the spoil captured in the north. They were fashioned of white calcite stalagmite, dark brown sandstone, and dark brown tufa or igneous rock. In the land of Sumer, where stone was a rare commodity, these were highly prized objects, and they formed a fitting thank-offering for presentation at Enlil's shrine. We have already referred to the question as to the nationality of the still earlier kings of Kish, Mesilim and his successors, some of whom we know to have been contemporary with the earlier rulers of Lagash. At that period the northern city had already succeeded in imposing its authority upon some of the city-states of Sumer, and later on both Kish and Opis are proved to have been engaged in active warfare in the south. Too little evidence is available for determining definitely whether these earlier kings and patesis were of Sumerian or Semitic stock, but there is much to be said in favour of regarding the later conflicts between the north and south as merely a continuation of the earlier struggle. With Enbi-Ishtar we meet at any rate with a name that is genuinely Semitic,[18] and we shall presently see reasons for believing that other Semitic kings of Kish, whose inscriptions and monuments have been recovered, should be placed in the same period. According to this view, as we have already pointed out,[19] the first Semitic immigration into Northern Babylonia, or Akkad, is not to be synchronized with the empire of Akkad, which was founded by Shar-Gani-sharri and consolidated by Narâm-Sin. In spite of the absence of Semitic idiom from the few short votive inscriptions of the earlier kings of Kish that have as yet been found, the possibility must not be disregarded that they too date from a period of Semitic and not of Sumerian domination in the north. At Sippar also we have evidence of very early Semitic occupation.