Formed in 2009, the Archive Team (not to be confused with the archive.org Archive-It Team) is a rogue archivist collective dedicated to saving copies of rapidly dying or deleted websites for the sake of history and digital heritage. The group is 100% composed of volunteers and interested parties, and has expanded into a large amount of related projects for saving online and digital history.
History is littered with hundreds of conflicts over the future of a community, group, location or business that were "resolved" when one of the parties stepped ahead and destroyed what was there. With the original point of contention destroyed, the debates would fall to the wayside. Archive Team believes that by duplicated condemned data, the conversation and debate can continue, as well as the richness and insight gained by keeping the materials. Our projects have ranged in size from a single volunteer downloading the data to a small-but-critical site, to over 100 volunteers stepping forward to acquire terabytes of user-created data to save for future generations.
The main site for Archive Team is at archiveteam.org and contains up to the date information on various projects, manifestos, plans and walkthroughs.
This collection contains the output of many Archive Team projects, both ongoing and completed. Thanks to the generous providing of disk space by the Internet Archive, multi-terabyte datasets can be made available, as well as in use by the Wayback Machine, providing a path back to lost websites and work.
Our collection has grown to the point of having sub-collections for the type of data we acquire. If you are seeking to browse the contents of these collections, the Wayback Machine is the best first stop. Otherwise, you are free to dig into the stacks to see what you may find.
The Archive Team Panic Downloads are full pulldowns of currently extant websites, meant to serve as emergency backups for needed sites that are in danger of closing, or which will be missed dearly if suddenly lost due to hard drive crashes or server failures.
ArchiveBot is an IRC bot designed to automate the archival of smaller websites (e.g. up to a few hundred thousand URLs). You give it a URL to start at, and it grabs all content under that URL, records it in a WARC, and then uploads that WARC to ArchiveTeam servers for eventual injection into the Internet Archive (or other archive sites).
To use ArchiveBot, drop by #archivebot on EFNet. To interact with ArchiveBot, you issue commands by typing it into the channel. Note you will need channel operator permissions in order to issue archiving jobs. The dashboard shows the sites being downloaded currently.
Stone tablet inscribed with the Sumerian King List
The Sumerian King List is an ancient stone tablet originally recorded in the Sumerian language, listing kings of Sumer (ancient southern Iraq) from Sumerian and neighboring dynasties, their supposed reign lengths, and the locations of the kingship. Kingship was seen as handed down by the gods and could be transferred from one city to another, reflecting perceived hegemony in the region.[1] Throughout its Bronze Age existence, the document evolved into a political tool. Its final and single attested version, dating to the Middle Bronze Age, aimed to legitimize Isin's claims to hegemony when Isin was vying for dominance with Larsa and other neighboring city-states in southern Mesopotamia.[1][2]
The list blends prehistorical, presumably mythicalpredynastic rulers enjoying implausibly lengthy reigns with later, more plausibly historical dynasties. Although the primal kings are historically unattested, that does not preclude their possible correspondence with historical rulers who were later mythicized. Some Assyriologists view the predynastic kings as a later fictional addition.[1][3] Only one ruler listed is known to be female: Kug-Bau "the (female) tavern-keeper", who alone accounts for the Third Dynasty of Kish. The earliest listed ruler whose historicity has been archaeologically verified is Enmebaragesi of Kish, c. 2600 BC. Reference to him and his successor, Aga of Kish, in the Epic of Gilgamesh has led to speculation that Gilgamesh himself may have been a historical king of Uruk. Three dynasties are absent from the list: the Larsa dynasty, which vied for power with the (included) Isin dynasty during the Isin-Larsa period; and the two dynasties of Lagash, which respectively preceded and ensued the Akkadian Empire, when Lagash exercised considerable influence in the region. Lagash, in particular, is known directly from archaeological artifacts dating from c. 2500 BC. The list is important to the chronology of the 3rd millennium BC. However, the fact that many of the dynasties listed reigned simultaneously from varying localities makes it difficult to reproduce a strict linear chronology.[1]
The last two sources (WB) are a part of the "Weld-Blundell collection", donated by Herbert Weld Blundell to the Ashmolean Museum. WB 62 is a small clay tablet, inscribed only on one side, unearthed from Larsa. It is the oldest dated source, at c. 2000 BC, that contains the list.[7] WB 444, in contrast, is a unique inscribed vertical prism,[1][8][9][10] dated c. 1817 BC, although some scholars prefer c. 1827 BC.[11] The Kish Tablet or Scheil dynastic tablet is an early 2nd millennium BC tablet which came into possession of Jean-Vincent Scheil, but only contains list entries for four Sumerian cities.[12] UCBC 9-1819 is a clay tablet housed in the collection of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California.[13] The tablet was inscribed during the reign of the Babylonian King Samsu-iluna, or slightly earlier, with the earliest date of 1712 BC.[14] The Dynastic Chronicle (ABC 18) is a Babylonian king list written on six columns, beginning with entries for the antediluvian (prior to the flood) Sumerian rulers. K 11261+[15] is one of the copies of this chronicle, consisting of three joined Neo-Assyrian fragments discovered at the Library of Ashurbanipal.[16] K 12054 is another of the Neo-Assyrian fragments from Uruk (c. 640 BC) but contains a variant form of the antediluvians on the list. The later Babylonian king lists and Assyrian king lists repeated the earliest portions of the list, thus preserving them well into the 3rd century BC. At this time, Berossus wrote Babyloniaca, which popularized fragments of the list in the Hellenic world. In 1960, the Apkullu-list (Tablet No. W.20030, 7) or “Uruk List of Kings and Sages” (ULKS) was discovered by German archaeologists at an ancient temple at Uruk. The list, dating to c. 165 BC, contains a series of kings, equivalent to the Sumerian antediluvians, called "Apkullu".[17]
Early dates are approximate, and are based on available archaeological data. For most of the pre-Akkadian rulers listed, the king list is itself the lone source of information. Beginning with Lugal-zage-si and the Third Dynasty of Uruk (which was defeated by Sargon of Akkad), a better understanding of how subsequent rulers fit into the chronology of the ancient Near East can be deduced. The short chronology is used here.
