Here, then, is an explanation of the archæological fact that the graves of the copper and early bronze age in Cyprus, which mark the beginning of civilization in the country, contain numerous seal-cylinders made in imitation of those of Babylonia.[118] Examples of the seal-cylinders from which they were copied have also been discovered there. Among them is the cylinder on which Naram-Sin is adored as a god, another is an extremely fine specimen of the style that was current in the age of Sargon of Akkad.[119] Along with the seal-cylinder it is probable that the clay tablet was also introduced to the people of the West. Though the clay tablets found by Dr. Evans and others in Krete may not go back to so remote a date, the linear Kretan characters belong to the same system of writing as the Cypriote syllabary, and an inscription in the letters of this syllabary on a seal-cylinder from the early copper-age cemetery of Paraskevi near Nikosia has recently been published by myself.[120] We may infer that the prototypes of the tablets of Knossos or Phæstos once existed in Cyprus and Syria, though in the damp climate of the Mediterranean the unbaked clay of which they were made has long since returned to its original dust. A few centuries after the age of Sargon of Akkad we find Gudea, a Sumerian prince in Southern Babylonia, bringing limestone from “the land of the Amorites,” blocks of alabaster from the Lebanon, and beams of cedar from Mount Amanus, for his buildings in the city of Lagas. Gold-dust and acacia wood were at the same time imported from the “salt” desert which lay between Palestine and Egypt, and stones from the mountains of the Taurus, to the north-east of the Gulf of Antioch, were floated down the Euphrates on rafts.[121] At a later date we hear of the kings of the Babylonian dynasty which had its capital at Ur, conducting military expeditions to the district of the Lebanon.