PORTION OF THE "STELE OF VULTURES," SCULPTURED WITH SCENES REPRESENTING EANNATUM, PATESI OF SHIRPURLA, LEADING HIS TROOPS IN BATTLE AND ON THE MARCH.—In the Louvre; Déc. en Chald., pl. 3 (bis).
The account of the battle is very broken upon the Stele of the Vultures,[5] but sufficient details are preserved to enable us to gather that it was a fierce one, and that victory was wholly upon the side of Lagash. We may conjecture that the men of Umma did not await Eannatum's attack behind their city-walls, but went out to meet him with the object of preventing their own fields and pastures from being laid waste. Every man capable of bearing arms, who was not required for the defence of two cities, was probably engaged in the battle, and the two opposing armies were doubtless led in person by Eannatum himself and by Ush, the patesi of Umma, who had provoked the war. The army of Lagash totally defeated the men of Umma and pursued them with great slaughter. Eannatum puts the number of the slain at three thousand six hundred men, or, according to a possible reading, thirty-six thousand men. Even the smaller of these figures is probably exaggerated, but there is no doubt that Umma suffered heavily. According to his own account, Eannatum took an active part in the fight, and he states that he raged in the battle. After defeating the army in the open plain, the troops of Lagash pressed on to Umma itself. The fortifications had probably been denuded of their full garrisons, and were doubtless held by a mere handful of defenders. Flushed with victory the men of Lagash swept on to the attack, and, carrying the walls by assault, had the city itself at their mercy. Here another slaughter took place, and Eannatum states that within the city he swept all before him "like an evil storm."
The record of his victory which Eannatum has left us is couched in metaphor, and is doubtless coloured by Oriental exaggeration; and the scribes who drew it up would naturally be inclined to represent the defeat of Umma as even more crushing than it was. Thus the number of burial-mounds suggests that the forces of Lagash suffered heavily themselves, and it is quite possible the remnant of Umma's army rallied and made a good fight within the city. But we have the independent testimony of Entemena's record, written not many years after the fight, to show that there is considerable truth under Eannatum's phrases; and a clear proof that Umma was rendered incapable of further resistance for the time may be seen in the terms of peace which Lagash imposed. Eannatum's first act, after he had received the submission of the city, was to collect for burial the bodies of his own dead which strewed the field of battle. Those of the enemy he would probably leave where they fell, except such as blocked the streets of Umma, and these he would remove and cast out in the plain beyond the city-walls. For we may conclude that, like Entemena, Eannatum left the bones of his foes to be picked clean by the birds and beasts of prey. The monument on which we have his record of the fight is known as the Stele of the Vultures from the vultures sculptured upon the upper portion of it. These birds of prey are represented as swooping off with the heads and limbs of the slain, which they hold firmly in their beaks and talons. That the sculptor should have included this striking incident in his portrayal of the battle is further testimony to the magnitude of the slaughter which had taken place. That Eannatum duly buried his own dead is certain, for both he and Entemena state that the burial-mounds which he heaped up were twenty in number; and two other sculptured portions of the Stele of the Vultures, to which we shall presently refer, give vivid representations of the piling of the mounds above the dead.
The fate of Ush, the patesi of Umma, who had brought such misfortune on his own city by the rash challenge he had given Lagash, is not recorded; but it is clear he did not remain the ruler of Umma. He may have been slain in the battle, but, even if he survived, he was certainly deprived of his throne, possibly at the instance of Eannatum. For Entemena records the fact that it was not with Ush, but with a certain Enakalli, patesi of Umma, that Eannatum concluded a treaty of peace.[6] The latter ruler may have been appointed patesi by Eannatum himself, as, at a later day, Ili owed his nomination to Entemena on the defeat of the patesi Urlumma. But, whether this was so or not, Enakalli was certainly prepared to make great concessions, and was ready to accept whatever terms Eannatum demanded, in order to secure the removal of the troops of Lagash from his city, which they doubtless continued to invest during the negotiations. As might be expected, the various terms of the treaty are chiefly concerned with the fertile plain of Gu-edin, which had been the original cause of the war. This was unreservedly restored to Lagash, or, in the words of the treaty, to Ningirsu, whose "beloved territory" it is stated to have been. In order that there should be no cause for future dispute with regard to the boundary-line separating the territory of Lagash and Umma, a deep ditch was dug as a permanent line of demarcation. The ditch is described as extending "from the great stream" up to Gu-edin, and with the great stream we may probably identify an eastern branch of the Euphrates, through which at this period it emptied a portion of its waters into the Persian Gulf. The ditch, or canal, received its water from the river, and, by surrounding the unprotected sides of Gu-edin, it formed not only a line of demarcation but to some extent a barrier to any hostile advance on the part of Umma.
On the bank of the frontier-ditch the stele of Mesilim, which had been taken away, was erected once more, and another stele was prepared by the orders of Eannatum, and was set up beside it. The second monument was inscribed with the text of the treaty drawn up between Eannatum and Enakalli, and its text was probably identical with the greater part of that found upon the fragments of the Stele of the Vultures, which have been recovered; for the contents of that text mark it out as admirably suited to serve as a permanent memorial of the boundary. After the historical narrative describing the events which led up to the new treaty, the text of the Stele of the Vultures enumerates in detail the divisions of the territory of which Gu-edin was composed. Thus the stele which was set up on the frontier formed in itself an additional security against the violation of the territory of Lagash. The course of a boundary-ditch might possibly be altered, but while the stele remained in place, it would serve as a final authority to which appeal could be made in the case of any dispute arising. It is probably in this way that we may explain the separate fields which are enumerated by name upon the fragment of the Stele of the Vultures which is preserved in the British Museum,[7] and upon a small foundation-stone which also refers to the treaty.[8] The fields there enumerated either made up the territory known by the general name of Gu-edin, or perhaps formed an addition to that territory, the cession of which Eannatum may have exacted from Umma as part of the terms of peace. While consenting to the restoration of the disputed territory, and the rectification of the frontier, Umma was also obliged to pay as tribute to Lagash a considerable quantity of grain, and this Eannatum brought back with him to his own city.
In connection with the formal ratification of the treaty it would appear that certain shrines or chapels were erected in honour of Enlil, Ninkharsag, Ningirsu and Babbar. We may conjecture that this was done in order that the help of these deities might be secured for the preservation of the treaty. According to Entemena's narrative,[9] chapels or shrines were erected to these four deities only, but the Stele of the Vultures contains a series of invocations addressed not only to Enlil, Ninkharsag, and Babbar, but also to Enki, Enzu, and Ninki,[10] and it is probable that shrines were also erected in their honour. These were built upon the frontier beside the two stelæ of delimitation, and it was doubtless at the altar of each one of them in turn that Eannatum and Enakalli took a solemn oath to abide by the terms of the treaty and to respect the frontier. The oaths by which the treaty was thus ratified are referred to upon the Stele of the Vultures[11] by Eannatum, who invokes each of the deities by whom he and Enakalli swore, and in a series of striking formulæ calls down destruction upon the men of Umma should they violate the terms of the compact. "On the men of Umma," he exclaims, "have I, Eannatum, cast the great net of Enlil! I have sworn the oath, and the men of Umma have sworn the oath to Eannatum. In the name of Enlil, the king of heaven and earth, in the field of Ningirsu there has been..., and a ditch has been dug down to the water level.... Who from among the men of Umma by his word or by his ... will go back upon the word (that has been given), and will dispute it in days to come? If at some future time they shall alter this word, may the great net of Enlil, by whom they have sworn the oath, strike Umma down!"