Genesis 5: Part 19 Sumerian Kings List

The Sumerian Kings List is a mythical record of the kings of Sumer. It notes how long each king reigned and which city was ruling the region.

The reigns of the early kings lasted tens of thousands of years and got progressively shorter over the different periods. The total list included over 70 kings.

The similarities between Genesis 5 and the Sumerian Kings List are quite clear. They both present a list of ancestors connected with ages. If Genesis 5 contains astronomical data, we might see it in the Kings List too.

M. Barnouin wrote an academic paper suggesting this connection and pointed out the mathematical similarities between the two lists.

Astronomical Data

I have found some astronomical information within the Kings List numbers. It was only a brief look, and I am sure there is far more in there. I will look deeper into this at a later date, but this is what I’ve found so far.

Here is a list of the Pre-Flood kings and their reigns. There are 8 kings and 5 different cities.

We can see that in Eridug, the first king of Sumer reigned for 28,800 years and his successor reigned for 36,000 years. In total, the kingship remained in Eridug for 64,800 years.

If we divide the sidereal orbits of the planets (the time each planet goes around the Sun), we get this result:

If we convert the length of reign from years to days, we can see that while the kingship was at Eridug, Saturn orbited the Sun 6 times, Jupiter 15 times, Mars 92 and so on. We can see ratios occur with the city of Bab-tibira too.

This could be a clue that using these ratios, we might find an astronomical clock within the data.

At Zimbar and Curuppag, we see that you can add the numbers for Venus and Mercury and get 176 and 440 respectively.

Venus and Sumer

In Sumerian astronomy, Venus held an important place. If we divide the years the kingship remained in Zimbar by 80 and 36, we get the following result.

262 1/2 is the number of days Venus spends as the morning star and then spends the same time as the evening star. 583 1/3 is approximately the synodic orbit for Venus.

The use of the number 36 suggests that the Sumerians may have used the Decans system, which was similar to Egyptian astronomy of the same period.

80 is ten times the number of kings in the Pre-Flood period.

I have found other astronomical connections with both 36 and 80, but I need to work on these more before I publish them.

The next post will look at how the theological information in Genesis 5 might help uncover more about the purpose of the Neolithic stone circles.