Sagaraktyas, of the first dynasty, had been
destroyed, and its foundations were traditionally said to inclose the
sacred tablets of Xisouthros, who has been identified with the Noah of the
Bible. Nabounid recounts the unsuccessful efforts that had been made before
his time to recover possession of the precious deposit. Two kings of
Babylon, Kourigalzou and Nebuchadnezzar, and one king of Assyria,
Esarhaddon, had made the attempt and failed. One of the three had
commemorated his failure in an inscription to the following effect: "I have
searched for the angle stone of the temple of Ulbar but I have not found
it." Finally Nabounid took up the quest. After one check caused by an
inundation he renewed the search with ardour; he employed his army upon it,
and at last, after digging to a great depth, he came to the angle-stone:
"Thus," he says, "have I recovered the name and date of Sagaraktyas."

[Illustration: FIG. 146.--Bronze statuette. 8-1/4 inches high. Louvre.]

In the ruins of the ancient royal city recovered by M. de Sarzec at Tello
the traces of similar precautions have everywhere been found. In the
middle of the great mass of ruins whose plan we are still awaiting, "I
found," says M. de Sarzec, "at a depth of hardly 30 centimetres (one foot
English) below the original level of the soil four cubical masses
consisting of large bricks cemented with bitumen, and measuring about 80
centimetres across each face. In the centre of each cube there was a cavity
27 centimetres long by 12 wide and 35 deep. In each case this hollow
contained a small bronze statuette packed, as it were, in an impalpable
dust. In one cavity the statuette was that of a kneeling man (Fig. 146), in
another of a standing woman (Fig. 147), in another of a bull (Fig. 148). At
the feet of each statue there were two stone tablets, set in most cases in
the bitumen with which the cavity was lined. One of these tablets was
black, the other white. It was upon the black as a rule that a cuneiform
inscription similar, or nearly so, to the inscriptions on the statuettes
was found."[402]

Abridgments of the same commemorative and devotional form of words are
found upon those cones of terra-cotta that were discovered in such numbers
among the foundations and in the interstices of the structure (Fig.
149).[403]

[Illustration: FIG. 147.--Bronze statuette. 8-1/4 inches high. Louvre.]

The Mesopotamian builder was not satisfied with relying upon talismans
built