270 OLD BABYLONIAN INSCRIPTIONS 



reference to this city in our whole ancient literature previous to 1500 B. C, we could 

 not speak of it as the seat of a kingdom until we first proved that the city really ex- 

 isted. From the fact that (1) Kisli and Kisli (shatu) did not only sound alike but 

 were even used interchangeably in the inscriptions, 1 (2) that many other ancient 

 Babylonian cities (cf. Shirpurla) 2 are frequently written without a determinative, (3) 

 that the city of Kish played a very important role in the inscriptions of Edingirana- 

 gin, 3 (4) that all the ancient empires arose from city kingdoms, and from several other 

 considerations, 4 1 inferred that shar KISH meant originally " king of Kish," a com- 

 bination which Winckler himself regarded " naheliegend. " 5 But notwithstanding 

 the great importance which must be attached to the kingdom of Kish in connection 

 with the final overthrow of the ancient empire of Kevgi, Kish was not the principal 

 leader in this whole conquest, but was controlled by a greater power in the North, 

 Harran, as I have shown above. Having therefore demonstrated the existence of the 

 city of Harran at the threshold of the fifth and fourth pre-Christian millenniums, which 

 Winckler failed to do, although Edingiranagin's inscriptions, which necessarily formed 

 the starting point of my operations, had been at his disposal for some time, and hav- 

 ing furthermore indicated the powerful position which Harran must have occupied as 

 the great Semitic centre of the ancient Orient, I am now prepared to accept Winckler's 

 theory of the original seat of the sharrut TcisTisTiati without reserve. I regard the title 

 as the Assyrian equivalent of the Sumerian nam-lugal Tcalama. In view of the lead- 

 ing part that Harran had taken in the establishment of the first " kingdom of the 

 world " under Lugalzaggisi, Harran became the seat of the Semitic sharrut TcisTisTiati 

 just as Nippur was the centre of the Sumerian nam-lugal Tcalama. "When after many 

 vicissitudes under Sargon I and Naram-Sin finally the northern half of ancient 

 Kengi, including Nippur, was definitely occupied by a Semitic population, which 

 spoko and wrote its own language, the old Sumerian title nam-lugal Tcalama, which 

 carried the same meaning for the inhabitants of Babylonia as sTiarrfd TcisTisTiati did for 



> Cf. Winckler, I. c, pp. 144 f. 



2 In the inscriptions of Ur-Nina written without ki. 



3 Not only in his stele of vultures, but also in the inscription unearthed in London (Proc. Soc. Bibl. Arch., Nov., 

 1890). Hommel was of the opinion {Vie Jdentitat der allesten babylonischen und agyptischen Q otter genealogie, p. 

 242), that the passage in Ihe latter text escaped my attention. I simply had no use for it : (1) lugal Kisli an ki is some- 

 thing entirely diQerent from lugal an-vb-da tab-tab-ba or lugal KISU ; for if it was possible to say so in Sumerian, it 

 could only mean "king of the whole heaven and earth," which the king of course did not want to say. (2) The test 

 does not offer this at all, hut must be translated lugal KishM -bi-na-dib-bi, "and the king of Kish," inotherwords Jiis 

 copula = "and," connecting Kh7t ki with what stood before. Cf. in the present work, PI. 87, col. II, 7 ("and " the 

 Euphrates). 



*Cf. Parti, pp. 23 f. 



6 Altorienlalische Forschungen II, p. 145, note 1. 



