The earliest identified victory monument is the Early Dynastic stela of Eanatum of
Lagash. It renders on one side episodes of the military campaign with the king leading
his men into battle, once on a chariot, the other time on foot, while the other side
celebrates the climax of the story: Ningirsu, divine patron of Lagash, holds a large net
in which the prisoners of war are captured (Winter 1985 ). The long inscription recounts
the history of Lagash’s conflicts with its neighbour Umma and ends with a series of
oaths that the defeated ruler has to swear on Ningirsu’s battle-net to the effect that he
will legally abide by the newly determined border between the two city-states. The stela
fragments of Sargon render a similar combination of episodic scenes with a culmi-
nating scene with the difference that the king himself offers the net of captives to an
enthroned Ishtar (Nigro 1998 ).
By contrast to these stelae divided into registers, the stela celebrating Naramsin’s
victory over the Lullubi of the Zagros Mountains shows a dynamic composition taking
up the entire front of the monument, in
which the deified king is prominently
placed between mundane and transcen-
dent spheres (Figure 10. 9 ; Bänder 1995 ).
Above his men, moving up from left to
right, and twice as large as any other figure,
he confronts the mountain of the Lullubi
and sets his foot on two fallen enemies,
while two more fall down the middle,
another collapses before him hit by a spear,
a fourth begs for mercy and, in a move-
ment down the right side, three more
Lullubi capitulate. With his men below
and the gods only hinted at by astral bodies
above, the triumph appears to be the king’s
alone.
Although no identified victory monu-
ments of Ur III kings have survived, we
know of their existence from copies of their
inscriptions. They inform us that the lost
monuments were metal statues of the king,
some of which were mounted on pedestals
that depicted victory scenes of the king
reviewing captives and stepping on enemy
leaders. The copyists not only copied the
label inscriptions identifying the various
figures in the representation, but also des-
cribed them. Based on their descriptions,
such scenes must have looked similar as
images on rock reliefs and cylinder seals of
peripheral rulers that doubtlessly emulated
Mesopotamian kings as, for example, that
of Anubanini, chief of the Lullubi (Figure
10. 10 ).^8 Moreover, the anonymous rock
–– Claudia E. Suter ––Figure 10.9Stela of Naramsin from Susa
(drawing after Winter 2004 : fig. 2 )