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Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit

The city where the King List says kingship resumed after the flood

Beginnings & the Patriarchs · city / site, destruction layer · Debated · found 1923

Eroded mudbrick ziggurat mound in the Iraqi plain
Photo: Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg) · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikimedia Commons — The eroded ziggurat mound of Kish at Tell al-Uhaymir.

Found 1923 — Field Museum–Oxford University Joint Expedition under Stephen Langdon, with Ernest Mackay and Louis-Charles Watelin (1923–1933); earlier soundings by Henri de Genouillac (1912)

Where Tell al-Uhaymir and Ingharra (ancient Kish), near Hillah, Iraq (Iraq)

Dates from c. 3100–2500 BCE · Jemdet Nasr to Early Dynastic · After the Flood; the age of Nimrod (Genesis 10)

Now at In situ; finds at the Field Museum, Chicago; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Iraq Museum, Baghdad

How Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit was found

Watelin's deep trenches at the Ingharra mound cut through a sterile layer of water-laid sand and silt separating the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic levels; Langdon announced it as evidence of the Flood in 1929, the same year Woolley claimed a flood layer at Ur.

What it is

A cluster of mounds along an old Euphrates channel with a ziggurat, Early Dynastic palaces, chariot burials, and a distinct flood-laid silt layer up to about half a meter thick in the Ingharra soundings.

Why it matters for the Bible

The Sumerian King List says that after the flood 'kingship descended from heaven' at Kish, and Kish's rulers were the first to hold the title 'king of Kish', a claim to rule all Sumer. Flood silts here, at Ur, Shuruppak, and Uruk once seemed to confirm a single great flood, but they date to different centuries and reflect separate river floods. What remains solid is that Mesopotamia itself remembered a flood as the hinge of its early history, with Kish as the first city after it.

Debated: Excavation results are accepted; the flood layer as evidence of Noach's flood is rejected by most archaeologists because such layers are local and of different dates.

The Hebrew word: gib-BOR

גִּבֹּר

גִּבֹּר is pronounced gib-BOR and means mighty one; Nimrod was 'the first to be a mighty one on the earth' (Strong's H1368).

People this discovery connects to

Places

Events

The Flood · First kingdoms after the flood

Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit in Scripture

Genesis 9:19 From Noach's sons the whole earth was peopled after the flood.

Genesis 10:8-10 Nimrod's kingdom in Shinar, the first after the flood; the King List gives Kish that role. (First mention of Nimrod.)

Questions people ask

What is Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit?
A cluster of mounds along an old Euphrates channel with a ziggurat, Early Dynastic palaces, chariot burials, and a distinct flood-laid silt layer up to about half a meter thick in the Ingharra soundings.

When was Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit discovered?
It was found in 1923 by Field Museum–Oxford University Joint Expedition under Stephen Langdon, with Ernest Mackay and Louis-Charles Watelin (1923–1933); earlier soundings by Henri de Genouillac (1912), at Tell al-Uhaymir and Ingharra (ancient Kish), near Hillah, Iraq.

Where is Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit today?
In situ; finds at the Field Museum, Chicago; Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; Iraq Museum, Baghdad.

Which Bible verses does Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit relate to?
Genesis 9:19, Genesis 10:8-10.

Is Kish and Its 'Flood' Deposit authentic?
Excavation results are accepted; the flood layer as evidence of Noach's flood is rejected by most archaeologists because such layers are local and of different dates.

Related discoveries

Sources

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