^WEUNIVERJ/A 
 
 'A- 
 
 ^ 5 
 
 o 
 
 %aJAINft-3ft^^ 
 
 
 
 0M\ 
 
 % /<^ 
 
 
 'JUJj 1111:1 J VI 
 
 '^<!iojnvjjo>^ 
 
 
 ^im-jr 
 
 L 
 
 %U'.... 
 
 
 .>^lOSANCElfj> 
 
 ^ ^ 
 
 ^U^^ 
 
 
 ^OF-CAUFO/?^ 
 
 
 ^<?Aavban# ^(^Aavaan-i^ 
 
 a-. 
 
 L 
 
 %m., 
 
 -\'')i 
 
 IBRARYQ^ ^>^lLIBRARYQc^ 
 
 ' "^ ■:£■ Cj 
 
 A, 
 
 
 \WEyNIVER5-/A 
 
 
 ^lOSANCELfi^ 
 
 %a3AIN(l-3WV 
 
 ^tUBRARYQ^^ 
 
 %JI1V3J0'^ ^^^OJ 
 
 LIFO/?^ 
 
 ^€) 
 
 (>Aava8iVi^ 
 
 1^1 UNIVERS/A 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 %a3AiNn-3v\v 
 
 
 y< 
 
 >&Abvaaiii^'^' '^i>Aa^ 
 
 ic.iiPa\os'/i. 
 
 >;vV .in;P.\DVAj„ 
 
 tVAf 
 
 C
 
 ^OFCAllFOfti^ 
 
 .vJiaiFiV'*' '^'J'iliQftV-, 
 
 
 
 y$ I 
 
 '■'"4, 
 
 <; 
 
 DC 
 CO 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 •5^ 
 
 :;j^ ^^EUNiv 
 
 ■<v^^.llWl\/FDr/>. . .ifuwurricr
 
 WILLIAM LLl'TKR, ^L1>., LL.D., 
 Prcbident of tlie Babyloiiiaii Exjjluration l-'und.
 
 NIPPUR 
 
 OR 
 
 EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES 
 ON THE EUPHRATES 
 
 THE NARRATIVE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF 
 PENNSYLVANIA EXPEDITION TO 
 BABYLONIA IN THE YEARS 
 1888-1890 
 
 BY 
 JOHN PUNNETT PETERS, Ph.D., Sc.D., D.D. 
 
 Director of the Expedition 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 
 
 VOLUME 11. 
 SECOND CAMPAIGN 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 Cbt ^nickerbotktr |Jrtss 
 
 1897 
 
 9 1 7 6 6
 
 Copyright 1897 
 
 BY 
 
 G.P.PUTNAM'S SONS 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London 
 
 ■Che Inuchcrhochcr prcef, IWcvc yorh
 
 ^4 
 
 V,, To 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I. — America and Return 
 II. — Back to Nippur 
 III. — A Successful Campaign . 
 IV. — General Results 
 V. — The Oldest Temple in the World 
 VI. — The Court of Columns . 
 VII. — Trench by Trench . 
 VIII. — Coffins .\nd Burial Customs 
 IX. — Miscellaneous . 
 
 X. — History of Nippur •. 
 XI.— A Journey to Ur . 
 XII. — Nejef and Kerbela 
 XIII. — Conclusion 
 
 I 
 
 47 
 
 64 
 
 104 
 
 141 
 
 172 
 
 193 
 214 
 
 235 
 245 
 266 
 
 307 
 341 
 
 APPENDICES. 
 
 A. — Notes on Plates . 
 
 B. — Weather Record at Nippur 
 
 Index ...... 
 
 373 
 397 
 
 405
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Portrait of William Pepper . . . Frontispiece 
 President of the Babylonian Exploration Fund. 
 
 Orient and Occident ...... 8 
 
 O. Hamdy Bey, Director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum, 
 and John P. Peters, Director of the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania Expedition to Babylonia, in the garden of Hamdy 
 Bey's house at Courouchesme, on the Bosphorus. 
 
 Street Scene in Damascus ..... 17 
 
 The Maidan, Damascus ...... 19 
 
 Map of Route from Damascus to Tadmor . . 24 
 
 Ruins of Tower at Kasr-el-Hair .... 26 
 The Ancient Heliaramia. 
 
 Sun Disc with Curved Radii ..... 26 
 Cut on a stone in the tower at Kasr-el-Hair. 
 
 Plan of Principal Ruins at Kasr-el-Hair . . 27 
 
 View of Ruins of Palmyra ..... 30 
 
 Columns with brackets for statues, in the foreground ; in the 
 background, medieval castle on hill west of city. From 
 photograph of Wolfe Expedition. 
 
 Black Camel's-hair Tent of Anazeh Arab . . 34 
 
 In camp at Sukhne. 
 
 Seal Cylinder and Impression ..... 50 
 
 Shamash, the Sun-god, holds a vase ; above is a crescent, with 
 the emblem of the Sun within. Before the god stands a 
 worshipper, and behind him, Aa, wife of Shamash, in her 
 usual attitude and dress, except that the gown is plain in- 
 stead of flounced. From an unknown Babylonian ruin- 
 mound. Date, circa 2500 r.. c.
 
 Vi ILL US TRA TIONS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Second Year's Camp .... ... 64 
 
 Centre and western parts. On extreme left, Muthif. In cen- 
 tre, with door to east, our Camp ; about that at considerable 
 distance, huts of workmen. Bake-ovens dotted here and 
 there through enclosure. Behind our Camp, Circus for 
 exercising horses. 
 
 Camp Scenes. Our Muthif, or Guest House . 65 
 
 Arab guards in front, and Aral> woman bringing brush for 
 fire-wood. 
 
 Camp Scenes. Alwan, Son of Obeid Mullah Kad- 
 
 HIM 69 
 
 With hut of Obeid in background. 
 
 Camp Scenes. .Arab Woman carrying Water to 
 
 Ca.mp from Wells in Canal-bed ... 72 
 
 Huts of Workmen ....... 74 
 
 Of most primitive type ; of Reeds only, without a covering of 
 mats. 
 
 Camp Scenes. A Camp Beauty .... 76 
 
 In the background huts of workmen. 
 
 Camp Scenes. Our Flock of Sheep and Shepherd, 87 
 
 Camp Scenes. Arab Basket Carriers ... 94 
 Dumping earth on the great dump in front of the Temple Hill. 
 
 Blue-Glazed, slipper-shaped Sarcophagus . . 98 
 
 Ornamented with naked females, and line and boss pattern. 
 Now in Museum at Constantinople. 
 
 Great Trench on Temple Hill . . . .122 
 
 Looking southeast from the Ziggurat ; showing walls of houses 
 of last Reconstruction, the removal of which, in the centre, 
 has just begun. 
 
 Figurines 128 
 
 In tlie centre, a (jreek terra-cotta head of good workmanship, 
 showing traces of color ; found in rooms of last Reconstruc- 
 tion on Temple Mill. Date, circa 300 B.C. To right and 
 left, rude clay figures, presumably representing the god Bel. 
 Found in burnt houses on Hill X. Date, circa 2500 n.c. 
 In front, belmv, a dog, of hard, white-enamelled, porcelain- 
 like substance. Found in Hill \', 14 metres below surface.
 
 ILL USTRA TIOXS. vii 
 
 Figurines (Continued). 
 
 PAGB 
 
 Date, circa 2500 B.C. To right of this, an obscene clay 
 figure, from Cossaean grave in Hill V. To left, a blue en- 
 amelled figurine of Egyptian workmanship, from Babylonian 
 grave in Hill I. 
 
 Temple Hill from southeast ..... 132 
 Toward the middle of the second year. In the background, 
 the Ziggurat ; in the foreground, tlie line of Booths of the 
 Cossaean Period. 
 
 A Mortar of Volcanic Stone ; and Fragments of 
 
 Inscribed Bas-Relief in Diorite . . . 140 
 
 Found in neighborhood of shrine of Bur-Sin, on Temple Hill. 
 Circa 2500 B.C. 
 
 Clay Contract Tablet 140 
 
 Inner Tablet and Envelope. From the time of Abraham or a 
 little earlier. 
 
 Plan of Temple of Bel, of Nippur .... 142 
 After the excavations of the Babylonian Expedition. End of 
 Season. May, 1S90. 
 
 Temple Hill from the northwest . . . -152 
 
 About the middle of second year ; showing Ziggurat and 
 
 northern corner of mounds. The western corner is not 
 visible. 
 
 154 
 
 A Find of Large Water-Firkins 
 
 In a room to the southeast of the Ziggurat. 
 
 Temple Hill looking east of south from the 
 
 Ziggurat ........ 156 
 
 Tovi'ard the close of the second year. Great Trench to the 
 left. To the right of that, the walls of houses of the last 
 Reconstruction are visible. 
 
 Scene in Great Trench on Temple Hill . . 160 
 In the latter part of the second year. 
 
 The Ziggurat ........ 164 
 
 On the northwestern side, near the northern corner. Below 
 are visible the panelled walls of brick of Ashurbanipal. 
 Above are seen the great blocks of unbaked brick of the last 
 great Reconstruction. Above this are formless debris and 
 very late walls.
 
 ILLUSTRATIOXS. 
 
 Plan of Levels of that portion of the Mounds 
 
 OF Nippur to the west of the Shatt-en-Nil 172 
 
 Showing excavations of first two years. Black trenches belong 
 to first year ; line trenches to second year ; dotted lines 
 show tunnels. Roman numerals indicate numbers of hills ; 
 Araljic numerals, height in metres above plain level. 
 
 Plan of Court of Columns 175 
 
 Plan of Column . . . . . . . -175 
 
 Elevation showing Foundations of Columns . 176 
 
 Colonnade on Camp Hill . . . . .176 
 
 Seen from the east : showing Alcove on northwest side. 
 
