cannot have endured long.

Under Sargon of Agade, the Semites gained the upper hand in Babylonia,
and Erech, Grishkhu, and Shirpurla, as well as the other ancient cities
in the land, fell in turn under his domination and formed part of the
extensive empire which he ruled.

Concerning the later rulers of city-states of Babylonia which succeeded
the disruption of the empire founded by Sargon of Agade and consolidated
by Naram-Sin, his son, the excavations have little to tell us which has
not already been made use of by Prof. Maspero in his history of this
period.*

* The tablets found at Telloh by the late M. de Sarzec, and
published during his lifetime, fall into two main classes,
which date from different periods in early Chaldaean
history. The great majority belong to the period when the
city of Ur held pre-eminence among the cities of Southern
Babylonia, and they are dated in the reigns of Dungi, Bur-
Sin, Gamil-Sin, and Ine-Sin. The other and smaller
collection belongs to the earlier period of Sargon and
Naram-Sin; while many of the tablets found in M. de Sarzec's
last diggings, which were published after his death, are to
be set in the great gap between these two periods. Some of
those recently discovered, which belong to the period of
Dungi, contain memoranda concerning the supply of food for
the maintenance of officials stopping at Shirpurla in the
course of journeys in Babylonia and Elam, and they throw an
interesting light on the close and constant communication
which took place at this time between the great cities of
Mesopotamia and the neighbouring countries.

[Illustration: 190.jpg STATUE OF GUDEA.]

The most famous of the later patesis, or viceroys, of
Shirpurla, the Sumerian city in Southern Babylonia now
marked by the mounds of Telloh. Photograph by Messrs.
Mansell & Co.

Ur, Isin, and,Larsam succeeded one another in the position of leading
city in Babylonia, holding Mppur, Eridu, Erech, Shirpurla, and the other
chief cities in a condition of semi-dependence upon themselves. We may
note that the true reading of the name of the founder of the dynasty
of Ur has now been ascertained from a syllabary to be Ur-Engur; and an
unpublished chronicle in the British Museum relates that his son Dungi
cared greatly for the city of Eridu, but sacked Babylon and carried off
its spoil, together with the