Near East Kingdoms

Sumer's Kings 'After the Flood' (Post-Diluvian)

Ancient Mesopotamia (Intro) Canaanite States & Groups Israelites & Israel Mesopotamian States & Groups Rome Syrian States & Groups

A non-Semitic people of the later Pottery Neolithic period, the ancestors of the Sumerians may have moved southwards into, and through, Mesopotamia in the mid-fifth millennium BC, although archaeological evidence suggests a cultural continuity which originates them in central Mesopotamia. Neolithic Farmer practices spread far and wide across the Near East and beyond at this time, but it took developments in irrigation to make it work in southern Mesopotamia.

One of the most important topics in Sumerian history is the 'Great Flood', and the Antediluvian period which led up to it. The Sumerian king list (see feature link) states that eight kings ruled in five cities before the 'Great Flood' swept over the land. And then the kingship was handed down anew.

The myth of Ziusudra and the flood exists in a single copy of the fragmentary 'Eridu Genesis', otherwise known as the 'Sumerian Creation Myth'. This is datable by its script to the seventeenth century BC, with a version later being adapted in Babylon, and then in the Old Testament.

The latter was largely compiled in the sixth century BC, around two millennia after the most probable date for the event, by which time the name of Ziusudra had been altered to the Israelite ancestor figure of Noah (see feature link, right, for details from the perspective of Noah).

It tells how the god Enki warns Ziusudra, king (or prince, or noble) of Shuruppak, of the gods' decision to destroy mankind in a flood (the passage describing why the gods have decided to do this has been lost). Enki instructs Ziusudra to build a large boat, the instructions for which were also thought lost until the chance discovery of a tablet revealed them. Dated to around 2000 BC and translated in AD 2013, it laid out instructions for a massive, round, coracle-like boat.

After a flood of seven days, Ziusudra makes appropriate sacrifices and prostrations to An (the sky-god) and Enlil (chief of the gods), and is given eternal life in Dilmun (the Sumerian Eden) by Anu and Enlil. The most well-known and detailed Mesopotamian account of the flood is found in the Gilgamesh Epic which relates to Uruk's mid-third millennium BC king.

(Information by Peter Kessler, with additional information from Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City, Gwendolyn Leick (Penguin Books, 2001), from Encyclopaedia Britannica (Eleventh Edition, Cambridge (England), 1910), from The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Samuel Noah Kramer ('List 1' of Sumerian rulers, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1963), from Political Change and Cultural Continuity in Eshnunna from the Ur III to the Old Babylonian Period, Clemens Reichel (List of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are not on the Bruce R Gordon list as part of a dissertation proposal for the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago, 11 June 1996), from Excavations at Tepe Hissar, Damghan, Erich F Schmidt (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), from Historical Atlas of the Ancient World, 4,000,000 to 500 BC, John Heywood (Barnes & Noble, 2000), from The Ancient Near East, c.3000-330 BC, Amélie Kuhrt (Routledge, 2000, Vol I & II), from Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East, Michael Road (Facts on File, 2000), from Mesopotamia: Assyrians, Sumerians, Babylonians, Enrico Ascalone (Dictionaries of Civilizations 1, University of California Press, 2007), from The Archaeology of Mesopotamia, S Lloyd (Revised Ed, London, 1984), from Early Mesopotamia: Society and Economy at the Dawn of History, J N Postgate (Routledge, 1994), from The First Empires, J N Postgate (Oxford 1977), from History of the Ancient Near East c.3000-323 BC, Marc van der Mieroop (Blackwell Publishing, 2004, 2007), from Ancient History: A Theory About Ancient Times, L C Gerts ('List 4' of Sumerian rulers, Chapter 12: The Sumerian king list, 2002), from Mesopotamia, Chris Scarre (Ed, Past Worlds - The Times Atlas of Archaeology, Guild Publishing, London 1989), from The Age of the God-Kings, Kit van Tulleken (Ed, Time Life Books, Amsterdam 1987), and from External Links: Ancient Worlds, and The Sumerian Kings List, J A Black, G Cunningham, E Fluckiger-Hawker, E Robson, & G Zólyomi ('List 2' of Sumerian rulers, available via the Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature, Oxford, 1998), and Ancient History, Anthony Michael Love ('List 3' of Sumerian rulers at Sarissa.org), and Eshnunna (the late Bruce R Gordon's Regnal Chronologies list of Eshnunna's rulers, providing some names which are missing from the Clemens Reichel list), and Ninhursag, Micha F Lindemans (formerly available via Encyclopaedia Mythica), and Images from History (University of Alabama), and Tepe Hissar (Encyclopaedia Iranica), and Hissar I, Erich F Schmidt (The Museum Journal XXIII, No 4, December, 1933, pp 340-365, accessed via Pennsylvania Museum), and The Flood: Mesopotamian Archaeological Evidence (National Center for Science Education).)

c.2500 BC

Sumerians continue to control southern Mesopotamia. The major city states are: Adab, Akkad, Bad-tibira, Borsippa, Eridu, Girsu, Isin, Kish, Lagash, Larsa, Mari, Nippur, Shuruppak, Ur, and Uruk.

The minor city states are: Akshak, Awan, Dilbat, Eshnunna, Hamazi, Kazallu, Kid-nun, Kisiga, Kisurra, Kutallu, Kutha, Larak, Lullubi, Marad, Neribtum, Nina, Puzrish-Dagan, Rapiqurn, Sippar, Tutub, Umma, Urukag, Uzarlulu, Zabala, and Zimbir.

This figurine of a woman was dated by archaeologists at about 2500 BC, having been uncovered in the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash

c.2334 BC

Sumerian domination of southern Mesopotamia comes to the end with the rise of the Akkadian empire circa 2334 BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief 'Sumerian renaissance' at Ur in the twenty-second century BC, but this is cut short circa 2004 BC by an Elamite invasion. The Elamites are pushed out six years later by Amorites.

Intrusive but now-dominant Amorite dynasties in Isin and Larsa persist through a short regional dark age (of sorts) until circa 1763 BC when Mesopotamia is united under the rule of the Amorite Babylonian empire.