interest and value, not only in the history
of ancient Elam, but also in that of the earliest rulers of Chaldaea.

In the diggings carried out during the first season's work on the site,
an obelisk was found inscribed on four sides with a long text of some
sixty-nine columns, written in Semitic Babylonian by the orders
of Manishtusu, a very early Semitic king of the city of Kish in
Babylonia.[* See illustration.] The text records the purchase by the
King of Kish of immense tracts of land situated at Kish and in
its neighbourhood, and its length is explained by the fact that it
enumerates full details of the size and position of each estate, and the
numbers and some of the names of the dwellers on the estates who were
engaged in their cultivation. After details have been given of a number
of estates situated in the same neighbourhood, a summary is appended
referring to the whole neighbourhood, and the fact is recorded that the
district dealt with in the preceding catalogue and summary had been duly
acquired by purchase by Manishtusu, King of Kish. The long text upon
the obelisk is entirely taken up with details of the purchase of the
territory, and therefore its subject has not any great historical value.
Mention is made in it of two personages, one of whom may possibly
be identified with a Babylonian ruler whose name is known from other
sources. If the proposed identification t should prove to be correct,
it would enable us to assign a more precise date to Manishtusu than has
hitherto been possible. One of the personages in question was a certain
Urukagina, the son of Engilsa, patesi of Shirpurla, and it has been
suggested that he is the same Urukagina who is known to have occupied
the throne of Shirpurla, though this identification would bring
Manishtusu down somewhat later than is probable from the general
character of his inscriptions. The other personage mentioned in the text
is the son of Manishtusu, named Mesalim, and there is more to be said
for the identification of this prince with Mesilim, the early King of
Kish, who reigned at a period anterior to that of Eannadu, patesi of
Shirpurla.

The mere fact of so large and important an obelisk, inscribed with a
Semitic text by an early Babylonian king, being found at Susa was
an indication that other monuments of even greater interest might be
forthcoming from the same spot; and this impression was intensified when
a stele of victory was found bearing an inscriptio