The form in which the record of the treaty is cast is of peculiar interest, for it forcibly illustrates the theocratic feeling of these early peoples. It is in accordance with their point of view that the actual patesis of Lagash and Umma are not named, and the dispute is regarded as having been adjusted by the gods. The deity who presided over the conference, and at whose invitation the treaty is stated to have been made, was Enlil, "the king of the lands." Owing to his unique position among the local gods of Babylonia, his divine authority was recognized by the lesser city-gods. Thus it was at his command that Ningirsu, the god of Lagash, and the city-god of Umma fixed the boundary. It is true that Mesilim, the King of Kish, is referred to by name, but he only acted at the word of his own goddess Kadi, and his duties were confined to making a record of the treaty which the gods themselves had drawn up. We could not have a more striking instance of the manner in which the early inhabitants of Babylonia regarded the city-gods as the actual kings and rulers of their cities. The human kings and patesis were nothing more than ministers, or agents, appointed to carry out their will. Thus, when one city made war upon another, it was because their gods were at feud; the territory of the city was the property of the city-god, and, when a treaty of delimitation was proposed, it was naturally the gods themselves who arranged it and drew up its provisions. We are enabled to fix approximately the period of Mesilim by this reference to him upon the cone of Entemena, but we have no such means of determining the date of another early ruler of the city of Kish, whose name has been recovered during the American excavations on the site of Nippur. Three fragments of a vase of dark brown sandstone have been found there, engraved with an inscription of Utug, an early patesi of Kish. They are said to have been found in the strata beneath the chambers of the great temple of Enlil on the south-east side of the ziggurat, or temple-tower.[21] It would be rash to form any theory as to the date of the vase solely from the position in which the fragments are said to have been discovered, but the extremely archaic forms of the characters of the inscription suggest that it dates from the earliest period of Babylonian history. Moreover, Utug is termed upon it patesi, not king, of Kish, suggesting that he ruled at a time when Kish had not the power and influence it enjoyed under Mesilim. The hegemony in Sumer and Akkad constantly passed from one city to another, so that it is possible that Utug should be set after Mesilim, when the power of Kish had temporarily declined. But as the characters of Utug's inscription are far more archaic than those of Mesilim, we may provisionally set him in the period before Kish attained the rank of a kingdom in place of its patesiate. But how long an interval separated Utug from Mesilim there is no means of telling.