Artistic licence or why i trust no one: Bullshit Memes #12: Evidence of alien astronauts in the Sumerian King List?

The Weld Blundell prism, Ashmolean Museum. Image Wikipedia.

As is not uncommon, I had not planned to write this blog post, even in the face of provocation from an endless variety of bullshit memes online. I simply did not believe it was necessary and I tend to want to bring something new to a topic when I write.

I mean, it really isn't difficult to find well-researched information that covers all one needs to know about the Sumerian King List. Maybe starting with the surprisingly not crap Wikipedia page.

But then one day I snapped after seeing yet another post on Facebook. So, I concluded that what was really needed was a basic overview of the facts about these tablets.

And some judicious naming and shaming of the woo.

Perhaps starting with some pointers on how to recognise Sumerian based bullshit, because I find that the greatest crime against Sumer in the meme-verse is ignorance of this ancient culture and its art. After all, most ppl can recognise fake ancient Egypt stuff... right? ... right?

And the recent advent of AI online has meant that internet searches for Sumerian topics are now full of images of outright rubbish, mainly because AI has been fed reception art and it shows no awareness of authentic Mesopotamian culture.

Identifying online misinformation about Sumer

Beware words like - 'mysterious', 'real record', 'hidden truth', or 'finally exposed'.
Anunnaki, Nibiru and Nefilim gods are also a give away.
Be wary of the word Sumeria instead of the correct term - Sumer. I am also not a fan of the use of an adjective as collective noun - 'the Ancients'. But that may be me.
Flamboyant use of reception graphics/AI. Most with no connection to ancient Sumer.

Examples of SKL misinformation

King List... dammit!...... Lore Library, Youtube 02.08.24.

The Sumerian King List does not record the Anunna (Anunnaki). Gods are absent from the SKL.

Above, reception image by digital artist Alexander Warda of a Neo-Assyrian king (artist's signature removed). Plus a Wiki image of the King List prism. These are astonishingly pasted over a background of Egyptian Sphinx & pyramid ... WTF ...

The odd choice of background indicates that either the Lore Library don't know the difference between these cultures, or they are basing their video on Zecharia Sitchin, who placed his astronaut overlords in ancient Egypt and Sumer. But 'the Anunnaki presence on Earth' also points in this direction.

Why an AI of Egyptian king Akhenaten.. why??? Reddit 19.05.24.

The Sumerian King List does NOT say that Earth was ruled by human-like gods.

Human-like gods, Anunnaki deities, and humans created as slaves for mining gold are all clear indications we are viewing purveyors of Sitchin's theories.

Again, neither of these images is Sumerian: Neo-Assyrian relief and AI Egyptophilia. Another hallmark of frauds is their inability to differentiate between Assyrian and Sumerian art. The AI image, on the other hand, is just rubbish.

Nothing in this image is Sumerian or relates to the SKL. Reddit 25.07.24.

The Sumerian King List does not say Gilgamesh was 2/3 god, nor that his mum is a goddess, instead his dad is described as a lilla spirit (a ghost).

Photoshop mish-mash of things that are not Sumerian: Akkadian head, Epic of Gilgamesh tablet and AI. Combined with bullshit text - Ancient astronaut gods mining Earth's resources again points toward Sitchin, or opportunists exploiting Sitchin's theories for profit... or both.... I'm up for both.

Add codswallop about the the Sumerian King List and ....viola!.... bullshit meme.

Origins of Sumerian King List pseudoscience

The interesting thing about these memes, apart from their indifference to accuracy, is their loose approach to their source material, the grand old men of pseudoscience: Zecharia Sitchin (1976-2010) and Erich von Däniken (1969), who used the SKL as part of their argument that astronauts had visited Earth and founded human civilisation.

And both pseudoscientists appear to use the same sources to achieve this aim, but with differing results, due to them each cherry-picking the numbers that they found most suitable to their narrative.

Can you spot the problem with Sitchin's numbers?

Sitchin argued that alien astronauts, the ‘Anunnaki gods’ arrived on Earth 445,000 years ago and ruled Mesopotamia before the great flood in 11,000 BCE. For his chronology he claims to use the Sumerian King List, but he actually favours the king list in the Babylonaica of Berossus (ca. 280 BCE).

Berossus (via Eusebius) named 10 ancient kings who reigned Babylon before the flood for 120 ‘sari’. A Mesopotamian sar was 3,600 years, so according to this model the earliest kings reigned 432,000 years.

10 kings ruled ancient Sumer for 432.000 years?

Did Anunnaki reign as kings before the flood? Or human kings?

