Sumerian King List: Secondary Sources

[us4-he2-gal2]

Thread Orientation: This thread sums and highlights (in so far as possible) the secondary literature with regards the Sumerian King list. The goal here is to take stock of the the Assyriological progress to date on this subject, to attempt to ascertain turning points in interpretation, and to make as best we can a 'guide to the SKL' here. Once this much is gathered, questions can be posed in an informed manner.

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*** This discussion is a continuation of that started on the Numerology thread at Enenuru, which Madness has started and we must come back to. please see here

For the SKL, in particular replies 3 through 9 (bel murru, us4-he2-gal2, madness, cynsanity, amarsin). We have there some good comments/insights on the problem of the Regnal Spans (of the kings of the kinglisht) and a look at two important articles:

1: History as charter: Some Observations on the Sumerian King List
Piotr Michlowski JAOS 81 1983.

2: Early Nippur Year Dates and the Sumerian King List
by Aage Westenholz, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 1974 The American Schools of Oriental Research




From Kenton Sparks, "Ancient Texts for the study of the Hebrew Bible," I have copied below a) a note which will add perspecitve to Michalowski's view and b) a well worded general description of the SKL (note the highlighted comment for later.)


a)

"When and why was the SKL first composed? It presents kingship as a single succession of divinely appointed leaders that originated at the beginning of time. It is therefore reasonable to presume that the SKL was composed to legitimize a specific king by painting him as the one and only authentic king. Jacobsen believes that this king was Utu-hegel, king of Uruk, and that the list was composed to legitimize his reign after he liberated Sumer from Gutian domination about 2100 B.C.E. To be sure, the list also seems to legitimize the Isin dynasty at points (ca. 2017–1794 B.C.E.), but most scholars view this as a later adaptation of the
older Utu-hegel list (e.g., Hallo 1963), a notable exception being Michalowski, who believes that the SKL was composed during the Isin period."

b)

"The Sumerian King List and Related Lists. The Sumerian King List (SKL) originated about 2000 B.C.E. Several different editions of the text survive, revealing a complicated literary history that probably goes back to a single original composition. In its most complete form, the text includes a list of antediluvian kings, followed by a reference to the flood itself, followed by a list of postdiluvian kings. The latest copy goes down to Damiq-ilišu (ca. 1816–1794 B.C.E.), the last king of Isin. The SKL notes the length of each king’s reign, but the reign lengths are often exceptionally long, particularly in the case of the pre-flood kings (e.g., Alalgar reigned 36,000 years!). However, this pre-flood portion of the list was apparently not a part of the original composition because it does not appear in some manuscripts and because the kings mentioned in it are sometimes duplicated in the postflood list (e.g., both Dumuzi and Enmenunna)."

[us4-he2-gal2]

Bibliographical References

(from K. Sparks, Ancient Texts for the Study of the Hebrew Bible)

Bibliography: I have highlight in white those that I will be able to access myself, in teal those alreayd accessed.

• EDZARD, “Königslisten und Chroniken, A”; D. V. ETZ, “The Numbersof Genesis V 3–31: A Suggested Conversion and Its Implications,” VT 43 (1993):171–89;
  
  
• B. GOODNICK, “Parallel Lists of Prediluvian Patriarchs,” Dor le Dor 13 (1984):47–51; GRAYSON, “Königslisten und Chroniken, B”;
  
  
• W.W.HALLO, The Ancient Near Eastern Background of Some Modern Western Institutions (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 1–15; IDEM, “Beginning and End of the Sumerian King List in the Nippur Recension,” JCS 17 (1963): 52–57;
  
  
• T. C. HARTMAN, “Some Thoughts on the Sumerian King List and Genesis 5 and 11b,” JBL 91 (1972): 25–32;
  
  
• G. F. HASEL, “The Genealogies of Gen 5 and 11 and Their Alleged Babylonian Background,” AUSS 16 (1978): 361–74;
  
