Another French mission that is carrying out work of the very greatest interest to the student of early Babylonian history is that which is excavating at Susa in Persia, under the direction of M. J. de Morgan, whose work on the prehistoric and early dynastic sites in Egypt has already been described.  M. de Morgan’s first season’s digging at Susa was carried out in the years 1897-8, and the success with which he met from the very first, when cutting trenches in the mound which marks the acropolis of the ancient city, has led him to concentrate his main efforts in this part of the ruins ever since.  Provisional trenches cut in the part of the ruins called “the Royal City,” and in others of the mounds at Susa, indicate that many remains may eventually be found there dating from the period of the Achaemenian Kings of Persia.  But it is in the mound of the acropolis at Susa that M. de Morgan has found monuments of the greatest historical interest and value, not only in the history of ancient Elam, but also in that of the earliest rulers of Chaldaea.

In the diggings carried out during the first season’s work on the site, an obelisk was found inscribed on four sides with a long text of some sixty-nine columns, written in Semitic Babylonian by the orders of Manishtusu, a very early Semitic king of the city of Kish in Babylonia.[* See illustration.] The text records the purchase by the King of Kish of immense tracts of land situated at Kish and in its neighbourhood, and its length is explained by the fact that it enumerates full details of the size and position of each estate, and the numbers and some of the names of the dwellers on the estates who were engaged in their cultivation.  After details have been given of a number of estates situated in the same neighbourhood, a summary is appended referring to the whole neighbourhood, and the fact is recorded that the district dealt with in the preceding catalogue and summary had been duly acquired by purchase by Manishtusu, King of Kish.  The long text upon the obelisk is entirely taken up with details of the purchase of the territory, and therefore its subject has not any great historical value.  Mention is made in it of two personages, one of whom may possibly be identified with a Babylonian ruler whose name is known from other sources.  If the proposed identification t should prove to be correct, it would enable us to assign a more precise date to Manishtusu than has hitherto been possible.  One of the personages in question was a certain Urukagina, the son of Engilsa, patesi of Shirpurla, and it has been suggested that he is the same Urukagina who is known to have occupied the throne of Shirpurla, though this identification would bring Manishtusu down somewhat later than is probable from the general character of his inscriptions.  The other personage mentioned in the text is the son of Manishtusu, named Mesalim, and there is more to be said for the identification of this prince with Mesilim, the early King of Kish, who reigned at a period anterior to that of Eannadu, patesi of Shirpurla.