Lower still they found a platform which was laid in the time of Ur-Gur, who is supposed to have lived long before the birth of Abraham, and still farther down they found the platforms of Sargon and Narim Sin.
This was evidently an earlier Sargon than the one mentioned in Is. xx:t, and who captured Jerusalem and Ashdod 711 years before Christ. He was called Sargon the Usurper, and he came to the throne about 722 B. C. But this earlier king was a Sargon nevertheless, for his name is stamped in the bricks. Professor Hilprecht thinks he has found traces of fifteen kings who lived before Sargon.
At last below all the others, there lie the ruins of ancient Calneh, and there are fragments of arches, sacrificial urns and altars which were built in the city of Nimrod.
Among the broken relics of pre-Sargonic times are those which revealed the existence of an old conqueror by the name of Lugalzaggisi. The fragments containing this inscription were parts of vases which had been widely scattered, but when the smallest pieces were at last in place it proved to be the longest record which had been found pertaining to this early period.
This inscription was reconstructed by Dr. Hil precht from eighty-eight fragments of more than fifty vases. These in turn had to be chosen at random from a great heap of similar fragments, so it was nearly impossible to tell which of them might belong to the other.
This old document tells a story to the effect that the first king of whom there is any record was En-shagshur-ana, the lord of Kengi. Kengi was the early name for Babylonia. The term sig. nifies "the land of reeds and canals," indicating that the general character of the country was much the same then as now. The capital of this early kingdom is not fully known, but it is supposed to have been the city of Erech mentioned in Genesis (5) Early Idolatry. Many of the people had already fallen away from the worship of the true God and the masses in Kengi at that time appear to have been the followers of Bel or Baal, who so long held dominion over the idolatrous portion of the country. This was the Babylonian Bel or Baal in connection with whose worship un mentionable horrors were perpetrated. It was the same deity who, in connection with Ash toreth, his female counterpart. and several others, were constantly denounced by Moses and the prophets. A temple, which was devoted to Bel,
was found in Calneh.
Nearly every city was then a separate king dom, and Calneh had a municipal neighbor called Kish, but the people of Calneh or Nipper claimed that this rival city was teeming with wickedness. It had once happened that the ruler of Kish en croached so far upon Babylonia that he took pos session of Calneh, for there is a record showing that he presented a large stone vase to the god Bel in the temple there.
But vase fragments have been found, showing that En-shagshur-ana, king of Calneh, marched with his army against Kish and defeated this ruler. The spoils of this expedition were pre sented to the god Bel. Afterward another king of Babylonia marched against Kish and suc ceeded in capturing its king, En Bildar, and car rying home also "his statue, his shining silver, the utensils, his property," and placing them in the temple of Bel.
This success, however, was followed by other reverses. A new king of Kish is found to have offered several inscribed vases in the temple of Calneh "to Inlil, lord of lands, and to Ninlil, mistress of heaven and earth, consort to Inlil." (6) Vicissitudes of Babylonia. It is evident from the inscriptions that Babylonia was continu ally being encroached upon by foreign hordes who came from the north. The Sumerians, or na tives of Shinar, were a cultured people in some and Babylonia was their ancestral home, but the invaders were Semites, and they were apparently a younger and a more vigorous race.
Lugalzaggisi was the son of Ukush, who was a Semite, as even his name shows. He was the patesi, or priest-king of Gish-ban, which is the Haran of Gen. xii :4. His son Lugalzaggisi was the great conqueror of his times, and his vic torious armies swept the country from the Medi terranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. Some of our modern critics have claimed that the four East ern kings who marched against Palestine must have been mythical, because an invasion of such proportions would have been impossible in the time of Abraham. (See ARIOCH, CHEDARLAOMER, A MRAPHEL, etc.) But Lugalzaggisi, who lived long before Abraham, claims that his conquests reached to the Mediterranean Sea. And Sargon I likewise left inscriptions asserting that he car ried on four campaigns to the Mediterranean, and also that he subdued the Amorites.