No great tombs were erected in Sumeria. The coffins were usually laid in brick vaults below dwellings, or below temples, or in trenches outside the city walls. On the "stele of victory", which belongs to the period of Eannatum, patesi of Lagash, the dead bodies on the battlefield are piled up in pairs quite naked, and earth is being heaped over them; this is a specimen of mound burial.
Figure IX.2. SLIPPER-SHAPED COFFIN MADE OF GLAZED EARTHENWARE
(British Museum)
Figure IX.3. STELE OF HAMMURABI, WITH "CODE OF LAWS"
(Louvre, Paris)
According to Herodotus the Babylonians "buried their dead in honey, and had funeral lamentations like the Egyptians".[[261]] The custom of preserving the body in this manner does not appear to have been an ancient one, and may have resulted from cultural contact with the Nile valley during the late Assyrian period. So long as the bones were undisturbed, the spirit was supposed to be assured of rest in the Underworld. This archaic belief was widespread, and finds an echo in the quaint lines over Shakespeare's grave in Stratford church:--