Whether the fall of Libit-Ishtar may be traced to such a cause or not, we now know that it was during the reigns of Ur-Ninib and Gungunum, at Nîsin and at Larsa respectively, that a West-Semitic Dynasty was established at Babylon. Northern Babylonia now fell under the political control of the invaders, and it is significant of the new direction of their advance that the only conflict connected in later tradition with the name of Sumu-abum, the founder of Babylon's independent line of rulers, was not with either of the dominant cities in Sumer, but with Assyria in the far north. On a late chronicle it is recorded that Ilu-shûma, King of Assyria, marched against Su-abu, or Sumu-abum,[37] and though the result of the encounter is not related, we may assume that his motive in making the attack was to check encroachments of the invaders towards the north and drive them southward into Babylonia. Ilu-shûma's own name is purely Semitic, and since the Amorite god Dagan enters into the composition of a name borne by more than one early Assyrian ruler, we may assume that Assyria received her Semitic population at about this period as another offshoot of the Amorite migration. [Illustration: FIG. 34. HEAD OF AN ARCHAIC LIMESTONE FIGURE FROM ASHUR. The primitive character of the sculpture is apparent, and the inlaying of the eyes with shell is characteristic of early work in Babylonia. The figure is possibly that of a female. (After _Mitt. der Deutsch. Orient-Gesellschaft,_ No. 54, p. 9.)] This assumption does not rest entirely on evidence supplied by the royal names, but finds indirect confirmation in recent archæological research. The excavations on the site of Ashur, the earliest Assyrian capital, tend to show that the first settlements in that country, of which we have recovered traces, were made by a people closely akin to the Sumerians of Southern Babylonia.[38] It was in the course of work upon a temple dedicated to Ishtar, the national goddess of Assyria, that remains were found of very early periods of occupation. Below the foundation of the later building a still older temple was found, also dedicated to that goddess. Incidentally this building has an interest of its own, for it proved to be the earliest temple yet discovered in Assyria, dating, as it probably does, from the close of the third millennium B.C. Still deeper excavation, below the level of this primitive Assyrian shrine, revealed a stratum in which were several examples of rude sculpture, apparently representing, not Semites, but the early non-Semitic inhabitants of Southern Babylonia.