DISCOVERIES IN MESOPOTAMIA. 543 



Semitic nor to the Indo-Germanic stratum of the Babylonian popu- 

 lation, l)ut to the so-called Smnerian people, who spoke an agglutinative 

 language, and who, though through the early centuries settled in Baby- 

 lonia contemporaneously with the Semites, and in lively intercourse 

 with them, nuist still be considered as the older native population from 

 whom the Semites received the art of writing and other achievements 

 of civilization. And since that first great discovery of De Sarzec, the 

 finds of Telloh hive steadily carried Babylonian history to earlier 

 periods, as is evinced by indisputable art, historical and paleographical 

 criteria. They carried it back to the time when the two Semitic kings 

 of Agade, Sargani-shar-ali and Naram-Sin — and these, as is recognized 

 with ever-increasing certainty, are Nabonaid's Sargon and Naram-Sin 

 (38(><) and 3750 B. C, respectively) — exercised sovereignty over Lagash, 

 and the priest king of this city, Lagal-Ushumgal, was their vassal. 

 Na3% even from an earlier time — the close of the fifth milleninum — 

 there rises before our eyes a whole line of hoary Sumerian patesis of 

 Lagash — Ur-Nina, Akurgal, Eannadu, Enannatum, Entemena. And 

 we know^ not only their names but most of their heroisn] against 

 domestic and foreign foes, and of their efforts for the general welfare 

 of their city and its inhabitants. 



As the orioin of the cuneiform writing is more and more cleared un 

 thi-ough the inscriptions of some of these most ancient rulers — above 

 ail, that of Eannadu — so one ray of light after another brightens the 

 darkness spread over the earliest history of the great Babylonian 

 cities — Agade, Babel, Kish, and Lagash, Erek,and the "city of bows." 

 Nay, on some periods, especially the times of Sargon I and his son, 

 Naram-Sin, a Hood of light is shed. For much as it may be deplored 

 that the archives, consisting of some 30,000 tablets, cylinders, and 

 large inscribed pebbles, found in 1894 in a cellar-shaped room at 

 Telloh, were scattered everywhere by the thievish Arabs, the docu- 

 ments themselves are not lost to science, whether they came to the 

 nuiseums of Constantinople, Paris, Berlin, Philadelphia, or elsewhere, 

 and they re\eal to us in a surprising and at the same time in detailed 

 manner the commercial, agricultural, and economic conditions, as well 

 as the civic and religious life of the times of Sargon I and Naram-Sin. 

 P^ven pierced lumps of clay were found with the names of Sargon or 

 Naram-Sin stamped upon them, inscribed with the names of the 

 addressee, the place of destination, and evidently attached to bales of 

 merchandise, to be forwarded from Agade to Lagash. 



One of the oldest sanctuaries upon earth is the temple of the lord of 

 the universe, Bel, in the middle Babylonian city of Nippur. The ruins 

 of this city, now called Nuffar, and especially the gigantic remains of 

 this temple, were the goal of the three expeditions from Philadelphia, 

 which, from 1886 up to the present time, under the direction of John 

 P. Peters, Hermann V. Hilprecht, and J. H. Haynes, have excavated 



