But it is in the reforms themselves, which Urukagina introduced, that we find the most striking evidence of the complete severance he made from the cherished traditions of his predecessors. In a series of very striking texts, of which we now possess three versions,[39] he has left us a record of the changes he introduced in the internal administration of the country. In the condition in which at least two of these versions have come down to us a literary artifice is employed, which enhances and emphasizes in a remarkable degree the drastic character of his reforms. Before enumerating these, the writer provides a striking contrast by describing the condition of the country which preceded their introduction by the king. We are thus confronted with two companion pictures, the main features of which correspond, while their underlying characters are completely changed. In the two sections of each text the general phraseology is much the same, the difference consisting in the fact that, while the first describes the oppression and injustice which had existed in the state of Lagash "since distant days, from the beginning," the second section enumerates the reforms by which Urukagina claimed that he had ameliorated the people's lot. Though some of the references they contain are still obscure, the texts afford us a welcome glimpse of the economic conditions that prevailed in Sumer. In contrast to other royal inscriptions found at Tello, they give us information concerning the daily life and occupations of the people; and at the same time they reveal beneath the official decorum of a Sumerian court an amount of oppression and misery, the existence of which would not be suspected from the pious foundation-inscriptions and votive texts of the period.