have been identified for sure and no monumental tomb for a ruler has been found either. Images on steles and cylinder-seals are a little more evocative. An important figure who clearly holds some kind of authority has long been noted: a bearded man with a headband who is usually depicted wearing a bell-shaped skirt or as ritually naked. He is often represented as a warrior fighting human enemies or wild animals, e.g. in the 'Stele of the Hunt' found at Uruk, in which he defeats lions with his bow. He is also found in victory scenes accompanied by prisoners or structures. He also is shown leading cult activities, as on a vase from Uruk of the Jemdet Nasr period which shows him leading a procession towards a goddess, who is almost certainly Inanna. In other cases, he is shown feeding animals, which suggests the idea of the king as a shepherd, who gathers his people together, protects them and looks after their needs, ensuring the prosperity of the kingdom. These motifs match the functions of the subsequent Sumerian kings: war-leader, chief priest, and builder. Scholars have proposed that this figure should be called the 'Priest-King'. This ruler may be the person designated in Uruk III tablets by the title of en. He could represent a power of a monarchic type, like that would subsequently exist in Mesopotamia. Researchers who analyse the appearance of the state as being characterised by greater central control and stronger social hierarchy, are interested in the role of the elites who sought to reinforce and organise their power over a network of people and institutions and to augment their prestige. This development is also connected with the changes in iconography and with the emergence of an ideology of royalty intended to support the construction of a new kind of political entity. The elites played a role as religious intermediaries between the divine world and the human world, notably in sacrificial ritual and in festivals which they organised and which assured their symbolic function as the foundation of social order. This reconstruction is apparent from the friezes on the great alabaster vase of Uruk and in many administrative texts which mention the transport of goods to be used in rituals. In fact, according to the Mesopotamian ideology known in the following period, human beings had been created by the gods in order to serve them and the