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Figure 1:  Memorial cone of the Mesilim Treaty Thanks to Peter Sand for contributing this post! [Footnotes after the jump.] The Musée du Louvre in Paris holds tangible evidence of the world’s first known legal agreement on boundary water resources: viz., the Mesilim Treaty , concluded in the 25th century B.C. between the two Mesopotamian states of Lagash and Umma . The terms of the treaty have been preserved as cuneiform inscriptions on a limestone cone (figure 1) and a stele commemorating Lagash’s victorious battle enforcing the treaty.[1] Fragments of both artifacts were excavated in 1878-1912 by French archeologists on sites at Tellō ( Tall Lawh, Dhi Qar Governate in Southern Iraq), the ancient temple-city of Girsu, once the capital of Lagash.[2] The inscriptions, transcribed and translated into French, German, Italian and English,[3] turned out to match several other texts on corresponding archeological finds of the period. The key exhibit, the so-called ‘Stele of the Vultures’, d...

Bevin Boys report for duty in 1943 ( Express ) The blog "ART and ARCHITECTURE, mainly" earlier this week had an interesting post on something I knew nothing about, despite my once-future career as a military historian. It seems that Britain conscripted nearly 50,000 men to work in its coal mines, in place of the military service, during the period 1943-48. From the blog: Coal was essential for military production during WW2; somehow Britain had to match the quotas needed to keep fact­ories churn­ing out the munitions required at the front. And as Britain was unable to import coal in wartime, the production of coal from local mines had to be increased. But how? 36,000 miners were already cons­crip­t­ed for army duty and had left their collieries. Ernest Bevin, wartime Minister of Labour and National Service and a former Trade Unionist, believed the short­age could be remedied by using conscripted men to fill the vacancies in the mines, keeping production at the rates requir­e...