This is the number Sitchin used for the kings who ruled Sumer before the great flood (his 13,000 years ago). But he also tried to reconcile Berossus' version with the list on the Weld Blundell prism (by simply adding 2 kings), while proclaiming Berossus was the most reliable source (2010, 90).

Nonetheless, the weakest part of his argument relating to the SKL (and there are many weak parts) is the date Sitchin argued humans were created – 287,000 years before the flood and 145,000 years after kingship was brought down from heaven.

Erich von Däniken, on the other hand, again argued for ancient astronaut gods having artificially laid the foundation of human civilisation on Earth, but with fewer Anunnaki and much more selective cross breeding of alien gods with homo sapiens over thousands of years.

Unlike Sitchin he chose to use the numbers from a tablet in the Ashmolean museum, Weld Blundell (WB) 62, which also names 10 pre-flood Mesopotamian kings, but these king's have much longer reigns, adding up to 456,000 years. For some reason he did not feel the need to explain why these Sumerian kings lived for thousands of years (Däniken 1969, 25, 55).

Seals do not confirm the prehistorical names and coins were not invented until late.

However, if you recall, both men wrote their books over 40 years ago, so neither had access to the range of information available to us. Instead, it is reasonably clear that their source was a publication of Ashmolean Museum tablets by Langdon from 1923. Sitchin even cites this as his source.

Däniken and Sitchin chose their preferred kings and year numbers from Langdon's book (see image below).

It ought to go without saying that 1923 is over 100 years ago, and Assyriology has moved on since then. In particular, it has moved on from Langdon's style of argumentation, and from his translations. In fact Assyriology had already moved on 60 years ago (see Finkelstein 1963).

But again, the interesting thing about this backstory is that bullshit memes on social media do not use the numbers from Sitchin (10 kings/432,000 years) or Däniken (10 kings/456,000 years), but rather they use numbers from the Weld Blundell prism (8 kings/241,200 years) (top left above).

Nonetheless, what is consistent from these sources is the use of out of date information about the Sumerian King List to claim there is evidence for extraterrestrial gods who descended from outer space, and who then went on to create humankind and establish civilisation in ancient Mesopotamia.

The entire basis of these claims is the exceptionally long years of reign of these early kings.

Bullshit meme with Weld Blundell prism. Facebook Aug. 2024.

So this brief overview of the woo brings us to the nitty gritty:

The SKL: What is it?

The Sumerian King List is a group of about 26-28 clay tablets that are inscribed in cuneiform with a list of kings of ancient Mesopotamia spanning from mythical time through to whichever ruling dynasty commissioned them (Gabriel 2018, 2021, Sallaberger & Schrakamp 2015, Marchesi 2010).

These tablets have been discovered during excavations at Nippur, Susa, Ur, Tells Leilan and Harmal, Isin and Kish. There are also a few tablets with no archaeological provenience. They have been studied since the early 20th century, and every now and then a new one has been found, so the number has almost doubled since early translations were done (Jacobsen 1939, Langdon 1923).

If an article claims there are 16 tablets they are relying on the list from Jacobsen 1939. The number was expanded to 22 by 1984 (Edzard 1984) and has now increased further to around 26, depending on criteria of inclusion (Gabriel 2018 lists 24, later 26 in 2021, but their list omits a few earlier inclusions, like WB 62).

Fragmentary SKL tablets from Nippur and Susa. © Penn Museum & Louvre.

However, not one of the different versions of the King List matches the others.

The content of these tablets is inconsistent, names are changed or spelled differently, years of reign don't match, kings and whole dynasties may be missing or rearranged. The most glaring omission would be the complete absence of the dynasties of Umma and Lagash.

If you have even a passing knowledge of Mesopotamian history you may be shocked to discover that the SKL therefore omits famous historical kings like Gudea, Eannatum and Ur-Nanshe.

The King Lists are also misleadingly written as though kingship was a continuous process in Mesopotamia with one king following another, rather than the reality of kings often ruling at the same time in independent city-states.

In addition, the lists give the impression that kingship conferred total rule over Sumer and Akkad to one king and one capital city, which was not often historical reality.

The Scheil SKL tablet, listing early Babylonian kings.

However, the focus of these tablets is on 'Kingship' as a divine power that is solely allotted by the gods, so the point of these documents is not historical reality.

The most complete copy of the Sumerian King List is on the Weld Blundell prism and translations of this version are the most widely cited. Academic translations may use this tablet as a form of master copy, that is combined with other tablets to create a complete text.

