These statues thus had a peculiar religious significance. Placed in the sacred temple, always before the god to whose service they were dedicated, they were supposed to represent the king constantly in life, and like the “Ka” statues of the Egyptian kings, to be the residence of the soul of the departed prince which was thus ever reverently before his god. Thus we can understand the terrible curse pronounced by Gudea upon whosoever should remove this statue from its place.
This and the companion statues from Tel-Loh, were nevertheless sent to Paris and placed in the Louvre, where they will receive more distinction than has been accorded them for ages. Perhaps this, and also the fact that the inscriptions on them could not be read until they were placed where competent Assyriologists could have access to them, may induce the Ka of Gudea to revoke his maledictions should they threaten this later disturber of his repose.
However this may be, the view thus given of this far off time, of which we have no trace in history, is one of the most interesting archæological discoveries of the century.
Here, long ages before the time of Hiram, king of Tyre, the friend of David and Solomon; long ages even before the days of Abraham, the ships of Gudea were navigating the seas from the trading ports of Ur and Eridu, then at the mouth of the Euphrates on the Persian Gulf; coasting down the shores of the Arabian peninsula, which they circumnavigated, into the waters of the Red Sea; sailing northward to Magan, “the enclosed port,” on the peninsula of Sinai, where the diorite for the statues was obtained, and perhaps copper also from the Wady Magarah, “the land of bronze;” then to various trading ports of the Egyptian coasts, for gold from Meroe, and for timber from Ethiopia, and then for the return voyage.
Other confirmation of the trade communications of southern Mesopotamia with the peninsula of Sinai appears in the beautiful statue of Kephren, the builder of the second pyramid, now in the Boulak museum. This statue was recently exhumed from the sands of the desert near the great Sphynx in Egypt, and is of stone so similar to the diorite of the Tel-Loh statues that it is evident they were both obtained from the same source.
We know in this connection, that Seneferu, a predecessor of Kephren, had conquered and held in possession the Sinaitic peninsula with a strong garrison of Egyptian troops, which were maintained here during his reign and the reign of his immediate successors; that under this protection the fine stone of this region was quarried, and that at Wady Margarah the rich mines of copper, turquoise and other precious stones were worked.
Another evidence of the contact of Gudea with Egypt is the fact that on the lap of the principal statue of Gudea the plan of the city is carved, and the scale of measurement used is the “pyramid inch,” instead of the Babylonian or Chaldean.
Aside from this, the finish, detail and workmanship of the Tel-Loh statues is so similar in style and character to the statue of Kephren that they all suggest the same influence and the same school of sculpture.
There are many evidences from other sources of the commercial intercourse between the Babylonians and Egyptians at these early dates, and it is probable that the cities of Eridu and Ur may have maintained the same relations in the prehistoric commerce of the Persian Gulf which obtained in later times with Tyre and Sidon on the Mediterranean. The commercial horizon thus opening before us is a broad one but is constantly extending.
The natural depressions of the Mesopotamian valley extend from the Persian Gulf northerly and northwesterly, thence through the Orontes valley to the Mediterranean. In prehistoric times and for long ages this was “the highway of nations,” by the great rivers, the Tigris and Euphrates, from sea to sea, the chief trade route between India and the western coasts of Asia Minor.