  
• J. KLEIN, “A New Nippur Duplicate of the Sumerian Kinglist in the Brockmon Collection, University of Haifa,” in Velles paraules: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Honor of Miguel Civil (ed. P. Michalowski et al.;AuOr 9; Barcelona: Editorial AUSA, 1991), 123–29;
  
  
• F. R. KRAUS, “Zur Liste der älteren Könige von Babylonien,”ZA 50 (1952): 29–60; C. J. LABUSCHAGNE, “The Life Spans of the
  Patriarchs,” in New Avenues in the Study of the Old Testament: A Collection of Old Testament Studies (ed. A. S. van derWoude; OTS 25; New York: Brill, 1989), 121–27;
  
  
• W. G. LAMBERT, “Enmeduranki and Related Matters,” JCS 21 (1967): 126–38;
  
  
• P. MICHALOWSKI, “History as Charter: Some Observations on the Sumerian King List,” in Studies in Literature from the Ancient Near East: Dedicated to Samuel Noah Kramer (ed. J. M. Sasson; AOS 65; NewHaven: American Oriental Society, 1984), 237–48;
  
  
• E. REINER, “The Etiological Myth of the ‘Seven Sages,’” Or 30 (1961): 1–11;
  
  
• M. B. ROWTON, “The Date of the Sumerian King
  List,” JNES 19 (1960): 158–62;
  
  
• E. SOLLBERGER, “New Lists of the Kings of Ur and Isin,” JCS
  8 (1954): 135–36; VAN SETERS, In Search of History, 70–72;
  
  
• J. C. VANDERKAM, Enoch: A Man for All Generations (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995), 6–14;
  
  
• G. P. VERBRUGGHE and J. M.WICKERSHAM, Berossos and Manetho, Introduced and Translated: Native Traditions in Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan
  Press, 2001), 13–91;
  
  
• C. VINCENTE, “The Tell Leilan Recension of the Sumerian King List,” ZA 85 (1995): 234–70;
  
  
• J. WALTON, “The Antediluvian Section of the Sumerian King List
  and Genesis 5,” BA 44 (1981): 207–8;
  
  
• C. WILCKE, “Genealogical and Geographical Thought in the Sumerian King List,” in DUMU-E2–DUB-BA-A: Studies in Honor of Åke Sjöberg (ed. H. Behrens, D. T. Loding, and M. Roth; OPSNKF 11; Philadelphia: University Museum, 1989), 557–71;
  
  
• D.W. YOUNG, “The Influence of Babylonian Algebra on Longevity among the Antediluvians,”ZAW102 (1990): 321–35; IDEM, “AMathematical Approach Hendrickson Publishers Third galleys 34071 January 26, 2005 to Certain Dynastic Spans in the Sumerian King List,” JNES 47 (1988): 123–29; IDEM, “On
  the Application of Numbers from Babylonian Mathematics to Biblical Life Spans and Epochs,” ZAW 100 (1988): 332–61.
  
  

[us4-he2-gal2]

Reviewing:

“

The Date of the Sumerian King List

,”

M. B. ROWTON, JNES 19 (1960): 158–62;

In this article, written in 1960, Rowten observes that at the time, there was some dispute between Jacobsen, who asserted that the King list was compiled during the reign of Utu-hegal, and Kraus, who places the compilation later then this (Ur-Ninurta's reign. ) In addition, we know that Michalowski's view, stated in 1984, places the date of compilation later still, in the Isin period.

Rowten attempts to look closely at the text itself for an answer to these disputes, and he begins by examining the reigns of two dynasties, the Uruk IV and Gutian. To visualize these two dynasties as they are represent in the Sumerian King List (SKL), we can refer to ETCSL t.2.1.1 (see see lines 297-334).
The author gives the reigns of these dynasties as represented in the following figures:

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7 (years) [var. 3], 6, 6, 5, 6, 5 (var. 3), 6 (var. 7), 6, 6, 6 (var. 7), 5, 6, 15, 3, 3, 1, 3, 2, 2, 1, 2, 7, 7, 7.

