Larak

The City of One King

Bad-tibira held kingship for 108,000 years. Then the list moves on.

"Then Bad-tibira fell and the kingship was taken to Larag."

Larak (also written Larag) is the third of the five pre-flood cities in the Sumerian King List. It has one king.

"In Larag, En-sipad-zid-ana ruled for 28800 years."

That is the whole entry: a city, a name, a number, and the transfer of kingship to Sippar. There is no description of the man, the city, or anything that happened there.

By the Numbers

• Kings: 1
• Years: 28,800
• In sar (units of 3,600): exactly 8
• Share of the 241,200-year pre-flood total: about 11.9%
• Average reign: 28,800 years

The number 28,800 is not unique. Alulim of Eridu is given 28,800 years, and so is En-men-gal-ana of Bad-tibira. Larak’s single king matches them exactly. Each of the three reigns is 8 sar.

The Name

The king’s name, En-sipad-zid-ana, is commonly interpreted as meaning something like “lord, righteous shepherd of heaven.” The word sipad is the Sumerian word for shepherd.

That is worth noticing, because the previous king in the list, Dumuzid of Bad-tibira, is the only ruler so far described as a shepherd. The list now moves straight from one shepherd to a king whose name contains the word. The text does not say why, and we should not claim more than the coincidence.

A City Without a Location

Larak has not been securely identified on the ground. It has been suggested that it lay somewhere in the vicinity of Isin, but no excavated site has been firmly tied to the name.

What we have is a god. Pabilsag is described as the patron deity of Larak, and he is well attested in texts from several other cities, with god-list references reaching back to the Early Dynastic period. So the city’s god is well documented, while the city itself is not.

That makes Larak different from its neighbors in the list. Eridu has been excavated, and Bad-tibira has a probable site with inscriptions connected to it. Larak is, for now, a name in the list and a god who outlived it.

What Larak Asks

The King List gives Larak one king, one number, and one handoff. It does not explain why a single reign receives the same 28,800 years as two others, or why the clock shifts from the 108,000 years of Bad-tibira to a single reign here.

We will not fill that gap with speculation. The silence is the evidence.

Where was Larak — and what is buried there?

"Then Larag fell and the kingship was taken to Zimbir."