CLAY CONES BEARING VOTIVE INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PATESIS GALU-BABBAR, GUDEA, AND UR-BAU.—Brit. Mus., Nos. 15782, 91046, and 91063.
CLAY CONES BEARING VOTIVE INSCRIPTIONS OF SIN-IDINNAM, KING OF LARSA, AND SIN-GASHID, KING OF ERECH.—Brit. Mus., Nos. 91152 and 91150.
His chief care appears to have been the rebuilding, upon a new and enlarged site, of E-ninnû, the great temple of Ningirsu at Lagash, in which he placed the statue of himself that has been recovered. Little of this temple now remains in the mounds of Tello, beyond a wall the lower part of which was found still standing under the south-east corner of the later palace erected in the second century B.C.[17] In addition to the rebuilding of the temple of the city-god, Ur-Bau records that he erected three temples in Girsu in honour of the goddesses Ninkharsag and Geshtin-anna, and of Enki, "the king of Eridu." In Uru-azagga he built a temple for the goddess Bau, and in Uru, another quarter of the city, he constructed a shrine in honour of Ninni, or Nin-azag-nun, the goddess Ishtar. Other deities honoured in a similar way by Ur-Bau were Nindar, Ninmar, and Ninagal, the last of whom stood in the mystical relation of mother to the patesi. Attached to E-ninnû he also built a "House of the Asses" in honour of Esignun, the deity whose duty it was to tend the sacred asses of Ningirsu.
Ur-Bau may probably be regarded as representative of the earlier patesis of this epoch, who, while acting with freedom and independence within the limits of their own state, refrained from embarking on any policy of conquest or expansion. With the accession of Gudea a distinct change is noticeable in the circumstances of Lagash. Like his predecessors, he devoted himself to the building of temples, but his work was undertaken on a wider and more sumptuous scale. Of all the kings and patesis of Lagash, he is the one under whom the city appears to have attained its greatest material prosperity, which found its expression in a lavish architectural display. Although not much of his great temple of E-ninnû still survives at Tello, his monuments are more numerous than all the others that have been recovered on that site.[18] Moreover, the texts engraved upon his statues, and inscribed upon the great clay cylinders which he buried as foundation-records in the structure of E-ninnû, are composed in a florid style and form a striking contrast to the dry votive formulæ employed by the majority of his predecessors. The cylinder-inscriptions especially are cast in the form of a picturesque narrative, adorned with striking similes and a wealth of detailed description such as are not found in the texts of any other period. In fact, Gudea's records appear to have been inspired by the novelty and magnitude of his architectural constructions and the variety of sacred ornament with which they were enriched.
We have no information as to the events which led to his accession, beyond the negative evidence afforded by the complete absence of any genealogy from his inscriptions. Like Ur-Bau, Gudea does not name his father, and it is possible that he was a man of obscure or doubtful birth. The energy which he displayed as patesi is sufficient to account for his rise to power, and the success which attended his period of rule may be held to have amply justified a break in the succession. Another problem suggested by a study of his texts concerns the source of the wealth which enabled him to undertake the rebuilding and refurnishing of the temples of Lagash upon so elaborate a scale. The cause of such activity we should naturally seek in the booty obtained during a number of successful campaigns, but throughout the whole of his inscriptions we have only a single reference to an act of war. On the statue of himself in the character of an architect, holding the plan of E-ninnû upon his knees, he gives in some detail an account of the distant regions whence he obtained the materials for the construction of Ningirsu's temple. At the close of this list of places and their products, as though it formed a continuation of his narrative, he adds the record that he smote with his weapons the town of Anshan in Elam and offered its booty to Ningirsu. This is the only mention of a victory that occurs in Gudea's inscriptions, and, although in itself it proves that he was sufficiently independent to carry on a war in Elam on his own account, it does not throw light upon the other causes of his success.