But because no two tablets contain the same information, all translations are an artificial restoration (Gabriel 2021).

The Weld Blundell prism

Is a 4 sided clay prism in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (AN1923.444) that has no excavation history ('provenience') and may have been found at Larsa in Iraq in the early 20th century. It was donated to the museum by H. Weld Blundell in 1923.

The prism was written in Sumerian cuneiform for an Old Babylonian dynasty, and was commissioned at the end or immediately after the reign of king Sin-magir of Isin (ca 1820-1800 BCE). We know this because he is the last king named.

Weld Blundell prism. © Ashmolean Museum Oxford.

What is the fuss about?

As stated above, these texts provide a list of kings who ruled Mesopotamia.

This mostly amounts to stating that kingship was given to a city and then in succession the kings of said city are named with their number of years of rule. Then the city loses the favour of the gods and kingship is handed to another city.

For a few kings a bit more information might be provided, like hobbies or who their dad was.

The thing that gets pseudos hot and bothered is the opening lines of the tablets that list the kings who ruled at the beginning of history, before the great flood:

'After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug.
In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years.
Alaljar ruled for 36000 years.

2 kings; they ruled for 64800 years.
Then Eridug fell and the kingship was taken to Bad-tibira.

In Bad-tibira, En-men-lu-ana ruled for 43200 years.
En-men-gal-ana ruled for 28800 years.

Dumuzid, the shepherd, ruled for 36000 years.'

and so on.... (source ETCSL)

Apparently an abstract concept of kingship descending from heaven and hyperbolic thousands of years of rule are all the proof one needs to believe that aliens came from the sky and either ruled the Earth themselves, or created immortal, or almost immortal, kings to rule Earth for them.

What is wrong with this picture?... History, Youtube.

For one thing that papyrus has the Egyptian King List on it.

The list of primeval kings is not original

There are however, a couple of problems - the first being that the beginning of most Sumerian King List tablets does not include the pre-flood kings.

In fact, few tablets list the primeval kings, and a few tablets that do list the earliest kings do not include the sentence saying kingship descended from heaven.

For example, a fragmentary tablet from Ur:

Two kings reigned for ... years.
... abandoned Eridu(?)

...

The kingship was brought to Larsa.

...

Ensipadziana reigned for 21,000 (/21,000+ ...?) years.
...
One king reigned for 21,000 (/21,000+ ...?) years.

... abandoned Larak

...

The kingship was brought to Badtibira (source CDLI: P346542)

Ur tablet, Old Babylonian. Image © cdli P346542

Because of this lack of sources (and consistency), it is really important to stress the Weld Blundell prism text if you wish to drive the alien gods argument home. Because the prism does have the most complete version and it does contain the section describing the earliest kings of Sumer that everybody cites.

But the Weld Blundell is not Sumerian, it is a 2nd millennium Babylonian text.

And about 21 years ago a much older SKL was identified that is the earliest example of this list (Steinkeller 2003). This King List is Neo-Sumerian, from the reign of Shulgi of Ur (Ur III) at the end of the 3rd millennium, and it is hundreds of years older than the other tablets.

The earliest copy of the SKL, the USKL, from Steinkeller 2003.

However, the earliest King List does not begin with the pre-flood kings, nor does it mention a flood.

Instead, it begins with kingship handed down from heaven to the city of Kish, and it only partially matches the later versions of the SKL for before the Akkadian kings.

In fact, in the light of this and other stylistic concerns, academic consensus considers that the pre-flood kings and flood section of the Sumerian King List were a later Babylonian addition to the original King List (Jacobsen 1939, Kraus 1952, Finkelstein 1963, Steinkeller 2003, Marchesi 2010, Sallaberger & Schrakamp 2015).

Awkward.

The earliest version begins with:

‘When kingship came down from heaven,

(the city of) Kiš was sovereign;

in Kiš Gušur exercised (kingship) for 2,160 years’ (source Marchesi 2010).

Pre-flood kings, Old Babylonian tablet. © Schøyen Collection.

The King List is arguably not Sumerian

To add insult to injury, the name is somewhat of a misnomer.

The original Sumerian name of the text is nam-lugal - ‘Kingship’. It may also be called The Chronicle of the One Monarchy in earlier modern literature.

But in fact, 'Sumerian' is misleading, as nearly all SKL tablets were written in the Old Babylonian period (2000-1595 BCE).

Only the one King List is earlier (USKL above). This tablet is now considered to be copied from an earlier Akkadian source (2340-2150 BCE), or from earlier sources that had copied an original Akkadian document (Steinkeller 2003).

