A History of Sumer and Akkad. L. W. King
as to put an end to trouble for the future. As a matter of fact, he only succeeded in shifting the area of disturbance southwards, for the Sumerian inhabitants fled to the Sea-country on the shores of the Persian Gulf; and to their influence, and to the reinforcements they brought with them, may be traced the troubles of Samsu-iluna and his son at the hands of Iluma-ilu, who had already established his independence in this region. Thus Samsu-iluna's policy of repression was scarcely a success; but the archaeologist has reason to be grateful to it. The undisturbed condition of these early cities renders their excavation a comparatively simple matter, and lends a certainty to conclusions drawn from a study of their remains, which is necessarily lacking in the case of more complicated sites.
Another class of Sumerian cities consists of those which were not finally destroyed by the Western Semites, but continued to be important centres of political and social life during the later periods of Babylonian history. Niffer, Warka, Senkera, Mukayyar, and Abû Shahrain all doubtless contain in their lower strata remains of the early Sumerian cities which stood upon their sites; but the greater part of the mounds are made up of ruins dating from a period not earlier than that of the great builders of the Dynasty of Ur. In Nippur, during the American excavations on this site, the history of Ekur, the temple of the god Enlil, was traced back to the period of Shar-Gani-Sharri and Narâm-Sin;[24] and fragments of early vases found scattered in the débris beneath the chambers on the south-east side of the Ziggurat, have thrown valuable light upon an early period of Sumerian history. But the excavation of the pre-Sargonic strata, so far as it has yet been carried, has given negative rather than positive results. The excavations carried out on the other sites referred to were of a purely tentative character, and, although they were made in the early fifties of last century, they still remain the principal source of our knowledge concerning them.
WARKA after Loftus
Some idea of the extent of the mounds of Warka may be gathered from Loftus's plan. The irregular circle of the mounds, marking the later walls of the city, covers an area nearly six miles in circumference, and in view of this fact and of the short time and limited means at his disposal, it is surprising that he should have achieved such good results. His work at Buwârîya, the principal mound of the group (marked A on the plan), resulted in its identification with E-anna, the great temple of the goddess Ninni, or Ishtar, which was enormously added to in the reign of Ur-Engur. Loftus's careful notes and drawings of the facade of another important building, covered by the mound known as Wuswas (B), have been of great value from the architectural point of view, while no less interesting is his description of the "Cone Wall" (at E on the plan), consisting in great part of terra-cotta cones, dipped in red or black colour, and arranged to form various patterns on the surface of a wall composed of mud and chopped straw.[25] But the date of both these constructions is uncertain. The sarcophagus-graves and pot-burials which he came across when cutting his tunnels and trenches are clearly contemporaneous with those at Abû Hatab, and the mound may well contain still earlier remains. The finds made in the neighbouring mounds of Senkera (Larsa), and Tell Sifr, were also promising,[26] and, in spite of his want of success at Tell Medîna, it is possible that a longer examination would have yielded better results.
MUKAYYAR after Taylor
The mounds of Mukayyar, which mark the site of Ur, the centre of the Moon-god's cult in Sumer, were partly excavated by Taylor in 1854 and 1855.[27] In the northern portion of the group he examined the great temple of the Moon-god (marked A on the plan), the earliest portions of its structure which he came across dating from the reigns of Dungi and Ur-Engur. Beneath a building in the neighbourhood of the temple (at B on the plan) he found a pavement consisting of plano-convex bricks, a sure indication that at this point, at least, were buildings of the earliest Sumerian period, while the sarcophagus-burials in other parts of the mound were of the early type. Taylor came across similar evidence of early building at Abû Shahrain,[28] the comparatively small mound which marks the site of the sacred city of Eridu, for at a point in the south-east side of the group he uncovered a building constructed of bricks of the same early character.
At Abû Shahrain indeed we should expect to find traces of one of the earliest and most sacred shrines of the Sumerians, for here dwelt Enki, the mysterious god of the deep. The remains of his later temple now dominates the group, the great temple-tower still rising in two stages (A and B) at the northern end of the mound. Unlike the other cities of Sumer, Eridu was not built on the alluvium. Its situation is in a valley on the edge of the Arabian desert, cut off from Ur and the Euphrates by a low pebbly and sandstone ridge. In fact, its ruins appear to rise abruptly from the bed of an inland sea, which no doubt at one time was connected directly with the Persian Gulf; hence the description of Eridu in cuneiform literature as standing "on the shore of the sea." Another characteristic which distinguishes Eridu from other cities in Babylonia is the extensive use of stone as a building material. The raised platform, on which the city and its temple stood, was faced with a massive retaining wall of sandstone, no doubt obtained from quarries in the neighbourhood, while the stairway (marked D on the plan) leading to the first stage of the temple-tower had been formed of polished marble slabs which were now scattered on the surface of the mound. The marble stairs and the numerous fragments of gold-leaf and gold-headed and copper nails, which Taylor found at the base of the second stage of the temple-tower, attest its magnificence during the latest stage of its history. The name and period of the city now covered by the neighbouring mound of Tell Lahm, which was also examined by Taylor, have not yet been ascertained.
ABÛ SHAHRAIN after Taylor
It will thus be seen that excavations conducted on the sites of the more famous cities of Sumer have not, with the single exception of Nippur, yielded much information concerning the earlier periods of history, while the position of one of them, the city of Isin, is still unknown. Our knowledge of similar sites in Akkad is still more scanty. Up to the present time systematic excavations have been carried out at only two sites in the north, Babylon and Sippar, and these have thrown little light upon the more remote periods of their occupation. The existing ruins of Babylon date from the period of Nebuchadnezzar II., and so thorough was Sennacherib's destruction of the city in 689 B.C., that, after several years of work, Dr. Koldewey concluded that all traces of earlier buildings had been destroyed on that occasion. More recently some remains of earlier strata have been recognized, and contract-tablets have been found which date from the period of the First Dynasty. Moreover, a number of earlier pot-burials have been unearthed, but a careful examination of the greater part of the ruins has added little to our knowledge of this most famous city before the Neo-Babylonian era. The same negative results were obtained, so far as early remains are concerned, from the less exhaustive work on the site of Borsippa. Abû Habba is a far more promising site, and has been the scene of excavations begun by Mr. Rassam in 1881 and 1882, and renewed by Père Scheil for some months in 1894, while excavations were undertaken in the neighbouring mounds of Deir by Dr. Wallis Budge in 1891. These two sites have yielded thousands of tablets of the period of the earliest kings of Babylon, and the site of the famous temple of the Sun-god at Sippar, which Narâm-Sin rebuilt, has been identified, but little is yet accurately known concerning the early city and its suburbs. The great extent of the mounds, and the fact that for nearly thirty years they have been the happy hunting-ground of Arab diggers, would add to the difficulty of any final and exhaustive examination. It is probably in the neighbourhood of Sippar that the site of the city of Agade, or Akkad, will eventually be identified.
Concerning the sites of other cities in Northern Babylonia, considerable uncertainty still exists. The extensive mounds of Tell Ibrâhîm, situated about four hours to the north-east of Hilla, are probably to be identified with