It is interesting to note that Kish and the king of Kish represented the most dreaded enemies of Lagash, at least during a portion of the reign of Eannatum. For on a mortar of black basalt which is preserved in the British Museum,[34] Eannatum, after recording that he has dedicated it to Ninâ, "the Lady of the Holy Mountain," prays that no man may damage it or carry it away; and he then adds the petition, "May the King of Kish not seize it!" This ejaculation is eloquent of the dread which the northern kingdom inspired in the cities of the south, and we may see in it evidence of many a raid during which the temples of Lagash had been despoiled of their treasures. We may well ascribe the dedication of the altar and the cutting of the inscription to the early part of Eannatum's reign; at any rate, to a period before the power of Kish was broken in the south; and, if we are right in this supposition, the mortar may perhaps serve to date another group of Eannatum's campaigns. For in a passage on the second side of this monument it appears to be recorded that he had conquered the cities of Erech and Ur. The passage follows the invocations set forth by Eannatum upon the other side, in the course of which he prays that no one shall remove the mortar, or cast it into the fire, or damage it in any way; and it might be argued that the lines were an addition made to the original text of dedication at a considerably later period. In that case the passage would afford no proof that the conquest of Ur and Erech preceded that of Kish. But both sides of the monument have the appearance of having been engraved by the same hand, and we are probably justified in assuming that the whole of the inscription was placed upon the vessel at the time it was made. We may thus provisionally place the conquest of Ur and Erech before that of Kish. Further, in his foundation-inscriptions, Eannatum groups his conquest of Ur and Erech with that of Ki-babbar, "the place of the Sun-god," a term which may with considerable probability be identified with Larsa, the centre of the cult of the Sun-god in Southern Babylonia. It would thus appear that Eannatum conquered these cities, all situated in the extreme south of Babylonia at about the same period, and probably in the early part of his reign.