Discussion starter · a theory from the Credible Theories team
The 43,200-year reign is a counting mix-up
The Sumerian King List gives En-men-lu-ana a reign of 43,200 years. Sumerian scribes counted in sixties, and a big unit called a sar was 3,600. 43,200 is exactly 12 sars, and the eight kings before the Flood add up to 241,200 years, exactly 67 sars. Our theory: the early reigns were written in round symbolic units that later readers took as plain years.
What fits
- The numbers land on whole sars far too often to be chance.
- After the Flood the reigns shrink until they look like real kings.
What does not
- Nobody has found a reading that turns the numbers into believable reigns for every king.
- The long reigns may be meant as myth on purpose, like the long lives before the Flood in Genesis.
Your turn: Symbolic numbers, a misreading, or a memory of something older?
Read the files first
This is a theory for discussion, labeled as ours. The files linked above say what the record actually shows.
Updated