PrefaceThe corpus of artifacts from the Lagas state constitutes what is arguably the single largest
cohesive body of elite representational display forms thus far discovered to have come
from Early Dynastic (ED) Sumer. Unlike the equally extraordinary finds from ED levels
of Ur, which consist primarily of grave goods and small finds (Woolley 1934; Woolley
1956), what is unique about the finds from Lagas is that the majority of them are
programmatic artifacts that were intended to be displayed to specific audiences.
Specifically, many of them are relief carvings or, to a lesser degree, statues that were
carefully composed and executed in order to encode and transmit carefully constructed
messages on the part of individual rulers, or the religious establishment. As such, the ED
Lagas corpus is a particularly important record of how one particular group of Sumerian
rulers viewed themselves and how the wished to be viewed by others.
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