 Excavations about the Court of Columns the 
 
 first year, 1889 . . . . . . -177 
 
 Showing Trench AB, bisecting Court of Columns. 
 
 Elevation of Trench AB . . . . .178 
 
 Shown in last cut, bisecting Court of Columns, near edge of 
 same ; showing depth of excavations beneath the Court of 
 Columns ; also continuation and level of trench to both 
 sides of same, at end of first year, 1S89. Field. 
 
 Court of Columns and Surrounding Structure . 178 
 
 Excavations of iSgo. The solid straight lines are walls ; 
 dotted straight lines, supposed walls ; shaded portions, ex- 
 cavated space ; cross hatchings, tunnels. 
 
 Great Trench at Camp Hill ..... 180 
 Louking west, showing wall, MM, second year. 
 
 Round Columns on Square Bases, in Room E , 180 
 
 Piece of Statuary . . . .184 
 
 In a hard, black, dioritic stone, fountl in a Jewish house on 
 Hill I, l)ut manifestly belonging to an earlier period. 
 Height of fragment, .21 m. ; diam., .15 m. ; girtli, .49 m. ; 
 On reverse, small of back of a human figure. 
 
 Cossaean Pottery 186 
 
 Found in large urn on Hill I, .11 m. below the surface. Box 
 .1 m. in each dimension, with pyramidal top .08 m. high. 
 Two smaller l)oxes with covers, and three vases, one with a 
 stopper. All thickly glazed with blue and yellow enamel in 
 stripes. No contents. Also found with these, over a hundred
 
 ILL US TKA TIOiXS. IX 
 
 CosSAEAN Pottery (Continued). 
 
 PAGE 
 
 small porcelain objects bored for suspension, some round, 
 some oval, some crescent-shaped, and all colored, some 
 black and white, and some blue and yellow. Similar cres- 
 cent-shaped ornaments were later found on other hills. 
 
 Excavations in Hill X . . . . . . i88 
 
 Showing Burned Rooms of the Period of Ine-Sin of Ur, circa 
 2500 B.C. 
 
 Account Tablet of Nazi-Marruttash, a Cossaean 
 
 King of Babylon, 1284-1258 b.c. . . . 188 
 
 Containing records of Temple Income. Actual length about 
 20 cm. 
 
 Plan of Brick Building with Columns, at Abu 
 
 Adham ......... 191 
 
 Nippur ......... 194 
 
 Taken from a cast of the mounds, showing excavations of first 
 year. The Temple Hill is to the right. Roman numbers 
 indicate hills where excavations were made. Arabic nu- 
 merals show the heights of the mounds in metres above 
 apparent plain level. 
 
 Excavations on the western side of Hill V . 202 
 
 The rooms shown in the foreground belong to the Hammurabi 
 Period, circa 2000 B.C. 
 
 Coffins in Hill V . . . . . . .214 
 
 Slipper-shaped Coffin above ; Tub and Urn Coffins below. 
 
 Whale-backed Coffin of Babylonian Period . 220 
 
 Found in Hill IX. 
 
 Nest of slipper-shaped Coffins .... 230 
 
 Found in Hill VI. 
 
 A Nest of slipper-shaped Coffins .... 230 
 By western corner of Colonnade on Camp Hill, with late brick 
 tomb in foreground. 
 
 Door Socket of Gimil-Sin of Ur .... 238 
 
 Circa 2400 B.C. Brought from Mughair. 
 
 Votive nail-headed Clay Cones of Gudea and 
 
 Ur-Bau, Patesis of Lagash .... 238 
 
 Brought from Tello.
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Door Socket of Sargox, 3800 b.c. .... 
 Ruins of Hammam ....... 
 
 From the nortli. Photogiapli of tlie Wolfe-Expedition. 
 
 The ZiGGURAT at Mughair, Ur of the Chaldees 
 From the northeast. Photograph of tlie Wolfe-Expedition. 
 
 Melkart holding a Lion's Skin 
 
 Colossal Stone Figure found by Cesnola 
 the Museum at Constantinople. 
 
 at Cyprus. Now in 
 
 Plate I 
 Plate II 
 Plate III 
 Plate IV 
 Plate V 
 Plate VI 
 Plate VII 
 Plate VIII 
 
 PAGE 
 242 
 
 374 
 378 
 382 
 386 
 
 JOO 
 
 390 
 392 
 
 394
 
 NIPPUR 
 
 OR 
 
 EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES 
 
 ON THE EUPHRATES
 
 NIPPUR 
 
 OR EXPLORATIONS AND ADVENTURES ON 
 THE EUPHRATES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 
 
 Left at Smyrna — Meeting with Hamdy — Asked to Resign — A Courageous 
 Committee — Supineness — A Friend by Force — Helped by Hamdy — 
 An Extra Permission — Musa Bey — Armenian Atrocities — Drunkenness 
 — Soli — The Nosairieh — Tomb of Lazarus — Beirout Custom-House — 
 Fireworks for Magic — Personnel — Medical Schools — Engaging Camels 
 — Damascus — Bullying the Governor — A Greek Ruin — The Desert 
 Post — The Hills of the Robbers — Kiriathaim — A Palmyrene Hostelry 
 — Lady Digby's Tribe — Palmyra — A Remembering Machine — A Med- 
 iaeval Castle — Roman Milestones — Among the Bedouin — Ransom 
 Demanded — Exacting an Escort — The Ambush Foiled — An Ancient 
 Reservoir — Frustrated Plans — Arabs and Blackmail — Change of Route 
 — Removal of the Wali — Naphtha Wells — A Storm — Anazeh Arabs — 
 Cholera and Plague. 
 
 IN the previous volume I recorded my embarkation on 
 a Turkish steamer bound to Constantinople from 
 Alexandretta. My first two days on board this steamer 
 were spent in a sort of torpor, so exhausted was I with 
 the journey from Baghdad to the coast. After leaving" 
 Mersin, however, I began to revive. We touched at all 
 sorts of queer and charming places. At Addalia, Rhodes,
 
 2 NIPPUR. 
 
 and Cliios I landed and explored the towns, in company 
 with M. Herger, military attache of the French embassy, 
 and a Turkish Colonel. At Addalia we called on the Wali, 
 and he called on us later on the steamer. Both this place 
 and Rhodes were singularly fascinating. 
 
 At Smyrna I had rather an amusing, but very uncom- 
 fortable experience, which delayed me in all nearly three 
 weeks. The captain had announced that we should 
 spend two days there. I went on shore toward noon of 
 the first day and spent the afternoon with the consul, 
 Mr. Emmett, and the missionaries. On returning to the 
 quay about ten o'clock I found that my boat had gone. 
 There turned out to be no cargo, so the captain changed 
 his mind and sailed a day earlier than he had intended. 
 My letter of credit, my money, my clothes, and my 
 papers were all on board, and I was stranded in Smyrna 
 with about eight dollars in my pocket. It was a week 
 before the Gedeklir, a boat of the Mahsousse, or Turkish 
 line of steamers, which belongs to the Sultan himself, 
 arrived at Smyrna on its way to Constantinople, and I 
 became a passenger. It was a small boat, and the deck 
 was crowded from stem to stern with khojas return- 
 ing from their Ramadhan preaching in the provinces. 
 Directly in front of the cabin door was a harem, screened 
 off from the rest of the deck by curtains, through which 
 I had to pass every time I went in or out of my cabin. 
 The only place on deck where I could find room to sit 
 was the captain's bridge, and to reach that I had to step 
 ()\-er and wind my way in and out among women and 
 men l\'ing on the deck almost as closely packed together 
 as sardines in a box. We had one cabin passenger, a 
 \\ hilc-turbanud mollah, who had his own servant with 
 him and his own sup])ly of rich Lesbian wine, and mastic 
 from Chios, which he insisted upon sharing with the 
 cai)tain and nic. I was rather surprised to see a Moslem 
 mos(iue lawyer drinking o]:)enly, especially on a vessel
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 3 
 
 crowded with fanatical khojas. We took several days 
 for the voyage, running in and out among the gulfs and 
 bays of Mitylene and the Troad, and touching at various 
 picturesque and most romantic towns. 
 
 Arrived at Constantinople, I found that all of my 
 effects, which the Mahsousse agency at Smyrna had 
 promised to telegraph to the company to hold for me at 
 Constantinople, had gone on up the Black Sea. I had 
 expected to receive at Constantinople a financial report 
 from Haynes, which it was necessary to present to the 
 Committee at home, but none arrived. Letters were 
 awaiting me, however, giving a very favorable but, as it 
 turned out later, incorrect account of the attitude of the 
 Wali toward us, and what he was doing to render our 
 return possible. 
 
 Hamdy Bey was more than cordial. He expressed 
 great indignation and shame at what had happened, and 
 apologized for the way in which we had been treated 
 throughout. It appeared that Bedry had extorted from 
 us some ^i8o beyond the amount really due him, and I 
 was urged to make a formal complaint against him. This 
 I refused to do for two reasons : in the first place, he was 
 a protege of the Minister of Public Instruction, and I did 
 not care to embroil myself with that of^cial ; in the second 
 place, I felt that the fault lay almost as much with the 
 Museum officials as with him, inasmuch as they had failed 
 to furnish written instructions which would have defined 
 his duties and his salary, and had, in fact, handed us over 
 to him bound hand and foot. What he had done was 
 the natural outcome of their system. I furnished Hamdy 
 with a memorandum of payments made to Bedry, for all 
 of which I had been careful to take receipts, and then 
 left the matter in his hands. I also made a full state- 
 ment to him of what I had done, and told him that it was 
 the necessary outcome of the way in which we had been 
 treated, and that it was impossible to deal honestly under
 
 4 NIPPUR. 
 
 such circumstances. He realized this, and showed at 
 once a desire to meet me half-way; and before I returned 
 to Nippur the next time we entered into an agreement of 
 mutual confidence, I promising him to guard the interests 
 of the Museum as carefully as I would my own, and he 
 accepting my word and reposing in me full confidence. 
 I told him of my visit to Yokha and other places, and he 
 suggested to me that I might under the law make sonda- 
 tions, or tentative explorations, at all such places, to de- 
 termine whether scientific explorations would or would 
 not be profitable. He proposed also to allow me to sub- 
 stitute for Birs Nimrud, which after my visit to it I no 
 longer regarded as especially desirable, Mughair, or any 
 other place which I wished, without compelling me to 
 provide impossible maps. He called with me on Munif 
 Pasha, the Minister of Public Instruction, to arrange for 
 my return to Nippur, and showed himself anxious to 
 do everything possible to insure the success of the 
 Expedition. 
 