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Rowten (my emphises): "Out of twenty-four reigns fifteen are approximately 6 years in that amount to 5, 6, or 7 years, and to the Sumerians with their sexigesimal system an estimate of "About 6 years" was the same as "about 10 years" would be to us. Within this group we have another one of "two-or-three" -year reigns, inserted as follows: 3, 3, 1, 3, followed by 2, 2, 1, 2.
Beyond all reasonable doubt these figures are completely artificial. This section of the text must have been in some way deficient already in the original king list."

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***interlude, at that moment while summing the above article, I paused and went off in search of a half full bag of stale nachos - falling asleep on the couch on the way back. During this time Amarsin comments below:

[amarsin]

I'm still skeptical that there was ever one original SKL. When you try to match or link the various manuscripts together (like you would for an ordinary Sumerian literary composition) you find little over-lap in terms of names or reigns or even the order of dynasties. So I'd say that while there was some general Sumerian (or perhaps just southern Mesopotamian) cultural disposition to records things (e.g. lexical lists), and while obviously some motifs of how to structure a king list perhaps came from a single source at a single point in time, that lots of lists representing myriad different traditions (and of course, pushing certain ideologies) were floating around.

[us4-he2-gal2]

**** end interlude: Damn nachos - they divert me. Well you are astute and discerning Amarsin as always - but we have yet to get at Rowton's actual argument! heh. Must below capture its gist, though we may come again to your observations of course

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......The Date of the Sumerian King list, M. B. Rowton (continued)

So as we see above, Rowton believes that the Uruk IV/Gutian dynasties were made up of artificial figures, this he believes because the length of reign is most often "approximately 6" (like we say approximately 10.) This leads to his suspicion that this section of the text was already deficient in "the original list"

(What original list?)

We next take a look at Su. Su, if your wondering what that means, you might refer to my primary source post here
From here we learn that the Su (from Susa) kinglist is represented by 4 surviving manuscripts, Su1, Su2, Su3, and Su4. Su is the "ancestor" of these surviving MS'.
In examining Su, Rowton observes that first of the lines relevant to the Gutian dynasty are destroyed, yet some of the reigns of the preceding Uruk IV dynasty are preserved: unlike on other manuscripts, the lengths of reign appear to be not generic ("approximately 6".) Here are the reigns given for the first 6 kings (Su 1 , Su3+4)

• 1. Urnigin 30 years
  
• 2. Urgigir, son of (1) 15 years
  
• 3. Lugal-me-lám 7 years
  
• broken
  
• broken
  
• 6. Urutu, son of (2) 25 years
  

The author does seem to presuppose the existence of an "original king list" when at length, he states on pg. 157: "And what this suggests is that the original king list very probably did not have the artificial figures.," and again on pg.158 "
nowhere else is there anything of the kind which we have in the [Uruk IV/Gutian] figures. And since Su1 and Su3+4 clearly suggest that the king list once had better figures for Uruk IV, the probability is that the U.G. -figures were not present in the original king list."

(The supposed date of this Hypothetical original:)

Kraus says UrNinurta

Rowton next mentions Kraus' convictions that the "original" dates to the reign of UrNinurta - he however disagrees and attempts to demonstrate the problem with this conviction using the following deduction - which I have greatly simplified here:

1. Kraus draws his arguement from the the cuneiform source LP (L1 + P2)
2. Su and LP share an erroneous variant not found in WB; further there is evidence that Su and LP share an additional common source different from the source of WB.
3. since a source for LP is evidenced by Rowtons deductions, this means that LP drew from something earlier and was not the "original" hence the conclusion: "[Kruas] dating of the original king list to the reign of Urninurta is not possible. It has to be dated well before the reign of that king."

Jacobsen says Utuḫegal

Rowten: "Jacobsen proposes the reign of Utuḫegal for the following reason. In WB the last two dynasties, Ur III and Isin, have significant deficiency. The element - à m is missing in the statement which introduces the first king of a dynasty: GN.a PN l u g a l .àm mu x ì. a5. In the antediluvian section this element is also missing in three out of five dynasties, and that section is secondary. Thus if the original king-list did not have these last two dynasties, it must have been compiled under Utuḫegal, the king who preceded Ur III."

