According to a theory proposed by Ignace Gelb, the Kish civilization encompassed the sites of

Ebla Ebla (Sumerian language, Sumerian: ''eb₂-la'', , modern: , Tell Mardikh) was one of the earliest kingdoms in Syria. Its remains constitute a Tell (archaeology), tell located about southwest of Aleppo near the village of Mardikh. Ebla was ...

and Mari in the

Levant The Levant ( ) is the subregion that borders the Eastern Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean sea to the west, and forms the core of West Asia and the political term, Middle East, ''Middle East''. In its narrowest sense, which is in use toda ...

, Nagar in the north, and the proto- Akkadian sites of Abu Salabikh and

Kish Kish may refer to: Businesses and organisations * KISH, a radio station in Guam * Kish Air, an Iranian airline * Korean International School in Hanoi, Vietnam People * Kish (surname), including a list of people with the name * Kish, a former ...

in central

Mesopotamia Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary of ...

in to the early

East Semitic The East Semitic languages are one of three divisions of the Semitic languages. The East Semitic group is attested by three distinct languages, Akkadian, Eblaite and possibly Kishite, all of which have been long extinct. They were influenced ...

era in

and the

. The epoch began in the early 4th millennium BC and ended with the rise of the

Akkadian empire The Akkadian Empire () was the first known empire, succeeding the long-lived city-states of Sumer. Centered on the city of Akkad (city), Akkad ( or ) and its surrounding region, the empire united Akkadian language, Akkadian and Sumerian languag ...

.Hasselbach (2005). p
4
The theory has been discarded by more recent scholarship.

Overview

According to the theory, the East Semitic population migrated from what is now the Levant and spread into Mesopotamia, and the new population could have contributed to the collapse of the

Uruk period The Uruk period (; also known as Protoliterate period) existed from the protohistory, protohistoric Chalcolithic to Early Bronze Age period in the history of Mesopotamia, after the Ubaid period and before the Jemdet Nasr period. Named after the S ...

c. 3100 BC. This early East Semitic culture was characterized by linguistic, literary and orthographic similarities extending from Ebla in the west to Abu Salabikh in the East. The personal names from the Sumerian city of Kish showed an East Semitic nature and revealed that the city population had a strong Semitic component from the dawn of

recorded history Recorded history or written history describes the historical events that have been recorded in a written form or other documented communication which are subsequently evaluated by historians using the historical method. For broader world h ...

, and since Gelb considered Kish to be the center of this civilization, hence the naming. The similarities included the using of a writing system that contained non-Sumerian logograms, the use of the same system in naming the months of the year, dating by

regnal year A regnal year is a year of the reign of a sovereign, from the Latin meaning kingdom, rule. Regnal years considered the date as an ordinal, not a cardinal number. For example, a monarch could have a first year of rule, a second year of rule, a t ...

s and a similar measuring system. However, each city had its own monarchical system. While the languages of Mari and Ebla were closely related, Kish represented an independent East Semitic linguistic entity that spoke a dialect (Kishite), different from both pre-Sargonic Akkadian and the Ebla-Mari language. The theory has been rejected for a number of reasons: the linguistic, literary and cultural similarities and connections between the different parts of the alleged Kish civilization have been shown to be much smaller than Gelb thought, the alleged central role of the city of Kish remains unproven, and it has been argued that onomastic and other evidence suggests that Semitic speakers were still a small minority in Northern Babylonia during the period in question.

References

{{Ancient states and regions of the Levant , state=collapsed 4th-millennium BC establishments 24th-century BC disestablishments Ancient Syria Ancient Mesopotamia Archaeological cultures of the Near East Sumer

Overview

See also

References