 While at Constantinople I received a telegram from 
 Philadelphia advising me that continuance of the Expedi- 
 tion was improbable, and a letter from the President of 
 tiic Fund, asking for my resignation. I could not but 
 feel that the Committee was quite justified in making 
 such a request, but I feared that my resignation would 
 be the end of American cx[)loration in Babylonia for some 
 time to come. My effects returned from Trebizond to 
 Constantinople on the 22d, and on the same day I started 
 for Bremen, stopping at Dresden on the way to see my 
 family. My wife's representations that my honor was at 
 stake, and that I must carry the Expedition through to 
 success or perish in the attempt, fixed my resolution to 
 endeavor to secure the continuance f)f the work under my 
 own direction. 
 
 I sailed from Bremen on the 2d f)f July, reaching New 
 York on the I2tii. It was the i5Lh before I met any
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 5 
 
 member of the Committee. The first one whom I saw 
 was of the opinion that the only course to be pursued 
 was to settle up our accounts and bring the Expedition to 
 a close. I was much hampered by the lack of a financial 
 report from the business manager, but from the papers in 
 my possession and the books of the treasurer, I made up 
 a report of some sort before the meeting of the Com- 
 mittee, Before that meeting I had an opportunity to go 
 over the situation with Mr. Frazier and Mr. E. W. Clark. 
 They were favorably impressed with the results accom- 
 plished by the first year's campaign under great difficul- 
 ties, and decided to advocate the continuance of the 
 Expedition. I was not prepared, however, for the 
 extremely favorable result of the Committee's considera- 
 tions. I merely presented to them a report of the work 
 done, a catalogue of the objects found, a statement of 
 moneys expended, and an estimate of the amount re- 
 quired to continue the work for another year. They 
 decided to send me back with carte blanche to manage 
 everything as I saw fit. The only condition which they 
 imposed was that they should engage no one, and deal 
 with no one but me, and that they would hold me, and 
 me alone, responsible for everything. They also placed 
 at my disposal for the work of the ensuing year a sum 
 larger by $3000 than the sum provided for the first year. 
 I doubt if a Committee has ever shown itself more royally 
 trustful and liberal than this Committee, and I left Phila- 
 delphia with the determination that I would merit the 
 trust. It was stipulated that I should go at once to Con- 
 stantinople. If I could arrange to return to Nippur, as I 
 believed I could, the Expedition was to continue. If not, 
 I was to close the matter and return home. 
 
 Stopping at Dresden to pick up my family on the way, 
 I reached Constantinople August 21st. Negotiations for 
 our return to Nippur had not progressed in my absence. 
 Hamdy Bey was absent in France and Switzerland. Our
 
 6 NIPPUK. 
 
 Legation had done nothing, and the Turkish authorities 
 no more. Our representative in Baghdad had been re- 
 miss about writing, and if it had not been for the fact 
 that Bedrywas in communication with Diwanieh I should 
 have been quite in the dark as to the doings of the Bagh- 
 dad Government and the condition of the country. Since 
 my departure a cholera epidemic had broken out in the 
 marsh region between Shatra and Nasrieh, and spread 
 over the whole country and into Persia. The country of 
 the Affech had suffered with particular severity, and both 
 Mekota and his uncle Shamir were dead. In Baghdad, 
 it was reported, the deaths reached seventy-five a day. 
 All the consuls had left the city and were encamped in 
 the open plain along the Tigris above the town. 
 
 Bedry, in Hamdy's absence from Constantinople, at- 
 tempted to extort more money, and foolishly committed 
 himself in writing. It turned out also that he had pur- 
 loined two of our most valuable tablets, and presented 
 them to one of the members of the Expedition, who had 
 carried them away with him. They were ultimately 
 handed over to the Museum in Philadelphia, but the 
 whole proceeding was of such a character that it left me 
 in great uncertainty as to the security of the other objects 
 found by us. On Hamdy's return I made use of my in- 
 formation, not to have Bedry dismissed, but to turn him 
 into a faithful friend and assistant. He appreciated the 
 fact tiiat he had put himself in my power, and brought 
 my wife as a present a sampler with this motto worked 
 by his wife: " Reveal not your secret to your secret 
 friend, otherwise you publish your secret. If you are 
 not secret to yourself, how shall your secret friend be 
 more secret ? " It was only necessary from this time on 
 to refer to money matters, or to commence a search for 
 the missing tablets, to secure Bedry's faithful co-opera- 
 tion. He proved himself imaluable from his knowledge 
 of his own government and ])e()ple, and without him it
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. J 
 
 would have been impossible for me to have accomplished 
 much that I did accomplish. Moreover, he did it in no 
 surly way, but heartily and kindly, so that I finally came 
 to regard him as a valuable friend. I could only wish 
 that I had known and understood him better the previous 
 year. Hamdy assigned him to me for my especial assist- 
 ance, and all that Bedry did for me was done with his 
 approval. 
 
 Hamdy himself did not return to Constantinople until 
 about the 25th of September. After that matters began 
 to move more rapidly. With Bedry's assistance I un- 
 earthed a private telegram of the Wall of Baghdad to the 
 Minister of the Interior, informing him that it was impos- 
 sible for us to return to Nippur without a war. This was 
 not meant for my eye, and it was quite different from the 
 information furnished to Haynes in Baghdad. With the 
 assistance of our Legation and of Hamdy Bey I caused 
 peremptory orders to be telegraphed him by the Grand 
 Vizier to make immediate arrangements for our return. 
 Hamdy made every exertion to enable me to go back, 
 taking much the same view of the situation as I did my- 
 self. It was not, however, until Thursday, the loth of 
 October, that I was actually able to sail from Constanti- 
 nople on my return to Baghdad. Those had been six 
 weeks of great anxiety and suspense. The Governor- 
 General of Baghdad actively, and Munif Pasha and the 
 Minister of the Interior passively, opposed my return. 
 I could obtain no reliable information from Baghdad as 
 to the action taken by the Governor-General in relation 
 to the burning of our camp by the Arabs, which the Wali 
 still persisted in treating as an accident. The cholera 
 epidemic which was devastating Irak was also urged as 
 an argument against our return. Only Hamdy Bey was 
 on my side, and on his friendliness and activity depended 
 my success or failure. But even after I had left Constan- 
 tinople my suspense was not ended, for a promise in
 
 8 NIPP UR. 
 
 Constantinople, and its fulfilment in Baghdad are two 
 ver}' different matters. 
 
 As already stated, I left Constantinople in perfect 
 agreement with Hamdy Bey, and enjoying his full confi- 
 dence. I was authorized to make rccherches scientifiques, 
 or tentative excavations, at such mounds as I might wish, 
 for the purpose of determining whether or not it would 
 be desirable to conduct fuller excav'ations there. This 
 permission was to have been given me in writing, but, 
 after the Turkish method, at the last moment, I was in- 
 formed that no writing would be necessary, and that the 
 verbal permission would sufifice. No commissioner was 
 sent with me from Constantinople, and it was arranged 
 that I should receive in Baghdad a commissioner who 
 would be congenial to me, and whose presence w^ould in 
 fact be but a form to satisfy the law. I had been promised 
 the exchange of Birs Nimrud to Mughair, but this was 
 not effected before I left. A telegram was, however, 
 sent to the Governor-General of Baghdad, authorizing 
 excavations by me at Mughair, provided there were no 
 obstacles in the way. Later it turned out that Mughair 
 was in the vilayet of Busrah, and not Baghdad, something 
 which our maps did not show, and I therefore never 
 actually held a formal permission to conduct excavations 
 there. 
 
 Outside of the anxiety caused by the uncertainty of 
 our future, life at Constantinople was, as usual, intensely 
 interesting, although we all suffered from the dengue, 
 which was raging at that time. Musa Bey, a Kurdish 
 chief from the neighborhood of Bitlis, in the Armenian 
 mountains, who had terrorized that region for several 
 years, levying blackmail on all the roads, treating the 
 Christian Armenian population with great brutality, and 
 deflowering and carrying off their women at his pleasure, 
 had just come to Constantinojile to be tried. Some six 
 years before he liad almost murdered two American mis-
 
 Orient and Occident. 
 O, Hamdy Bey, Director of the Imperial Ottoman Museum, and John P. 
 Peters, Director of tlie University of Pennsylvania Expedi- 
 tion to Babylonia, in the garden of Hamdy Bey's 
 house at Courouchesme, on the 
 Bosphorous.
 
 AMERICA AA'D RETUKX. 9 
 
 sionaries, Knapp and Reynolds, for which our govern- 
 ment has never exacted redress. Finally the English 
 Government brought pressure to bear, and so much was 
 published about Musa's enormities that he was brought, 
 or rather came, to Stamboul for trial. About fifty wit- 
 nesses against him, chiefly Armenians, also arrived and 
 were lodged at the Armenian Patriarchate. All mention 
 ■of the matter in the press was forbidden, and my Turkish 
 friends told we that it was dangerous even to speak of it 
 in private. The English Government did not dare to 
 push the matter vigorously, because of the use which the 
 Russians made of any such action on its part to persuade 
 the Sultan that the English were his enemies and they his 
 friends. The Sultan himself declared that Musa could 
 not have committed the crimes attributed to him, be- 
 cause he was a pious Moslem; and Musa, after being 
 allowed to escape once and almost a second time (in pre- 
 venting which latter escape we all had a hand), was at 
 length acquitted. 
 