What this means is the Antediluvian section has elsewhere been determined to be secondary, that is, added to the original by later scribes. It lacks this feature
" .àm" which in most sections of the king list, is present in the line pertaining to the first king of a dynasty. Also - Jacobsen observered - the feature was absent in Ur III and Isin dynasty, making them secondary: this helps him make his case for the dating of the original writing to the reign of Utu-ḫegal.

Rowton says Urnammu

The author carries the .àm argument even further, and he explains that there is a difference between PN lugal [Personal name lugal] which appears for some kings. PN lugal means this - "PN (was) king." However, PN lugal.àm is part of the formula which marks the moving of the nam.lugal, from one city to another, and thus its presenance in the lines dealing with the first king of a dynasty (exception being in the secondary sources.)
He does not go into much detail on the dating for Urnammu but comments "In fact if the king list is to be dated to the tine of Utuḫegal, a date very early in the reign of Urnammu would be preferable. For it would have the substantial advantage of explaining the omission of Lagaš, since at the very beginning of his reign, Urnammu had to fight a bitter war against Lagaš."





.....Thats another fine mess...0_0 .... Thats a quagmire? Quagmire can I use that word? I'll keep reading and summing and I'm sure we'll work ourselves back to your views Amarsin ;].

[us4-he2-gal2]

Enmebaragesi

Extract from "Theologies, Priests, and Worship in Ancient Mesopotamia" CANE 3, by F.A.M. Wiggermann (1995)

Wiggermann has in this article provided an excellent overview of Mesopotamian cult and dogma (as the wording appears in this article.) Relevant to our purposes here, Wiggermann expresses again his insight the shifting social-polictical important of Eridu versus Nippur: the authors comments in regards the rise of Nippur are fascinating also on the historic level and I type below those which tough strongly on the Sumerian King List. First however I list below the section pertaining to the first dynasty of Kish, that is also the first dynasty directly following the flow - This dynasty features Enmebaragesi, who made Elam submit, and also his son Aga to whom Gilgamesh confronted in "Gilgamesh and Aga."



see ETCSL t.2.1.1 40-94

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• Kullassina-bçl ruled for {960} [years].
  
• En-taraḫ-ana ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has:) {420} years ……, 3 months, and 3 1/2 days.
  
• Babum …… ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has:) {300} years.
  
• Puannum ruled for {840} {(ms. P2+L2 has instead:) 240} years.
  
• Kalibum ruled for {960} {(ms. P2+L2 has instead:) 900} years.
  
• Kalûmum ruled for {840} {(mss. P3+BT14, Su1 have instead:) 900} years.
  
• Zuqâqîp ruled for {900} {(ms. Su1 has instead:) 600} years. (in mss. P2+L2, P3+BT14, P5, the 10th and 11th rulers of the dynasty precede the 8th and 9th)
  
• {Atab} {(mss. P2+L2, P3+BT14, P5 have instead:) A-ba} ruled for 600 years.
  
• Maðda, the son of Atab, ruled for {840} {(ms. Su1 has instead:) 720} years.
  
• Arwium, the son of Maðda, ruled for 720 years.
  
• Etana, the shepherd, who ascended to heaven and consolidated all the foreign countries, became king; he ruled for {1500} {(ms. P2+L2 has instead:) 635} years.
  
• Baliḫ, the son of Etana, ruled for {400} {(mss. P2+L2, Su1 have instead:) 410} years.
  
• En-me-nuna ruled for {660} {(ms. P2+L2 has instead:) 621} years.
  
• Melem-Kið, the son of En-me-nuna, ruled for 900 years. {(ms. P3+BT14 adds:) 1560 are the years of the dynasty of En-me-nuna.}
  
• {Barsal-nuna, the son of En-me-nuna,} {(mss. P5, P3+BT14 have instead:) Barsal-nuna} ruled for 1200 years.
  
• Zamug, the son of Barsal-nuna, ruled for 140 years.
  
• Tizqâr, the son of Zamug, ruled for 305 years. {(ms. P3+BT14 adds:) 1620 + X …….} Ilku ruled for 900 years.
  
