at once named assistant professor, and in 1674 the full responsibilities of the office devolved on him, but his engagements did not prevent his accepting in 1689 the invitation of Lord Montagu to decorate Montagu House. He visited London twice, remaining on the second occasion—together with Rousseau and Monnoyer—more than two years. William III. vainly strove to detain him in England by the proposal that he should decorate Hampton Court, for Le Brun was dead, and Mansart pressed Lafosse to return to Paris to take in hand the cupola of the Invalides. The decorations of Montagu House are destroyed, those of Versailles are restored, and the dome of the Invalides (engraved, Picart and Cochin) is now the only work existing which gives a full measure of his talent. During his latter years Lafosse executed many other important decorations in public buildings and private houses, notably in that of Crozat, under whose roof he died on the 13th of December 1716.
LAGARDE, PAUL ANTON DE (1827–1891), German biblical
scholar and orientalist, was born at Berlin on the 2nd of
November 1827. His real name was Bötticher, Lagarde being
his mother’s name. At Berlin (1844–1846) and Halle (1846–1847)
he studied theology, philosophy and oriental languages.
In 1852 his studies took him to London and Paris. In 1854 he
became a teacher at a Berlin public school, but this did not
interrupt his biblical studies. He edited the Didascalia apostolorum
syriace (1854), and other Syriac texts collected in the
British Museum and in Paris. In 1866 he received three years’
leave of absence to collect fresh materials, and in 1869 succeeded
Heinrich Ewald as professor of oriental languages at Göttingen.
Like Ewald, Lagarde was an active worker in a variety of
subjects and languages; but his chief aim, the elucidation of
the Bible, was almost always kept in view. He edited the
Aramaic translation (known as the Targum) of the Prophets
according to the Codex Reuchlinianus preserved at Carlsruhe,
Prophetae chaldaice (1872), the Hagiographa chaldaice (1874),
an Arabic translation of the Gospels, Die vier Evangelien, arabisch
aus der Wiener Handschrift herausgegeben (1864), a Syriac
translation of the Old Testament Apocrypha, Libri V. T.
apocryphi syriace (1861), a Coptic translation of the Pentateuch,
Der Pentateuch koptisch (1867), and a part of the Lucianic text
of the Septuagint, which he was able to reconstruct from manuscripts
for nearly half the Old Testament. He devoted himself
ardently to oriental scholarship, and published Zur Urgeschichte
der Armenier (1854) and Armenische Studien (1877). He was
also a student of Persian, publishing Isaias persice (1883) and
Persische Studien (1884). He followed up his Coptic studies
with Aegyptiaca (1883), and published many minor contributions
to the study of oriental languages in Gesammelte Abhandlungen
(1866), Symmicta (i. 1877, ii. 1880), Semitica (i. 1878, ii. 1879),
Orientalia (1879–1880) and Mittheilungen (1884). Mention
should also be made of the valuable Onomastica sacra (1870;
2nd ed., 1887). Lagarde also took some part in politics. He
belonged to the Prussian Conservative party, and was a violent
anti-Semite. The bitterness which he felt appeared in his
writings. He died at Göttingen on the 22nd of December 1891.
See the article in Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopädie; and cf. Anna de Lagarde, Paul de Lagarde (1894).
LAGASH, or Sirpurla, one of the oldest centres of Sumerian
civilization in Babylonia. It is represented by a rather low,
long line of ruin mounds, along the dry bed of an ancient canal,
some 3 m. E. of the Shatt-el-Haī and a little less than 10 m. N.
