History
Enmerkar
A king of Uruk in the Sumerian King List, and the hero of the Sumerian poem that contains the oldest story about writing being invented.
Illustration of The Early Dynastic period, not a likeness of any person on this page.
- Standing:
- Named by the tradition, with no contemporary attestation of the person. The texts are real; whether the individual was is not established.
- Reigned:
- the King List places him in the First Dynasty of Uruk; no contemporary attestation
- City:
- Uruk
- Period:
- The Early Dynastic period · c. 2900 to 2350 BCE
What they did
in Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta (ETCSL 1.8.2.3) he sends messenger after messenger to a distant city until the message grows too long to remember, and so, the poem says, he presses it into clay. The King List also credits him with building Uruk.
Sources
The references this entry is drawn from. ETCSL is the scholarly edition for the Sumerian texts; the rest are general references for the archaeology and the dates.
In the same period
Others our chronology places in The Early Dynastic period.
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