• Iltasadum ruled for 1200 years.
  
• En-me-barage-si, who made the land of Elam submit, became king; he ruled for 900 years.
  
• Aga, the son of En-me-barage-si, ruled for 625 years. {(ms. P3+BT14 adds:) 1525 are the years of the dynasty of En-me-barage-si.}

[/color]
23 kings; they ruled for 24510 years, 3 months, and 3 1/2 days. Then Kið was defeated and the kingship was taken to E-ana.

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Wiggermann (pg.1869):
" The northern part of lower Mesopotamia had a different name (Wari, later Akkad); a different demographic structure (smaller population centers more evenly spread); and apparently a different tradition of rulership, that of an inheritable kingship. The origins of northern kingship surfaced in later traditions as the (non-Sumerian) legend of the shepherd Etana and his son Balikh, the first king.

Halfway through the third millennium a northern king, Enmebaragesi (Mebaragesi), transformed Enlil's temple in Nippur, exactly between Wair and Kiengir (Sumer), into a national cult center, the first step toward the unification of the two cultural provinces under one king deriving his power from Enlil and the national assembly of gods. With Enmebaragesi and his son Aka, national history began; they were the first kings of the Sumerian Kinglist who were not legendary and whose inscriptions actually have been found. Under the aegis of the national kings, Nippur became in the course of the third millennium the center of a literary culture whose products formed the core of the "Scriptures" of the Babylonian stage of Mesopotamian theology."

[us4-he2-gal2]

Reviewing "The Ancient near East: A History" By W. W. Hallo

I had seen a tip while browsing a misc, extinct Scholarly ANE board that pointed me toward Hallo's book, in which that author comments meaningfully on the Antediluvian sections of the Sumerian King List and on Kingship in general. I attempt to capture these and other insights below. (have marked a few notes in red.)




On Hegemony
(Compare note on Enmebaragesi above, and Wiggermann's discourse on Magic and History summer on another thread. Also relevant are Jacobsen's ideas regarding the Kengir league, briefly noted in reply #1 of this thread. )





...Each of the cities on the SKL enjoyed one or more turns at a real or spurious hegemony over all of Sumer an Akkad...

• Hallo pg. 38:
  

"The claim to such hegemony apparently depended on recognition by the priesthood and scribes of Nippur who, however, rely for their information on sources composed according to other principals such as genealogical lists based on dynastic (family) relationships or local king list based on lists of date formulas (1)... The King List therefore includes not only those kings who may really have enjoyed a measure of national supremacy, but also as many of their predecessors and successors at the their royal capitals as the sources may have contained, together with the lengths of their reigns and sometimes their filiation or other brief biographical notices.

• Hallo draws fro Jacobsen:
  

"Early Mesopotamian Political development always existed in a kind of tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces, between petty-statism and imperialism, between the city-state as the traditional medium of political organization and the recurrent attempts to forge a greater unity. This tension was reflected in numerous institutional compromises: an amphictyonic league (2) that united the separate city-states for cultic purposes, a high priestess at Ur who was the daughter of whatever king happened to lay claim to primacy among the various city-state rulers; a tradition of historical literature, royal name, royal titles, and royal hymns that was the common legacy of all the dynasties; and so on."

Thus, the SKL records opposing city states, while it is explicit in that one city knew the (hegemonic) nam-lugal at a given time, and attests to the tension between centrifugal and centripetal forces.

• The Significance of the Kings of Kish
  

...After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kiš...

The flood, which we consider a semi-historical occurrence, is in the field of ANE studies supposed to be a localized event in Mesopotamia. Backing this up in particular, is archaeological evidence in the form of layers of clay deposits in Ancient Shuruppak, the city of the traditional flood hero of the same name (or variously, he is named Ubar-tutu, Ziusudra, Atrahasis, or Uta-napistum.) This is a possible geological explanation for the course of Early Kingship, while the southern localities were weakened by the flood, it is then conceivable why at this point the northern Kish (upstream) should take firm hold of kingship and launch the post-diluvian dynastic period.