of the modern Turkish town of Shatra. These ruins were discovered
in 1877 by Ernest de Sarzec, at that time French consul
at Basra, who was allowed, by the Montefich chief, Nasir Pasha,
the first Wali-Pasha, or governor-general, of Basra, to excavate
at his pleasure in the territories subject to that official. At
the outset on his own account, and later as a representative of
the French government, under a Turkish firman, de Sarzec
continued excavations at this site, with various intermissions,
until his death in 1901, after which the work was continued under
the supervision of the Commandant Cros. The principal excavations
were made in two larger mounds, one of which proved to
be the site of the temple, E-Ninnu, the shrine of the patron god
of Lagash, Nin-girsu or Ninib. This temple had been razed and
a fortress built upon its ruins, in the Greek or Seleucid period,
some of the bricks found bearing the inscription in Aramaic
and Greek of a certain Hadad-nadin-akhe, king of a small
Babylonian kingdom. It was beneath this fortress that the
numerous statues of Gudea were found, which constitute the
gem of the Babylonian collections at the Louvre. These had
been decapitated and otherwise mutilated, and thrown into the
foundations of the new fortress. From this stratum came also
various fragments of bas reliefs of high artistic excellence. The
excavations in the other larger mound resulted in the discovery
of the remains of buildings containing objects of all sorts in
bronze and stone, dating from the earliest Sumerian period
onward, and enabling us to trace the art history of Babylonia
to a date some hundreds of years before the time of Gudea.
Apparently this mound had been occupied largely by store
houses, in which were stored not only grain, figs, &c., but also
vessels, weapons, sculptures and every possible object connected
with the use and administration of palace and temple. In a
small outlying mound de Sarzec discovered the archives of
the temple, about 30,000 inscribed clay tablets, containing
the business records, and revealing with extraordinary minuteness
the administration of an ancient Babylonian temple, the
character of its property, the method of farming its lands, herding
its flocks, and its commercial and industrial dealings and enterprises;
for an ancient Babylonian temple was a great industrial,
commercial, agricultural and stock-raising establishment. Unfortunately,
before these archives could be removed, the galleries
containing them were rifled by the Arabs, and large numbers
of the tablets were sold to antiquity dealers, by whom they have
been scattered all over Europe and America. From the inscriptions
found at Tello, it appears that Lagash was a city of great
importance in the Sumerian period, some time probably in the
4th millennium B.C. It was at that time ruled by independent
kings, Ur-Nina and his successors, who were engaged in contests
with the Elamites on the east and the kings of Kengi and Kish
on the north. With the Semitic conquest it lost its independence,
its rulers becoming patesis, dependent rulers, under Sargon and
his successors; but it still remained Sumerian and continued to
be a city of much importance, and, above all, a centre of artistic
development. Indeed, it was in this period and under the
immediately succeeding supremacy of the kings of Ur, Ur-Gur
and Dungi, that it reached its highest artistic development. At
this period, also, under its patesis, Ur-bau and Gudea, Lagash had
extensive commercial communications with distant realms.
According to his own records, Gudea brought cedars from the
Amanus and Lebanon mountains in Syria, diorite or dolorite
from eastern Arabia, copper and gold from central and southern
Arabia and from Sinai, while his armies, presumably under his
over-lord, Ur-Gur, were engaged in battles in Elam on the east.
His was especially the era of artistic development. Some of
the earlier works of Ur-Nina, En-anna-tum, Entemena and
others, before the Semitic conquest, are also extremely interesting,
especially the famous stele of the vultures and a great silver vase
ornamented with what may be called the coat of arms of Lagash,
a lion-headed eagle with wings outspread, grasping a lion in each
talon. After the time of Gudea, Lagash seems to have lost its
importance; at least we know nothing more about it until the
construction of the Seleucid fortress mentioned, when it seems
to have become part of the Greek kingdom of Characene. The
objects found at Tello are the most valuable art treasures up to
this time discovered in Babylonia.
See E. de Sarzec, Découvertes en Chaldée (1887 foll.). (J. P. Pe.)
LAGHMAN, a district of Afghanistan, in the province of Jalalabad, between Jalalabad and Kabul, on the northern side of the Peshawar road, one of the richest and most fertile tracts in Afghanistan. It is the valley of the Kabul river between the Tagao and the Kunar and merges on the north into Kafiristan. The inhabitants, Ghilzais and Tajiks, are supposed to be the cleverest business people in the country. Sugar, cotton and rice are exported to Kabul. The Laghman route between Kabul
