“The Akkadian victory over [the Lullubi] is commemorated by . . . a masterpiece of Mesopotamian sculpture: the famous stele found at Susa [c. 2239 B.C.]. . . . There Naram-Sin, armed with the bow and the horned tiara of the gods on his head, is shown climbing a steep mountain and treading upon the corpses of his enemies; his infantry, pictured on a smaller scale, follows him. The gods, who dwarfed the humans in Early Dynastic Sumerian sculpture, are now, significantly, reduced to discreet symbols: two stars in the sky.”

—Georges Roux, Ancient Iraq, third edition, 1992.