Again, the facility and skill in the manipulation of the material has indicated that the tools used for the work must have been of the hardest metals. They are supposed to have been of the hardest bronze. But this presupposes an amazing antiquity for the practice of metallurgy.
The replies to the question, from whence the bronze? are now abundant, and come from a variety of sources, but the testimony from the inscriptions of the statues is the most direct and ample, opening before us a commercial intercourse between nations and people of these regions scarcely suspected of such very remote dates.
There are indications that even in these early days tin from Cornwall was exported to these far off regions.
The inscriptions relate chiefly to the building of a pyramid temple by Urbahu, and on the Gudea statues to the rebuilding of the temple by this later prince.
Referring constantly to himself as patesi, or priest-king, he says that for this purpose his God, Nin-Girsu, has opened the way for him “from the sea of the highlands,”—the Persian Gulf—“to the upper sea,” the Mediterranean.
“I,” says Gudea, “made the lordly temple of the God who enlightens the darkness; of costly woods I made it for him; with wood from Lebanon (Amanus); wood of seventy and fifty cubits. I raised its roof twenty-five cubits high.”
From the copper and silver mines of the Taurus, near “the great pass,” “the gate of Syria,” copper was brought for the great pillars. Marble also from the “Mountain of Canaan,” (Tidalum), in Phœnicia, for the foundations. He sent ships to upper Egypt, where gold was obtained for the porch of the temple. “To the country of Gubi and to the country of Nituk which possesses every kind of tree, vessels to be laden with all sorts of trees for Sippara I have sent.”
Sippara, “The City of the Bright Flame,” was another name by which Zirgul was known. Reference to this comes in the inscriptions concerning the “God who enlightens the darkness.”
Then of his statues he says: “Strong stone being brought from Magan (Sinaitic peninsula) I made an image therewith that my name may be remembered gloriously.”
Again of this statue he says: “Neither in silver, nor in copper, nor in tin, nor in bronze let any one undertake the execution. An image yielding none of these no man will demand as spoil; made of hard stone may it remain in the place thereof, forever.”