 The conditions in Armenia were at that time entering 
 upon the final stage of massacre which has since been 
 reached. The Kurds were killing and outraging at pleas- 
 ure. The Russian Government had massed troops on 
 the boundary and seemed to meditate an invasion of 
 Armenia. It was encouraging the Armenians to be rest- 
 less, and indirectly it was encouraging the Turk to perpe- 
 trate atrocities which would give it ultimately the oppor- 
 tunity to absorb Armenia. The English Government 
 was pursuing a weak and futile policy, occasionally 
 protesting against Turkish outrages, but taking no active 
 steps to enforce its protestations. The Turkish Govern- 
 ment had instructed at least one of its governors, the 
 Wali of Erzeroum, to do nothing against the Kurds for 
 their outrages upon the Armenians. The commander of 
 the troops in that province confided to one of his officers 
 his hope that the Armenians would rise, for he had every-
 
 lO NIPPUR. 
 
 thing prepared to serve them as the Bulgarians were 
 served. He had been prominent in the Bulgarian massa- 
 cres. Crete was in a state of anarchy, and England was 
 supposed to be plotting to obtain possession of it. 
 Arabia was in a condition of ferment. There was also 
 much tliscontcnt among the Turks themselves, and severe 
 criticism by them of the government. Something of 
 this discontent I saw myself; but while the Turks with 
 whom I conversed in the provinces almost without excep- 
 tion had spoken with great freedom of the corruption of 
 the government and predicted its speedy downfall, in 
 Constantinople their tongues were stilled, and they dared 
 not speak of such matters for fear of the ubiquitous po- 
 lice spies. 
 
 On the steamer to Beirout I met one of my old acquaint- 
 ances, Salih Pasha, with whom I had made the journey 
 from Baghdad to Aleppo the previous spring. He had 
 been appointed Governor of Marash, which he attributed 
 to the fact that I had spoken favorably of him to the 
 Grand Vizier, and was grateful accordingly, insisting that 
 our " harems " should make acquaintance, and embracing 
 me when he left the ship at Alexandretta. On our way 
 up the Euphrates I had found him a pious. God-fearing 
 man. He was then accompanied by a private imam, and 
 was somewhat too much given to praying, stopping our 
 caravan daily in mid-route to attend to his devotions. 
 Now he was accompanied by another Pasha on his way 
 to his post at Urfa, and the two of them got drunk every 
 evening. I regret to say that in my experience of Turk- 
 ish officials, outside of Constantinople at least, this is a 
 frc(iuent failing. 
 
 We landed at Smyrna, Mersin, Alexandretta, Lada- 
 kieh, Larnaca in Cyprus, and Tripoli, spending gener- 
 ally a day at each place. Along the coast of Asia Minor 
 I nf)ticed many ruin sites which had escaped my observa- 
 tion on my first trip, such as Korghos, Ayash (Aleusia),
 
 AMERICA AND RETURy. II 
 
 Selcfke (Seleucia), Holmi, Pershendy, and several others 
 for which I could find no names either ancient or modern. 
 During our stop at Mersin we visited Pompeiopolis, or 
 Soli, where a squad of workmen were digging for treasure 
 among the ruins under the direction of a Turkish official, 
 who supervised the work from the shade of an umbrella. 
 This work was done by order of the Wall of Adana, who 
 had heard that the Arabs had found treasure there. The 
 Arabs had, in fact, found some gold coins, a couple of 
 which I saw. These bore the names of Theodosius and 
 his daughter Pulcheria (408-457 A.D.). Farther inland, I 
 was told, a number of Polish silver coins had been found 
 of the years 1400 to 1600 A.U. The Arabs had also found 
 at Pompeiopolis a leaden box with a Greek inscription, 
 which had once contained Church archives. Near an old 
 castle a mile farther north a badly effaced Armenian in- 
 scription had been exposed, dating presumably from the 
 period of the Rhupenian Armenian Kingdom (1064-1375 
 A.D.), which embraced this region. But none of these 
 things did I see for myself. 
 
 One of the railroad officials at Mersin showed me a 
 statue which had been brought to him from some unknown 
 place in the interior, and which he hoped would possess 
 some archaeological value. It was Greek work barbar- 
 ously executed. The same official told me of the diffi- 
 culties experienced by the management in selling railroad 
 tickets. The natives wished to haggle over the price, 
 and would often come back day after day to try to 
 cheapen the ticket by bargaining, and at the end perhaps 
 journey to Tarsus or Adana by wagon or by camel at a 
 higher price, because they conceived themselves cheated, 
 or their importance insulted in the refusal of the officials 
 to cheapen the price by bargaining. In every other 
 matter of business the asking price was not the real price, 
 and they would not believe that it really was so in the 
 case of railroad tickets. Then, again, they could not
 
 12 NIPPUR. 
 
 conceive of anything starting on schedule time, and were 
 constantly being left, to their great indignation. These 
 inconveniences, together with the serious disadvantage to 
 the Turkish mind of the rapidity of service, made the 
 railroad unpopular, and camel caravans were still the pre- 
 ferred means of transport, so the manager of the road 
 told me. 
 
 At Mersin, Ladakich, and Larnaca the Reformed Pres- 
 bvterians have schools and missions. Their work at 
 Ladakich lies largely among the Nosairieh, one of those 
 secret religious sects in which the country abounds. The 
 missionaries say that these people believe in the transmi- 
 gration of souls. They venerate the life-germ, even as it 
 shows itself in some plants. They reverence Ali as a 
 di\-ine incarnation, now existing in the sun or moon. In 
 the stars are other saints; and therefore the heavenly 
 bodies are worthy of worship. Like the Mohamme- 
 dans, they venerate ziarets of the holy dead. They 
 have further secret doctrines and private rites, disclosed 
 only to the initiated. Whether they are Mohamme- 
 dans with heretical beliefs, or have merely adopted 
 into another faith some of the doctrines of Islam is not 
 clear. For purposes of the military conscription the 
 Turkish Government counts them as Moslems; in the or- 
 dinary relations of life they are treated as non-Moslems. 
 They are said to have originated in the Euphrates region 
 in the tenth century; they now number about 200,000, 
 inhabiting the mountains from below Ladakich north- 
 ward to Aleppo, and from Adana to Mersin. They are 
 divided into two main sects. They are a low and de- 
 graded people for the most part, but not immoral, so the 
 missionaries assert, except that they sell their daughters 
 to the Turks as slaves; and that their religious heads or 
 sheikhs are privileged to cohabit with any woman, married 
 or unmarried, and the husbands even urge the sheikhs to 
 honor them by the selection of their wives. They are
 
 AMERICA A AW RETURN. 1 3 
 
 robbers, and their country unsafe ; and they are ail banded 
 together to resist and outwit the Turkish Government, 
 especially in the matter of conscription. 
 
 There are some interesting remains of antiquity at 
 Ladakieh, or Lattakia, as it is also written. Besides those 
 mentioned in the guide-books, the most conspicuous of 
 which are the Arch of Triumph, ascribed to Septimius 
 Severus, and the so-called Church of the Pillars, I ob- 
 served a broken column with an inscription of Diocletian, 
 and in an orthodox Greek church a handsome lectionary, 
 written in capitals, and ascribed to Theodosius, Metro- 
 politan of Jerusalem, 492 A.D. 
 
 At Alexandretta I took on board the beds, guns, and 
 other paraphernalia left there by us on our way out. An 
 American concern, the Stamford Manufacturing Com- 
 pany, has a station at this point, which is also the princi- 
 pal port for the export of licorice to the United States, 
 where it is used mainly, I was informed, to color tobacco. 
 We took on a large cargo here, chiefly of dhurra and 
 barley. From Alexandretta onward we were afflicted 
 with mosquitoes, which came into the cabins of the 
 steamer in great numbers. 
 
 At Larnaca we visited the grave of Lazarus, and I some- 
 what shocked our pious captain by suggesting to him that 
 saints, being the great ones in heaven, do, like the great 
 on earth, have several domiciles. So Lazarus presumably 
 lay in this tomb at one season, and at some of his other 
 tomb abodes elsewhere at other seasons. Only thus could 
 the fact be explained that the same saints were in so 
 many cases reverenced at several tombs. Tripoli was a 
 fascinating place, like Rhodes still redolent of the Cru- 
 sades. It is a mediaeval Italian city inhabited by Mos- 
 lems. 
 
 We reached Beirout just before sunset, Sunday, October 
 20th. Such a landing I never experienced before. Dr. 
 Post, of the Syrian Protestant College, met us and took
 
 14 NIPPUR. 
 
 us in charge, or I do not know how we should have man- 
 aijed. At the landing-stage our boatmen quarrelled with 
 the boatmen of another boat about the right of way, and 
 the two parties fell to fighting with their oars. The dock 
 and neigboring streets were filled with a wild mob. A 
 number of conscripts were being shipped to Constanti- 
 nople, and their women were fairly wild in consequence. 
 The custom-house in Beirout is said to be the worst in 
 Turkey, and I can well believe it. The greater part of 
 our effects we did not receive until the following day. 
 Everything had been overhauled and maltreated, some 
 things were stolen, and considerable damage done. All 
 my books were carried ofT to the Serai for examination, 
 excepting those that were contraband, and they, of 
 course, were passed through the custom-house at once, as 
 well as our arms. It should be said that any book which 
 deals with the geography, history, or religion of Turkey 
 is contraband, including, therefore, all guide-books, and 
 indeed everything that one specially wants in the Turk- 
 ish Empire. 
 
