can be traced by the distinctive cylinder seals of the period. They are found as far to the north as Troy, as far to the south as Upper Egypt, as far to the east as middle, or even north-east Persia.[120] At Brak, on the Khabur in northern Syria, 500 miles north of Erech, has been discovered a temple built on the plan of those in the south, containing similar objects and decorated with cone mosaics.[121] Later, in Early Dynastic times, Ishtar temples at Mari on the Euphrates and at Assur on the Tigris were equipped with statues of Sumerian style, representing men in Sumerian dress.[122] Thus it is obvious that there existed along the two great rivers a cultural continuum within which people could move without creating a disturbance in the fabric of civilization. And the change of language to which we have referred, points to a gradual but continuous drift of people towards the south, as if the cultural influences emanating from Sumer attracted those who had come under its spell. Evidence of this movement is contained in Early Dynastic inscriptions. The thoroughly Sumerianized people of Mari, who had adopted the Sumerian script, inscribed their statues in Akkadian. The same seems to have happened at Khafajah near Baghdad. At Kish, a little farther to the south, the population seems to have been bilingual.[123] These observations in the field of language are valuable pointers; there may have been other, intangible, differences between the northern and the southern elements in the population of Mesopotamia, differences which would distinguish two strains with distinct cultural traditions. And although the old view that the accession of Sargon of Akkad represents a foreign conquest is untenable, his reign truly marks a new beginning. In the arts a new spirit finds magnificent expression, and in statecraft an entirely new attempt is made to create a political unity which would comprise the city states but surpass their scope, and which had no precedent in the past.[124] The house of Sargon appears as a succession of rulers consistently claiming kingship over the whole land; and it is possible that their political ideal was not unrelated with the fact that they were free, as their predecessors were not, from the traditional viewpoint which grasped political problems exclusively in terms of the city. For among most semitic-speaking people kinship provides the supreme bond. It is possible that the Akkadian-speaking inhabitants of middle and northern Mesopotamia had always acknowledged loyalties which went beyond the city proper. In Sumer there is no sign of the existence of such loyalties, nor was there a political institution which over-arched the sovereignty of the separate cities. But of Sargon a chronicle reports: “He settled his palace folk for thirty-three miles and reigned over the people of all lands.”[125] The first part of this entry suggests that Sargon allotted parts of lands of