Stele of the Vultures

The two faces work differently. On the historical side, Eannatum leads a phalanx of helmeted soldiers who advance shoulder to shoulder behind a wall of overlapping shields, spears bristling forward, trampling the enemy dead; below, a mound of corpses is heaped for burial. This is the earliest depiction of massed infantry formation anywhere. The mythological side belongs to Ningirsu, the city god, who holds the defeated packed inside a great net, clubbing anyone who tries to escape, while the lion-headed eagle Anzu spreads its wings above. The monument takes its modern name from the fragment where vultures wheel away carrying severed heads of the enemy.

Ernest de Sarzec, French vice-consul at Basra, began digging at Tello, ancient Girsu, in 1877, and the pieces came to light in his campaigns from 1881 onward, entering the Louvre soon after; one further fragment was acquired later from the British Museum. The stele is fundamental evidence for how early Sumerian states understood war as something conducted by the gods through their human stewards. Standing close, you can still read the cuneiform running across the soldiers' bodies, treating text and image as a single surface.

Did You Know? The interlocking shield wall carved here is the oldest known image of soldiers fighting in formation, predating the Greek phalanx by roughly two thousand years.