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266 stand all attacks. We learn from an inscription by Ur-Bau, the vice- roy at Lagash at the time of the Naram-Sin upheavals, that he was instructed by Ninurta to reinforce the walls of the Girsu and to strengthen the enclosure of the Imdugud aircraft. Ur-Bau "com- pacted the soil to be as stone . . . fired clay to be as metal"; and at the Imdugud's platform "replaced the old soil with a new founda- tion," strengthened with huge timber beams and stones imported from afar. When the Gutians left Mesopotamia—circa 2160 B.C.—Lagash burst into new bloom and produced some of Sumer's most enlight- ened and best-known rulers. Of these, one of the best-known from his long inscriptions and many statues was Gudea, who reigned during the twenty-second century B.C. His was a time of peace and prosperity; his records speak not of armies and wars but of trade and reconstruction. He crowned his activities with the building of a new, magnificent temple for Ninurta in a vastly enlarged Girsu. According to Gudea's inscriptions, "the Lord of Girsu" appeared unto him in a vision, standing beside his Divine Black Bird. The god expressed to him the wish that a new E.NINNU ("House of Fifty"—Ninurta's numerical rank) be built by Gudea. Gudea was given two sets of divine instructions: one from a goddess who in one hand “held the tablet of the favorable star of heavens" and with the other "held a holy stylus," with which she indicated to Gudea "the favorable planet" in whose direction the temple should be oriented. The other set of instructions came from a god whom Gudea did not recognize and who turned out to have been Ningishzidda. He handed to Gudea a tablet made of precious stone; "the plan of a temple it contained." One of Gudea's statues depicts him seated with this tablet on his knees, the divine stylus beside it (Fig. 88). Gudea admits that he needed the help of diviners and "searchers of secrets" to understand the temple plan. It was, as modern re- searchers have found, an ingenious one-in-seven architectural plan for the construction of a ziggurat as a seven-stage pyramid. The structure contained a strongly reinforced platform for the landing of Ninurta's airborne vehicle. The participation of Ningishzidda in the planning of the E- Ninnu carried a_ significance that went beyond mere architectural assistance, as evidenced by the fact that the Girsu included a spe- cial shrine for this god. Associated with healing and magical pow- ers, Ningishzidda—a son of Enki—was deemed in Sumerian inscriptions to have known how to secure the foundations of tern- THE WARS OF GODS AND MEN