The Sumerian King List of Prehistory & History’ Kingship in Early Mesopotamia

"The Sumerian King List or the ‘History’ of Kingship in Early Mesopotamia." A NEW SOCIAL STRUCTURE! 

By Gianni Marchesi:  Undermining FIrst Raw Prehistory Politics.!

Of course, there is no such thing as a Sumerian king list. The text usually referred to as the ‘Sumerian King List’ (SKL) is a composition somewhere between a literary text and a list proper, which deals with the history of kingship in Babylonia from the beginning of time to the early centuries of the second millennium BCE. But what it does reflect is something more important, the Mesopotamian perception of the proper ordering of politics and the world.

Ur III period example of the Sumerian King List.

In fact, the native title of this composition was simply ‘Kingship’, after its first word, nam-lugal.

nam-lugal an-ta e11-da-ba / Kiš.KI lugal-am3 / Kiš.KI-a GIŠ.UR3-e /
mu 600×3+60×6 i3-na

When kingship came down from heaven, (the city of) Kish was sovereign; in Kish, Gushur exercised (kingship) for 2,160 years.

So begins the oldest SKL manuscript, which dates to the time of Shulgi (ca. 2093-2046 BCE), the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur (also called Ur III). Later compilers apparently felt uncomfortable with the prominence accorded to the city of Kish and provided a new beginning to the composition by devising a prior descent of kingship in the Sumerian city of Eridu.    

In the original version, however, Kish was likely to have been the first seat of kingship. In that city a certain Gushur (‘Tree-Trunk’?) reigned for hundreds and hundreds of years. Similarly long-lived kings of Kish reigned until the city was defeated and kingship was transferred to Uruk, or rather to Eana, the sacred precinct of Uruk.