nouncedly Semitic city of Opis, which was situated "farthest north"
and on the western bank of the river Tigris. A century elapsed ere
Kish again threw off the oppressor's yoke and renewed the strength of
its youth.

The city of Kish was one of the many ancient centres of goddess
worship. The Great Mother appears to have been the Sumerian Bau, whose
chief seat was at Lagash. If tradition is to be relied upon, Kish owed
its existence to that notable lady, Queen Azag-Bau. Although floating
legends gathered round her memory as they have often gathered round
the memories of famous men, like Sargon of Akkad, Alexander the Great,
and Theodoric the Goth, who became Emperor of Rome, it is probable
that the queen was a prominent historical personage. She was reputed
to have been of humble origin, and to have first achieved popularity
and influence as the keeper of a wine shop. Although no reference
survives to indicate that she was believed to be of miraculous birth,
the Chronicle of Kish gravely credits her with a prolonged and
apparently prosperous reign of a hundred years. Her son, who succeeded
her, sat on the throne for a quarter of a century. These calculations
are certainly remarkable. If the Queen Azag-Bau founded Kish when she
was only twenty, and gave birth to the future ruler in her fiftieth
year, he must have been an elderly gentleman of seventy when he began
to reign. When it is found, further, that the dynasty in which mother
and son flourished was supposed to have lasted for 586 years, divided
between eight rulers, one of whom reigned for only three years, two
for six, and two for eleven, it becomes evident that the historian of
Kish cannot be absolutely relied upon in detail. It seems evident that
the memory of this lady of forceful character, who flourished about
thirteen hundred years before the rise of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt,
has overshadowed the doubtful annals of ancient Kish at a period when
Sumerian and Semite were striving in the various states to achieve
political ascendancy.

Meanwhile the purely Sumerian city of Lagash had similarly grown
powerful and aggressive. For a time it acknowledged the suzerainty of
Kish, but ultimately it threw off the oppressor's yoke and asserted
its independence. The cumulative efforts of a succession of energetic
rulers elevated Lagash to the position of a metropolis in Ancient
Babylonia.

The goddess Bau, "the mother of Lagash", was worshipped in conjunction
with o