Sumerian kings counted birthdays in the thousands

TREASURER Joe Hockey believes that somewhere out there may be child who will reach the age of 150, but history shows that is small potatoes.

History: The Death of Adam painted by 15th century Italian artist Piero della Francesca. Out of copyright.

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has copped flak for saying he was trying to ensure quality of life for ­future Australians, given that “somewhere in the world today, it is highly probable, a child has been born who will live to be 150’’.

Given ancient legends of people living for centuries, even millennia, perhaps Hockey’s claim might act-ually be on the conservative side.

In 1900 German-born archaeologist Hermann Hillprecht found a 4000-year-old tablet while excavating the ancient Sumerian city of Nippur, in what is now Iraq.

The tablet proved to be a list of ancient Sumerian kings claiming that some monarchs had enjoyed extraordinary longevity. According to the list Alulim, the first king was appointed by the gods and reigned for 28,000 years. The longest reign was that of Em-Men-Lu-Ana whose reign lasted a period of 12 Sars or 43,200 years.

Scholars assume there is some problem with the translation of the term Sars and what length of time it actually represents. Others suggest the lists show ancient scribes were prone to exaggerate.

Even among some of the later kings whose reigns are shorter there are still some that stretch credulity, like the reign of Gilgamesh which lasted 126 years, so he may have been around 150 when he died. In the story the Epic of Gilgamesh he searches for a way to avoid death but eventually realises he has to die. The king list shows mostly normal length reigns of kings thereafter.

Adam, the first man on Earth according to the Judaeo-Christian canon, also had a decent run.

According to Genesis, “So all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died”. Adam was 130 when he had his son Seth who lived to 912. Seth’s great-great-great-great-grandson Methuselah was the oldest Biblical figure, dying at the age of 969 just days before his son Noah loaded everybody on to the ark. Noah took after his dad, also racking up nine centuries but only made it to 950.

In ancient Persia the good king Jamshid was said to have reigned for 700 years and during his reign people neither sickened nor aged. This gave rise to the saying about people who stay young and healthy for a long time who are said to have drunk from the “cup of Jamshid’’.

His reign was ended by the evil Zahhak, who had two snakes growing from his shoulders that he fed with human brains. His reign of 1000 years was ended by his capture and imprisonment under a mountain where he remains.

Ancient Greek legend had it that a tribe (in Africa, according to Herodotus, or India according to other writers) known as the Macrobioi (meaning literally “long lived”) lived to an average age of 120. ­Herodotus said they derived their longevity from properties in their waters, but others assumed this must be something magic and this became the basis for later legends of the Fountain of Youth.

Contrary to legend, Spanish ­explorer Juan Ponce de Leon did not go looking for the Fountain of Youth in Florida in the 16th century. Nothing in his papers mentions magic waters, all he wanted to do was find lands to settle and spread Christianity. It appears the story was spread by his detractors to make him appear gullible.

Similarly, the great French alchemist Nicholas Flamel did not discover the elixir of life or the Philosopher’s Stone which allowed him to live for centuries.

Born in about 1330 he was a manuscript copyist and book seller who lived into his 80s but definitely died in 1418, as his grave will attest. There is no evidence he ever dabbled in alchemy and legends of his elixir only appear centuries after his death, concocted to sell books in the 17th century.

Similarly,in 1835 showman Phineas T. Barnum concocted a fake history for the ancient African American woman Joice Heth, saying she was 161 years old in order to sell tickets to his show at the Barnum Hotel in Bridgeport. Heth was most likely born in about 1756, but Barnum claimed she had been born in 1674, promoting her as “Nurse to Gen. George Washington”. She died in 1836 and he sold tickets to her autopsy.

Despite a Buddhist monk L.P. Suwang dying in 1995 at the alleged age of about 500, the oldest verifiable age of a human was French woman Jeanne Louise Calment who died in 1997 at the age of 122.

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