The new text gives contemporary confirmation of this assertion
and furnishes us with additional information with regard to the name of
the conquered ruler of Sinai and other details of the campaign.
That monuments of such great interest to the early history of Chaldaea
should have been found at Susa in Persia was sufficiently startling,
but an easy explanation was at first forthcoming from the fact that
Naram-Sin's stele of victory had been used by the later Elamite king,
Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, for an inscription of his own; this he had engraved
in seven long lines along the great cone in front of Naram-Sin, which is
probably intended to represent the peak of the mountain. From the fact
that it had been used in this way by Shutruk-Nakhkhunte, it seemed
permissible to infer that it had been captured in the course of a
campaign and brought to Susa as a trophy of war. But we shall see later
on that the existence of early Babylonian inscriptions and monuments in
the mound of the acropolis at Susa is not to be explained in this way,
but was due to the wide extension of both Sumerian and Semitic influence
throughout Western Asia from the very earliest periods. This subject
will be treated more fully in the chapter dealing with the early history
of Blam.
The upper surface of the tell of the acropolis at Susa for a depth of
nearly two metres contains remains of the buildings and antiquities
of the Achaemenian kings and others of both later and earlier dates.
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