The ancient city of Kish, located on the floodplain of the Euphrates River, eighty kilometers sou... more The ancient city of Kish, located on the floodplain of the Euphrates River, eighty kilometers south of modern- day Baghdad, held an extraordinary position during the formative periods of Mesopotamian history. It seems to have been the only important city in the northern part of the alluvium (Akkad), while there were several major centers in the south (Sumer). According to the Sumerian King List, Kish was the first city to which “kingship descended from heaven” after the great flood that destroyed the world. During the third millennium B.C., rule over Kish implied dominance over the entire northern part of the plain, and the title “King of Kish” bestowed prestige analogous to that of the medieval “Holy Roman Emperor” (GIBSON 1972). From 1923 through 1933, joint archaeological expeditions of The Field Museum of Natural History and Ox- ford University explored many of the twenty-four-square-kilometer site’s forty mounds, uncovering significant evidence of Kish’s extremely early urbanization and its prominence as a dominant regional polity. However, no final site report of the work of those seasons was ever published. This paper details the history, progress, and future prospects of the Kish Project, a federally funded effort to virtually reconcile and publish, in both print and digital formats, the expansive, and divided, collection of ancient material culture from the Mesopotamian city of Kish.
The ancient city of Kish, located on the floodplain of the Euphrates River, eighty kilometers sou... more The ancient city of Kish, located on the floodplain of the Euphrates River, eighty kilometers south of modern- day Baghdad, held an extraordinary position during the formative periods of Mesopotamian history. It seems to have been the only important city in the northern part of the alluvium (Akkad), while there were several major centers in the south (Sumer). According to the Sumerian King List, Kish was the first city to which “kingship descended from heaven” after the great flood that destroyed the world. During the third millennium B.C., rule over Kish implied dominance over the entire northern part of the plain, and the title “King of Kish” bestowed prestige analogous to that of the medieval “Holy Roman Emperor” (GIBSON 1972). From 1923 through 1933, joint archaeological expeditions of The Field Museum of Natural History and Ox- ford University explored many of the twenty-four-square-kilometer site’s forty mounds, uncovering significant evidence of Kish’s extremely early urbanization and its prominence as a dominant regional polity. However, no final site report of the work of those seasons was ever published. This paper details the history, progress, and future prospects of the Kish Project, a federally funded effort to virtually reconcile and publish, in both print and digital formats, the expansive, and divided, collection of ancient material culture from the Mesopotamian city of Kish.
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From 1923 through 1933, joint archaeological expeditions of The Field Museum of Natural History and Ox- ford University explored many of the twenty-four-square-kilometer site’s forty mounds, uncovering significant evidence of Kish’s extremely early urbanization and its prominence as a dominant regional polity. However, no final site report of the work of those seasons was ever published. This paper details the history, progress, and future prospects of the Kish Project, a federally funded effort to virtually reconcile and publish, in both print and digital formats, the expansive, and divided, collection of ancient material culture from the Mesopotamian city of Kish.
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From 1923 through 1933, joint archaeological expeditions of The Field Museum of Natural History and Ox- ford University explored many of the twenty-four-square-kilometer site’s forty mounds, uncovering significant evidence of Kish’s extremely early urbanization and its prominence as a dominant regional polity. However, no final site report of the work of those seasons was ever published. This paper details the history, progress, and future prospects of the Kish Project, a federally funded effort to virtually reconcile and publish, in both print and digital formats, the expansive, and divided, collection of ancient material culture from the Mesopotamian city of Kish.