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Comment by quickthrowman | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why the Sumerians deviated on the last two lengths from the rule they had on the first six. The first six reign lengths (and the total sum of all eight reign lengths) are all n * 60 * 60, where n is an integer. The last two are not, but they could’ve been. If instead you use 18000 years and 21600 years instead of 18600 and 21000, they fit the same formula as the other numbers and the sum remains the same. They used base 60, and apparently got a kick out of multiplying 60 by itself and another integer.

I noticed the deviation because there are mechanical watch movements that run at 18000 and 21600 beats per hour.

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The next 28 kings after the flood all have unfeasibly long reigns too. Then there's some believable ones, but even much later on there's Hadanish (360 years, 6*60) and Lugal-kinishe-dudu (120 years, 2*60).

There's a lot to 'guess' with very old text with uncertain translation and no longer spoken or written original forms.

Are these individual human kings, or dynastic reigns, such as the Tudors, Windsors, etc.

They seem to be accompanied by commentary like "son of" or "the fisherman", or nicknames that apply to individuals. Dumuzid "the shepherd", 36,000 years. Kug-Bau, "the woman tavern-keeper, who made firm the foundations of Kish" reigned for 100 years, which is just possible but pretty good going. You have to wonder at what point in her ~120 year life she did her tavern-keeping. Perhaps while ruling?

So, OK, maybe it really means "Kug-Bau, the woman tavern-keeper, and her descendents, not mentioned here".

Maybe they just transposed a few digits? It happens. Somebody should try swapping them in and see if the pattern fits better.

I ran it through the provided program and the alignment was worse if anything.

The Sumerians used a sexagesimal notation system; the two lengths would be 5.10.0 and 5.50.0 (which together add up to 11.0.0, FWIW), while all of the other king lengths are 8.0.0, 10.0.0, or 12.0.0.

Yeah. I had Fable run through every version of it I could think of and it explained the numbering system was the root of everything being divisible by 60.

I did find a pattern though. If you look at ALL the kings, rather than just those 8 it becomes obvious. The recent numbers are realistic and drift further apart, becoming less and less accurate, the further back you go.

Interestingly it also compared some other clay tablets and they were close. So it seems that they were probably written down based on a verbal history that had already drifted wildly well before it was written down .

Thinking that it was just a one off claim in a single text was my initial suspicion here, as someone who knows nothing about the subject. If it’s repeated across other “texts” (didn’t they use clay tablets?) then so much for that.

Yep. I only learned about it last night, but there are many of these king tablets. They mostly agree with each other within a margin, which is interesting. So the scribes were getting it right, but whatever came before clay tablets (oral history probably) had already goofed it up.

Also, one of those early kings was also literally a well known god. So it's possible they were just saying "Before the flood Gods ruled on earth", and we've since forgotten most of those gods.

Positional notation with no zero is awkward.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Babylonian_mathema...

"For example, the symbols for 1 and 60 are identical."

The Weld-Blundell Prism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weld-Blundell_Prism doesn't use positional notation, so 5.50.0 is expressed as 𒐧𒐢 (five 3600, five 600) and 5.10.0 is expressed as 𒐧𒐞 (five 3600, one 600). (Lines 27-35, each number appearing twice separated by a line with 𒁹𒈗 (one king), if you want to follow along.)

This is besides the point, but you do have to marvel at the technology it took to make this comment render just fine in HN.

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