 I remained in Beirout until November /tli, making pur- 
 chases and waiting for the arrival of Hajji Kework and 
 Artin, two of our last year's servants, for whom I had 
 sent to Aintab, their home. Among other things, I 
 bought a horse from one of the medical missionaries, of 
 which purchase I can only say that in matters of horse- 
 flesh even missionaries are human. I had purchased the 
 greater part of the supplies for this year in Constantinople 
 and shipped them to liaghdad. The first year Haynes 
 had no outfit for instantaneous photography. To secure 
 greater efficiency in this direction, I procured in Constan- 
 tinople appliances ff)r his large camera. I also equipped 
 myself in America and Germany with two small cameras 
 for snap shots, one of them the Kodak Number i, which 
 had been placed on the market not long before, and the 
 other the Krugner Camera. I had endeavored in Con-
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 1 5 
 
 stantinople to purchase a supply of fireworks, feeling 
 confident that I could use them with great effect among 
 the Affech. It proved impossible to buy any there, but 
 in Beirout I found a Greek who undertook to manu- 
 facture rockets without sticks (which he told me I could 
 supply by reeds cut in the marshes), Roman candles, fire- 
 crackers, squibs, and some indescribable inventions of his 
 own made in old tomato cans. It had occurred to me that 
 my magical powers might be construed as responsible for 
 the death of my old enemy Mekota and so many of his 
 tribe as punishment for their treacherous burning and 
 plundering of our camp, and I felt sure that fireworks, 
 judiciously applied, would assure and confirm the develop- 
 ment of this idea, and protect us from such disasters in 
 future. I wrote to Noorian that if he came in contact 
 with any of the men of Affech he would probably meet 
 some such sentiment, which he was on no account to dis- 
 courage. While in Beirout I received from him the 
 information that Berdi, who had murdered his two 
 brothers as they slept, had himself been murdered in 
 the same manner by his uncle, a man whom I had 
 doctored the previous year. 
 
 I had already received from both Haynes and Noorian 
 assurances that they would return with me to Nippur, 
 their former protestations to the contrary notwithstand- 
 ing, and had re-engaged them for the work. Through 
 Dr. Post's assistance I engaged at Beirout Dr. Selim 
 Aftimus, a native of the Lebanon, and a graduate of the 
 medical department of the Syrian Protestant College, to 
 accompany me as botanical collector and physician. I 
 had been anxious the previous year to make botanical 
 and zoological collections, and was provided with an 
 outfit for that purpose; but I did not myself find time 
 to do any work of the sort, and no other member of the 
 Expedition was willing to attempt it. Now it seemed 
 eminently desirable, in view of the presence of cholera in
 
 1 6 NIPPUR. 
 
 the neighborhood of Nippur, and the possibility and even 
 probabihty of an outbreak of the same plague the succeed- 
 ing spring, to take with us a physician. I therefore 
 sought to combine in one person the two functions of 
 physician and natural history collector, but, as will appear 
 in the sequel, poor Aftimus did not succeed in filling 
 either part. 
 
 The Syrian Protestant College at Beirout, of which Dr. 
 Bliss is the President, is an admirably equipped institu- 
 tion, and its most efficient and best-developed department 
 is the medical. The physicians graduated here, however, 
 are not allowed to practice without receiving a diploma 
 from Constantinople. For this purpose they are com- 
 pelled to spend about a year in residence there, and to 
 learn the Turkish language. The Imperial Medical 
 School in Constantinople is extremely inefificient, and its 
 diploma amounts to nothing whatever. The law serves 
 merely as an engine of corruption and oppression to 
 hamper foreign institutions in Turkey, to keep out of 
 the country as much as possible foreigners wishing to 
 practice, and when they insist on coming in, to extort 
 from them fees and subject them to annoyance. 
 
 Besides the Protestant college there is also a large Jesuit 
 college and medical school at Beirout. This institution 
 has a press which has done valuable work in publishing 
 Arabic texts. The Bible Society also has a press at 
 Beirout, and all of the Arabic Bibles and mission books, 
 are printed there, while the Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, 
 and Armenian books are printed in Constantinople. 
 There is a considerable foreign colony of merchants and 
 artizans here. 
 
 We all suffered in Beirout from the Abu Rekab, or 
 Father of the Knees, another name of the dengue, which 
 affected the whole country at that time, in some places 
 bringing all business to a standstill. 
 
 Rework and Artin arrived from Aintab on the 5th, and
 
 AMERICA AiVD RETURN. 
 
 17 
 
 I should have started on the same day for Damascus, 
 had it not been for the delay in passing through the 
 custom-house some goods of Haynes's which they 
 brought with them. On the 6th I sent them and the 
 luggage to Damascus by mule. Aftimus and I left on 
 the diligence at 4.30 A.M. on the 7th, reaching Damascus 
 at 6 P.M. the same evening. Here I was detained until 
 the i8th, securing a caravan. Through the instrumental- 
 ity of Mr. Neshaka, our consular agent, who was also 
 
 STREET SCENE IN DAMASCUS. 
 
 interpreter at the British Consulate, I at last made a 
 contract with Mohammed-er-Reshid, who held the con- 
 tract for the desert mail between Baghdad and Damascus, 
 to furnish us with fifteen dromedaries, two of them being 
 dhelul or riding dromedaries, which we could use instead 
 of our horses, if we saw fit; the proper number of attend- 
 ants, and an extra guard of two armed men. For forty 
 liras he was to transport us by way of Palmyra and the 
 Euphrates valley, landing me in Baghdad within twenty
 
 1 8 NIPPUR. 
 
 days, if I wished to go through without stopping, by the 
 regular road over Palmyra and Deir, but giving me :he 
 option of making a detour from Palmyra to Resafa, or in 
 such other direction from Palmyra as I might see fit, or 
 permitting me to stop for the purpose of exploration at 
 such places as I should select, provided that the total 
 delay did not exceed ten additional days. It was my 
 intention to take advantage of the permission to conduct 
 sondatiotis, and I took with me a few implements for that 
 purpose. I wished also to explore the roads between 
 Palmyra and the Euphrates. The theory was an admir- 
 able one, and the contract was well drawn ; but from 
 beginning to end Mohammed never did anything as 
 agreed upon. We were unable to explore any new 
 routes, we had no opportunity to make any sondations, 
 and it took the entire thirty da\'s to go straight to Bagh- 
 dad. 
 
 There was another man, a certain Munsur Abdullah, 
 who was introduced to me by the proprietor of the Hotel 
 Dimitri, where I stayed, who was also anxious to secure 
 the contract. He called himself Sheikh of Palmyra, 
 which he was not, and offered a bribe to both Neshaka 
 and Aftimus to influence me to give him the contract. 
 When we finally made an arrangement with Mohammed, 
 Munsur told us that we would do well to hire a man to 
 protect us, as our lives were no longer worth anything, 
 which was, however, only braggadocio to frighten us into 
 taking him. 
 
 With the exception of the arrangements for our jour- 
 ney, the purchase of a horse for Aftimus, and a couple of 
 tents, we had no business in Damascus. Nevertheless, 
 we were compelled by Oriental obstructiveness and dila- 
 toriness to stay there eleven days. It is a most interesting 
 city, far more Oriental than Aleppo, and more fanatical 
 than Baghdad. In the bazaars one little lad spat at me, 
 calling me a giaour. Not a few pious Moslems would sell
 
 AMERICA AND KEl^URN. 
 
 19 
 
 me nothing whatever because I was a Christian. Many 
 more scowled savagely as I passed their booths, and all 
 raised their prices on me to such an extent that I was 
 compelled to purchase by indirection. I ultimately suc- 
 ceeded in getting all that I wanted, at native prices, but 
 I could not buy anything myself. 
 
 The most interesting portion of Damascus, to me, was 
 the Maidan, a panhandle extension of the town along the 
 Mecca pilgrim road. Here you find the bedouin in great 
 numbers purchasing at the booths, or wandering up and 
 
 THE MAIDAN, DAMASCUS. 
 
 down the streets. Here also you find numbers of Druses 
 from the Hauran. Next to this the Jewish quarter was 
 most interesting. There are large numbers of Jews in 
 Damascus, and I was much surprised at the freedom of 
 their women. Passing through the Jewish quarter on the 
 afternoon of the Sabbath, when the people were free and 
 in the streets, the girls and young women chaffed me 
 almost as boldly as would the operatives in one of our 
 factory towns. The houses in this quarter are miserably
 
 20 NIPPUr. 
 
 poor to look at. From the outside you would suppose 
 them to be mere mud hovels, but within some of them 
 are quite luxurious. I visited one with a fine inlaid re- 
 ception hall, baths, and courts. This house contained a 
 considerable library, which is open to the public. I 
 offered an old Jew who was employed there as librarian 
 a small backsheesh for his consideration and courtesy in 
 giving me information. As it w'as the Sabbath, he could 
 not receive it, but told me to put it under the rug on the 
 divan, and he would find it on the following day. 
 
 There are no anti([uities worth speaking of in Damascus. 
 You are still shown the " street called straight," but the 
 house of Ananias has left this street and gone to another 
 part of the town. The House of Naaman the Leper is 
 the name given to a so-called leper hospital maintained 
 by the Christians just outside of the walls. There were 
 about forty lepers there, of whom the greater part were 
 out begging when I visited the place. Apparently they 
 have a domicile in this leper house, and are expected to 
 feed and clothe themselves. Almost all of them were 
 fellaheen from tiie neighboring villages. In one room I 
 found three lepers playing cards with two visitors, a man 
 and a young woman from a neighboring village. There 
 is another similar leper house for Mohammedans. But 
 Damascus is a place which is well known, and its sights 
 have often been described, including the ancient walls, 
 and the great mosque, which latter was destroyed by fire 
 after my visit. 
 
