[116]The enumeration recalls the so-called “Royal Tombs” of Ur, where, under conditions which are as yet obscure, a courtly society had been buried in all its splendour. The riches discovered in these tombs, which belong to the very end of the Early Dynastic period and appear far removed from the simple co-operative society of the ideal temple community which we have described, recall Homer and Malory rather than Hesiod and Piers Plowman. Since Sidney Smith suggested in 1928 (Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society [1928], 849 ff.) that these rich tombs, containing numerous attendants killed when the main occupant was buried, derived from the performance of a “fertility rite,” the discussion has continued without leading to a decisive conclusion. See my Kingship and the Gods, 400, n. 12.
[117]Translation of Col. xii, 25-6, after Thorkild Jacobsen.
[118]The head is uninscribed but represents in all probability one of the Akkadian kings. The eyes were inlaid with precious materials and had been chiselled out by robbers.
[119]This view has been refuted by Thorkild Jacobsen, “The Assumed Conflict of Sumerians and Semites in Early Mesopotamian History,” Journal of the American Oriental Society, LIX (1939), 485-95.
[120]Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, 227 ff.
[121]M. E. L. Mallowan, “Excavations at Brak and Chagar Bazar,” Iraq, IX (London, 1947).
[122]Walter Andrae, Die Archaischen Ischtar-Tempel in Assur (Leipzig, 1922).
[123]Journal of the American Oriental Society, LIX (1939), 490.
[124]However, Lugalzaggesi, whom Sargon overthrew, had assumed the title of “King of the Land.”
[125]L. W. King, Chronicles concerning Early Babylonian Kings, II, 5; Sidney Smith, Early History of Assyria, 93.