page_title: Uruk
section_title: Early dynastic, Akkadian, and Neo-Sumerian rulers of Uruk
hierarchical_section_title: Uruk / Political history / Early dynastic, Akkadian, and Neo-Sumerian rulers of Uruk
caption_attribution_description: English: Tablet of Sin-Gashid of Uruk
context_page_description: Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer situated east of the present bed of the Euphrates River on the dried-up ancient channel of the Euphrates 30 km east of modern Samawah, Al-Muthannā, Iraq.
  Uruk is the type site for the Uruk period. Uruk played a leading role in the early urbanization of Sumer in the mid-4th millennium BC.
  By the final phase of the Uruk period around 3100 BCE, the city may have had 40,000 residents, with 80,000-90,000 people living in its environs, making it the largest urban area in the world at the time. The legendary king Gilgamesh, according to the chronology presented in the Sumerian king list, ruled Uruk in the 27th century BC. The city lost its prime importance around 2000 BC in the context of the struggle of Babylonia against Elam, but it remained inhabited throughout the Seleucid and Parthian periods until it was finally abandoned shortly before or after the Islamic conquest of 633–638.
  William Kennett Loftus visited the site of Uruk in 1849, identifying it as "Erech", known as "the second city of Nimrod", and led the first excavations from 1850 to 1854.
context_section_description: In 2009, two different copies of an inscription were put forth as evidence of a 19th-century BC ruler of Uruk named Naram-sin
  Uruk continued as principality of Ur, Babylon, and later Achaemenid, Seleucid, and Parthian Empires. It enjoyed brief periods of independence during the Isin-Larsa period, under kings such as (possibly) Ikūn-pî-Ištar (c. 1800 BC), Sîn-kāšid, his son Sîn-irībam, his son Sîn-gāmil, Ilum-gāmil, brother of Sîn-gāmil, Etēia, Anam, ÌR-ne-ne, who was defeated by Rīm-Sîn I of Larsa in his year 14 (c. 1740 BC), Rīm-Anum and Nabi-ilīšu. The city was finally destroyed by the Arab invasion of Mesopotamia and abandoned c. 700 AD.
caption: Dedication tablet of Sîn-gāmil, ruler of Uruk, 18th century BCE.
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