From any building of his predecessors which he razed to the ground, an invader would therefore remove the gate-sockets and blocks of stone for his own use, supposing he contemplated building on the site.  If he left the city in ruins and returned to his own country, some subsequent king, when clearing the ruined site for building operations, might come across the stones, and he would not leave them buried, but would use them for his own construction.  And this is what actually did happen in the case of some of the building materials of one of these early kings, from the lower strata of Nippur.  Certain of the blocks which bore the name of Lugalkigubnidudu had been used again by Sargon, King of Agade, who engraved his own name upon them without obliterating the name of the former king.

It followed that Lugalkigubnidudu belonged to the pre-Sargonic period, and, although the same conclusive evidence was not forthcoming in the case of Lugalzag-gisi, he also without much hesitation was set in this early period, mainly on the strength of the archaic forms of the characters employed in his inscriptions.  In fact, they were held to be so archaic that, not only was he said to have reigned before Sargon of Agade, but he was set in the very earliest period of Chaldaean history, and his empire was supposed to have been contemporaneous with the very earliest rulers of Shirpurla.  The new inscription found by Captain Cros will cause this opinion to be considerably modified.  While it corroborates the view that Lugalzaggisi is to be set in the pre-Sargonic period, it proves that he lived and reigned very shortly before him.  As we have already seen, he was the contemporary of Urukagina, who belongs to the middle period of the history of Shirpurla.  Lugalzaggisi’s capture and sack of the city of Shirpurla was only one of a number of conquests which he achieved.  His father Ukush had been merely patesi of the city of Gish-khu, but he himself was not content with the restricted sphere of authority which such a position implied, and he eventually succeeded in enforcing his authority over the greater part of Babylonia.  From the fact that he styles himself King of Erech, we may conclude that he removed his capital from Ukush to that city, after having probably secured its submission by force of arms.  In fact, his title of “king of the world” can only have been won as the result of many victories, and Captain Cros’s tablet gives us a glimpse of the methods by which he managed to secure himself against the competition of any rival.  The capture of Shirpurla must have been one of his earliest achievements, for its proximity to Gish-khu rendered its reduction a necessary prelude to any more extensive plan of conquest.  But the kingdom which Lugalzaggisi founded cannot have endured long.

Under Sargon of Agade, the Semites gained the upper hand in Babylonia, and Erech, Grishkhu, and Shirpurla, as well as the other ancient cities in the land, fell in turn under his domination and formed part of the extensive empire which he ruled.