27. It has been noticed that the bricks bearing the name of Ur-ea "are found in a lower position than any others, at the very foundation of buildings;" that "they are of a rude and coarse make, of many sizes and ill-fitted together;" that baked bricks are rare among them; that they are held together by the oldest substitutes for mortar--mud and bitumen--and that the writing upon them is curiously rude and imperfect.[AO] But whatever King Ur-ea's architectural efforts may lack in perfection, they certainly make up in size and number. Those that he did not complete, his son Dungi continued after him. It is remarkable that these great builders seem to have devoted their energies exclusively to religious purposes; also that, while their names are Shumiro-Accadian, and their inscriptions are often in that language, the temples they constructed were dedicated to various deities of the new, or rather reformed religion. When we see the princes of the South, according to an ingenious remark of Mr. Lenormant, thus begin a sort of practical preaching of the Semitized religion, we may take it as a sign of the times, as an unmistakable proof of the influence of the North, political as well as religious. A very curious relic of King Ur-ea was found--his own signet cylinder--which was lost by an accident, then turned up again and is now in the British Museum. It represents the Moon-god seated on a throne,--as is but meet for the king of the Moon-god's special city--with priests presenting worshippers. No definite date is of course assignable to Ur-ea and the important epoch of Chaldean history which he represents. But a very probable approximative one can be arrived at, thanks to a clue supplied by the same Nabonidus, last King of Babylon, who settled the Sargon question for us so unexpectedly. That monarch was as zealous a repairer of temples as his predecessors had been zealous builders. He had reasons of his own to court popularity, and could think of nothing better than to restore the time-honored sanctuaries of the land. Among others he repaired the Sun-temple (E-Babbara) at Larsam, whereof we are duly informed by a special cylinder. In it he tells posterity that he found a cylinder of King Hammurabi intact in its chamber under the corner-stone, which cylinder states that the temple was founded 700 years before Hammurabi's time; as Ur-ea was the founder, it only remains to determine the latter king's date in order to know that of the earlier one.[AP] Here unfortunately scholars differ, not having as yet any decisive authority to build upon. Some place Hammurabi _before_ 2000 B.C., others a little later. It is perhaps safest, therefore, to assume that Ur-ea can scarcely have lived much earlier than 2800 or much later than 2500 B.C. At all events, he must necessarily have lived somewhat before 2300 B.C., for about this latter year took place the Elamite invasion recorded by Asshurbanipal, an invasion which, as this King