What is the most striking feature in the king list?

Okay, let's talk about the Sumerian King List, a truly fascinating topic.

If we're talking about the most eye-catching, or perhaps the most "wow"-inducing aspect of the Sumerian King List, it absolutely has to be the absurdly long, physiologically impossible reigns of the earliest kings.

It's like looking at a list of a company's CEOs and finding out the first one ruled for 28,800 years, and the second for 36,000 years. Doesn't that feel magical? That's exactly the feeling the Sumerian King List gives you.

How Exaggerated Is It?

Let me show you a few examples, and you'll understand:

Kings before the Great Flood had reigns lasting tens of thousands of years. For instance, the first king, Alulim, reigned for 28,800 years, while another named Dumuzid reigned for a staggering 36,000 years!
The eight kings before the flood collectively ruled for a total of 241,200 years.

These numbers seem less like human history and more like something out of mythology or a game setting.

Then, the list mentions a key event – "the Flood swept over the earth".

After the Great Flood, the reigns of kings became significantly shorter, though still very long. For example, the first king after the flood reigned for 1,200 years.
Moving further forward, as time gets closer to the historical period we recognize, the reigns become increasingly "normal": from several hundred years down to decades. Finally, we encounter historical figures who can be corroborated by archaeological evidence, like Gilgamesh (though his 126-year reign is still quite long) and Enmebaragesi, whose name is confirmed in inscriptions found by archaeologists. The King List says he reigned for 900 years.

Therefore, this dramatic shift from "mythical tens of thousands of years" to "heroic hundreds of years" and finally to "mortal decades" is the most striking and thought-provoking feature of the Sumerian King List.

Why is this? What's the reasoning behind it?

There are many theories about this, with a few popular explanations:

Symbolic Meaning, Not Literal This is the view generally accepted by historians and archaeologists. They believe these extraordinarily long numbers are not meant to be taken literally as timekeeping, but rather as symbols. The larger the number, the more it signified that the king's reign represented a "golden age" – a time of peace, prosperity, and divine favor. It was a form of political propaganda used to deify the legitimacy of kingship.
- For example: Just like ancient Chinese emperors were called "Lord of Ten Thousand Years" (万岁爷), it wasn't that people actually believed they would live ten thousand years, but rather an expression of reverence for their supreme power and a form of well-wishing. The Sumerians might have used these exaggerated numbers similarly to express reverence for their ancient kings.
Different Units of Measurement? Some speculate that perhaps the ancient Sumerians used a different unit for "year." For instance, could their "year" have actually been equivalent to our "month" or "season"? But even with such conversions, numbers in the tens of thousands remain incredibly exaggerated, so this explanation doesn't hold up well.
The Blending of Myth and History This view holds that the Sumerian King List is a "baton-passing" style of record. The initial "baton" was held by gods (or beings considered god-like), hence their "terms" were of mythical proportions. As history progressed, the "baton" gradually passed to demigod heroes, and finally to mortal human kings like us. The King List records precisely this process of power transfer from "gods" to "men."

Besides the kings with super-long reigns, another interesting feature

That is the list's emphasis that "Kingship descended from heaven", and that at any one time, only one city could possess Kingship.

The list reads something like: "After kingship had descended from heaven, kingship was in Eridu. In Eridu, Alulim became king..." When a city declined, it states: "Then Eridu was defeated and kingship was taken to Bad-tibira."

This actually reflects a political concept: the Mandate of Heaven, with one rightful ruler. Whoever held Kingship was the "overlord" of the entire Sumerian region, the legitimate ruler. This provided the theoretical justification for one city-state conquering another.

To summarize

So, if you ask what the most striking feature of the Sumerian King List is, the answer is undoubtedly the mythical, extraordinarily long reigns of the earliest kings, and the peculiar phenomenon of these reigns drastically shortening after the "Great Flood" as a dividing point, gradually returning to normal lengths.

Its most captivating aspect lies precisely in this "part-god, part-man," "both real and mythical" quality. It's not a dry chronicle, but an epic that carries the Sumerians' worldview, political propaganda, and historical memory.