but on the least sign of feebleness in their master they reasserted themselves, and endeavoured to recover their independence.  A reign of any length was sure to be disturbed by rebellions sometimes difficult to repress:  if we are ignorant of any such, it is owing to the fact that inscriptions hitherto discovered are found upon objects upon which an account of a battle would hardly find a fitting place, such as bricks from a temple, votive cones or cylinders of terra-cotta, amulets or private seals.  We are still in ignorance as to Dungi’s successors, and the number of years during which this first dynasty was able to prolong its existence.  We can but guess that its empire broke up by disintegration after a period of no long duration.  Its cities for the most part became emancipated, and their rulers proclaimed themselves kings once more.  We see that the kingdom of Amnanu, for instance, was established on the left bank of the Euphrates, with Uruk as its capital, and that three successive sovereigns at least—­of whom Singashid seems to have been the most active—­were able to hold their own there.  Uru had still, however, sufficient prestige and wealth to make it the actual metropolis of the entire country.  No one could become the legitimate lord of Shumir and Accad before he had been solemnly enthroned in the temple at Uru.  For many centuries every ambitious kinglet in turn contended for its possession and made it his residence.  The first of these, about 2500 B.C., were the lords of Nishin, Libitanunit, Gamiladar, Inedin, Bursin I., and Ismidagan:  afterwards, about 2400 B.C., Gungunum of Nipur made himself master of it.  The descendants of Gungunum, amongst others Bursin II., Gimilsin, Inesin, reigned gloriously for a few years.  Their records show that they conquered not only a part of Elam, but part of Syria.  They were dispossessed in their turn by a family belonging to Larsam, whose two chief representatives, as far as we know, were Nurramman and his son Sinidinnam (about 2300 B.C.).  Naturally enough, Sinidinnam was a builder or repairer of temples, but he added to such work the clearing of the Shatt-el-Hai and the excavation of a new canal giving a more direct communication between the Shatt and the Tigris, and in thus controlling the water-system of the country became worthy of being considered one of the benefactors of Chaldaea.

We have here the mere dust of history, rather than history itself:  here an isolated individual makes his appearance in the record of his name, to vanish when we attempt to lay hold of him; there, the stem of a dynasty which breaks abruptly off, pompous preambles, devout formulas, dedications of objects or buildings, here and there the account of some battle, or the indication of some foreign country with which relations of friendship or commerce were maintained—­these are the scanty materials out of which to construct a connected narrative.  Egypt has not much more to offer us in regard to many of her Pharaohs, but