"The first king whom the excavations there have brought to light is a certain En-sag(sak)-ana who calls himself 'lord of Kengi' and conqueror of Kis 'the wicked.' Kengi—'the land of canals and reeds,' as Professor Hilprecht interprets the word—was the oldest name of Babylonia, given to it in days when it was still wholly occupied by its Sumerian population, and when as yet no Semitic stranger had ventured within it. The city of Kis (now El-Hy-mar) lay outside its borders to the north, and between Kis and Kengi there seems to have been constant war. … Nippur was the religious centre of Kengi, and Mul-lil, the god of Nippur, was the supreme object of Sumerian worship. … A king of Kis made himself master of Nippur and its sanctuary, and the old kingdom of Kengi passed away. The final blow was dealt by the son of the Sumerian high priest of the 'Land of the Bow.' Lugal-zaggi-si was the chieftain who descended from the north upon Babylonia and made it part of his empire. … Lugal-zaggi-si lived centuries before Sargon of Akkad in days which, only a year ago, we still believed to lie far beyond the horizon of history and culture. We little dreamed that in that hoar antiquity the great cities and sanctuaries of Babylonia were already old, and that the culture and script of Babylonia had already extended far beyond the boundaries of their motherland. The inscriptions of Lugal-zaggi-si are in the Sumerian language, and his name, like that of his father, is Sumerian also. … The empire of Lugal-zaggi-si seems to have passed away with his death, and at no long period subsequently a new dynasty arose at Ur. … According to Professor Hilprecht, this would have been about 4000 B. C. How long the first dynasty of Ur lasted we cannot tell. It had to keep up a perpetual warfare with the Semitic tribes of northern Arabia, Ki-sarra, 'the land of the hordes,' as it was termed by the Sumerians. Meanwhile a new state was growing up on the eastern side of the Euphrates in a small provincial city called Lagas, whose ruins are now known as Telloh. Its proximity to Eridu, the seaport and trading depot of early Babylonia, had doubtless much to do with its rise to power. At all events the kings of Telloh, whose monuments have been brought to light by M. de Sarzec, became continually stronger, and the dynasty of Lagas took the place of the dynasty of Ur. One of these kings, E-Anna-gin, at length defeated the Semitic oppressors of northern Chaldæa in a decisive battle and overthrew the 'people of the Land of the Bow.' …