Kish

LET IT STAY BURIED FOR NOW: Iraq’s Ancient Kish City Lies Buried in Sand. Iraq’s Kish City has overcome natural disasters and neglect over the years, but it has now been turned into a desolate site covered in sand (Adnan Abu Zeed, Al-Monitor).

KISH CITY, Iraq — A British archaeological team from the Field Museum and Oxford University conducted excavations between 1923 and 1929 in Kish City, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Baghdad. Since then, no other excavations have been made in the city, which dates back 5,000 years. The visible ruins of the ancient site have been covered by sand dunes and mounds. According to archaeological records, Kish City survived the Great Flood that happened some 7,600 years ago and was mentioned in Jewish, Christian and Muslim scriptures.

Kish City is also well known because this is the site where the famous King Sargon of Akkad, with whom the Akkadian state was raised to the level of an empire, appeared. This brave king annexed the cities neighboring Kish to his kingdom and invaded the lands neighboring Iraq, such as Anatolia, Syria, Palestine, the coasts of the Mediterranean Sea and the Arab Gulf region.

Whoever visits Kish City, 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) east of Babil, will not find, for the time being, more than ruins buried underneath the sand.

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Kish is not mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (Saul's father's names is coincidentally similar) or the New Testament or, as far as I can recall, in the Qur'an. I don't know where the author got the idea that the name is mentioned in these scriptures. The Hebrew Bible does mention a number of very ancient Mesopotamian cities such as Babylon, Uruk ("Erech"), and Agade ("Akkad") in Genesis 10.

The Sumerian King list is the "archaeological records" that say that that the city-state of Kish survived the Great Flood.

There is already some local looting of the site, but I hope it remains relatively ignored until the political situation becomes more stable in Iraq.