The Creation, beginning of the Antediluvian (i.e., pre-Flood) world. (Image by James Tissot)

The antediluvian (or pre-diluvian) period – meaning "before the deluge" – is the period referred to in the Bible between the Creation of the Earth and the Deluge (flood) in the Biblical cosmology. The narrative takes up chapters 1-6 (excluding the flood narrative) of Genesis. The term found its way into early geology and lingered in science until late Victorian era. Colloquially, the term is used to refer to any ancient and murky period.

Timing the Antediluvian period[link]

The Biblical Flood[link]

Noah prepares to leave the antediluvian worlds, Jacopo Bassano and assistants, 1579

In the Christian Bible and Hebrew Torah, the antediluvian period begins with the Creation according to Genesis and ends with the destruction of all life on the earth except those saved with Noah in the Ark. According to Bishop Ussher's 17th century chronology, the antediluvian period lasted for 1648 years, from creation at 4004 BC and the flood at 2348 BC.^[1] The elements of the narrative include some of the best-known stories in the bible - the Creation itself, Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel - followed by the genealogies tracing the descendants of Cain and Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve. (These genealogies provide the framework for the biblical chronology, in the form A begat B in his Xth year).^[2]

The Bible speaks of this era as being a time of great wickedness. There were Gibborim (giants) in the earth in those days as well as Nephilim; some translations identify the two as one and the same. The Gibborim were unusually powerful; Genesis calls them "heroes of old, men of renown;" (Enoshi Ha Shem). The antediluvian period ended when God sent the Flood to wipe out all life except Noah, his family, and the animals they took with them. Nevertheless, the Nephilim (literally meaning 'fallen ones', from the Hebrew root n-f-l 'to fall') reappear much later in the Biblical narrative, in Numbers 13:31-33 (where the spies sent forth by Moses report that there were Nephilim or "giants" in the Promised Land).

In early geology[link]

Strata of "Secondary rock", Lyme Regis

The Deluge subsides, thought in early geology to be responsible for the formation of sediments, with only traces of the Antediluvian world. Thomas Cole, 1829

Early attempts at reconstructing the history of the Earth were founded on the Biblical narrative and thus used the term Antediluvian to refer to a period understood to be essentially similar to the Biblical one.^[3] Early scientific interpretation of the Biblical narrative divided the Antediluvian into sub-periods:

• Pre-Adamitic (the first 5 days, Gen 1:1 to Gen 2:3)
  • Primary (the formation of the physical universe and the earth)
  • Secondary (creation of plants and animals)
• Adamitic (or Tertiary, from the creation of man to the Great Flood; Gen 2:5 to Gen 7.8)

Prior to the 19th century, rock was classified into three main types: primary or primitive (igneous and metamorphic rock), secondary (sedimentary rock) and tertiary (sediments). The primary rocks (like granite and gneiss) are void of fossils and were thought to be associated with the very creation of the world in the primary Pre-Adamitic period. The secondary rocks, often containing copious fossils, though human remains had not been found, were thought to have been laid down in the secondary Pre-Adamitic period. The tertiary rocks (sediments) were thought to have been put down after Creation and possibly in connection to a flood event, and were thus associated with the Adamitic period.^[4] The post-flood period was termed the Quaternary, a name still in use in geology.

As mapping of the geological strata progressed in the early decades of the 19th century, the estimated lengths of the various sub-periods were greatly increased. The fossil rich Secondary Pre-Adamitic period was divided up into the Coal period, the Lias and the Chalk period, later expanded into the now-familiar geologic time scale of the Phanerozoic.^[3] The term antediluvian was used in natural science well into the 19th century and lingered in popular imagination despite increasingly detailed stratigraphy mapping the Earth's past, and was often used for the Pleistocene period, where humans existed alongside now extinct megafauna.^[3]

The Antediluvian world[link]

Creationist interpretation[link]

Garden of Eden by Thomas Cole, 1828. The lush vegetation and foggy atmosphere are typical of Biblical interpretation of the Antediluvian period.

The end of the Edenic period, Adam and Eve are thrust into a bleak Antediluvian world. Thomas Cole, 1828

Writers such as William Whiston (A New Theory of the Earth 1696) and Henry Morris (The Genesis Flood 1961) describe the antediluvian period as follows:^[5][6]

• People lived much longer than those alive today, typically between 700–950 years, as reported in the genealogies of Genesis;
• The Earth contained many more people than the Earth contained in 1696. Whiston calculated that as many as 500 million humans may have been born in the antediluvian period, based on assumptions about lifespans and fertility rates;
• There were no clouds or rain. Instead, the Earth was watered by mists which rose from the Earth. (Another interpretation is that the Earth was covered completely by a global cloud layer; the upper waters mentioned in the Creation. This is commonly called the Canopy theory).^[7]

In 19th century science[link]

During the late eighteenth and early 19th centuries, the understanding of the nature of early Earth went through a transformation from a Biblical or deist interpretation to a scientific one. Even back in the early 18th century, Plutonists had argued for an ancient Earth, but the full impact of the depth of time involved in the Pre-Adamitic period was not commonly accepted until uniformitarianism as presented in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology of 1830.^[8] While vast aeons of time were involved, the narrative of the Pre-Adamitic world was still influenced by the Biblical story of creation in this transition. A striking example is a description from "Memoires of Ichtyosauri and Plesiosauri", 1839:

An "ungarnished and desolated world which echoed the flapping of [pterodactyl] leathern wings" was lit by "the angry light of supernatural fire", shining on a "sunless and moonless" world, before the creation of these heavenly "lights".^[9]

A modern view of the ancient world, along with abandoning the term Antediluvian, came about with the works of Darwin and Agassiz in the 1860s.

