Kubaba

Kubaba (, ) was a legendary Mesopotamian queen who according to the Sumerian King List ruled over Kish for a hundred years before the rise of the dynasty of Akshak. It has been suggested that she was not a historical figure due to anomalies such as the atypical form of the name.

==Name== Kubaba's name was written in cuneiform as kù-dba-ú, kù-dbu-ú, ku-ub-ba-bu-ú or ku-ub-ba-bu-ú. It is also romanized as Ku-Baba, with a hyphen separating the elements and the first letter of the theonym capitalized. The first sign can be transcribed as kug rather than ku, which is reflected by the title of the corresponding entry in the Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Ku(g)-Baba. This name can be translated from Sumerian as "radiant Baba" or "silver of Baba". The correct reading of the last sign in the theonym used as the second element of this theophoric name remains a matter of debate, with /u/ and /wu/ proposed in addition to /ba/. The name of the queen can accordingly be alternatively romanized as Kug-Bau or Kug-Bawu. A lexical list focused on names of rulers provides it with the Akkadian translation Baba-ellet (dba-ba6-el-let).