Did Sargon and Naramsin live at so early a date as that assigned to them by Nabonidos?  The scribes who assisted the kings of the second Babylonian empire in their archaeological researches had perhaps insufficient reasons for placing the date of these kings so far back in the misty past:  should evidence of a serious character A constrain us to attribute to them a later origin, we ought not to be surprised.  In the mean time our best course is to accept the opinion of the Chaldaeans, and to leave Sargon and Naramsin in the century assigned to them by Nabonidos, although from this point they look down as from a high eminence upon all the rest of Chaldaean antiquity.  Excavations have brought to light several personages of a similar date, whether a little earlier, or a little later:  Bingani-sharali, Man-ish-turba, and especially Alusharshid, who lived at Kishu and Nipur, and gained victories over Elam.

[Illustration:  098.jpg Page image:  the arms op the city and kings of Lagash]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a bas-relief from Lagash, now
     in the Louvre

After this glimpse of light on these shadowy kings darkness once more closes in upon us, and conceals from us the majority of the sovereigns who ruled afterwards in Babylon.  The facts and names which can be referred with certainty to the following centuries belong not to Babylon, but to the southern States, Lagash, Uruk, Uru, Nishin, and Larsam.  The national writers had neglected these principalities; we possess neither a resume of their chronicles nor a list of their dynasties, and the inscriptions which speak of their the arms of the city gods and princes are still very rare and kings of Lagash.  Lagash, as far as our evidence goes, was, perhaps, the most illustrious of all these cities.* It occupied the heart of the country, and its site covered both sides of the Shatt-el-Hai; the Tigris separated it on the east from Anshan, the westernmost of the Elamite districts, with which it carried on a perpetual frontier war.

* We are indebted almost exclusively to the researches of M. de Sarzec, and his discoveries at Telloh, for what we know of it.  The results of his excavations, acquired by the French government, are now in the Louvre.  The description of the ruins, the text of the inscriptions, and an account of the statues and other objects found in the course of the work, have been published by Heuzey-Sakzec, Decouvertes en Chaldee.  The name of the ancient town has been read Sirpurla, Zirgulla, etc.

All parts of the country were not equally fertile:  the fruitful and well-cultivated district in the neighbourhood of the Shatt-el-Hai gave place to impoverished lands ending to the eastward, finally in swampy marshes, which with great difficulty furnished means of sustenance to a poor and thinly scattered population of fisher-folk.

[Illustration:  099.jpg FRAGMENT OF BAS-RELIEF BY URNINA, KING OF LAGASH.]