the Sumerian King list recompiled in Base 10

This list is compiled from the contemporary accounts of the inhabitants of Mesopotamia themselves. Other attempts to fit certain of these Kings into timeframes has been done by either Radiocarbon dating artifacts or by chronological dating methods. In both cases this has led to very varied dates that usually differ by up to 300 years in either direction. Firstly because Radiocarbon dating is not very accurate to a certain year and secondly because chronological dating is innefective on an archaeological site where artifacts were used again and again by successive generations so that an artifact manufactured around 2500bce can be found in a layer dating to 2000bce. So therefore this list is compiled backwards using the length of stated rule of each ruler from very well established dates, in this case the foundation of the Babylonian Empire in 1894bce.

the reason for so much confusion for the dates on the original list is because it appears like this in its original format:-

40-94. After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kiš. In Kiš, Ĝušur became king; he ruled for 1200 years. Kullassina-bēl ruled for [960] [(ms. P2+L2 has instead

900] years. Nanĝišlišma ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has

[670] (?) years. En-taraḫ-ana ruled for (ms. P2+L2 has

[420] years

no attempt has ever been made to ratify this messy way of annotating the kings of mesopotamia as for a long time it wasn't understood that the Sumerians used base 60 to annotate numerics which left them having reigns of an impossible amount of years such as "Ĝušur became king; he ruled for 1200 years." whereas when Sumerian power waned and semites became kings they used for them the more traditional base ten system which we still use today.

That the sumerians used 60 in this manner is irrefutable and you need only look at the face of a clock to see the truth of this as the system that we still use today to record time came from this very same ancient source.

This one small fact has changed the face of civilisation as we know it by leading to the fiction perpetrated in the old testament leading the Hebrews to claim that they too had mighty leaders who ruled for hundreds of years, such as Methuselah who reportedly reached an age of 969 years. In base 60 this means that he was in fact just over 16 years old at the time of his death.
This error was then in turn overlooked by Bishop James Usher when he compiled his biblical chronology to work out the total age of the earth believing it to be created in 4004bce in 6 days by a guy called simply God.
In addition it is probably worth mentioning here that there are 23 kings of Kish (Kiš) and 23 Biblical patriarchs. this is not a coincedence. It is in fact a very early form of plaguiarism.

As it turns out the god of Bishops Ushers faith was based on the Hebrew God YHWH, and now in turn it seem that the Hebrew God YHWH was based in part on the Mesopotamian god Enlil who was in fact based on a number of early ruling Kings who were fully human. In other words the name Enlil was an epithet which meant "high king". Ushers chronology was used to change the face of the world and the belief system of the more civilised members of society at that time. It held back advances in science which contradicted it and was used as a form of established racism to denegrate races who not knowing the word of the one true God were relegated to "conquered peoples" and exploited sometimes in a most horrible fashion.

so this is a list of high kings in the same way that the Egyptian king list only notates those believed to hold the spirit of Horus and in the same way that the ancient Irish used the term "Ard Rí na hÉireann" to seperate the King who was God from the simple feudal type vassal king who was not. This is supported by the fact that there are many Kings of Mesopotamia not mentioned on this list yet who are well established by archaeology to have controlled certain areas. Only in truly ancient times did this type of kingship flourish. No one would argue with a king who was God and this is the glue that held early civilisation together in the first place

the numbers after each Kings name are
Stated Length of rule: the number that appears on the list
Base 60 : the same number in base 60
Base 10 : the same number in base 10
Chronology : the date of the Kings succession
Race : the race of the king Su - Sumerian /Se - Semite


Kiš
Ĝušur 1200 1200 20 3592bce Su
Kullassina-bēl 960 960 16 3572bce Su
Nanĝišlišma 670 670 11 3556bce Su
En-tara-ana 420 420 7 3545bce Su
Babum 300 300 5 3538bce Su
Puannum 840 840 14 3533bce Su
Kalibum 960 960 16 3519bce Su
Kalūmum 900 900 15 3503bce Su
Zuqāqīp 900 900 15 3488bce Su
Atab 600 600 10 3473bce Su
Mašda 840 840 14 3463bce Su
Arwium 720 720 12 3449bce Su
Etana, the shepherd 1500 1500 25 3437bce Su
Bali 410 410 6 1/2 3412bce Su
En-me-nuna 660 660 11 3406bce Su
Melem-Kiš 900 900 15 3395bce Su
Barsal-nuna 1200 1200 20 3380bce Su
Zamug 140 140 2 1/3 3360bce Su
Tizqār 305 305 5 3357bce Su
Ilku 900 900 15 3352bce Su
Iltasadum 1200 1200 20 3327bce Su
En-me-barage-si 900 900 15 3307bce Su
Aga 625 625 10 1/2 3292bce Su

