Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

380 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
monarch must have lived before Ur-Ninib, and is more
closelv connected with Ur-Gur than has generally been
asserted, a fact fully corroborated by the recent investigations
of Thureau-Dangin, who has shown that there was only
one dynasty of Ur in the third pre-Christian millennium.
But we draw another important conclusion. It is entirely
impossible to assume that a native Babylonian usurper of
the throne, however ill-disposed
toward an ancient cult and
however unscrupulous in the means taken to suppress it,
should have committed such an outrage against the sacred
property of the great national sanctuary of the country.
The breaking and scattering of the vases not only indicates
a period of great political disturbance in Babylonia,
but points unmistakably to a foreign invasion. Whence
did it come ?
We know on the one hand, from the chronological lists
of dates and the last
lines of thousands of business tablets of
the third millennium, that the powerful kings of Ur had led
their armies victoriously to Elam, conquered even Susa,
and established a Babylonian hegemony over the subdued
cities and districts of their ancient enemies. And we know
on the other hand, from numerous references in Babylonian
and Assyrian inscriptions, remarkably confirmed by De
Morgan's excavations in Susa, that towards 2300 b. c. the
Elamites were for a while in the complete possession of
the lower country of the Euphrates and Tigris, even establishing
an Elamitic dynasty at Larsa after they had devastated
and ransacked all the renowned temples of Shumer
and Akkad. Between these two historical events, which
reversed the political relations between Babylonia and
Elam completely, we must place the native dynasties of
(N)isin and Larsa, preceded bv a first Elamitic invasion,
which occurred about two
hundred years before the second
one. It was this first Elamitic invasion which caused the
destruction of the temple property at Nippur, brought