The evidence of the catastrophe that befell Shirpurla at this period is furnished by a small clay tablet recently found at Telloh during Captain Cros’s excavations on that site. The document on which the facts in question are recorded had no official character, and in all probability it had not been stored in any library or record chamber. The actual spot at Telloh where it was found was to the north of the mound in which the most ancient buildings have been recovered, and at the depth of two metres below the surface. No other tablets appear to have been found near it, but that fact in itself would not be sufficient evidence on which to base any theory as to its not having originally formed part of the archives of the city. Its unofficial character is attested by the form of the tablet and the manner in which the information upon it is arranged. In shape there is little to distinguish the document from the tablets of accounts inscribed in the reign of Urukagina, great numbers of which have been found recently at Telloh. Roughly square in shape, its edges are slightly convex, and the text is inscribed in a series of narrow columns upon both the obverse and the reverse. The text itself is not a carefully arranged composition, such as are the votive and historical inscriptions of early Sumerian rulers. It consists of a series of short sentences enumerating briefly and without detail the separate deeds of violence and sacrilege performed by the men of Gishkhu after their capture of the city. It is little more than a catalogue or list of the shrines and temples destroyed during the sack of the city, or defiled by the blood of the men of Shirpurla who were slain therein. No mention is made in the list of the palace of the Urukagina, or of any secular building, or of the dwellings of the citizens themselves. There is little doubt that these also were despoiled and destroyed by the victorious enemy, but the writer of the tablet is not concerned for the moment with the fate of his city or his fellow citizens. He appears to be overcome with the thought of the deeds of sacrilege committed against his gods; his mind is entirely taken up with the magnitude of the insult offered to the god Ningirsu, the city-god of Shirpurla. His bare enumeration of the deeds of sacrilege and violence loses little by its brevity, and, when he has ended the list of his accusations against the men of Gishkhu, he curses the goddess to whose influence he attributes their success.