Page:History of Early Iran.pdf/54

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38
HISTORY OF EARLY IRAN

hordes descended upon Babylonia. Shilwan suggests the mountainous country east of ancient Der near modern Sirwan. The land Huhunuri was soon to be familiar from date formulas of the Third Dynasty of Ur, and Mu Turran[1] may be the Mê Ṭurnat of the Assyrian annals, a city on the modern Diyala River. Separate mention is made of the king of Simash, who came from afar to seize the feet of Puzur-Inshushinak.[2]

Booty from the humbled cities enriched Susa, and a new temple to Inshushinak crowned the acropolis. For its foundation deposit Puzur-Inshushinak decreed four magi of silver, emblems of silver and gold, a long dagger, and a great ax whose sides were overlaid with silver. With magnificent ceremony a fine new statue of the deity was brought to the site on a new canal leading from the city Sidari. In his honor two sheep were sacrificed daily, and at his gate musicians sang morning and evening. We are told all this by a stele with an Akkadian inscription, which further declares that Puzur-Inshushinak gave righteous judgment to the city.[3] From the wreck of the temple a lion-headed block, inscribed in Akkadian and in the still undecipherable proto-Elamite,[4] has

  1. Read by Scheil as Mu-i-um?-an.
  2. Scheil, Mém., XIV, 9 ff., supplemented by the cities mentioned on the fragment Mém., VI, 14 f. Many names are almost illegible; others are at present unknown.
  3. Scheil, Mém., IV, 4 ff.; cf. SAK, pp. 178 ff.
  4. Scheil, Mém., VI, 8; cf. SAK, pp. 178 f.; drawing and description by Lampre, Mém., VIII, 162 ff. To this period also belongs a bas-relief with proto-Elamite text, Mém., Vol. VI, Pl. 2.