Further corroboration of this belief of Professor Sayce was furnished by the recently dug up Stele of the Vultures, now in the Louvre. Here there is a representation of a wicker cage, filled with captives who are waiting to be put to death by the god Ningirsu, who holds in his hand the heraldic emblem of the city of Lagash. The Stele of the Vultures records the triumph of the King of Lagash, the great Eannatum, over the men of Umma who are undoubtedly the captives and are about to be sacrificed.[126] These few examples of human sacrifice indicate, however, that the practice had disappeared at an early date, but, as we shall see, it did not entirely disappear, or rather reappeared among the Semites of Palestine at a later period.[127] [Illustration: A POMEIOC CHIEFTAIN’S WIFE AND CHILD (FROM THE ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA IN 1587)] [Illustration: ESKIMO MOTHER CARRYING INFANT IN HER HOOD (FROM ORIGINAL WATER-COLOUR DRAWING IN BRITISH MUSEUM BY JOHN WHITE, GOVERNOR OF VIRGINIA, 1587)] More positive knowledge, however, we have of the Sumerian laws, laws it should be remembered that tell of a civilization 1000 years before the Chinese. That there was a sense of justice in Sumer and Akkad long before the period of Hammurabi, is evident from the inscriptions found at Tello by Gerzec. Inscriptions of the year 3500 B. C., according to Cuq, and about the year 2800, according to Kang, show that Hammurabi was indebted to the reform king, Urukagina, for many of his laws. Urukagina declared that the people had rights, and even went so far as to say that if the king bought the property of a subject, he must pay for it. We have many tablets telling of the wonderful things that he did, but the one reform which indicates that he had a regard for the family, and consequently, there was probably more care for children, is that provision of his laws which deals with divorce. In telling of his reforms in these inscriptions, Urukagina records the fact that under the old régime, if a man put away his wife, he paid the _patesi_ five shekels of silver and gave one to the grand vizir. Undoubtedly in the beginning, the object of these fees was to prevent the nobles, and through them by force of example, the plain people, from putting away their wives too easily. In other words there was a desire to hold together the old Sumerian family. In the course of time, however, this became merely a bribe, for as the economic conditions improved, the money became not so much a deterrent as a bribe. One of the things that Urukagina did was to abolish the fees of divorce, and to attempt to stamp out practices that were growing up.