[88] When passing by this route into Persia from Turkey, in the spring of 1904, I made a careful study of all the sculptured panels on both sides of the Hulvan. The second largest panel is that of this early Semitic king; on the ledge below the sculpture are traces of an inscription, of which sufficient is preserved to prove that it is written in Semitic Babylonian. The sculptured panel at Sheikh-Khân, with its fragmentary Semitic inscription (De Morgan, op. city pl. x.), is a very much ruder production, and is probably of a considerably later date.
[89] See the panel on the cover of this volume; and cf. p. [217] f.
[CHAPTER IX]
THE LATER RULERS OF LAGASH
We have seen that the Dynasty of Akkad marks the culminating point attained by the races of Sumer and Akkad during the earlier periods of their history. It is true that the kings of this period owed much to their immediate predecessors, but they added to and improved their inheritance. Through long centuries of slow development the village community had gradually been transformed into the city-state, and this institution had flourished and had in its turn decayed before the centralizing influence of the kingdoms of Sumer and Kish. It was on the ruins of the latter monarchy that Shar-Gani-sharri founded his empire, which differed from that of Kish in its extent, rather than in the principles of its formation. A similarly close connection can be traced between the cultural remains of the successive periods with which we have hitherto been dealing. The rude, though vigorous, artistic efforts of the earlier Sumerians furnished the models upon which the immigrant Semites of Northern Babylonia improved. In the sculpture of Kish and upon cylinder-seals of that period we see the transition between the two styles, when the aim at a naturalistic treatment sometimes produced awkward and grotesque results. The full attainment of this aim under the patronage of the Akkadian kings gives their epoch an interest and an importance, which, from their empire alone, it would not perhaps have enjoyed.
While the earlier ages of Babylonian history afford a striking picture of gradual growth and development, the periods succeeding the Dynasty of Akkad are marked by a certain retrograde movement, or reversion to earlier ideals. The stimulus, which produced the empire and the art of Akkad, may be traced to the influx of fresh racial elements into Northern Babylonia and their fusion with the older and more highly cultured elements in the south. When the impulse was exhausted and the dynasties to which it had given rise had run their course, little further development along these lines took place. Both in art and politics a Sumerian reaction followed the period of Semitic power, and the establishment of the Dynasty of Ur was significant of more than a shifting of political influence southwards. It would appear that a systematic attempt was made to return to the earlier standards. But the influence of Akkad and her monarchs, though deliberately ignored and combated, was far from ineffective. As the sculptures of Gudea owe much to the period of Narâm-Sin, so the empire of Dungi was inevitably influenced by Shar-Gani-sharri's conquests. There was no sudden arrest either of the political or of the cultural development of the country. A recovery of power by the Sumerians merely changed the direction in which further development was to take place. Although, when viewed from a general standpoint, there is no break of continuity between the epoch of Akkad and that of Ur, there is some lack of information with regard to events in the intervening period. There is every indication that between the reign of Narâm-Sin and that of Ur-Engur, the founder of the Dynasty of Ur, we have to count in generations rather than in centuries, but the total length of the period is still unknown. The close of the Dynasty of Akkad, as we have already seen, is wrapped in mystery, but the gap in our knowledge may fortunately to some extent be bridged. At this point the city of Lagash once more comes to our assistance, and, by supplying the names of a number of her patesis, enables us to arrange a sequence of rulers, and thereby to form some estimate of the length of the period involved.
It will be remembered that under Shar-Gani-sharri and Narâm-Sin a certain Lugal-ushumgal was patesi of Lagash, and that the impressions of his seals have been recovered which he employed during the reigns of these two monarchs.[1] The names of three other patesis of Lagash are known, who must also be assigned to the period of the Dynasty of Akkad, since they are mentioned upon tablets of that date. These are Ur-Babbar, Ur-E, and Lugal-bur; the first of these appears to have been the contemporary of Narâm-Sin,[2] and in that case he must have followed Lugal-ushumgal. As to Ur-E and Lugal-bur, we have no information beyond the fact that they lived during the period of the kings of Akkad. A further group of tablets found at Tello, differentiated in type from those of the Dynasty of Akkad on the one hand, and on the other from tablets of the Dynasty of Ur, furnishes us with the names of other patesis to be set in the period before the rise of Ur-Engur. Three of these, Basha-mama,[3] Ur-mama, and Ug-me, were probably anterior to Ur-Bau, who has left us ample proof of his building activity at Lagash. We possess a tablet dated in the accession year of Ur-mama, and another dated during the patesiate of Ug-me, in the year of the installation of the high priest in Ninâ.[4] A sealing of this last patesi's reign has also been found, which supports the attribution of this group of tablets to the period between the Sargonic era and that of Ur. The subject of the engraving upon the seal is the adoration of a deity, a scene of very common occurrence during the later period; but by its style and treatment the work vividly recalls that of the epoch of Shar-Gani-sharri and Narâm-Sin. On the strength of this evidence it has been argued that Ug-me's period was not far from that of Lugal-ushumgal, Ur-E, and Lugal-bur.[5]