Hallo: "There is, moreover, some evidence that at the very beginning of dynastic times, lower Mesopotamia did enjoy a measure of unity under the hegemony of Kish. The King List itself records a long list of rulers at Kish before the first rival claimants appeared at any other city. The epic tradition of the succeeding period looks back on a "golden age" when the four quarters of the world lived in harmony and, even, it seems, spoke a common language. As in the Biblical tale of the "Confusion of Tongues," this stage seems to be pictured as the immediate sequel to the Deluge. Classical Sumerian mythology, which describes the gods as untied in an assembly under the leadership of an elective executive, has been interpreted as reflecting an earthly form of "primitive democracy" in the earliest dynastic period, based on a loose league of equals, and it was a king of Kish [Enmebaragesi] who inaugurated the national shrine at the league's religious capital, Nippur. Archaeological evidence too suggests that Kish had the first, if not indeed the only, clear instance of a royal palace in the Early Dynastic Period. Finally, the evidence of the royal inscriptions of all subsequent periods may be invoked to show the high esteem in which the title king of Kish was always held; long after Kish had ceased to be the seat of kingship, the title was employed to express hegemony over Sumer and Akkad and ultimately came to signify or symbolize imperial, even universal, dominion."

• Enmebaragesi and the building of the Tummal , Hallo pg. 45:
  

"These three city states - Kish, Uruk, and Ur - were preeminent in Mesopotamia throughout this period, as attested not only by the King List but also by the Tummal Inscription, a brief historiographic essay on the sanctuaries of Nippur. it credits Enmebaragesi with first building the temple of Enlil at Nippur. There is no reason to doubt that this indeed took place in ED II times .Although the city of Nippur had a long prior existence, and its Inanna temple can be traced back almost to the beginning of Uruk time (about 3400), there is no prior evidence of an Enlil sanctuary. Its foundations may well mark or symbolize the shift from Kish as a political capital to Nippur as religious center of the rival city-states. If so, it is significant that tis foundation is attributed to a king of Kish, for Enmebaragesi is know as King of Kish not only from the King List but also from two contemporary inscriptions, one found as far away as Tutub (modern Khafahe) in the Diyala region.
The Tummal Inscription goes on to credit Enmebaragesi's son Aka with the construction of the Tummal-building at Nippur. It is less clear about the rest of Nippur's benefactors. Some sources name next a king of Ur, Mesannepadda (or Nane), and his "son" Meskiagnunna, followed by Gilgamesh of Uruk and his son Ur-lugal (or Ur-nungal). Others reverse this order. Their very uncertainty about, or indifference to, the precise order seems to indicate that both groups of rulers were contemporaneous. But Gilgamesh was also contemporaneous with Enmebaragesi, according to a late royal hymn, and with Aka of Kish, according to Gilgamesh and Aka, and epic that tells in detail of an unsuccessful siege of Uruk by an army of Kish. Thus we can synchronize the end of the first dynasty of Kish,the middle of the dynasty of Uruk, and the beginning of the first dynasty of Ur.:"

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1 : Date formulas

Hallo 61: [the practice of designating a year by some significant event that happened the preceding year] "was introduced by Sargon, apparently at the end of his final reign, in place of the older systems of dating by the names of local officials (so-called eponyms), know at Shuruppak, or by regnal years, attested for Urukagina and his immediate predecessors at Lagash. The eponym system was used subsequently in Assyria throughout its long history, and the regnal-year system was resumed in Babylonia beginning with the Kassites, as well as in most of the rest of the Asiatic Near East."

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2 : Amphictyonic League

amphictyony = a league of states

A note Hallo makes later on in the book, pg. 82, relates to Shulgi's innovations, and indirectly relates to the status of the earlier kengir league:

"One of Shulgi's most interesting innovations, revealed by the archival texts from Dreham, is an elaborate schedule of monthly obligations levied on all major Sumerian and Akkadian provinces through their governors. This rotating "liturgy" provided for the sacrificial requirements of the Nippur temples and, not indecently, the maintenance of their sizable retinues. It conveniently institutionalized the relationship between the Ur III empire and those of tis once independent city-states that were formerly untied in the rather amorphous "Kengir League" .. In its calendaric and religious aspects, it foreshadowed the amphictyonic taxation systems of the Solomonic kingdom in Isreal and of Delphi and other cult centers in Greece. The Nippur priesthood was not unmindful of these and other benefits conferred on it by the long lived king. Fairly early in his reign, it permitted him to resume the divine status that had gone unclaimed since the collapse of the Sargonic empire, and apostrophized him in more royal hymns than any other Mesopotamian ruler before or after him."

