I started
a list of things I had read or heard about that sounded interesting. I consult
that list for ideas for blogs. Sometimes my list entry is a helpful short paragraph;
other entries are a phrase or just a word. This time, the entry was “Kish,
Iran”.
I googled
“Kish, Iran” and came up with Kish Island, a duty-free giant shopping mall on
an island, according to Wikipedia. What? I must have misunderstood or mis-wrote,
because I have extremely little interest in giant shopping malls, duty-free or
otherwise. I read the history section, and it mentioned some ancient info about
the island, but it was all summed up in a couple sentences, with lots of
references to other articles, and it didn’t sound all that interesting.
What a
bummer. What do I do, cross off that entry and pick another?
I opened
google again, and put in “Kish”. What came up concerned an ancient city in what
is now Iraq. I always seem to confuse
Iran and Iraq. I decided to take look at what Wikipedia had on this Kish.
Around
4000 BC, the Sumerian people appeared in the area between the Tigris and
Euphrates River in Mesopotamia (modern southern Iraq). They all shared the same
culture and language, but they settled in about a dozen different places, which
eventually became walled cities.
Kish was
a city that came into existence around 3100 BC, sitting on the Euphrates River.
The Sumerians as a whole developed a system of writing that was adopted by many
other cultures. They also invented the wheel, the plow, law codes, literature
and brewing. They placed their cities on rivers so that they could irrigate
crops.
Although
the Sumerian cities all shared a culture and language, they were constantly at
war with each other, which explains why their cities were walled. The contained
area was almost always dominated by a ziggurat – a tiered, pyramid-like temple.
Individual houses were built either of bundles of marsh reeds or mud bricks.
Sumerians traveled long distances to trade with other peoples. They may have
reached as far as Afghanistan and Ethiopia.
Kish was
the first city to have kings after the deluge, according to the ancient Sumerian
kings list. It had several dynasties. Two leaders from the 2nd dynasty, Enmebaragesi
and his son, Aga of Kish, are said to be contemporaries of Gilgamesh of Uruk.
The third
dynasty had an unusual beginning; the new king was Kubau, a female who had
previously been a tavern keeper. She came to power at about 2500 BC. At some
point, she was deified. The fourth dynasty consisted of Kubau’s (male)
descendants.
Early in
the 2nd millennium BC, Sumer was invaded by the Amorites and
Babylonians. The culture did not survive this invasion. By 1750 BC, their
history, culture, language were all forgotten. Eventually, Kish was abandoned
and also forgotten. Just like the people who had been living in this area when the Sumers arrived.
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