Note 115 — III. THE CITIES OF MESOPOTAMIA

The word has not yet been found in Protoliterate texts, a fact which does not prove, of course, that the institution was unknown in that period, although it does make a prima facie case for that assumption. On the monuments (Figs. 15, 44) a bearded figure in a long garment is throughout the main actor. He wears his hair wound round his head and gathered in a chignon at the back, a style usual with rulers in the Early Dynastic period. But it should be remembered that the Protoliterate objects on which he appears derive from Erech where, according to the Epic of Gilgamesh, there was a permanent king in very early times. (This was possibly connected with the cult of Inanna.) Note, however, that even Gilgamesh consulted the assembly and the elders before he embarked on a course of action which entailed the risk of war (Journal of Near Eastern Studies, II, 166, n. 44). At Erech the ruler was called, not lugal, but en, “lord.”