ABSTRACT
The plain was inhabited by two distinct races, in the south by non-Semites, in the north by Semites. Which were the first comers? Had they to surrender part of their territory? Tradition preserves no memory of the answers; it only notes that now a city of the north, now a city of the south, now even a foreign city, won the hegemony and exercised a more or less ephemeral supremacy. One of the oldest documents testifies to the intervention of a king of Kish, a city of the northern division, between the people of Umma and those of Lagash, who belong to the southern group.
