes
The King List's antediluvian section closely parallels the long-lived patriarchs of Genesis 5, a comparison widely noted in scholarship. The document exists in multiple recensions from different cities, each naturally favouring its own dynastic tradition. The Weld-Blundell Prism (Ashmolean WB 444) is the most complete surviving exemplar.
currently held: Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; multiple institutions
related texts
The Eridu Genesis, also called the Sumerian Flood Story, is a fragmentary text describing the earliest history of humanity and the great flood. In the surviving portions the gods An, Enlil, Enki, and Ninhursag create the black-headed people and the animals. Kingship descends from heaven and the firs…