Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a stone in the Louvre.

The capital, built on the left bank of the river, stretched out to the north-east and south-west a distance of some five miles.  It was not so much a city as an agglomeration of large villages, each grouped around a temple or palace—­Uruazagga, Gishgalla, G-irsu, Nina, and Lagash, which latter imposed its name upon the whole.  A branch of the river Shatt-el-Hai protected it on the south, and supplied the village of Nina with water; no trace of an inclosing wall has been found, and the temples and palaces seem to have served as refuges in case of attack.  It had as its arms, or totem, a double-headed eagle standing on a lion passant, or on two demi-lions placed back to back.  Its chief god was called Ningirsu, that is, the lord of Girsu, where his temple stood:  his companion Bau, and his associates Ninagal, Innanna and Ninsia, were the deities of the other divisions of the city.  The princes were first called kings, but afterwards vicegerents—­patesi—­when they came under the suzerainty of a more powerful king, the King of Uruk or of Babylon.

The earlier history of this remarkable town is made up of the scanty memoirs of its rulers, together with those of the princes of Gishban—­“the land of the Bow,” of which Ishin seems to have been the principal town.  A very ancient document states, that, at the instigation of Inlil, the god of Nipur, the local deities, Ningirsu and Kirsig, set up a boundary between the two cities.  In the course of time, Meshilim, a king of Kishu, which, before the rise of Agade, was the chief town in those parts, extended his dominion over Lagash and erected his stele at its border; Ush, vicegerent of Gishban, however, removed it, and had to suffer defeat before he would recognize the new order of things.  After the lapse of some years, of which we possess no records, we find the mention of a certain Urukagina, who assumes the title of king:  he restored or enlarged several temples, and dug the canal which supplied the town of Nina with water.  A few generations later we find the ruling authority in the hands of a certain Urnina, whose father Ninigaldun and grandfather Gurshar received no titles—­a fact which proves that they could not have been reigning sovereigns.  Urnina appears to have been of a peaceful and devout disposition, as the inscriptions contain frequent references to the edifices he had erected in honour of the gods, the sacred objects he had dedicated to them, and the timber for building purposes which he had brought from Magan, but there is no mention in them of any war.  His son Akurgal was also a builder of temples, but his grandson Idingiranagin, who succeeded Akurgal, was a warlike and combative prince.

[Illustration:  101.jpg IDINGIRANAGIN HOLDING THE TOTEM OF LAGASH.]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the bas-relief F2 in the
     Louvre.

It seems probable that, about that time, the kingdom of Gishban had become a really powerful state.  It had triumphed not only over Babylonia proper, but over Kish, Uru, Uruk, and Larsam, while one of its sovereigns had actually established his rule in some parts of Northern Syria.  Idingiranagin vanquished the troops of Gishban, and there is now in the Louvre a trophy which he dedicated in the temple of Ninglrsu on his return from the campaign.