The Antediluvian monsters[link]

An "Antediluvian monster", a Mosasaurus discovered in a Maastricht limestone quarry, 1770 (contemporary engraving)

From antiquity, fossils of large animals were often quoted as having lived together with the giants from the Book of Genesis: e.g. the Tannin or "great sea monsters" of Gen. 1,21. They are often described in later books of the Bible, especially by God Himself in the Book of Job: e.g. Re'em in verse 39,9, Behemoth in chapter 40 and Leviathan in chapter 41.^[10][11] With the advent of geological mapping in the early 19th century, it became increasingly obvious that much of the fossils associated with the "secondary" (sedimentary) rock, notably large animals like Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurs, Pliosaurs and the various giant mammals found when excavating the Catacombs of Paris, were neither those of giant humans nor of any extant animals. The geologists of the day increasingly came to use the term "Antediluvian" only for the younger strata containing fossils of animals resembling those alive today.^[12]

Other uses[link]

• The adjective antediluvian is sometimes used figuratively to refer to anything that is of great age and/or outmoded. H. P. Lovecraft was particularly fond of the term, using it frequently in his horror stories.

• In Charles Stross's Saturn's Children the religious order who believe in evolution refer to the antediluvian period as the time in which man lived alongside Tyrannosaurs.

• Atlantis: The Antediluvian World is a 1882 book by Ignatius L. Donnelly that attempted to establish that all known ancient civilizations were descended from Atlantis. Many theories mentioned in the book are the source of modern-day concepts about Atlantis.

• In the tabletop role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade the Antediluvians are the early vampires that lived in the pre-flood world and the supposed progenitors of the original clans.

See also[link]

• Flood myth
• Sons of Noah

References[link]

The Sumerian King List is an ancient manuscript originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq) from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their supposed reign lengths, and the locations of "official" kingship. Kingship was believed to have been handed down by the gods, and could be transferred from one city to another, reflecting perceived hegemony in the region.^[1] Throughout its Bronze Age existence, the document evolved into a political tool. Its final and single attested version, dating to the Middle Bronze Age, aimed to legitimize Isin's claims to hegemony when Isin was vying for dominance with Larsa and other neighboring city-states in southern Mesopotamia.^[1][2]

Composition[link]

The list blends prehistorical, presumably mythical predynastic rulers with implausibly lengthy reigns with later, more plausibly historical dynasties. Although the primal kings are historically unattested, this does not preclude their possible correspondence with historical rulers who were later mythicized. Some Assyriologists view the predynastic kings as a later fictional addition.^[1][3] Only one ruler listed is known to be female: Kug-Bau "the (female) tavern-keeper", who alone accounts for the Third Dynasty of Kish. The earliest listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified is En-me-barage-si of Kish, ca. 2600 BC. Reference to this individual in the Epic of Gilgamesh has led to speculation that Gilgamesh himself may be historical. Three dynasties are notably excluded from the list: the Larsa dynasty, which vied for power with the (included) Isin dynasty during the Isin-Larsa period; and the two dynasties of Lagash, which respectively preceded and ensued the Akkadian Empire, when Lagash exercised considerable influence in the region. Lagash in particular is known directly from archaeological artifacts dating from ca. 2500 BC. The list is important to the chronology of the 3rd millennium BC. However, the fact that many of the dynasties listed reigned simultaneously from varying localities makes it difficult to reproduce a strict linear chronology.^[1]

Sources[link]

The following extant ancient sources contain the Sumerian King List, or fragments:

• WB 62
• WB 444 (Weld-Blundell Prism) ^[4]
• Kish Tablet (Scheil dynastic tablet)
• UCBC 9-1819 ("California Tablet")
• Dynastic Chronicle (ABC 18)^[5] including copies, K 11261+ and K 12054
• Babyloniaca (Berossus)
• Apkullu-list (W.20030, 7)

