no reference survives to indicate that she was believed to be of miraculous birth, the Chronicle of Kish gravely credits her with a prolonged and apparently prosperous reign of a hundred years.  Her son, who succeeded her, sat on the throne for a quarter of a century.  These calculations are certainly remarkable.  If the Queen Azag-Bau founded Kish when she was only twenty, and gave birth to the future ruler in her fiftieth year, he must have been an elderly gentleman of seventy when he began to reign.  When it is found, further, that the dynasty in which mother and son flourished was supposed to have lasted for 586 years, divided between eight rulers, one of whom reigned for only three years, two for six, and two for eleven, it becomes evident that the historian of Kish cannot be absolutely relied upon in detail.  It seems evident that the memory of this lady of forceful character, who flourished about thirteen hundred years before the rise of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, has overshadowed the doubtful annals of ancient Kish at a period when Sumerian and Semite were striving in the various states to achieve political ascendancy.

Meanwhile the purely Sumerian city of Lagash had similarly grown powerful and aggressive.  For a time it acknowledged the suzerainty of Kish, but ultimately it threw off the oppressor’s yoke and asserted its independence.  The cumulative efforts of a succession of energetic rulers elevated Lagash to the position of a metropolis in Ancient Babylonia.

The goddess Bau, “the mother of Lagash”, was worshipped in conjunction with other deities, including the god Nin-Girsu, an agricultural deity, and therefore a deity of war, who had solar attributes.  One of the titles of Nin-Girsu was En-Mersi, which, according to Assyrian evidence, was another name of Tammuz, the spring god who slew the storm and winter demons, and made the land fertile so that man might have food.  Nin-Girsu was, it would seem, a developed form of Tammuz, like the Scandinavian Frey, god of harvest, or Heimdal, the celestial warrior.  Bau was one of the several goddesses whose attributes were absorbed by the Semitic Ishtar.  She was a “Great Mother”, a creatrix, the source of all human and bestial life, and, of course, a harvest goddess.  She was identified with Gula, “the great one”, who cured diseases and prolonged life.  Evidently the religion of Lagash was based on the popular worship of the “Queen of Heaven”, and her son, the dying god who became “husband of his mother”.

The first great and outstanding ruler of Lagash was Ur-Nina, who appears to have owed his power to the successful military operations of his predecessors.  It is uncertain whether or not he himself engaged in any great war.  His records are silent in that connection, but, judging from what we know of him, it may be taken for granted that he was able and fully prepared to give a good account of himself in battle.  He certainly took steps to make secure his position,