654 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1959 
knives, and razors. Mirrors and small, delicate gold and silver man- 
icure sets were also found. Prince Mes-Kalam-Dug was buried with 
a spear of copper stuck into his grave; an electrum axhead was at 
his right shoulder. A beautiful copper relief, now in the University 
of Pennsylvania Museum, was hammered from a copper sheet in 
repoussé work. Lead rings were sometimes gold plated. Sheets of 
metal were nailed to cores of wood with small nails, as in the case of a 
copper horn discovered at Tello (Lagash). 
Graves of the more important personalities contained vessels of 
metal in quantity. Some of these cups and bowls are beautifully 
shaped and fluted, sometimes engraved. The cups had obvious ritual 
importance; one was usually placed in the hands, near the mouth of 
Ficure 27.—Gold amulets of the queen. 
the dead, probably with the hope that a benevolent divinity would 
some day pour into them the drink of life. To the category of vessels 
belong the long tubes of metal through which the Sumerians sucked 
beer from large jars. 
The weapons of the Sumerians were the mace, the spear, and the 
dagger, a sickle-shaped sword, the bow and arrow, but especially the 
socketed and “toothed” pickax or adz. A poem written in cuneiform 
signs celebrated the creation of this national weapon by the war 
god for his chosen people so that they may build cities with it, but 
also keep malefactors in their place. 
Woolley (1950) describes a gold dagger as “a wonderful weapon, 
whose blade was gold, its hilt of lapis lazuli decorated with gold studs 
and its sheath of gold beautifully worked with an openwork pattern 
derived from plaited grass.” With this dagger was found “an object 
scarcely less remarkable, a coneshaped reticule of gold ornamented 
with a spiral pattern and containing a set of little toilet instruments, 
tweezers, lancet and pencil also of gold ... they revealed an art 
hitherto unsuspected.” 
