[37] The phrase is not to be taken to mean that Eannatum buried the bodies of the slain Elamites, though it may be a conventional formula employed to describe any important battle. It may be noted that Entemena definitely states that he left the bones of his enemies to bleach in the open plain, and this was probably the practice of the period. Each side would bury its own dead to ensure their entrance into the Underworld.
[38] Rev., Col. VI., l. 10—Col. VII., l. 3.
[39] The name is expressed by the conflate sign, formed of the signs URU and A, the phonetic reading of which is unknown.
[40] The name of the place was formerly read in a short inscription engraved upon a mace-head of Gudea, and it was supposed to be described in that passage as lying near the Persian Gulf; cf. Heuzey, "Rev. Arch.," vol. xvii. (1891), p. 153; Radau, "Early Bab. Hist.," pp. 81, 191. But the syllable as occurs in that text without the determinative for "place," and it is rather to be interpreted as part of the name of the mountain from which Gudea obtained the breccia for his mace-head; and the mountain itself is described as situated on "the Upper Sea," i.e. the Mediterranean, see below, p. [270] f.
[41] See "Rev.," Col. VIII.
[42] Foundation-stone A, Col. VII., ll. 3 ff.
[43] For one of the inscribed bricks from the well, see the plate opposite p. [154].