But the recognition of Urukagina's true place in the line of the rulers of Lagash has rendered the theory untenable; and the suggested identification of Mesalim, the son of Manishtusu, with Mesilim, the early king of Kish, so far from giving support to the other proposal, is quite incompatible with it. In fact, both the proposed identifications cannot be right, and it remains to be seen whether either of them can be accepted. Of the two, the proposal to identify Mesalim with Lugal-shag-engur's contemporary may be dismissed at once, since both the internal and the external evidence furnished by the obelisk are against assigning Manishtusu's reign to so early a period. Although these objections do not apply so strongly to the other proposal, its acceptance is negatived on other grounds. From Urukagina's own inscriptions we have seen reason to believe that he did not obtain the throne by right of succession, but by force; he never refers to his own father, and the antagonism to the patesiate, which characterizes his texts, suggests that his reign marks a complete break in the succession.[36] We may therefore conclude that Urukagina of the obelisk is a different personage to Urukagina, the king, and the former's father, Engilsa, would in that case have ruled as a patesi of Lagash at a period subsequent to the sack of that city by Lugal-zaggisi.[37] We are therefore reduced to more general considerations in attempting to fix the date of Manishtusu. That his reign is to be assigned to about the same period as that of Urumush there can be little doubt, for, in contrast to those of the earlier kings of Kish, the inscriptions of both are written in Semitic Babylonian, and the forms of the characters they employ are very similar. Evidence has already been cited which proves that Urumush was anterior to Shar-Gani-sharri and Narâm-Sin. In Manishtusu, therefore, we have another Semitic king under whom the city of Kish enjoyed the hegemony in Babylonia, which afterwards passed to Akkad. That the kingdom of Kish, under these two rulers, was not separated by a long interval from the empire of Akkad would seem to follow from the references to the latter city on Manishtusu's obelisk.[38] We have already noted that the forty-nine overseers, who were entrusted with the administration of the lands purchased by the king, are described in the text as citizens of Akkad, and that among their number are members of powerful ruling families from other cities of Babylonia. It would thus appear that Akkad was already of sufficient importance to attract princes from such distant cities as Umma and Lagash. This fact, indeed, has been employed as an argument in favour of the view that Manishtusu and Urumush must have ruled after, and not before, Shar-Gani-sharri and Narâm-Sin,[39] under whom Akkad was made the capital of the whole country. Although this inference does not necessarily follow, and, in point of fact, is