wheelofheaven/sumerian-king-list-woh

The Sumerian King List — Wheel of Heaven Translation

A verse-aligned parallel corpus of The Sumerian King List — the Sumerian source text alongside the Wheel of Heaven English translation, with transliteration, manuscript-witness attribution, per-verse translator commentary, an aligned public-domain reference translation, and a translation glossary. Wheel of Heaven Translation of the Sumerian King List (ETCSL 2.1.1), produced from the ETCSL composite transliteration. Opens with 'After the kingship descended from heaven' — the antediluvian section gives five cities and eight kings with reigns of tens of thousands of years (Alulim of Eridug: 28,800 years), the WoH-direct pair to Genesis 5 and Berossus; then 'the flood swept over' and kingship descends from heaven a second time, running through the post-diluvian dynasties of Kic, Unug, Urim, Akcak, Agade and on to Isin. 435 composite lines, including manuscript-insertion lines (73A, 249A etc.), the unnumbered variant lines A-D, and the concluding dynastic summary (lines 378-431).

Files

• —`sumerian-king-list-woh.jsonl` — 435 rows, one per verse.
• —`glossary.json` — the 12-entry translation glossary (the lexical decisions that make this a Wheel of Heaven translation rather than a generic one).

Columns

ref, chapter, verse, original (source script), original_lang, transliteration, english (WoH translation), reference_english (aligned public-domain translation; empty where none is available), reference_version, reference_license, commentary (translator's note; populated only for verses the editor annotated), glossary_refs, witness_primary, witness_secondary.

Reference translation

No aligned public-domain English reference translation is bundled for this text. The reference_english column is present but empty, so the schema is identical across the whole collection; a public-domain reference may be added in a later revision.

Method & provenance

Produced under the Wheel of Heaven Translation Program (translator → editor → reviewer → human sign-off).

• —Review status: editor + reviewer reviewed per chapter (sign-off packages on file).

Source: Black, J.A., Cunningham, G., Robson, E., and Zolyomi, G., The Electronic Text Corpus of Sumerian Literature (http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/), Oxford 1998-2006. Source text c.2.1.1 used as transliteration base; English translation and all WoH content original to this project.

License & citation

The Wheel of Heaven layer — source pointing, English translation, per-verse commentary, and glossary — is dedicated to the public domain under CC0-1.0. Documentation and the reading edition: https://www.wheelofheaven.world/library/sumerian-king-list-woh/.

Wheel of Heaven Translation Program. The Sumerian King List (Wheel of Heaven Translation). Wheel of Heaven, 2026. CC0-1.0. https://www.wheelofheaven.world/library/sumerian-king-list-woh/