kingdom. The position of Ur on the western bank of the Euphrates
exposed it to the attacks of the Semitic tribes of northern Arabia, and
thus accustomed its inhabitants to the use of arms, while at the same
time its proximity to Eridu made it a centre of trade. In Abrahamic days
it had long been a place of resort and settlement by Arabian and
Canaanite merchants.

How long the supremacy of Ur lasted we do not know. Nor do we know
whether it preceded or was followed by the supremacy of Lagas. The kings
of Lagas had succeeded in overcoming their hereditary enemies to the
north. The so-called "Stela of the Vultures," now in the Louvre,
commemorates the overthrow of the forces of the land of Upe or Opis, and
depicts the bodies of the slain as they lie on the battlefield devoured
by the birds of prey. E-ana-gin, the king of Lagas who erected it, never
rested until he had subjected the rest of southern Babylonia to his
sway. The whole of "Sumer" was subdued, and the memory of a time when a
king of Kis, Mesa by name, had subjected Lagas to his rule, was finally
wiped out.

High-priests now took the place of kings in Kis and the country of Opis.
But a time came when the same change occurred also at Lagas. doubtless
in consequence of its conquest by some superior power. One of the
monuments discovered at Tello, the ancient Lagas, describes the
victories of the "high-priest" Entemena over the ancestral foe, and the
appointment of a certain Ili as "high-priest" of the land of Opis. From
henceforward Kis and Opis disappear from history.

A new power had meanwhile appeared on the scene. While the Sumerian
princes were engaged in mutual war, the Semites were occupying northern
Babylonia, and establishing their power in the city of Agade or Akkad,
not far from Sippara. Here, in B.C. 3800, arose the empire of
Sargani-sar-ali, better known to posterity as "Sargon" of Akkad. He
became the hero of the Semitic race in Babylonia. Legends told how he
had been hidden by his royal mother in an ark of bulrushes daubed with
pitch, and intrusted to the waters of the Euphrates, how he had been
found and adopted as a son by Akki the irrigator, and how the goddess
Istar had loved him and restored him to his kingly estate. At all
events, the career of Sargon was a career of victories. Babylonia was
united under his rule, Elam was subjugated, and three campaigns sufficed
to make "the land of the Amorites," Syria and Canaan, obedient to his
sway. He