But, while Ur-Ninâ's policy appears to have been mainly of a domestic character, he did not fail to maintain relations with other cities in the sphere of religious observance. That he should have continued in active communication with Nippur, as the religious centre of the whole of Babylonia, is what we might infer from the practice of the period, and we may probably trace to this fact his dedication to Enlil of one of the canals which was cut during his reign. A more striking instance of the deference paid by Ur-Ninâ to the god of another city may be seen in his relations to Enki, the Sumerian prototype of the god Ea. When Ur-Ninâ planned the rebuilding of the temple E-ninnû, he appears to have taken precautions to ensure the success of his scheme by making a direct appeal to Enki, the city-god of Eridu. On a diorite plaque that has been found at Tello[32] he records the delivery of his prayer to Enki, that in his character of Chief Diviner he should use his pure reed, the wand of his divination, to render the work good and should pronounce a favourable oracle. The temple of Enki in the city of Eridu, near the shore of the Persian Gulf, was one of the earliest and most sacred of Sumerian shrines, and we may perhaps picture Ur-Ninâ as journeying thither from Lagash, in order to carry his petition in person into the presence of its mysterious god. Of the deities of Lagash to whose service Ur-Ninâ appears especially to have devoted himself, the goddess Ninâ, whose name he bore within his own, was one of the most favoured. For one of the chief claims to distinction that he puts forward is that he built her temple at Lagash; and although, unlike the later great builder Gudea, he gives in his inscriptions few details of his work, we may conclude that he lavished his resources upon it. He also boasts that he made a statue of Ninâ, which he no doubt set up within her temple, and one of his canals he dedicated to her. Her daughter Ninmar was not neglected, for he records that he built her temple also, and he erected a temple for Gatumdug, Ninâ's intercessor, and fashioned a statue of her. Another group of Ur-Ninâ's buildings was connected with the worship of Ningirsu, the city-god of Lagash, whose claims a ruler, so devoted to the interests of his own city as Ur-Ninâ, would naturally not have ignored.