E-Ana
Meš-ki-aĝ-gašer 325 325 5 1/2 3281bce Su
Enmerkar 420 420 7 3275bce Su
Lugalbanda 1200 1200 20 3268bce Su
Dumuzid the fisherman 110 110 2 3248bce Su
Gilgamesh 126 126 2 3246bce Su
Ur-Nungal 30 1800 30 3244bce Se
Udul-kalama 15 900 15 3214bce Su
Lā-ba’šum 9 540 9 3199bce Su
En-nun-tara 8 480 8 3190bce Se
Meš-e 36 2160 36 3182bce Se

Urim
Meš-Ane-pada 80 80 1 1/3 3146bce Su
Meš-ki-aĝ-Nanna 36 36 7 months 3144bce Su
Elulu 25 25 5 months 3143bce Su
Balulu 36 36 7 months 3143bce Su

Awan
King 1 120 120 2 3142bce N/A
King 2 120 120 2 3140bce N/A
King 3 116 116 2 3138bce N/A

Kiš
Susuda, the fuller 201 201 3 1/3 3136bce Su
Dadasig 81 81 1 1/3 3135bce Su
Mamagal, the boatman 360 360 6 3134bce Su
Kalbum 195 195 3 1/3 3128bce Su
Tuge 360 360 6 3125bce Su
Men-nuna 180 180 3 3119bce Su
Lugalĝu 420 420 7 3116bce Su

Amazi
Hadaniš 360 360 6 3109bce Su

Unug
En-šag-kuš-ana 60 60 1 3103bce Su
Lugal-ure/Lugal-kiniše-dudu 120 120 2 3102bce Su
Argandea 7 420 7 3100bce Su

Urim
Nanni 54 3240 54 3093bce Se
Meš-ki-aĝ-Nanna 48 2880 48 3039bce Se
Unknown 2 120 2 2991bce Se

Adab
Lugal-Ane-mundu 90 90 1 1/2 2989bce Su

Mari
Anbu 30 90 30 2987bce Se
Anba 17 1020 17 2957bce Se
Bazi the leatherworker 30 1800 30 2940bce Se
Zizi the fuller 20 1200 20 2910bce Se
Limer, gudug priest 30 1800 30 2890bce Se
Šarrum-īter 9 540 9 2860bce Se

Kiš
Kug-Bau (fem) 100 100 1 1/2 2851bce Su

Akšak,
Unzi 30 1800 30 2849bce Se
Undalulu 12 720 12 2819bce Se
Urur 6 360 6 2807bce Se
Puzur-Nira 20 1200 20 2801bce Se
Išu-Il 24 1440 24 2781bce Se
Šu-Suen 24 1440 24 2757bce Se

Kiš,
PuzurSuen son kugbau 25 1500 25 2733bce Se
Ur-Zababa 400 400 6 1/2 2708bce Su

Unug
Lugal-zage-si 34 2040 34 2700bce Se

Agade
Sargon 56 3360 56 2666bce Se
Rimus 15 900 15 2610bce Se
Man-ištiššu 15 900 15 2595bce Se
Narām-Suen 56 3360 56 2580bce Se
Šar-kali-šarrī 25 1500 25 2524bce Se
Irgigi 1 60 1 2499bce Se
Imi 1 60 1 2498bce Se
Nanum 1 60 1 2497bce Se
Illulu 2 120 2 2496bce Se
Dudu 21 1260 21 2495bce Se
Šu-Durul 18 1080 18 2474bce Se

Unug
Ur-niĝin 30 1800 30 2456bce Se
Ur-gigir 15 900 15 2426bce Se
Kuda 6 360 6 2411bce Se
Puzur-ilī 20 1200 20 2405bce Se
Ur-Utu 25 1500 25 2385bce Se
Lugal-melem 7 420 7 2360bce Se

Gutium
No king 5 300 5 2353bce N/A
Inkišuš 7 420 7 2348bce Se
Zarlagab 7 420 7 2341bce Se
Inimabakeš 5 300 5 2334bce Se
Duga 6 360 6 2329bce Se
Igešauš 6 360 6 2323bce Se
Yarlagab 15 900 15 2317bce Se
Ibate 3 180 3 2302bce Se
Apilkin 3 180 3 2299bce Se
Lā-erabum 2 120 2 2296bce Se
Irarum 2 120 2 2294bce Se
Ibranum 1 60 1 2292bce Se
Ablum 2 120 2 2291bce Se
Puzur-Suen 7 420 7 2289bce Se
Yarlaganda 7 420 7 2282bce Se
Tirigan 40 days 10 40 days 2275bce Se

