Fig. 60. Portion of a Stele of Victory of a king of Akkad, sculptured in relief with battle scenes; from Tello.—In the Louvre: Cat. No. 21.
that still earlier Semitic kings reigned in that city before the rise of Kish. But in view of the total absence of other evidence in support of such a conclusion, it is preferable to assign the Tello stele provisionally to Shar-Gani-sharri himself. It will have been noted that the foes sculptured upon the monument are Semites, not Sumerians, and, if our assumption is correct, we may see in them the men of Kish, on whose defeat by Shar-Gani-sharri the whole of Sumer, including the city of Lagash, would have fallen under the rule of Akkad.[84] In that case the stele may well have commemorated the decisive victory by which Shar-Gani-sharri put an end to the domination of Kish and founded his own empire.
The absence of Sumerians from the battle-scenes in the reliefs of the period that we possess is significant of their political annihilation before the Semitic onslaught.
Fig. 61. Portion of a Stele of Victory of a king of Akkad, sculptured in relief with battle scenes; from Tello. For the other face of the fragment see above.
In the scenes engraved upon the stele of Sharru-Gi[85] the king's enemies are Semites, so that even in his time we have the picture of different Semitic clans or tribes contending among themselves for the possession of the countries they had overrun. That the racial movement was not confined to Akkad and Sumer is proved by Semitic inscriptions of the rulers of other districts. Lasirab, King of Gutiu, has left us a ceremonial mace-head, which was found at Abû Habba.[86] Whether it was carried to Sippar as spoil of war, or deposited there by Lasirab himself, we cannot say; but its text proves that Gutiu was ruled by Semitic monarchs. The neighbouring district of Lulubu was similarly governed, and Anu-banini, one of its kings, has left us sculptured images of himself and his goddess Ninni, or Ishtar, upon the face of a cliff near Ser-i-Pul-i-Zohab.[87] Here the river Hulvan flows through a natural rift in a low range of limestone hills that rise abruptly from the plain. The track runs through the rift in the hills beside the stream, and on to the foot of the Zagros pass and through the mountains into Elam. Road, river, and cliff form a striking combination, and not only Anu-banini but other monarchs who passed that way have left their records on the rock. One of these, on the further bank of the stream, was set there by another early Semitic king, whose sculpture was influenced by that of Anu-banini.[88]