and supplied the village of
Nina with water; no trace of an inclosing wall has been found, and the
temples and palaces seem to have served as refuges in case of attack.
It had as its arms, or totem, a double-headed eagle standing on a lion
passant, or on two demi-lions placed back to back. Its chief god was
called Ningirsu, that is, the lord of Girsu, where his temple stood: his
companion Bau, and his associates Ninagal, Innanna and Ninsia, were
the deities of the other divisions of the city. The princes were first
called kings, but afterwards vicegerents--_patesi_--when they came under
the suzerainty of a more powerful king, the King of Uruk or of Babylon.

The earlier history of this remarkable town is made up of the
scanty memoirs of its rulers, together with those of the princes of
Gishban--"the land of the Bow," of which Ishin seems to have been the
principal town. A very ancient document states, that, at the instigation
of Inlil, the god of Nipur, the local deities, Ningirsu and Kirsig, set
up a boundary between the two cities. In the course of time, Meshilim,
a king of Kishu, which, before the rise of Agade, was the chief town in
those parts, extended his dominion over Lagash and erected his stele at
its border; Ush, vicegerent of Gishban, however, removed it, and had to
suffer defeat before he would recognize the new order of things. After
the lapse of some years, of which we possess no records, we find the
mention of a certain Urukagina, who assumes the title of king: he
restored or enlarged several temples, and dug the canal which supplied
the town of Nina with water. A few generations later we find the ruling
authority in the hands of a certain Urnina, whose father Ninigaldun and
grandfather Gurshar received no titles--a fact which proves that they
could not have been reigning sovereigns. Urnina appears to have been of
a peaceful and devout disposition, as the inscriptions contain frequent
references to the edifices he had erected in honour of the gods, the
sacred objects he had dedicated to them, and the timber for building
purposes which he had brought from Magan, but there is no mention in
them of any war. His son Akurgal was also a builder of temples, but
his grandson Idingiranagin, who succeeded Akurgal, was a warlike and
combative prince.

[Illustration: 101.jpg IDINGIRANAGIN HOLDING THE TOTEM OF LAGASH.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bas-relief F2 in the
Louvre.

It seems probable th