The Sumerian King List and antediluvian reign lengths
- Date of account
- Known copies mainly early 2nd millennium BCE; traditions older
- Location
- Mesopotamia
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
The Sumerian King List presents rulers and dynasties before and after a great flood, assigning impossibly long reigns to antediluvian kings and more plausible but still ideological durations to later rulers. Copies differ, and the composition appears to combine local traditions into a political account of legitimate kingship. Fringe chronologies have treated its figures as literal evidence for tens of thousands of years of civilization, while historians use it cautiously alongside inscriptions, settlement archaeology, and independent king lists. It is especially relevant to disputes over textual memory and deep chronology.
Investigate related details with Anomaly Graph’s account-based search, or read how matching and provenance work.