Such are the main facts which until recently had been ascertained with regard to the influence of early Babylonian rulers in Elam.  The information is obtained mainly from Babylonian sources, and until recently we have been unable to fill in any details of the picture from the Elamite side.  But this inability has now been removed by M. de Morgan’s discoveries.  From the inscribed bricks, cones, stelae, and statues that have been brought to light in the course of his excavations at Susa, we have recovered the name of a succession of native Elamite rulers.  All those who are to be assigned to this early period, during which Elam owed allegiance to the kings of Babylonia, ascribe to themselves the title of patesi, or viceroy, of Susa, in acknowledgment of their dependence.  Their records consist principally of building inscriptions and foundation memorials, and they commemorate the construction or repair of temples, the cutting of canals, and the like.  They do not, therefore, throw much light upon the problems connected with the external history of Elam during this early period, but we obtain from them a glimpse of the internal administration of the country.  We see a nation without ambition to extend its boundaries, and content, at any rate for the time, to owe allegiance to foreign rulers, while the energies of its native princes are devoted exclusively to the cultivation of the worship of the gods and to the amelioration of the conditions of the life of the people in their charge.

A difficult but interesting problem presents itself for solution at the outset of our inquiry into the history of this people as revealed by their lately recovered inscriptions,—­the problem of their race and origin.  Found at Susa in Elam, and inscribed by princes bearing purely Elamite names, we should expect these votive and memorial texts to be written entirely in the Elamite language.  But such is not the case, for many of them are written in good Semitic Babylonian.  While some are entirely composed in the tongue which we term Elamite or Anzanite, others, so far as their language and style is concerned, might have been written by any early Semitic king ruling in Babylonia.  Why did early princes of Susa make this use of the Babylonian tongue?

At first sight it might seem possible to trace a parallel in the use of the Babylonian language by kings and officials in Egypt and Syria during the fifteenth century B.C., as revealed in the letters from Tell el-Amarna.  But a moment’s thought will show that the cases are not similar.  The Egyptian or Syrian scribe employed Babylonian as a medium for his official foreign correspondence because Babylonian at that period was the lingua franca of the East.  But the object of the early Elamite rulers was totally different.  Their inscribed bricks and memorial stelae were not intended for the eyes of foreigners, but for those of their own descendants.  Built into the structure of a temple, or buried beneath