tegration after a period of no long duration.
Its cities for the most part became emancipated, and their rulers
proclaimed themselves kings once more. We see that the kingdom of
Amnanu, for instance, was established on the left bank of the Euphrates,
with Uruk as its capital, and that three successive sovereigns at
least--of whom Singashid seems to have been the most active--were able
to hold their own there. Uru had still, however, sufficient prestige and
wealth to make it the actual metropolis of the entire country. No one
could become the legitimate lord of Shumir and Accad before he had
been solemnly enthroned in the temple at Uru. For many centuries every
ambitious kinglet in turn contended for its possession and made it
his residence. The first of these, about 2500 B.C., were the lords
of Nishin, Libitanunit, Gamiladar, Inedin, Bursin I., and Ismidagan:
afterwards, about 2400 B.C., Gungunum of Nipur made himself master of
it. The descendants of Gungunum, amongst others Bursin II., Gimilsin,
Inesin, reigned gloriously for a few years. Their records show that
they conquered not only a part of Elam, but part of Syria. They were
dispossessed in their turn by a family belonging to Larsam, whose two
chief representatives, as far as we know, were Nurramman and his son
Sinidinnam (about 2300 B.C.). Naturally enough, Sinidinnam was a builder
or repairer of temples, but he added to such work the clearing of the
Shatt-el-Hai and the excavation of a new canal giving a more direct
communication between the Shatt and the Tigris, and in thus controlling
the water-system of the country became worthy of being considered one of
the benefactors of Chaldaea.

We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself: here
an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name,
to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there, the stem of a
dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas,
dedications of objects or buildings, here and there the account of some
battle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relations
of friendship or commerce were maintained--these are the scanty
materials out of which to construct a connected narrative. Egypt has not
much more to offer us in regard to many of her Pharaohs, but we have in
her case at least the ascertained framework of her dynasties, in
which each fact and each new name falls eventually, and after some
uncertainty, into its pr