ten months of a cosmic year, each month consisting of twelve “sars”, i.e. 12 x 3600 = 43,200 years.  The Sumerians themselves had no difficulty in picturing two of their dynastic rulers as each reigning for two “ners” (1,200 years), and it would not be unlikely that “sars” were distributed among still earlier rulers; the numbers were easily written.  For the unequal distribution of his hundred and twenty “sars” by Berossus among his ten Antediluvian kings, see Appendix II.

(2) The exclusion of the Antediluvian period from the list may perhaps be explained on the assumption that its compiler confined his record to “kingdoms”, and that the mythical rulers who preceded them did not form a “kingdom” within his definition of the term.  In any case we have a clear indication that an earlier period was included before the true “kingdoms”, or dynasties, in an Assyrian copy of the list, a fragment of which is preserved in the British Museum from the Library of Ashur-bani-pal at Nineveh; see Chron. conc.  Early Bab.  Kings (Studies in East.  Hist., II f.), Vol.  I, pp. 182 ff., Vol.  II, pp. 48 ff., 143 f.  There we find traces of an extra column of text preceding that in which the first Kingdom of Kish was recorded.  It would seem almost certain that this extra column was devoted to Antediluvian kings.  The only alternative explanation would be that it was inscribed with the summaries which conclude the Sumerian copies of our list.  But later scribes do not so transpose their material, and the proper place for summaries is at the close, not at the beginning, of a list.  In the Assyrian copy the Dynastic List is brought up to date, and extends down to the later Assyrian period.  Formerly its compiler could only be credited with incorporating traditions of earlier times.  But the correspondence of the small fragment preserved of its Second Column with part of the First Column of the Nippur texts (including the name of “Enmennunna”) proves that the Assyrian scribe reproduced an actual copy of the Sumerian document.

Though Professor Barton, on the other hand, holds that the Dynastic List had no concern with the Deluge, his suggestion that the early names preserved by it may have been the original source of Berossus’ Antediluvian rulers(1) may yet be accepted in a modified form.  In coming to his conclusion he may have been influenced by what seems to me an undoubted correspondence between one of the rulers in our list and the sixth Antediluvian king of Berossus.  I think few will be disposed to dispute the equation

{Daonos poimon} = Etana, a shepherd.