Unug
Utu-eĝal 427 7 7 2275bce Su

Urim
Ur-Namma 18 1080 18 2268bce Se
Šulgi, 58 3480 58 2250bce Se
Amar-Suena 25 1500 25 2192bce Se
Šu-Suen 9 540 9 2167bce Se
Ibbi-Suen 25 1500 25 2159bce Se

Isin
Išbi-Erra 33 1980 33 2134bce Se
Šu-ilīšu 20 1200 20 2101bce Se
Iddin-Dagan 25 1500 25 2081bce Se
Išme-Dagan 20 1200 20 2056bce Se
Lipit-Eštar 11 660 11 2036bce Se
Ur-Ninurta 28 1680 28 2025bce Se
Būr-Suen 21 1260 21 1997bce Se
Lipit-Enlil 5 300 5 1976bce Se
Erra-imitti 8 480 8 1971bce Se
Enlil-bāni 24 1440 24 1963bce Se
Zambiya 3 180 3 1939bce Se
Iter-piša 4 240 4 1936bce Se
Ur-du-kuga 4 240 4 1932bce Se
Suen-magir 11 660 11 1928bce Se
Damiq-ilišu 23 1380 23 1917bce Se


there are two very important characters in this list for those more biblically minded among you.

The first is Abraham and the second his only real son Ishmael.
Neither of them were from "Ur of the Chaldees" which didn't exist until a thousand years after the claimed death of Abraham in the Bible anyway and neither of them ever left their home on a quest instructed by god.

Basically because they were regarded as Gods in every sense of the word anyway and there are existing sumerian texts that illustrate this which I will post if anyone is interested of indeed if anyone can point out which two names on the list represent them

the list is compiled from three seperate king lists so is accurate in either direction to +/- 300 years.
in future I will be able to bring it down to +/- 50 years but I am very busy working on something else right now and thought some posters might like to see a preliminary rough version of this special chronology

the early rulers of Sumer used base 60 to record their reigns
this wasn't an attaempt to make themselves look good as in many cases after they were defeated by a different King froma different city the godship was then taken up by a rival and the previous God-King was still recorded as having that reign.
not all kingships were handed down father to son. the rivalry was quite intense
the Sumerians also used base 60 a lot in everything else, such as time keeping and also of course measuring area
the Cuneiform symbol for the "Sar" a numeric that represented 3600 is a circle.

the Cuneiform symbol for the planet Earth is a circle and a water sign, because from their perspective the land was surrounded by water.

This means of course that they were aware of the spherical nature of the planet. This symbol is the main reason that their flood stories which tell of a flood upon the land are mistranslated in later times to tell of a flood upon the earth. the symbol for Mud is the water sign that accompanies the circle in the planet earth sign


and of course they were famous for their measurements of area and distance which also made use of the Sar and this is the reason that a king was known as a ruler in the first place
you can't call someone a king of all he surveys unless he's actually surveyed it and knows how much he owns can you.
think Yurtle the turtle
The list of Sumerian kings names you will see are normally spelled as a long list of sylables whereas semitic kings have more normal sounding names with less sylables in them.
:wink:
there are of course more names at the start of the king list which at first look seem to have incredibly long lengths of reign even beyond the limits of the base 60 rule such as

Alalĝar ruled 64,800
Dumuzid, the shepherd ruled 36,000

but these numbers are all whats known as precessional measurements and are in fact measurements of area and not as has been speculated before as something to do with the cosmos.
The big clue in this former case is that Dumuzid, the shepherd was a famous God who travelled to the underworld and back. In Sumerian mythology Heaven was in the mountains to the north and Heavne on a mountaintop is a reoccuring theme in ancient world civilisations. this is the main reason why the "Aliens did it" mob get so het up.
In many ancients texts it states that God came down from heaven, without needing to say that heaven was firmly fixed to the earths surface, like today we are happy to say we "went down to the shops" without anyone thinking that we took some stairs to get there. It was a common figure of speech

the list entire list quite simply represents earth measurements followed by a list of those who ruled it from a mesocentric point of view. In other words they knew there were other civilisations who claimed to have God kings such as Egypt but from their perspective the other gods were not the real ones.
a view you may have heard in modern organised religion which is actually derived from the ancient Sumerian model as are the many religious stories that support it.

Bl**dy hell Steve - you're a genius

Why's no-one else figured out the years were in base 60 before?

because they were too busy thinking up reasons why they were genetically engineered from aliens instead
lets face it the man most responsible for getting people interested in Sumer in recent years were EVD and Z.Sitchin
the people who did know the truth didn't bother to publish it anywhere before because they were having so much fun laughing at the idiots who thought that just 5000 years ago kings were reigning for 1200 years at a time.

