According to a theory proposed by Ignace Gelb, the Kish civilization encompassed the sites of Ebla and Mari in the Levant, Nagar in the north,[1] and the proto-Akkadian sites of Abu Salabikh and Kish in central Mesopotamia[2][3][better source needed] in to the early East Semitic era in Mesopotamia and the Levant. The epoch began in the early 4th millennium BC and ended with the rise of the Akkadian empire.[4] The theory has been discarded by more recent scholarship.[5]
According to the theory, the East Semitic population migrated from what is now the Levant and spread into Mesopotamia,[6] and the new population could have contributed to the collapse of the Uruk period c. 3100 BC.[3] This early East Semitic culture was characterized by linguistic, literary and orthographic similarities extending from Ebla in the west to Abu Salabikh in the East.[7] The personal names from the Sumerian city of Kish showed an East Semitic nature and revealed that the city population had a strong Semitic component from the dawn of recorded history,[8] and since Gelb considered Kish to be the center of this civilization, hence the naming.[7]
The similarities included the using of a writing system that contained non-Sumerian logograms, the use of the same system in naming the months of the year, dating by regnal years and a similar measuring system.[7] However, each city had its own monarchical system.
While the languages of Mari and Ebla were closely related, Kish represented an independent East Semitic linguistic entity that spoke a dialect (Kishite),[9] different from both pre-Sargonic Akkadian and the Ebla-Mari language.[7]