e Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf. Fortunately this rather
vague phrase, which survived in later tradition, is restated in greater
detail in one of the contemporary versions, which records that Enlil
"gave him the upper land, Mari, Iarmuti, and Ibla, as far as the Cedar
Forest and the Silver Mountains".(1)

(1) See Poebel, _Historical Texts_ (Univ. of Penns. Mus.
Publ., Bab. Sect., Vol. IV, No. 1, 1914), pp. 177 f., 222
ff.

Mari was a city on the middle Euphrates, but the name may here signify
the district of Mari which lay in the upper course of Sargon's march.
Now we know that the later Sumerian monarch Gudea obtained his cedar
beams from the Amanus range, which he names _Amanum_ and describes as
the "cedar mountains".(1) Doubtless he felled his trees on the eastern
slopes of the mountain. But we may infer from his texts that Sargon
actually reached the coast, and his "Cedar Forest" may have lain
farther to the south, perhaps as far south as the Lebanon. The "Silver
Mountains" can only be identified with the Taurus, where silver mines
were worked in antiquity. The reference to Iarmuti is interesting, for
it is clearly the same place as Iarimuta or Iarimmuta, of which we
find mention in the Tell el-Amarna letters. From the references to this
district in the letters of Rib-Adda, governor of Byblos, we may infer
that it was a level district on the coast, capable of producing a
considerable quantity of grain for export, and that it was under
Egyptian control at the time of Amenophis IV. Hitherto its position has
been conjecturally placed in the Nile Delta, but from Sargon's reference
we must probably seek it on the North Syrian or possibly the Cilician
coast. Perhaps, as Dr. Poebel suggests, it was the plain of Antioch,
along the lower course and at the mouth of the Orontes. But his further
suggestion that the term is used by Sargon for the whole stretch of
country between the sea and the Euphrates is hardly probable. For
the geographical references need not be treated as exhaustive, but as
confined to the more important districts through which the expedition
passed. The district of Ibla which is also mentioned by Naram-Sin and
Gudea, lay probably to the north of Iarmuti, perhaps on the southern
slopes of Taurus. It, too, we may regard as a district of restricted
extent rather than as a general geographical term for the extreme north
of Syria.

(1) Thureau-Dangin, _Les inscriptions de Sumer de d'