The mere fact of so large and important an obelisk, inscribed with a Semitic text by an early Babylonian king, being found at Susa was an indication that other monuments of even greater interest might be forthcoming from the same spot; and this impression was intensified when a stele of victory was found bearing an inscription of Naram-Sin, the early Semitic King of Agade, who reigned about 3750 B.C.  One face of this stele is sculptured with a representation of the king conquering his enemies in a mountainous country. [* See illustration.] The king himself wears a helmet adorned with the horns of a bull, and he carries his battle-axe and his bow and an arrow.  He is nearly at the summit of a high mountain, and up its steep sides, along paths through the trees which clothe the mountain, climb his allies and warriors bearing standards and weapons.  The king’s enemies are represented suing for mercy as they turn to fly before him.  One grasps a broken spear, while another, crouching before the king, has been smitten in the throat by an arrow from the king’s bow.  On the plain surface of the stele above the king’s head may be seen traces of an inscription of Naram-Sin engraved in three columns in the archaic characters of his period.  From the few signs of the text that remain, we gather that Naram-Sin had conducted a campaign with the assistance of certain allied princes, including the Princes of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi, and it is not improbable that they are to be identified with the warriors represented on the stele as climbing the mountain behind Naram-Sin.

In reference to this most interesting stele of Naram-Sin we may here mention another inscription of this king, found quite recently at Susa and published only this year, which throws additional light on Naram-Sin’s allies and on the empire which he and his father Sargon founded.  The new inscription was engraved on the base of a diorite statue, which had been broken to pieces so that only the base with a portion of the text remained.  From this inscription we learn that Naram-Sin was the head of a confederation of nine chief allies, or vassal princes, and waged war on his enemies with their assistance.  Among these nine allies of course the Princes of Sidur, Saluni, and Lulubi are to be included.  The new text further records that Naram-Sin made an expedition against Magan (the Sinaitic peninsula), and defeated Manium, the lord of that region, and that he cut blocks of stone in the mountains there and transported them to his city of Agade, where from one of them he made the statue on the base of which the text was inscribed.  It was already known from the so-called “Omens of Sargon and Naram-Sin” (a text inscribed on a clay tablet from Ashur-bani-pal’s library at Nineveh which associates the deeds of these two early rulers with certain augural phenomena) that Naram-Sin had made an expedition to Sinai in the course of his reign and had conquered the king of the country.  The new text gives contemporary confirmation of this assertion and furnishes us with additional information with regard to the name of the conquered ruler of Sinai and other details of the campaign.