You have voted Marduk for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

Wow.. great research. Very interesting indeed! I think you may well be onto something here!

Nice theory, but you're about a hundred yeas too late on it. This was already taken into account when the numbers were first translated:
www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk...

Nice theory, but you're about a hundred yeas too late on it

as I already said it has long been known that base 60 was used to record numerals I don't see the point of your post at all
this is the first time anyone has used this knowledge to display its effect on the kings list instead of people thinking that they actually reigned 100s of years and the first time that the dates of reign have been re calculated into base 10 to give a chronological timeline
unless of course you can prove otherwise


in addition you rlink is to babylonian numerals and not sumerian or akkadian
which they were inherited from

[edit on 1-11-2006 by Marduk]

You have voted Marduk for the Way Above Top Secret award. You have two more votes this month.

amazing. simply amazing.

does anyone care that the sumerian gods were indeed aliens?

the AHnunAHki(thats just how i like to spell it)

stichen..is the reincarnation of the prophet zechariah

stichen was not completley right in all of his claims..but he did help shine light on something the tribe of IS REAL needed to know.

does anyone care that the sumerian gods were indeed aliens

well seeing as the older Sumerian Gods never existed in the flesh and the younger Sumerian gods were deified kings who have been dead for millenia I wouldn't think they are worried about it too much
so why should you

Originally posted by Marduk

does anyone care that the sumerian gods were indeed aliens

well seeing as the older Sumerian Gods never existed in the flesh and the younger Sumerian gods were deified kings who have been dead for millenia I wouldn't think they are worried about it too much
so why should you

why should you be so ignorant about your parents?

Lets stick to the base 60 application to the Kings List, not the issue of whether sitichin was relevant.

Eh... the original lists are dervied from the base 60... and the numbers as written aren't the ones in base 60. They're converted into base 10.

The early legendary kings' length of rule was measured in "sars" which is a period of 3600 years. They also used "ners" which was the equivalent of 600 years.
en.wikipedia.org...

So the lists you see are in base 10 -- after they've been translated. They were not left in base 60 because that's unwieldy and leads to errors for scholars who can't actually read the material directly:
www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk...

I understand your confusion Byrd
but what I'm saying is that after they have been broken down into "presumed" base ten from their original sar calculation you need to reduce them into "realistic" base ten by further reducing them by 60 again
the Sumerians used base 60 for everything
the semites used base 10 for a lot of their caluclations
the akkadians were semites
this is why Kings like Gusur who according to the list reigned for 1200 years actually in reality reigned for 20 years (20 x 60 = 1200)
as time passed and the manner of calculating the dates changed along with the kingship this earlier convention was changed
the Kings with Sumerian names all need to be reduced by 60 to be realistic
the kings with semitic names don't
makes sense don't you think ?

either that or people were living a very long time
and we know they weren't
well some of us do anyway


[edit on 1-11-2006 by Marduk]

Originally posted by Marduk
I understand your confusion Byrd
but what I'm saying is that after they have been broken down into "presumed" base ten from their original sar calculation you need to reduce them into "realistic" base ten by further reducing them by 60 again

That's what the translators did, Marduk. It shows specifically in the translations:

Here's the English translation of the page:
www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk...

Note specifically this sentence:

186-192In Unug, En-cakanca-ana became king; he ruled for 60 years.

And from this page ....
www-etcsl.orient.ox.ac.uk...

The exact words

186unugki-ga en-cakan2-ca4-an-na
187lugal-am3 mu 1 cu-ci i3-ak

I've highlighted the 1 and the word for "sixty". The text really says "1 60-years" but the translators changed that to "60 years."

You can find other examples where the translators took the numbers and converted them correctly into base 10.

byrd you're still missing it
try again

Originally posted by Marduk
byrd you're still missing it
try again

Noooooo... I'm not missing it. They took the original and converted it into base 10.

Your math, however, is just a bit off:

You state:

Stated Length of rule: the number that appears on the list
Base 60 : the same number in base 60
Base 10 : the same number in base 10

Ĝušur 1200 - 1200 - 20 - 3592bce Su

1200 is not, in fact, 20 in base 10.
1200 (base 60) = (1*60*60) + (2*60) + 0 + 0
= 3600 + 120
= 3720 in base 10

en.wikipedia.org... (has a section that specifically refers to converting base 60 numbers)

And 20 isn't 1200 in base 60. It's 120, not 1,200.

