The seal-cylinders were engraved, sometimes with figures of men and gods, sometimes with symbols only.  Very frequently lines of cuneiform writing were added, and a common formula gave the name of the owner of the seal, along with those of his father and of the deity whom he worshipped.  One of the seal-cylinders found in Cyprus describes the owner as an adorer of “the god Naram-Sin.”  It is true that its workmanship shows it to belong to a much later date than the age of Naram-Sin himself, but the legend equally shows that the name of the conqueror of Magan was still remembered in the West.  Another cylinder discovered in the Lebanon mentions “the gods of the Amorite,” while a third from the same locality bears the inscription:  “Multal-ili, the son of Ili-isme-anni, the worshipper of the god Nin-si-zida.”  The name of the god signified in the old pre-Semitic language of Chaldaea “the lord of the upright horn,” while it is worth notice that the names of the owner and his father are compounded simply with the word ili or el, “god,” not with the name of any special divinity.  Multal-ili means “Provident is God,” Ili-isme-anni, “O my God, hear me!”

Many centuries have to elapse before the monuments of Babylonia again throw light on the history of Canaan.  Somewhere about B.C. 2700, a high-priest was ruling in a city of Southern Babylonia, under the suzerainty of Dungi, the king of Ur.  The high-priest’s name was Gudea, and his city (now called Tel-loh by the Arabs) was known as Lagas.  The excavations made here by M. de Sarzec have brought to light temples and palaces, collections of clay books and carved stone statues, which go back to the early days of Babylonian history.  The larger and better part of the monuments belong to Gudea, who seems to have spent most of his life in building and restoring the sanctuaries of the gods.  Diorite statues of the prince are now in the Louvre, and inscriptions upon them state that the stone out of which they were made was brought from the land of Magan.  On the lap of one of them is a plan of the royal palace, with the scale of measurement marked on the edge of a sort of drawing-board.  Prof.  Petrie has shown that the unit of measurement represented in it is the cubit of the pyramid-builders of Egypt.

The diorite of Sinai was not the only material which was imported into Babylonia for the buildings of Gudea.  Beams of cedar and box were brought from Mount Amanus at the head of the Gulf of Antioch, blocks of stone were floated down the Euphrates from Barsip near Carchemish, gold-dust came from Melukhkha, the “salt” desert to the east of Egypt which the Old Testament calls Havilah; copper was conveyed from the north of Arabia, limestone from the Lebanon ("the mountains of Tidanum"), and another kind of stone from Subsalla in the mountains of the Amorite land.  Before beams of wood and blocks of stone could thus be brought from the distant West, it was necessary that trade between Babylonia and the countries of the Mediterranean should have long been organized, that the roads throughout Western Asia should have been good and numerous, and that Babylonian influence should have been extended far and wide.  The conquests of Sargon and Naram-Sin had borne fruit in the commerce that had followed upon them.