Secret_History

Chapter 11: Time 483
Dumuzi Bad-tabira 10 36,000
En-Sib-zi-an-na Larak 8 28,800
En-me-en-dur-an-na Sippar 5 (5 ner) 21,000
(?) du-du Suruppak 5 (1 ner) 18,600
And here ends the Kingship of the Annunaki.
Now it is important to note that during this astonishing length of time recorded
as “history” by the Sumerians, only two Annunaki held overall reign. First was
Enki (later known as Ea) and the second was Enlil, a half-brother of Enki. The
event that ended this first list was the legendary deluge. It was also during the
latter part of this first period of the King-List that human beings appeared.
Calculating the length of time back to the arrival of these “Annunaki”, brings us
to about 450,000 years ago. That puts it well before the accepted date of the
appearance of modern man.
The numbering system of the Sumerians is actually quite fascinating. The
Sumerian civilization can be more or less divided into three periods of cultural
manifestation. The first included the development of glyptics where cylinder seals
were engraved with parades of animals or scenes of a religious nature. This was
followed by the development of sculpture, and finally, the emergence of writing.
During the first period of cultural manifestation, archaeology indicates that there
were no palaces for such as what we would consider a real king. The “king” was
actually a priest who lived in the temple. The priest-king was titled “EN”, or
“Lord”. It was only later, in the second cultural period that the title of king, or
Lugal, came into use. At the same time, palaces became evident, witnessing a
separation of the State - and its military forces - and the priesthood.
At the beginning of the second millennium BC, the Sumerians came back to
dominance for a period, but after Hammurabi, Sumer disappeared entirely as a
political entity. Nevertheless, the Sumerian language remained a language of
priests.
Around 3,200 BC, the Sumerians devised their numerical notation system,
giving special graphical symbols to the units 1, 10, 60, 600, 3,600. That is to say,
we find that the Sumerians did not count in tens, hundreds and thousands, but
rather adopted base 60, grouping things into sixties, and multiplying by powers of
sixty.
Our own civilization utilizes vestiges of base 60 in the ways we count time in
hours, minutes and seconds, and in the degrees of the circle.
Sixty is a large number to use as a base for a numbering system. It is taxing to
the memory because it necessitates knowing sixty different signs (words) that
stand for the numbers from 1 to 60. The Sumerians handled this by using 10 as an
intermediary between the different sexagesimal orders of magnitude: 1, 60, 60 2 ,
60 3 , etc. The word for 60, ge#, is the same as the word for unity. The number 60
represented a certain level, above which, mutiples of 60 up to 600 were expressed
by using 60 as a new unit. When they reached 600, the next level was treated as
still another unit, with multiples up to 3,000. The number 3,600, or sixty sixties,
was given a new name: #àr, and this, in turn, became yet another new unit.