None of the following predynastic antediluvian rulers have been verified as historical by archaeological excavations, epigraphical inscriptions or otherwise. While there is no evidence they ever reigned as such, the Sumerians purported them to have lived in the mythical era before the great deluge. Some modern scholars believe the Sumerian deluge story corresponds to localized river flooding at Shuruppak (modern Tell Fara, Iraq) and various other cities as far north as Kish, as revealed by a layer of riverine sediments, radiocarbon dated to c. 2900 BC, which interrupt the continuity of settlement. Polychrome pottery from the Jemdet Nasr period (c. 3000–2900 BC) was discovered immediately below this Shuruppak flood stratum.[18]
The antediluvian reigns were measured in Sumerian numerical units known as sars (units of 3,600), ners (units of 600), and sosses (units of 60).[19] Attempts have been made to map these numbers into more reasonable regnal lengths. [20]
Ruler
Epithet
Length of reign
Approx. dates
Comments
"After the kingship descended from heaven, the kingship was in Eridug. In Eridug, Alulim became king; he ruled for 28800 years."
said to have defeated Urukagina of Lagash, as well as Kish and other Sumerian cities, creating a unified kingdom; he in turn was overthrown by Sargon of Akkad
"Then Unug was defeated and the kingship was taken to Agade (Akkad)"
contemporary of Sumu-la-El of Babylon. He was Erra-imitti's gardener and was appointed substitute king, to serve as a scapegoat and then sacrificed, but remained on the throne when Erra-imitti suddenly died.
^Langdon, S. (1923). The Weld-Blundell Collection, vol. II. Historical Inscriptions, Containing Principally the Chronological Prism, W-B. 444. [PDF] Oxford University Press. Available at: http://etana.org/sites/default/files/coretexts/20340.pdf [Accessed 22 Sep. 2018].
^"Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 2010-11-07. Retrieved 2011-02-23.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link) Stephen Langdon,
Historical inscriptions, containing principally the chronological prism, W-B 444, Oxford University Press, 1923
^Ancient Iraq: (Assyria and Babylonia), Peter Roger Stuart Moorey, Ashmolean Museum, 1976; The Sumerian King List, T. Jacobsen, University of Chicago Press, 1939, p. 77.
^"The Early Chronology of Sumer and Egypt and the Similarities in Their Culture", S. Langdon, The Journal of Egyptian Archaeology, Vol. 7, No. 3/4, Oct., 1921, p. 133. [1]
^"The Antediluvian Kings: A University of California Tablet", J. J. Finkelstein, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 17, No. 2, 1963, p. 39.
^Bilingual Chronicle Fragments, Irving L. Finkel, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, Vol. 32, No. 2, Apr., 1980, pp. 65-80.
^A copy of the tablet appears in Jan van Dijk and Werner R. Mayer, Texte aus dem Rès-Heiligtum
in Uruk-Warka, Bagdader Mitteilungen Beiheft 2 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1980), text no. 89 (= BaMB 2 89). For an edition of the text, see J. van Dijk, Die Inschriftenfunde, Vorläufiger Bericht über die... Ausgrabungen in Uruk-Warka 18 (1962), 44-52 and plate 27. "Archived copy"(PDF). Archived from the original(PDF) on 2010-07-09. Retrieved 2011-09-15.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link)
^"Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-01-30. Retrieved 2011-03-10.CS1 maint: Archived copy as title (link) Christine Proust, "Numerical and Metrological Graphemes: From Cuneiform to Transliteration," Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, 2009, ISSN 1540-8779
^R.K. Harrison, “Reinvestigating the Antediluvian Sumerian King List,” JETS, vol. 36, no. 1, pp. 3-8, (Mar 1993)
Rowton, M. B. The Date of the Sumerian King List, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 19, no. 2, pp. 156–162, 1960
P. Steinkeller, An Ur III Manuscript of the Sumerian King List. In Literatur, Politik und Recht in Mesopotamien: Festschrift fur Claus Wilcke, ed. W. Sallaberger et al., Harrassowitz Verlag, pp. 267–92, 2003
Young, Dwight W. The Incredible Regnal Spans of Kish I in the Sumerian King List, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 23–35, 1991
Hallo, William W. Beginning and End of the Sumerian King List in the Nippur Recension, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 52–57, 1963
Vincente, Claudine-Adrienne, "The Tall Leilan Recension of the Sumerian King List", Zeitschrift für Assyriologie 50 (1995), 234–270
Michalowski, Piotr. History as Charter Some Observations on the Sumerian King List, Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 103, no. 1, pp. 237–248, 1983