[88] When passing by this route into Persia from Turkey, in the spring of 1904, I made a careful study of all the sculptured panels on both sides of the Hulvan. The second largest panel is that of this early Semitic king; on the ledge below the sculpture are traces of an inscription, of which sufficient is preserved to prove that it is written in Semitic Babylonian. The sculptured panel at Sheikh-Khân, with its fragmentary Semitic inscription (De Morgan, op. city pl. x.), is a very much ruder production, and is probably of a considerably later date. [89] See the panel on the cover of this volume; and cf. p. 217 f. CHAPTER IX THE LATER RULERS OF LAGASH We have seen that the Dynasty of Akkad marks the culminating point attained by the races of Sumer and Akkad during the earlier periods of their history. It is true that the kings of this period owed much to their immediate predecessors, but they added to and improved their inheritance. Through long centuries of slow development the village community had gradually been transformed into the city-state, and this institution had flourished and had in its turn decayed before the centralizing influence of the kingdoms of Sumer and Kish. It was on the ruins of the latter monarchy that Shar-Gani-sharri founded his empire, which differed from that of Kish in its extent, rather than in the principles of its formation. A similarly close connection can be traced between the cultural remains of the successive periods with which we have hitherto been dealing. The rude, though vigorous, artistic efforts of the earlier Sumerians furnished the models upon which the immigrant Semites of Northern Babylonia improved. In the sculpture of Kish and upon cylinder-seals of that period we see the transition between the two styles, when the aim at a naturalistic treatment sometimes produced awkward and grotesque results. The full attainment of this aim under the patronage of the Akkadian kings gives their epoch an interest and an importance, which, from their empire alone, it would not perhaps have enjoyed.