546 ANNUAL KEPOET SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 5 



vated ; Ga-sur levels were reached elsewhere only in the test pits that 

 were sunk in rooms L4 and N120. 



Through the conquests of Sargon of Akkad (Agade) and of his 

 great dynasty (about 2700-2500 B. C), the first Semitic empire in 

 history was established and the Akkadian culture, which was much 

 indebted to the earlier Sumerian culture, was carried to northern 

 Mesopotamia and even into Asia Minor. Ga-sur was one of the 

 Akkadian colonies established to develop commercial intercourse be- 

 tween the distant regions of the empire, and it is of particular im- 

 portance to us because it is the only one, outside of southern Baby- 

 lonia, of which we have commercial records. These cuneiform 

 tablets of Ga-sur consist of letters, receipts, contracts, land records, 

 and the like. They bear witness to business relations over a wide 

 territory, extending from Ashur in the west to Simurrum and 

 Hamazi in the east, and reaching as far south as Akkad. The rela- 

 tions with ancient Ashur, which at the time was likewise largely in- 

 habited by Akkadians (though both Ashur and Ga-sur may have 

 been originally Sumerian), were particularly close — if not always 

 friendly. In one of the early inscriptions from Ashur a certain 

 Ititi relates the dedication of a certain object " from the booty of 

 Ga-sag " (a variant spelling of Ga-sur) to the goddess Ishtar. This 

 name Ititi is of frequent occurrence at Ga-sur, where many of the 

 500 personal names Imown contain a similar repetition of a syllable 

 (e. g., Ababa, Bazaza, Bazizi, Bubu, Dada, Dudu, etc.; the latter 

 three are also divine names) . Such iterative names were common in 

 Babylonia during this period, but they tend to disappear there about 

 2300 B. C. Their popularity persisted, however, in Elam and Cap- 

 padocia — an indication of the non-Semitic origin of this vogue. At 

 Ga-sur, however, most of the personal names, including the iterative 

 ones, are Semitic. 



The earliest geographical map known to us was found among these 

 clay tablets. It shows two rivers, joined at the southeastern corner 

 of the map — the Rakhium^ which empties itself through three chan- 

 nels into a northern sea, and the . . .-ru-um, which flows westward ; 

 also two chains of mountains and three or four cities, one of which 

 is called Mashkan-dur-Ibla, "the site of the fortress Ibla." The 

 identification of the region represented by the map rests on the in- 

 terpretation of the words " sha-ad/t a-za-la " written in its center. 

 If we translate " Mount Azala ", the region is somewhere in north- 

 ern Syria between the Anti-Lebanon and the Zagros range, where 

 there is a city named Ibla ; if, however, we translate " field of 

 Azala " or " belonging to Azala ", the map represents a landed prop- 

 erty, comprising " 354 iku of cultivated land ", belonging to a certain 

 Azala. 