The first two sources (WB) are a part of the "Weld-Blundell collection", donated by Herbert Weld Blundell to the Ashmolean Museum. WB 62 is a small clay tablet, inscribed only on the obverse, unearthed from Larsa. It is the oldest dated source (c. 2000 BC) containing the list.^[6] WB 444 in contrast is a unique inscribed vertical prism,^[1][7][8][9] dated c. 1817 BC, although some scholars prefer c. 1827 BC.^[10] The Kish Tablet or Scheil dynastic tablet is an early 2nd millennium BC tablet which came into possession of Jean-Vincent Scheil; it only contains king list entries for four Sumerian cities.^[11] UCBC 9-1819 is a clay tablet housed in the collection of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California.^[12] The tablet was inscribed during the reign of the Babylonian King Samsu-iluna, or slightly earlier, with a minimum date of 1712 BC.^[13] The Dynastic Chronicle (ABC 18) is a Babylonian king list written on six columns, beginning with entries for the antideluvian Sumerian rulers. K 11261+^[14] is one of the copies of this chronicle, consisting of three joined Neo-Assyrian fragments discovered at Library of Ashurbanipal.^[15] K 12054 is another of the Neo-Assyrian fragments from Uruk (c. 640 BC) but contains a variant form of the antediluvians on the list. The later Babylonian and Assyrian king lists, preserved the earliest portions of the list well into the 3rd century BC, when Berossus' Babyloniaca popularized fragments of the list in the Hellenic world. In 1960, the Apkullu-list (Tablet No. W.20030, 7) or “Uruk List of Kings and Sages” (ULKS) was discovered by German archaeologists at an ancient temple at Uruk. The list, dating to c. 165 BC, contains a series of kings, equivalent to the Sumerian antediluvians called "Apkullu".^[16]

The list[link]

Early dates are approximate, and are based on available archaeological data; for most pre-Akkadian rulers listed, this king list is itself the lone source of information. Beginning with Lugal-zage-si and the Third Dynasty of Uruk (which was defeated by Sargon of Akkad), a better understanding of how subsequent rulers fit into the chronology of the ancient Near East can be deduced. The short chronology is used here.

None of the following predynastic "antediluvian" rulers have been verified via archaeological excavations, epigraphical inscriptions, or otherwise. It is possible that they correspond to the Early Bronze Age Jemdet Nasr period culture which ended approximately 2900 BC, immediately preceding the dynasts.^[17] It is also possible that they were fictional creations to make the kingdom seem more legitimate and ancient to its subjects which would explain the exaggerated lifespans and recurring and composite characters that have overwhelming similarities with their predecessors.

Antediluvian rulers[link]

The following reigns were measured in Sumerian numerical units known as sars (units of 3600), ners (units of 600), and sosses (units of 60).^[18]

First Dynasty of Kish[link]

First Dynasty of Uruk[link]

First dynasty of Ur[link]

Dynasty of Awan[link]

Second Dynasty of Kish[link]

The First Dynasty of Lagash (ca. 2500 – ca. 2271 BC) is not mentioned in the King List, though it is well known from inscriptions

Dynasty of Hamazi[link]

Second Dynasty of Uruk[link]

Second Dynasty of Ur[link]

Dynasty of Adab[link]

Dynasty of Mari[link]

Third Dynasty of Kish[link]

Dynasty of Akshak[link]

Fourth Dynasty of Kish[link]

Third Dynasty of Uruk[link]

Dynasty of Akkad[link]

Fourth Dynasty of Uruk[link]

(Possibly rulers of lower Mesopotamia contemporary with the Dynasty of Akkad)

The 2nd Dynasty of Lagash (before ca. 2093–2046 BC (short)) is not mentioned in the King List, though it is well known from inscriptions.

Gutian rule[link]

Fifth Dynasty of Uruk[link]

Third Dynasty of Ur[link]

Independent Amorite states in lower Mesopotamia. The Dynasty of Larsa (ca. 1961–1674 BC (short)) from this period is not mentioned in the King List.

Dynasty of Isin[link]

* These epithets or names are not included in all versions of the king list.

See also[link]

Ancient Near East portal

• Cities of the ancient Near East
• Chronology of the Ancient Near East
• History of Sumer
• Kings of Assyria
• List of kings of Iraq
• List of lists of ancient kings
• List of Mesopotamian dynasties
• Short chronology timeline

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Sumerian King List. Oriental Institute, Assyriological Studies 11, University of Chicago Press, 1939
• Rowton, M. B. The Date of the Sumerian King List, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 156–162, 1960
• P. Steinkeller, An Ur III Manuscript of the Sumerian King List. In Literatur, Politik und Recht in Mesopotamien: Festschrift fur Claus Wilcke, ed. W. Sallaberger et al., Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 267–92, 2003
• Young, Dwight W. The Incredible Regnal Spans of Kish I in the Sumerian King List, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 23–35, 1991
• Hallo, William W. Beginning and End of the Sumerian King List in the Nippur Recension, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 52–57, 1963
• Vincente, Claudine-Adrienne, "The Tall Leilan Recension of the Sumerian King List", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 50 (1995), 234–270
• Friberg, Jöran. "The Beginning and the End of the Sumerian King List", in A remarkable collection of Babylonian mathematical texts: Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection Cuneiform Texts I, Springer, 2007, ISBN 0-387-34543-4
• Michalowski, Piotr. History as Charter Some Observations on the Sumerian King List, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 103, no. 1, pp. 237–248, 1983
• Jean-Jacques Glassner, Mesopotamian Chronicles, Brill, 2005, ISBN 90-04-13084-5
• J. J. Finkelstein, The Antediluvian Kings: A University of California Tablet, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 39–51, 1963
• Albrecht Goetze, Early Kings of Kish, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 105–111, 1961
• Thomas Jacobs, The Sumerian King List, UGent paper, GONO department

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