 We were informed in Damascus that the road to Pal- 
 myra was extremely unsafe, the mountains being infested 
 with brigands. Neshaka, therefore, applied for a zaptieh 
 escort for us. This was refused, for which refusal we 
 were given various reasons, being told, among other 
 things, that a Russian prince had lately gone through 
 tiiat country distributing arms to the bedouin, on which 
 account the government did not wish to allow any one
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 21 
 
 having official protection to travel by the Palmyra route. 
 Another statement was to the effect that the brigands 
 in the mountains between Damascus and Palmyra paid 
 the Governor-General of Damascus protection money to 
 leave them undisturbed, on which account he was unable 
 to send over that road any one furnished with govern- 
 ment protection. The Director of the Imperial Ottoman 
 Bank was of the opinion that by unofficial application we 
 could secure that which was refused when officially ap- 
 plied for, and in company with him I visited the Chief of 
 Police to ask for an escort. He refused it, and informed 
 me that I would not be allowed to go by the Palmyra 
 road, but must travel northward to Aleppo, and so down 
 the Euphrates, and that if I attempted to go by the 
 straight road to Palmyra I would be arrested and turned 
 back. My camels, which had arrived a day late from 
 the Hauran, where they had been employed, were al- 
 ready at the gate, and the greater part of my baggage 
 had been carried out to their camp on the backs of por- 
 ters. My contract with Mohammed was made and all 
 my plans laid for the route through Damascus. The 
 route which the Turkish authorities proposed involved 
 an extra journey of two weeks, and proportional addi- 
 tional expense. For that journey, mules would have 
 been the beasts to choose rather than camels, since there 
 was water at all the stations; whereas on the Palmyra 
 route camels were preferable on account of the lack of 
 water. 
 
 By the assistance of Mr. Syufi, the Director of the 
 Bank, and the Lieutenant-Governor, who seemed to be a 
 sensible man, I finally forced my way into the Governor- 
 General's presence in my riding clothes, equipped for the 
 journey, with my spurs on my heels and my whip in my 
 hand, and demanded of him an escort. Although gover- 
 nor of an Arab-speaking region, he was unable to speak 
 one word of Arabic. The Turks treat the Arabs as a
 
 22 NIPPUR. 
 
 conquered race, and put over them not infrequently men 
 like this man, Ahmed Pasha, as completely a foreigner to 
 them as a Russian would be to us. He was, moreover, 
 notoriously corrupt. As he could not speak Arabic, Mr. 
 Syufi was unable to interpret for me, and the official in- 
 terpreter of the vilayet was sent for. I preferred, how- 
 ever, to speak directly to the Governor-General in such 
 poor Turkish as I could muster. I told him that the 
 whole thing was preposterous and an outrage; that I had 
 informed the Grand Vizier and the Minister of Public In- 
 struction of my intended route, and that both of them had 
 approved of it; and that I did not propose to be turned 
 back at the last moment for no reason. I finally told the 
 Wali that I proposed to start by the route which I had 
 stated to him, and that if the Chief of Police had me 
 arrested and brougiit back I should make an ofificial com- 
 plaint through our minister at Constantinople. Finally 
 he sent for the Chief of Police and ordered him to let me 
 pass unmolested, assuring me at the same time that my 
 blood was on my own head, and that he could not give 
 me any escort or guarantee me protection through that 
 unsafe region. I think I told him that it was his busi- 
 ness to make it safe. At all events I told him that I 
 should go, and that he would be responsible just the 
 same if anything happened to me. He did not offer me 
 a cup of coffee, nor did we part with any excess of cour- 
 tesy. However, I had gained my point. Mohammed 
 assured me that there was no real danger, and in consid- 
 eration of a couple of liras more promised to provide two 
 additional guards, Agcyli Arabs like himself. But after 
 what I had said to the Governor-General it was considered 
 probable that the police would inform the brigands that 
 I must not be touched. 
 
 I had intended to leave Damascus Saturday, the i/th, 
 but owing to Mohammed's delays, it was kite in the after- 
 noon of Sunday, the i8th, before we actually set out.
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 2$ 
 
 My object in starting on that day and at that hour was 
 to prevent the delay which would have ensued had I 
 waited until the following morning, for a caravan never 
 succeeds in departing from a large city without the loss 
 of half a day. We therefore went a couple of hours* 
 journey to a little village called Harasta and encamped 
 there for the night, to secure an early start on the mor- 
 row. There was a bitter cold wind, but we found a shel- 
 tered nook by the side of a dung heap, on top of which 
 our cook's tent was pitched, and part of which was mixed 
 with our dinner that evening, to Aftimus's great disgust. 
 He, Mohammed, and I had reached the place a half an 
 hour ahead of our men, and while we were waiting for 
 them to come my newly acquired horse attempted to 
 work the destruction of us all, but only succeeded in 
 putting one of my fingers out of joint and wrenching it 
 so that it was lame for some weeks and has never quite 
 recovered its normal condition, A Turkish Bey to whom 
 the dung heap belonged invited us to come and lodge in 
 his house, which I refused, but later in the evening, as 
 we heard him singing with a party of roystering friends, 
 we found our way through a filthy court of camels and 
 barking dogs, and up a dilapidated and dangerous outside 
 staircase, and joined the merry company. 
 
 The second night we spent at the village of Domeir 
 (the Obair of Kiepert's map), where there was a ruin of 
 an old Greek temple. Neshaka had sent ahead of us one 
 of the cawasses of the English consulate, whose home 
 was at this place. That made us, as it were, masters of 
 the town. Life here seemed to be conducted principally 
 on the roofs. There the women spun, rocked their 
 babies, and made their visits, and there the men loafed. 
 By virtue of our relation to the English cawass I was 
 permitted to walk over the roofs at pleasure and pry into 
 all the household affairs. Domeir is not on the road to 
 Palmyra. Mohammed had taken us there, a day's jour-
 
 24 NIPPUR. 
 
 ney out of the way as it proved, in order to meet his 
 incoming post from Baghdad, this being the station at 
 which the postman comes out of the desert, six days' 
 journey from Koubeitha, near Hit. It was the English 
 who originally started this camel postal route across the 
 desert, under Mohammed's father. A few years since 
 the Turks established a rival route, and finally, as owing 
 to the Suez Canal this road had ceased to be of use to the 
 Indian administration, the British service was abandoned, 
 and now only the Turkish post across the desert is in use. 
 From the incoming postman we learned that some of the 
 Arabs were on a ghazu, and that the country was dis- 
 turbed. 
 
 Our next station was 'Atne, near Jerud, the ancient 
 Geroda. About an hour from Domeir we passed a Greek 
 ruin, for which I could obtain no name. At 'Atne we 
 saw the remains of a large building of the Arabic period. 
 Near 'Atne are large salt deposits, in which the salt 
 assumes many fantastical shapes. The people of the sur- 
 rounding country connect with this locality the story of 
 Lot's wife, and call the saltrocks opposite Atne, Medain 
 Lot. The region from 'Atne to Kurietain was said to 
 be particular!)- dangerous, the hills to the east harboring 
 robbers, about whom Mohammed told us many stories. 
 Se'id Abdullah, a merchant of Baghdad, and Abu Gheni 
 of Sidon, had attached themselves to our caravan at 
 Damascus, so that we numbered in all nineteen camels, 
 two horses, one she-dog, and twehe men. All kept 
 close together, and arms were held in readiness the 
 wliole da)\ About seven hours from 'Atne we passed a 
 ruin called el-Quseir, apparently an Arab military khan. 
 Wc encamped near this in the desert. At night no fires 
 were lighted, although it was so cold that water froze 
 solid. On the hills we could see Arab camp-fires here 
 and there, but aw wiiat any one lived in that barren 
 desert it was hard to conjecture. We carried fodder for all
 
 Map of Route from Damascus to Tatlmor.
 
 AMERICA AND RET CRN. 25 
 
 our beasts, even for the camels. The latter were fed 
 each evening on meal balls, and during the day they 
 browsed as they marched. 
 
 The next day, two hours after starting, we passed a 
 heap of stones, said by Mohammed to be a bedouin place 
 of prayer. At a quarter before two we reached Kurietain. 
 This must have been some ancient Kiriathaim, in Syriac, 
 the Nezala of the Greeks. It is the most important sta- 
 tion on the direct road from Palmyra to Damascus. Here 
 there is plenty of water, including hot sulphur springs, 
 and a town of some importance has always existed. I 
 found several fragments of inscriptions built into the 
 walls, one inscribed stone with the name of Zenobia on 
 it forming the lintel of the gateway to a courtyard. Not 
 far from the present town is an ancient tel, called Ras-el- 
 Ain. The Wakil, or Head Priest of the Syrian Catholics 
 at Kurietain, showed me an old and fine-appearing Syriac 
 manuscript of the Gospels, but said that it was not for 
 sale. He told me that the priest in Deir, who had tried 
 to palm off forged antiquities upon us, was his ' ' brother. 
 He himself did not appear to be interested in antiquities, 
 or in religion either, for that matter, but was very anxious 
 to sell me some native wine for use on my journey. By 
 his directions one old priest took me into the church and 
 sang part of the service for my benefit. 
 
 The next night was spent at Kasr-el-Hair, the ancient 
 Heliaramia, seven hours and a half from Kurietain. 
 Kiepert's map incorrectly represents a chain of hills as 
 partially crossing the plain near this point. In reality, 
 from a point below 'Atne on to the very gates of Palmyra 
 there is an unbroken plain, rising gradually toward the 
 northeast, and bordered by hills on both sides. At Kasr- 
 el-Hair there are the ruins of a tower some fifty feet in 
 height, and originally forty feet square at the base. The 
 construction is characteristically Palmyrene, and on one 
 of the corner-stones half-way up the tower are two sun
 
 26 
 
 NIPFUR. 
 
 discs, one plain, and one with curved radii. By the side 
 of the tower there is a building of brick and stone sur- 
 rounding a large court some two hundred feet square, 
 entered by a very ornamental stone gateway on the east 
 side. The lintel of this gateway is a stone fifteen feet in 
 length, elaborately carved. The door-posts, which are 
 single stones, arc likewise carved, but not quite so elabo- 
 rately. This building had been, apparently, a caravan- 
 serai. Outside of the wall and tower there were a couple 
 of smaller ruins, and near one of these an ancient well, 
 now choked up. Half a inile to the north was another 
 
 
 
 RUINS OF TOWER AT KASR-KI,-HAIR, TinC ANCIENT 
 HELIARAMIA. 
 
