Reconstructing History from Ancient Inscriptions

The Lagash Umma border dispute is the earliest well - documented interstate conflict known. From about 2500 to 2350 B.C.the Sumerian city - states of Lagash and Umma contested the right to exploit a tract of land on their common border, and their dispute is documented by a series of inscriptions filled with claims and counterclaims, and some times vivid descriptions of battles between the two states. This volume makes available for the first time, complete English translations of all documents relevant to these events. After a brief introduction to early civilization and political organization in Baby lonia, the documents are described in detail. There follows an exposition of the difficulties involved in trying to reconstruct the chronology and the geography of the conflict, and the philological problems that hamper our understanding of the documents. The actual reconstruction of the 150 year struggle is then undertaken by critically examining the sources for each episode. An attempt is made to account for both the high degree of agreement among the individual sources, and the occa sional glaring discrepancies. Documents from outside the corpus of texts relating the border conflict and archeological evidence, are used to set the Lagash-Umma dispute in the broader context of third millennium Mesopotamian history. Special attention is paid to the art and language of ancient historical narratives and the limits they place on the nature of the historical data that can be elicited from a close reading of the inscrip tions. The volume is intended both for specialists and for teachers and students of ancient history in general.