Byrd
"the early history of sumer
The main written sources for the history of the early periods are the lists of kings, certain legends, references to events in omen texts, and later, royal inscriptions and the year names ot the kings. the results of excavations at Kish, Fara, Ur, Al- Ubaid, Tello, Warka, Nippur and Asshur to mention the most important sites, have done much to illustrate the written records and to add to the scanty information they contain.
About 200Bce, after the fall of the third dynasty of Ur, Sumerian scribes took it in hand to record the glories of the great days that had passed away. They must have had at their disposal a mass of documentary evidence, and from this they compiled on the one hand the political history and on the other the religious traditions of the land. Their histories have perished, or survive only in excerpts embodied in Babylonian chronicles of much later date, but there do remian contemporary copies of the scematic lists of kings which they drew up as the framework of their narrativeand, for the earliest part a version made by the priest Berossus in the greek period. The list gives the names of kings arranged in their dynasties, the number of years of the reign of each and the total for the dynasty; it starts with ten kings who reigned before the flood and details nineteen dynasties which bridged the long period between the flood and the close of the thrid dynasty of Ur."- Sir Charles Leoanard Woolley (1928)

Only the ante diluvian kings numbers are reckoned in multiples of Sars and ners. the first 8 kings in sars only and the last two kings in sars and ners/
the next 23 kings reigns namely the kings of Kish are reckoned and recorded in plain figures and not multiples of anything
Ĝušur 1200
Kullassina-bēl 960
Nanĝišlišma 670
En-tara-ana 420
etc

these dates and the dates of most of the true Sumerian kings were as Sir Leonard says taken from "a mass of documentary evidence" now lost to us. So the scribes who wrote these early post diluvian kings dates took them directly from the records left by the kings themselves.
now imagine what error they would make if they had not realised that these records holdovers from an earlier age and using a slightly different numbering system were needed to be divided by a factor of 60 to bring them in line with the Babylonian scribes who were writing it down
the claim that they wanted to record their glorious past and therefore may have exaggerated it falls flat because the Akkadians the group who followed from the Sumerians and the Babylonians who followed them were not sumerians themselves but were in fact semiotes who had not been granted positions of power under Sumerian rule and there was no love lost. It would be like the present day English wanting to glorify the Norman Invasion of 1066
they were semitic and of the same stock as the Hebrews who also later copied down the idea of ancient long lived kings.
Now there are two reasons that support this theory and which support no other conclusion
1) the list of ante diluvian kings is clearly listed from an ancient and not babylonian source because the name of the God Dumuzid is mentioned rather than his at that time present name Tammuz (you may have heard of him the god of Freemasons)
2) the lengths of the kings of kish when divided by a factor of 60 suddenly become very credible and matches what is known from the admittedly limited archaeological record

so you have
ante diluvians king - sars and ners
early sumerian dyanstic kings - factor of 60
semitic kings - base ten

this is what I have been trying to tell you albeit very unprofessionally because of my atrocious mathematical knowledge
I thank you for pointing out that it is not base 60 and will amend that in my personal records
see what I mean now ?
unless you think they made it all up

or they had alien genes

the ante diluvian kings which are calculated in sars and ners I had missed of the list because I thought it would make it too confusing for people to take in

Originally posted by Marduk
Only the ante diluvian kings numbers are reckoned in multiples of Sars and ners. the first 8 kings in sars only and the last two kings in sars and ners/
the next 23 kings reigns namely the kings of Kish are reckoned and recorded in plain figures and not multiples of anything

Well, for the first item, the text comes not from a single source but from multiple sources.

And for the second item, the way they wrote their numbers tells us which system they were using. Each single number was a base number PLUS a second number that said which base system it was in. So "790 years" is 7(100)+9(10)+0

You can see more of this (including the use of the '60' sign) here:
it.stlawu.edu...
it.stlawu.edu...

Multiple sources were checked to avoid confusion with the numbers (I believe there are at least 7 different sources here) :
etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk...#

unless you think they made it all up

In fact, I do.

These kings were far back in the past of these ancient writers. It was common there and in other civilizations to giive legendary figures exaggerated powers and lengths of rule and lifetime. "Kur lived a very long time and ruled many" can easily be turned into "Kur lived and ruled for 1000 years" if you are the ruler of the town Kur came from and you are arguing with your neighbor over who owns what. In their minds, the longer the lifespan, the more solid the claim that the local rulers had over a disputed area. While they couldn't get away with "my grandfather ruled 200 years" (because the other guy would have proof that this was a lie), they could get by with "my grandfather's grandfather's grandfather lived 300 years!"

Many of these places mentioned are known places and we have good records of the cities. These records don't stretch back 25,000 years and more.