(Texts: All Artifacts, Color Coding, & Writings in Bold Type With Italics Inside Parenthesis, are Added by Editor R. Brown, not the Authors, Translators, or Publishers!)
(gods in blue …mixed-breed demigods in teal…)
“IN ERIDU (Enki‘s patron city, it is not Uruk as suggested below!):
ALULIM RULED AS KING 28,800 YEARS.
ELALGAR RULED 43,200 YEARS.
KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO BAD-TIBIRA (Dumuzi‘s patron city).
AMMILU’ANNA THE KING RULED 36,000 YEARS.
ENMEGALANNA RULED 28,800 YEARS.
DUMUZI RULED 28,800 YEARS.
BAD-TIBIRA WAS ABANDONED.
KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO LARAK.
EN-SIPA-ZI-ANNA RULED 13,800 YEARS.
LARAK WAS ABANDONED.
KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO SIPPAR (Utu‘s patron city).
MEDURANKI RULED 7,200 YEARS.
SIPPAR WAS ABANDONED.
KINGSHIP WAS TAKEN TO SHURUPPAK (Ninlil‘s patron city).
UBUR-TUTU (Noah‘s father) RULED 36,000 YEARS.
TOTAL: 8 KINGS, THEIR YEARS: 222,600…”
Context: 5 other copies of the Antediluvian king list are known only: MS 3175, 2 in Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, one is similar to this list, containing 10 kings and 6 cities, the other is a big clay cylinder of the Sumerian king list, on which the kings before the flood form the first section, and has the same 8 kings in the same 5 cities as the present.
A 4th copy is in Berkeley: Museum of the University of California, and is a school tablet. A 5th tablet, a small fragment, is in Istanbul.
Commentary: The list provides the beginnings of Sumerian and the world’s history as the Sumerians knew it. The cities listed were all very old sites, and the names of the kings are names of old types within Sumerian name-giving. Thus it is possible that correct traditions are contained, though the sequence given need not be correct. The city dynasties may have overlapped. It is generally held that the Antediluvian king list is reflected in Genesis 5, which lists the 10 patriarchs from Adam to Noah, all living from 365 years (Enoch) to 969 years (Methuselah), altogether 8,575 years. It is possible that the 222,600 years of the king list reflects a more realistic understanding of the huge span of time from Creation to the Flood, and the lengths of the dynasties involved. The first of the 5 cities mentioned , Eridu, is (not) Uruk, in the area where the myths places the Garden of Eden, while the last city, Shuruppak, is the city of Ziusudra, the Sumerian Noah.