[us4-he2-gal2]

Well it's been awhile since we've had a good update on the King List thread -


If anyone might be interested in doing a little investigative note taking for the board, I have come across a fascinating article which discusses a King list from Ebla - apparently it was written at Mari but discovered in Ebla.


I am finding resources for a different board topic at the moment or I would explore this article myself:

w3.uniroma1.it/eblaproso/studies/KingLists.pdf

[darkl2030]

You guys don't seem to have mentioned the article publishing the only surviving Ur III manuscript of the Sumerian kinglist by Steinkeller. That's by far the most important source, but the king list in general isn't a topic i've explored in much depth yet.

[sheshki]

From: Royal Statuary of Early Dynastic Mesopotamia,
by Gianni Marchesi and Nicolò Marchetti (2011)

Some quotes from this wonderful book

"Therefore, SKL is a document of exceptional interest: it provides us with a unique recon-
struction of the history of early Babylonia by the Babylonians themselves. The absence of any
theological speculation in SKL is also noteworthy, and unique in Sumerian literature. No deity
plays a role in the numerous dynastic changes that are related in SKL: kingship is transferred
from city to city as a consequence of military events only. The sole divine entity in SKL is
kingship itself, which, by virtue of its descending from heaven, was conceptualized as a divine
institution."

"Jacobsen’s belief in the general historical veracity of SKL led him to emend the text arbi-
trarily or restore broken portions of it with the names of kings known from historical sources
and to suggest unlikely ad hoc readings for some of the royal names in SKL in order to approximate
the names of known historical sovereigns. So, for instance, Jacobsen reconstructed the
badly preserved name of the penultimate king of the Second Dynasty of Kiš in WB 444 iv 31 as
“i/enbi^ni-ib-es₄-tar₂” and identified it with en-bi₂-as₁₁-dar (= `Inbi`astar), the name of the Pre-
Sargonic king of Kiš who was defeated and taken prisoner by Enšagkušu’anak, king of Uruk.
However, WB 444 iv 31 actually reads i-bi-[x.x.x] and an unpublished duplicate has i-bi₂-^dEN.Z
(= Ibbisîn) instead.
...
As Jacobsen had done, so did other scholars. Geller wanted to recognize the names of NI-zi
and Sa`umu—respectively a king (LUGAL) and a high-ranking official (EN) of Mari who are
known from the Ebla archives—in the section of SKL that deals with a Pre-Sargonic dynasty of
Mari. Accordingly, he read “ªna<sub>2</sub>-zi” and “a-`u-me” in two manuscripts of SKL. However,
the former reading, though possible epigraphically, is unlikely, and the latter is incorrect.
Equally unlikely is Klein’s tentative restoration “lugal-ki-*ni?*-š[e₃?-du₇-du₇]”
(one of the various spelling of the name of a well-known Early Dynastic king of Uruk) in BT 14 v 8u:191 the preserved
traces of the sign after KI rules out the possibility that this was NI, and there are no traces
of še₃.
...

In view of these facts, it is clear that SKL has a little to offer us in reconstructing the histori-
cal chronology of the Early Dynastic period. Any reconstruction should be based on Early Dynas-
tic sources only. The picture that emerges when we do rely exclusively on such sources is, of
course, dramatically different from that presented by SKL."

[us4-he2-gal2]

******Moderator's note: I have moved our discussion on mono-mythology to its own thread as I feel it is categorically different:

enenuru.proboards.com/thread/704/mono-mythology-mesopotamian-literature?page=1&scrollTo=6853