ABSTRACT
Parades of exotic animals and sailors carrying jars filled with aromatic spices and incense walking down the quays of southern Mesopotamia must have been rare sights in the earliest periods of Mesopotamian history. Yet we know from royal inscriptions that they existed and they highlight one of the most important aspects of Mesopotamian royal collecting: the ability to procure objects from abroad. This activity was a royal prerogative since the initial phases of Mesopotamian dynastic history at the beginning of the third millennium B.C.E., and continued throughout the period. The royal ability demonstrated that the kings could traverse great distances or at least command and contact people and things from distant realms, which many commoners would never encounter. The ability gave the kings an aura of otherworldliness that distanced them from others, and it fittingly arrived on the Mesopotamian scene at the very entrance of the institution of kingship.
