portions that are best preserved,[5] while under the south-east corner of the palace was a wall of the rather earlier ruler Ur-Bau.[6] [Illustration: TELLO after de Sarzec] In the lower strata no other earlier remains were brought to light, and it is possible that the site of the temple was changed or enlarged at this period, and that in earlier times it stood nearer the mound K, where the oldest buildings in Tello have been found. Here was a storehouse of Ur-Ninâ,[7] a very early patesi of the city and the founder of its most powerful dynasty, and in its immediate neighbourhood were recovered the most important monuments and inscriptions of the earlier period. Beneath Ur-Ninâ's storehouse was a still earlier building,[8] and at the same deep level above the virgin soil were found some of the earliest examples of Sumerian sculpture that have yet been recovered. In the mound V, christened the "Tell of the Tablets," were large collections of temple-documents and tablets of accounts, the majority of them dating from the period of the Dynasty of Ur. The monuments and inscriptions from Tello have furnished us with material for reconstructing the history of the city with but few gaps from the earliest age until the time when the Dynasty of Isin succeeded that of Ur in the rule of Sumer and Akkad. To the destruction of the city during the period of the First Dynasty of Babylon and its subsequent isolation we owe the wealth of early records and archaeological remains which have come down to us, for its soil has escaped disturbance at the hands of later builders except for a short interval in Hellenistic times. The fact that other cities in the neighbourhood, which shared a similar fate, have not yielded such striking results to the excavator, in itself bears testimony to the important position occupied by Lagash, not only as the seat of a long line of successful rulers, but as the most important centre of Sumerian culture and art. [Illustration: DOORWAY OF A BUILDING AT TELLO ERECTED BY GUDEA, PATESI OF SHIRPURLA; ON THE LEFT IS PART OF A LATER BUILDING OF THE SELEUCID ERA. Déc. en Chald., pl. 53 (bis).]