Because these tablets were produced over hundreds of years and for different dynasties the tablets differ in content and usually end with the dynasty that commissioned them. Equally, the lists were copied by scribes over a long time, so there are errors.

Sumerian cuneiform tablet naming king Eannatum of Lagash.

Eannatum: king of Sumer and Akkad. Early Dynastic IIIb, ca. 2450-2425 BCE.

No kings of Lagash are listed in the SKL. Image © Louvre.

There is no Sumerian version of the King List (Early Dynastic, 2900-2340 BCE), and it ought to be emphasised that the Sumerians only left us complex recording systems from the second half of this period. Before the Early Dynastic cuneiform writing was a work in progress.

To sum up: there is only one version of the SKL from the very end of the 3rd millennium, the rest of the tablets are 2nd millennium.

In fact, it would be more accurate to call it the Babylonian King List, since most tablets were commissioned by Babylonian kings. Except that this name is already taken.

Sumerian Early Dynastic plaques naming kings Enannatum and Ur-Nanshe of Lagash.

No kings of Lagash are listed in the SKL. Images © Trustees of the British Museum & Louvre.

Sumer ≠ Mesopotamia

From a misnomer that is based on assumptions about the antiquity of these documents, it is important to stress another problem - the word 'Sumerian'.

Sumerian cuneiform survived for writing religious and royal literature for nearly 2000 years after Sumer as a culture had been swallowed up by Akkadian and the language was no longer spoken in Mesopotamia (after about 2000 BCE).

In the same way that Latin outlasted Rome as the language of religion and power in Europe.

A cuneiform text written in Sumerian during the Akkadian or Old Babylonian periods is not actually a Sumerian text. However, the problem for clarity is that it is still correctly called Sumerian, because it is written in Sumerian.

The casual conflation of Assyrian and Sumerian art does my head in.

This ambiguity is particularly convenient for pseudos like Däniken and Sitchin, who, either intentionally or through ignorance, are able to identify any Mesopotamian text or artwork as Sumerian and then claim the authority of great antiquity (pimping up the early dates), not unlike the kings of Akkad and Babylon did.

Although why ‘Sumer’ is considered cooler and more authentic than these cultures is entirely beyond me.

Especially when their artworks are often representative of ancient Mesopotamian art.

How reliable is the Sumerian King List as an historical document?

It isn't.

When these tablets were first studied in the early 20th century the historical accuracy was taken at face value and, like Manetho for Egypt, used as a baseline for creating chronologies by scholars.

Nonetheless, the extraordinarily long reigns of the earlier kings were always considered to be mythical, aided by the fact that a few kings are gods or mythical heroes, like Dumuzi, Etana, Gilgamesh and Lugalbanda.

And it didn’t take long for scholars to begin finding inconsistencies, because the defining feature of academia is that it continuously builds upon and adjusts its knowledge base.

Therefore, doubts were already being raised by the 1930s.

In the past 60 years the historical reliability of the SKL has been repeatedly challenged with experts now considering the hypothetical original should be dated among kings of the Akkadian period. And that this text was created with the purpose of legitimising Akkadian rule by the Sargonic kings.

Sargon of Akkad unified Mesopotamia and conquered Sumer ca. 2324 BCE.

Because of this and other concerns, the SKL is considered to be mythological for the kings who are listed before the ‘kings of Agade’ (Akkad). And as support for this most pre-Akkadian kings have mythically long periods of rule, whereas Sargonic and post-Akkadian kings have sensible length reigns that can often be confirmed by other historical sources.

Basically, Assyriologists now believe the Sumerian King List was created as propaganda to make the Akkadian kings look like they had cool (and legitimate) origins, a hobby that many ancient Near Eastern kings dabbled in (Edzard 1984, Michalowski 1983, Marchesi 2010. Sallaberger & Schrakamp 2015).

The same motive applies to the Old Babylonian versions of the text, with the added embellishment of even older historical connections, by adding ancient pre-flood kings who ruled Mesopotamia for thousands of years.

This means the SKL is not accurate for the Sumerian period proper, and named kings are really only useful historically if there is other evidence confirming their existence. Currently that amounts to only 7 of the approximately 87 pre-Sargonic kings who can be attested from other Mesopotamian king lists and historical records (Marchesi 2010).

None of the pre-flood kings can be matched to historical kings (Sallaberger & Schrakamp 2015).

The extraordinary lengths of reign for these primeval kings are naturally to be taken with a pinch of salt. This is another classic literary device intended to justify a later king’s VERY ancient right to wear a special hat and invade other city-states.