 SUN DISC WITH CURVED 
 RADII, CUT ON A STONE 
 IN THE TOWER AT KASR- 
 EL-HAIR. 
 
 gateway, similar to the one just described, except that 
 the lintel and door posts were plain. The building be- 
 longing to this latter gateway had quite disappeared, 
 but I presume that it was a second caravanserai, built 
 because one did not prove sufficient to accommodate all 
 the travellers on this route. Not far from this second 
 khan were the ruins of a large reservoir, from which an 
 aqueduct ran southward several miles across the plain to 
 Sedd-cl-Berdi, or Dam of the Marsh Grass. Here are 
 the ruins of a dam across a ravine in the hills, by means 
 of which in the rainy season water was stored for use in
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 
 
 27 
 
 the dry. Kasr-el-Hair was evidently a station on the road 
 to Palmyra in the time of the prosperity and wealth of 
 that city. The whole equipment of the station was 
 singularly interesting and complete, but I have never seen 
 an accurate description of it. In Baedeker's guide-book 
 it is stated that there is a Maltese cross on the tower. 
 This is incorrect, some travellers having mistaken the 
 Palmyrene sun disc for a Maltese cross. 
 
 •t 
 
 ^ fi 
 
 PLAN OF PRINCIPAL RUINS AT KASR-EL-HAIR. 
 A— Tower. B— Gate of Caravanserai. C— Wall of small stones of later date than the 
 other parts of the Ruins. D — Mounds covering Walls of Caravanserai. E — Old Well. F — 
 Outlying Ruins. 
 
 The following night we were encamped upon the plain, 
 between the ancient well of Ain-el-Bweida and the moun- 
 tains southward. At Ain-el-Bweida an ancient road 
 column still stands, but no inscription is visible. The 
 well at this point is very deep and evidently ancient. In 
 Zenobia's time there was a road station here, and to-day 
 the Turks still have a miserable little garrison, with two 
 or three gendarmes stationed by the well in rude barracks.
 
 28 NIPPUR. 
 
 I^'our hours and forty minutes beyond 'Ain-el-Bweida, 
 and two hours and twenty minutes from the mouth of 
 the little pass through which one enters Palmyra, almost 
 in the middle of the plain, are the remains of a large 
 building, by which is a column similar, except for its 
 lack of inscription, to the Diocletian milliaria which are 
 found on the road from Homs to Palmyra, and Palmyra 
 to Erek. 
 
 The hills on the east of the plain, all the way from 
 'Atne to Palmyra, are called Jebel Tadmor, those on the 
 west from 'Atne to Kurietain are called Jebel Kaous. 
 The former have a bad reputation. The vegetation in 
 the neighborhood of 'Atne, what little there was, was 
 almost entirely a species of kali, called by the Arabs 
 'odhu, which is also the common vegetation on the 
 Damascus plain, south of Domeir. At 'Atne there was 
 running water. From that point on to Kurietain there 
 was no water whatever. After we began to rise above 
 the salty deposit in the neighborhood of 'Atne the vege- 
 tation of the valley was stunted tamarisk. The ground 
 throughout the whole plain was burrowed by count- 
 less marmots (jerdheh), large black lizards, and rabbits. 
 Gazelles were numerous. I saw also some specimens of 
 a curious creature, called ghereir, which has the color of 
 a skunk, the tail of a beaver, the claws of an armadillo, 
 and the size and pluck of a racoon. The men killed one, 
 which made a brave fight. The dog was afraid to touch 
 it. We saw a few camps of the Ahalu Anazeh, of whom 
 .Mijwcl, husband of Lady Digby, was once chief. It will 
 be remembered that this eccentric Englishwoman married 
 an Arab chief, she spending half of the time with him in 
 his camp in the desert, and he half of the time with her 
 in Damascus. She acted as a sort of Lady Bountiful to 
 his tribe. They were the guides to Palmyra, and it was 
 considered impossible to go there except under their 
 guidance, and by jiaying a large backsheesh. These
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. li) 
 
 Ahalu Anazeh have large flocks of sheep, but where 
 they found water for them I could not understand. 
 
 From Kurietain onward, Fem-el-Mizab, the great 
 mountain of Tripoli, was visible behind us, and a bitter 
 cold wind swept the plain. At the upper end of the val- 
 ley the hills come together, or rather there is a small cross 
 line which joins the two ranges. Through this there is a 
 natural pass into Tadmor. On the hills on both sides, 
 and in the valley, are abundant ruins and tower tombs. 
 On the left, as one enters the pass, are the remains of an 
 aqueduct. It was almost one o'clock on Saturday, No- 
 vember 23d, when we came to camp just to the north of 
 the great temple of the sun god. The old temple con- 
 tains the modern town, and the effect of the miserable 
 mud shanties among the grand walls and columns is very 
 incongruous. At one time the place was a fortress, and 
 the great western wall of the present day is built of old 
 remains, ancient columns in some places acting as bind- 
 ers. The principal industry of Palmyra, if there can be 
 said to be any industry there, is the salt works, which are 
 now in the hands of the Commission of the Public Debt. 
 The people of the town are, by all odds, the laziest I ever 
 saw, and miserably poor. I saw no man do a stroke of 
 work, although the women were busy enough. One of 
 the occupations of the women throughout the country is 
 to collect camels' dung, and cow dung where it may be 
 had, and dry it for fuel. It is not a graceful avocation. 
 
 Sunday I spent wandering over the roofs of the houses, 
 exploring the old mosque, and photographing the people, 
 but most of all wandering among the great streets of 
 columns, and the temples which are still standing on the 
 plain. Seeing women with water-jars going in and out 
 of a hole in the ground, I was about to descend to ascer- 
 tain what was within, when a number of women rushed 
 out and warned me off, telling me that it was their hot 
 bath. While I was engaged in photographing on the
 
 30 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 plain, a zaptieh, Ahmed by name, who had escorted us 
 one day's journey on the Euphrates the year before, 
 came with a comrade and told me that the Kaimakam 
 wished to see me. Like the Governor-General of Damas- 
 cus, he proved to be a Turk who could speak no Arabic, 
 although set over an Arabic community. He demanded 
 an account of me and my party, and insisted upon vise- 
 ing my passport. He also inquired curiously as to the 
 meaning and use of my Kodak camera. The Turks are 
 very jealous of photographing, drawing, and taking 
 notes, and all photographing in the neighborhood of 
 fortresses is positively forbidden. This is the same rule 
 which prevails in European countries, but the Turks de- 
 signate as fortresses many places which we should count 
 as nothing but interesting old ruins, like St. Jean D'Acre 
 and Rhodes. Sometimes jealous officials extend the 
 prohibition to Baalbec, Palmyra, and other ruins of the 
 interior. I thought it well, therefore, not to be ac- 
 counted a photographer if I could avoid it. When the 
 prefect asked me the meaning and use of my camera, 
 I at first forgot my Turkish altogether. When he re- 
 peated his question in another form, asking whether that 
 were a telegraph machine (a confusion between tele- 
 graph and photograph is very common among Turkish 
 officials in the interior), I replied that it was not. When 
 he pressed me further for the name of the machine 
 and an account of its use, I told him that it was a 
 "remembering machine"; that when I wished to re- 
 member anything that I had seen I fixed the machine 
 so, and touched this little button in this way, where- 
 upon the scene was written down upon a piece of paper, 
 and at my leisure afterwards I could take it out and 
 recall to my memory what had interested me there. 
 A remembering machine was quite a new instrument, 
 and excited much interest, and no objection whatever 
 was made to its use.
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 3 1 
 
 Palmyra has been so well and often described and de- 
 picted that it seemed to me almost like a place I had seen 
 and known before. The Turks strictly forbid the re- 
 moval of antiquities; but illicit digging continues, and 
 almost every traveller buys and removes a few busts and 
 mortuary inscriptions. The natives themselves occasion- 
 ally use these monuments of antiquity for gravestones for 
 their own graves, and in the mosque within the temple 
 precinct I observed one newly made grave on which stood 
 a tombstone with an ancient Palmyrene inscription. 
 There are visible at Palmyra ruins of the time of Zen- 
 obia, Diocletian, Justinian, and the Caliphate. To the 
 west of the city on the hills there is a most picturesque 
 castle. This I visited with an escort of two zaptiehs fur- 
 nished by the Kaimakam, who told me that it was not 
 safe to go there without an escort. The castle is sur- 
 rounded by a deep moat cut in the rock. The depth of 
 this moat was forcibly brought home to me by an 
 escapade of my gentle missionary steed, who was in- 
 spired to stand upon his hind legs on the very edge of it, 
 so that we all but rolled down to the bottom together. 
 This castle is unlike any other Arabic or Turkish con- 
 struction at Palmyra or elsewhere in that region. Both 
 in its situation and architecture it resembles the castles of 
 mediaeval Europe. As stated, it is surrounded by a deep 
 dry moat, cut in the rock. The whole of the island thus 
 formed is occupied by the massive walls and dungeons of 
 the still towering fortress. The drawbridge is broken, 
 and access to the interior is obtained with difficulty by 
 scrambling up the precipitous sides of the moat to a hole 
 in the southwestern corner of the castle wall. The outer 
 walls of the castle are of stone, but the interior work is 
 chiefly in brick. All space is most carefully utilized. 
 Battlement rises above battlement, three tiers of de- 
 fences in all, while down into the solid rock beneath 
 vaults and dungeons have been cut. There is a tradition
 
 32 NIPPUR. 
 
 that it was built by a powerful Druse chief, but there are 
 no inscriptions to determine either its date or its origin. 
 Had the crusaders ever reached this point, I should sup- 
 pose it to be their work. The castle of Rehaba, on the 
 Euphrates, resembles it more closely than anything else, 
 but even that is different. 
 
