Up to a recent date, the oldest known example of cuneiform writing was supplied by a porphyry cylinder seal of the Semite king, Sargon I., who flourished 3800 B.C. (fig. 40). It bears this inscription:--"Sargon, King of the city of Akkad, to the Sun-god (Sarnas) in the city of Sippara I approached." It is this same king concerning whom a myth, which may have been the origin of the myth about the infant Moses in the bulrushes, is recorded on a tablet preserved, together with the seal, in the British Museum. [Illustration: Fig. 40.--Cylinder Seal of Sargon I.] Another famous cuneiform relic is the Stele of the Vultures, a large portion of which is in the Louvre. It dates from about 4500 B.C., and besides its sculptured panels, one of which depicts vultures carrying away the heads of the slain in battle (whence its name), it records the victory of E-anna-du, priest-king of Sirpurra, over the "people of the land of the Bow," on the Elamite frontier, a tribute of corn being imposed on the conquered state. Other inscriptions testify that "in the fourth millennium before the Christian era art was fully developed, statues set up, the chariot used in war, silver and copper worked, weaving and the making of pottery known, and an elaborate system of calculation into thousands evolved." But the antiquity of these witnesses pales before that evidenced by the rubbish-mounds of the city of Nuffar or Nippur, in Northern Babylonia. Several records of Sargon I. were found among the thousands of tablets dug from the later deposits, but discoveries were made beneath these on which Dr. Peters, in reporting on the epigraphic material secured by Mr. Haynes, writes as follows:--"We found that Nippur was a great and flourishing city, and its temple, the temple of Bel, the religious centre of the dominant people of the world at a period as much prior to the time of Abraham as the time of Abraham is prior to our own day. We discovered written records no less than six thousand years old, and proved that writing and civilisation were then by no means in their infancy. Further than that, our explorations have shown that Nippur possessed a history extending backward of the earliest written documents found by us, at least two thousand years." (_Nippur; the Narrative of the University of Pennsylvania's Expedition_, vol. ii. p. 241.) Upon which Dr. Hilprecht comments: "I do not hesitate to date the founding of the temple of Bel and the first settlements in Nippur somewhere between 6000 and 7000 B.C., and possibly earlier." (_Academy_, 30th April 1898, p. 465.) [Illustration: Fig. 41.--Tell-el-Amarna Tablet (_circa_ 1450 B.C.)] [Illustration: Fig. 42.--First Creation Tablet]