Where does that leave us?

Well firstly, it leaves us with a lot of misinformation built from reinterpeting an ancient propaganda text.

From this shaky start more misinfomation is constructed by relying on the theories of a late 20th century pseudoscientists, like Erich von Däniken and Zecharia Sitchin, who both cherry picked out of date research to argue that astronaut gods colonised Earth.

‘After kingship came down from heaven’ is a sentence that may be easily interpreted to infer that aliens literally flew down from heaven, when, to be pedantic, it is 'Kingship' that is passed down.

Mesopotamian kingship was conferred on a king and a city by the supreme god (who happened to dwell in heaven). This stock phrasing was used in royal records from the Akkadian to Old Babylonian periods.

It means Kingship was given to a city and its king, and it is worth noting that kingship was usually granted to humankind by either Enlil (who decreed fate) or by An (the sky/heaven god).

No spaceships, just supreme gods doing what gods do.

Conclusion

To sum up: The Sumerian King List as we know it is not an accurate historical document for the Sumerian period, nor to be purist, is it Sumerian. It is at best a later propaganda text that attempts to hang on the coattails of Sumerian royal coolness.

In addition, the introductory list of primeval kings ending with a great flood has been considered to be an Old Babylonian insertion since the mid 20th century. It is not original to the text and appears to have been added by Babylonian kings to beef up their claims of right to rule.

Finally, and somewhat obviously, none of the versions of the Sumerian King List mentions biblical Nefilim, Anunnaki, secrets of immortality, spaceships or aliens of any species. These claims are fraudulent speculation largely designed to generate profit for unscrupulous individuals.

I hope you learned something new, I know I certainly did.

Andrea Sinclair

August 2024

Irrelevant AI graphics - Eat the Fruit Inc - Facebook 26.08.24

Don't just trust me, read some of these

Web links

Explanation of the Anunna/Anunnaki at ORACC - https://oracc.museum.upenn.edu//amgg/listofdeities/anunna/index.html

CDLI: Sumerian King List at Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative - https://cdli.ox.ac.uk/wiki/doku.php?id=the_sumerian_king_list_skl

Weld Blundell prism at CDLI - https://cdli.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/cdli-tablet/129
ETCSL: Sumerian King List English/Sumerian text at Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature - https://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/section2/tr211.htm -

Eusebius Chronikon/Babylonaica of Berossus online at Attalus - https://www.attalus.org/translate/eusebius4.html

Weld Blundell prism at the Ashmolean Museum - https://www.ashmolean.org/collections-online#/item/ash-object-462921.

Overview at Ashmolean: https://www.ashmolean.org/sumerian-king-list#/

Sources and Further Reading

Edzard, DO. 1984. 'Königsliste und Chroniken: A. Sumerisch.' RlA 6, 77-86.

Finkelstein, JJ. 1963, 'The Antediluvian Kings: A University of California Tablet.' JCS 17: 39-51.

Gabriel, G. 2018. 'The Sumerian King List as Educational Artefact.' In Implimenting Meanings: The Power of the Copy between Past. Present, and Future, S. Di Paolo ed., 71-131.
Gabriel, G. 2021. 'The "Prehistory" of the Sumerian King List and its Narrative Residue.' In The Shape of Stories: Narrative Structures in Cuneiform Literature, G. Konstantopoulos & S. Helle eds., 234-57. Brill.

Jacobsen, T. 1939. The Sumerian King List. Oriental Institute, University of Chicago.

Kraus, FR. 1952. 'Zur Liste der Älteren Könige Babyloniens.' ZAVA 50: 29-60.
Mallowan, MEL. 1936. 'The Bronze Head of the Akkadian Period from Nineveh.' Iraq 3(1): 104-110.

Marchesi, G. 2010. 'The Sumerian King List and the Early History of Mesopotamia.' In Ana turri gimilli: studi dedicati al padre Werner R. Mayer, MG. Biga & M. Liverani eds., 231-48.

Michalowski, P. 1983. 'History as Charter: Some Observations on the Sumerian King List.' JAOS 103(1): 237-48.

Sallaberger, W. & I. Schrakamp 2015. 'The Sumerian King List.' In Arcane III: History and Theology, W. Sallaberger & I. Schrakamp eds. 13-22. Brepols.
Steinkeller, P. 2003. 'An Ur III Manuscript of the Sumerian King List.' In Sonderdruck aus Literatur, Politik, und Recht in Mesopotamien, W. Sallaberger, K. Volk & A. Zgoll, 267-91. Harrassowitz.