TWO TABLETS OF BAKED CLAY INSCRIBED WITH DETAILS OF A SURVEY OF CERTAIN PROPERTY DURING THE REIGN OF BUR-SIN, KING OF UR. —Brit. Mus., Nos. 18039 and 19030; photo, by Messrs. Mansell & Co.
Whenever the king rebuilt or added to a temple we may assume that he inaugurated there a new centre of his cult, but it is certain that temples were also erected which were devoted entirely to his worship. Thus Dungi dated a year of his reign by the appointment of a high-priest of his own cult, an act which suggests that on his assumption of divine rank he founded a temple in his own honour. Moreover, under his successors high officials sought the royal favour by building and dedicating shrines to the reigning king. This is proved by a votive inscription of Lugal-magurri, the patesi of Ur and commander of the fortress, which records that he founded a temple in honour of Gimil-Sin, "his god." At the king's death his cult did not die with him, but he continued to be worshipped and offerings were made to him at the Feast of the New Moon. Tablets from Tello, dated during the later years of the Dynasty of Ur, record the making of such offerings to Dungi, and it is noteworthy that the patesis Ur-Lama and Gudea were also honoured in the same way. We have seen that Gudea was probably not deified in his own lifetime, but at this period he takes his place beside the god Dunpae in the rites of the New Moon. Offerings in his honour, accompanied by sacrifices, were repeated six times a year, and a special class of priests was attached to his service.[29] An interesting survival, or trace, of this practice occurs in an explanatory list of gods, drawn up for Ashur-bani-pal's Library at Nineveh, where Bûr-Sin's name is explained as that of an attendant deity in the service of the Moon-god.[30]
The later kings of Ur appear to have retained possession of the empire acquired by Dungi, but we may assume that, like him, they were constantly obliged to enforce their authority. Tablets have been found at Susa dated by the official formulæ of Bûr-Sin,[31] proving that the capital of Elam remained under his control, but, before he had been two years upon the throne, he was obliged to undertake the reconquest of Urbillu. Other successful expeditions were made in his sixth and seventh years, which resulted in the subjugation of Shashru and Khukhunuri, or Khukhnuri. The date-formulæ of Gimil-Sin's reign record that he conquered Simanu in his third year, and four years later the land of Zabshali, while the only conquest of Ibi-Sin of which we possess a record is that of Simuru. A date-formula of this period also commemorates the marriage of the patesi of Zabshali to Tukîn-khatti-migrisha, the daughter of the king, but it is not certain to which reign this event should be assigned. Evidence of the extent of Gimil-Sin's authority in the direction of the Mediterranean may be seen in the date-formula for his fourth year, which commemorates his building of the Wall, or Fortification, of the West, entitled Murîk-Tidnim. Since Tidnu was explained by the Assyrian geographers as another name for Amurru[32] and may be connected with Tidanu, the mountain in Amurru from which Gudea obtained his marble,[33] we may infer that at least a portion of Syria acknowledged the suzerainty of Ur during his reign.
Of the comparatively long reign of Ibi-Sin, and of the events which preceded the downfall of the Dynasty of Ur, we know little, but already during the reigns of his predecessors it is possible to trace some of the causes which led to the decline of the city's power. The wealth obtained from the Elamite provinces and the large increase in the number of public slaves must have introduced an element of luxury into Sumerian life, which would tend to undermine the military qualities of the people and their inclination for foreign service. The incorporation of Sumer and Akkad into a single empire had broken down the last traces of political division between the great cities of the land, and, while it had put an end to local patriotism, it had not encouraged in its place the growth of any feeling of loyalty to the suzerain city. All the great provincial towns were doubtless required to furnish contingents for the numerous military campaigns of the period, and they could have had little satisfaction in seeing the fruits of their conquests diverted to the aggrandizement of a city other than their own. The assumption of divine rank by the later kings of Ur may in itself be regarded as a symptom of the spirit which governed their administration. In the case of Dungi the innovation had followed the sudden expansion of his empire, and its adoption had been based upon political as much as upon personal grounds. But with his descendants the practice had been carried to more extravagant lengths, and it undoubtedly afforded opportunities for royal favourities to obtain by flattery an undue influence in the state.
We have already seen that Lugal-magurri, who combined the civil office of patesi of Ur with the military appointment of commander of the fortress, founded a temple for the worship of Gimil-Sin, and it is clear that such an act would have opened an easier road to the royal favour than the successful prosecution of a campaign. It was probably by such methods that ministers at the court of Ur secured the enjoyment of a plurality of offices, which had previously been administered with far greater efficiency in separate hands. The most striking example is afforded by Arad-Nannar, whose name as that of a patesi of Lagash is frequently mentioned upon dated tablets from Tello. He was "sukkal-makh," or chief minister, under the last three kings of Ur, and appears to have succeeded his father Ur-Dunpae, who had held this post in Dungi's reign. From the Tello tablets we know that he also held the patesiate of Lagash during this period, for he received the appointment towards the end of Bûr-Sin's reign[34] and continued to hold it under Ibi-Sin. But the patesiate of Lagash was only one of many posts which he combined. For two gate-sockets have been found at Tello, which originally formed parts of a temple founded in Girsu by Arad-Nannar for the cult of Gimil-Sin, and in the inscriptions upon them he has left us a list of his appointments.[35]
In addition to holding the posts of chief minister and patesi of Lagash, he was also priest of Enki, governor of Uzargarshana, governor of Babishue, patesi of Sabu and of the land of Gutebu, governor of Timat-Enlil, patesi of Al-Gimil-Sin,[36] governor of Urbillu, patesi of Khamasi and of Gankhar, governor of Ikhi, and governor of the Su-people and of the land of Kardaka. At some time during the reign of Gimil-Sin Arad-Nannar thus combined in his own person twelve important appointments, involving the administration of no less than thirteen separate cities and provinces. The position of some of the places enumerated is still uncertain, but it is clear that several were widely separated from one another. While Lagash, for instance, lay in the south of Sumer, Sabu was in Elam and Urbillu and Gankhar more to the north in the region of the Zagros mountains.
This centralization of authority under the later kings of Ur undoubtedly destroyed the power attaching to the patesiate at a time when the separate cities of the land had enjoyed a practical autonomy; and it incidentally explains the survival of the title, under the First Dynasty of Babylon, as that of a comparatively subordinate class of officials. But the policy of centralization must have had a more immediate effect on the general administration of the empire. For it undoubtedly lessened the responsibilities of local governors, and it placed the central authority, which the king himself had previously enjoyed, in the hands of a few officials of the court. The king's deification undoubtedly tended to encourage his withdrawal from the active control of affairs, and, so long as his divine rites were duly celebrated, he was probably content to accept without question the reports his courtiers presented to him. Such a system of government was bound to end in national disaster, and it is not surprising that the dynasty was brought to an end within forty-one years of Dungi's death. We may postpone until the next chapter an account of the manner in which the hegemony in Babylonia passed from the city of Ur to Isin.