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64 Much of what was happening in and around Sumer at the time has been gleaned from “Date Formulas”—royal records in which each year of the king’s reign was noted by the major event that year. In the case of Shulgi much more is known, for he left behind other short and long inscriptions, including poetry and love songs. These records indicate that soon after he had ascended the throne, Shulgi—perhaps hoping to avert his father’s fate on a battlefield—treversed his father’s militant policies. He launched an expedition to the outlying provinces, including the “rebel lands,” but his “weapons” were offers of trade, peace, and his daughters in marriage. Deeming himself a successor to Gilgamesh, his route embraced the two desti- nations of that famed hero: the Sinai peninsula (where the spaceport was) in the south and the Landing Place in the north. Observing the sanctity of the Fourth Region, Shulgi skirted the peninsula and paid homage to the gods at its boundary, at a place described as “Great fortified place of the gods.” Moving northward west of the Dead Sea, he paused to worship at the “Place of Bright Oracles’”—the place we know as Jerusalem—and built there an altar to “the god who judges” (usually an epithet of Utu/Shamash). At the “Snow-covered Place” in the north, he built an altar and of- fered sacrifices. Having thus “touched base” with the reach- able space-related sites, he followed the “Fertile Crescent’”—the arching trade and migration east-west route dictated by geography and water sources—then continued southward in the Tigris-Euphrates plain, back to southern Sumer. When Shulgi returned to Ur, he had every reason to think that he had brought to gods and people alike “Peace in our time” (to use a modern analogy). He was granted by the gods the title “High Priest of Anu, Priest of Nannar.” He was be- friended by Utu/Shamash, and was given the personal atten- tion of Inanna/Ishtar (boasting in his love songs that she granted him her vulva in her temple). But while Shulgi turned from affairs of state to personal pleasures, the unrest in the “rebel lands” was continuing. Unprepared for military action, Shulgi asked his Elamite ally for troops, offering its king as a reward one of his daugh- THE END OF DAYS