PART II 85 kingship was in Kish

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After the flood had swept over, and the kingship had descended from heaven, the kingship was in Kish...

Enmebaragesi: The 20th king of the Kish I dynasty establishes national hegemony

So we see that the Kishites were in a unique position to exploit lower Mesopotamia which had been weakened by the flood and that their domination went uncontested for generations: their rule was to become legendary. However, it is not just this period of (unusual) uncontested domenience which makes this dynasty distinct, it was perhaps more than anything the actions of the 20th king of Kish - Enmebaragesi - that would shape Mesopotamia ever after. This king's selection of Nippur as his new relgious and political centre, a city that stood almost exactly in the middle between the Semitic north and the Sumerian south, would lead to a hegemonic authority 

The northern part of lower Mesopotamia had a different name (Wari, later Akkad); a different demographic structure (smaller population centers more evenly spread); and apparently a different tradition of rulership, that of an inheritable kingship. The origins of northern kingship surfaced in later traditions as the (non-Sumerian) legend of the shepherd Etana and his son Balikh, the first king.

The Tummal: the Nippurian political phenomena as an extension of Kishite power/influence:

In "Toward the Image of Tammuz" , p.140, Jacobsen further details that the elaborate political mythology, such as the election of the king of all Sumer with in an assembly headed by An and Enlil at Nippur, may testify to the role of Nippur as gathering point to which "the citizens of Sumerian cities assembled to elect common leaders, "lords" or "kings" as the case might be." He suggests this may be the original political reality behind the myths and later political mythology, which would agree well with the observation "the only term we have for Sumer as a political unit, [is] the term kengir; for there is good evidence that this term was originally a term for Nippur itself, and its understandable that a political organization created in Nippur meetings should take its name from the meeting place." Jacobsen refers collectiviely to the cities brought under the influence of Nippur as the "kengir league."

A document which helps greatly in defining the way in which this league spread, is the Tummal inscription - a record of the building and building of the temple of Enlil by important kings who continued the tradition of the national cult at Nippur. It is in effect a record of the rise and perpeuation of hegemony, and we see that after Kish was defeated by Ur, and by Uruk, the national cult was keep alive and authoritative by the likes of Mesannepadda, Gilgamesh, Ur-Nammu and Shulgi.

"These three city states - Kish, Uruk, and Ur - were preeminent in Mesopotamia throughout this period,

  Enmebaragesi with first building the temple of at Nippur. There is no reason to doubt that this indeed took place in ED II times .Although the city of Nippur had a long prior existence, and its Inanna temple can be traced back almost to the beginning of Uruk time (about 3400), there is no prior evidence of an Enlil sanctuary. Its foundations may well mark or symbolize the shift from Kish as a political capital to Nippur as religious center of the rival city-states. If so, it is significant that this foundation is attributed to a king of Kish, for Enmebaragesi is know as King of Kish not only from the King List but also from two contemporary inscriptions, one found as far away as Tutub (modern Khafahe) in the Diyala region.

 Gilgamesh was also contemporaneous with Enmebaragesi, according to a late royal hymn, and with Aka of Kish, according to Gilgamesh and Aka, and epic that tells in detail of an unsuccessful siege of Uruk by an army of Kish. Thus we can synchronize the end of the first dynasty of Kish,the middle of the dynasty of Uruk, and the beginning of the first dynasty of Ur."