 The natives brought to my camp, or offered to bring, 
 many antiquities of the common Palmyrene type. They 
 brought also hundreds of coins, chiefly copper, with 
 Roman and Byzantine dates. I observed as ornaments 
 on a woman's head-dress two silver coins which the owner 
 said had come from Erek, or Rakka, beyond Palmyra, 
 one of which was a coin of Charles VIII. of France, and 
 the other of Maurice of Saxony. 
 
 It was Tuesday, November 26th, when we left Palmyra 
 on our way to the Euphrates. The Kaimakam, on the 
 strength of my last year's buyurultu from the Wali Pasha 
 of Aleppo, sent with me one zaptieh, my old friend Ah- 
 med, as escort. Three hours beyond Palmyra I found 
 an inscribed milestone of Diocletian, indicating this 
 to be the road from Palmyra to Arakka, VIII. mile. 
 Near this lay another large milestone of a different 
 sort. Both of these were noticed and described by the 
 Wolfe Expedition. Professor Sterrett, in his report of 
 that Expedition, has published four milestone inscrip- 
 tions found between Rakka, or Erek, and Tadmor, with 
 a notice of three other fragments from the same stretch 
 of road. I can add to this one more stone, found three 
 hours and eighteen minutes beyond Erek on the road 
 toward the Euphrates. Unfortunately, the inscription 
 on this stone was so broken that it is only possible to con- 
 jecture what it was. The late Professor Merriam of 
 Columbia University suggested that it was a stone of 
 Septimius Severus, and the eighteenth milestone from 
 Palmyra. Almost all of the other milestones found to 
 the east of Palmyra belong to the time of Constantine.
 
 AMERICA, AND RETURN. 33 
 
 In addition to these milestones I observed at certain dis- 
 tances the ruins of ancient guard-houses. 
 
 Our course for the first five hours and a half was 
 oyer the plain, north eighty-five degrees east, with a hill 
 line at our left. Then we turned north sixty degrees 
 east, and entered a country of low and barren hills. Six 
 hours and twenty minutes after leaving Palmyra we 
 reached Rakka, or Erek, ancient Arakka. Here there 
 are at the present day a Turkish zaptieh station and a 
 small village of mud huts. There is running water, but 
 it is strongly impregnated with sulphur. We discarded our 
 zaptieh at Erek, and at Mohammed's desire did not take 
 another. He assured me that now that we were among 
 the bedouin he could protect us more satisfactorily with- 
 out zaptiehs than with them. Moreover, we should be 
 hampered by the presence of a Turkish escort, which 
 would compel us to stop at the zaptieh stations and fol- 
 low the regular Turkish route. We encamped in the 
 desert an hour and a half beyond Erek, having passed 
 some time before a large camp of > Anazeh Arabs. On 
 the hills to the north of our camp I noticed a few butm 
 (pistaccio) nut trees which were, as I afterwards learned, 
 the outposts of a considerable forest. In their inscriptions, 
 Ashur-bani-pal and other Assyrian conquerors describe 
 this as a forest region. The greater part of these forests 
 has long since disappeared, but some part still exists to 
 the north and east of Palmyra. Through this part of the 
 country, and indeed until we reached 'Anah, we found 
 everything suffering from drought. Along the road were 
 carcasses of quantities of sheep torn by jackals and hyenas. 
 
 Mohammed now requested me to discard my pith hel- 
 met and wear an Arabic kefieh, as I already wore an 
 Arabic cloak or abbayeh. His intention was to represent 
 me as a Turkish official on his way to his post. The 
 next afternoon, after a ride of six hours and a quarter,, 
 we reached the town of Sukhne, the ancient ChoUe.
 
 34 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 There are still visible here large foundation walls. Near 
 the town are hot sulphur springs. The place itself con- 
 sists of a half-dozen or a dozen miserable mud houses, 
 surrounded by a mud wall, and containing a small zaptieh 
 station. There were immense camps of Anazeh there, 
 and we were informed that other camps were not far dis- 
 tant. We also learned that the Shammar had been on a 
 ghazu, and had been defeated, and that there were some 
 prisoners in the camp, including a negro slave of Paris. 
 The chief of the Anazeh camp at Sukhne was Ferhan. A 
 little distance away lay another chief, Fadhil. Encamped 
 close to the wall of the zaptieh station at Sukhne was a 
 
 small caravan 
 --<^":7r-^'"J«2' which did not 
 
 " J 2^ _, dare to leave 
 
 the place on ac- 
 count of the 
 disturbed con- 
 dition of the 
 country, and 
 the fighting be- 
 tween the Ana- 
 zeh and the 
 Shammar. We 
 had scarcely arrived when a demand was made upon us 
 for blackmail, and it proved that Mohammed's boasted 
 influence with tlie Anazeh was nil, so far as protection 
 for my party was concerned. I absolutely declined to 
 pay anything, telling Mohammed that I had no objection 
 to his doing so if he wished, but as it was part of our 
 contract that he should protect us from the Arabs, I cer- 
 tainly should not repay this, or any similar expenditure. 
 I spent the afternoon exploring the bedouin tents and 
 the sulphur springs of Sukhne. In one hot spring, which 
 had been anciently walled in, apparently as a bath, a 
 number of men and boys were disporting themselves. 
 
 BLACK CAMELS HAIR TENT OF ANAZEH ARAB, 
 IN CAMP AT SUKHNE.
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 35 
 
 Another, not many feet away, was in possession of the 
 women, a few old duennas sitting around to keep guard 
 and see that no man approached too close. The old 
 dames could not, however, prevent the girls and women 
 bathing there from bobbing up to take a look at us. The 
 pool from which the drinking water was taken lay just 
 beneath the little town of Sukhne in such a position that 
 all the refuse of the town must inevitably drain into it. 
 Immense quantities of camels, sheep, and horses were 
 wading in it and drinking out of it all the afternoon, the 
 women at the same time going in up to their knees to fill 
 their water skins and using the opportunity to take a 
 partial bath. Excepting that in addition to its other im- 
 purities the water of this pool tasted strongly of sulphur, 
 it was a fair specimen of the water supply of the desert 
 on which the bedouin rely. 
 
 That evening several Shammar prisoners came to our 
 tent and asked to be permitted to accompany us on the 
 morrow. Some Anazeh also appeared to give Moham- 
 med messages and letters for Baghdad and v^arious points, 
 and one of them entrusted to him money to be paid. 
 Aftimus and Se'id Abdullah went to the zaptieh station 
 to present my buyurultu and ask for Turkish Government 
 protection. The corporal in charge of the station was 
 unable to read, and believed that the document was a 
 forgery. He argued that if I were entitled to Turkish 
 protection, I should have brought a zaptieh with me. 
 He would only agree to give us an escort on condition 
 that we paid to him a blackmail at least as large as that 
 which the Arabs were demanding. After I had retired 
 to my own tent Mohammed came to me in great trepida- 
 tion to tell me that Ferhan and Fadhil were both very 
 angry because they had not received a present, that is, 
 blackmail as a ransom for me, and that it would be im- 
 possible for us to proceed unless I would pay them some- 
 thing. I told him that it was his part to do that, and
 
 36 NIPPUR. 
 
 that if he did not do it and I were robbed, he would be 
 responsible, according to his contract; and turned him 
 out and went to bed. The next morning things were still 
 in the same condition, and Mohammed was afraid to pro- 
 ceed. I ordered the camp struck and the animals loaded 
 without delay. The other caravan, which was waiting to 
 see what I would do, at once began to make preparations 
 to go out with us. After breakfast I mounted, took 
 Hajji Kework with me, and rode to the door of the zap- 
 tieh station. I reprimanded the corporal and rated him 
 soundly in bad Turkish for his impertinence, showed him 
 my buyurultu, and ordered him to furnish an escort with- 
 out delay. He treated me with great deference, but still 
 showed some signs of hesitancy, perplexed by the fact 
 that I had arrived without escort. Hajji Kework took 
 him around the corner, told him what a great and power- 
 ful man I was, and presented him with ten cents. He 
 returned, made most humble salaams and apologies, and 
 ordered a Circassian zaptieh, named Ahmed, to accom- 
 pany me to Deir. A few of the Anazeh, those who had 
 entrusted messages and money to Mohammed, gave us 
 escort through the camp and one hour beyond. The 
 Shammar prisoners (with the exception of the black slave, 
 who, it turned out, had blood upon his hands, and to 
 save his life had been compelled to take refuge in the 
 tent of Ferhan) and the other caravan attached them- 
 selves to us and we proceeded on our way. 
 
 . Our course at first lay through a valley. On the north 
 were high, shining, white chalk hills; to the south was 
 broken and undulating country. Gradually the hills to 
 the north grew lower and then receded. Towards noon 
 we were startled by the sudden appearance of a dozen or 
 more Arab horsemen riding down upon us from a ravine 
 to ou/ left. It was a pretty sight to see them coming, 
 their white tunics glistening in the sunlight, their long 
 spears shaking as they galloped down upon us, zigzaging
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 37 
 
 as they came, after their fashion when on the war-path. 
 At the same moment a much larger force of footmen ap- 
 peared from behind some low hills to our right. It was 
 evident that we were caught in an ambush prepared for 
 the purpose of plundering us, inasmuch as we had refused 
 to pay a backsheesh for our ransom. What it was pur- 
 posed to do, we learned afterwards from the report of the 
 incident which reached Damascus, to the effect, namely, 
 that our caravan had been plundered and that the robbers 
 had secured several hundred liras. Mohammed and his 
 men were dreadfully frightened. He had told me that 
 it would be impossible to resist the Anazeh by force, as 
 they could gather from the neighboring camps a thou- 
 sand fighting men on a few hours' notice. Even the 
 number by which we were now surrounded was several 
 times larger than our own force. My two men, Hajji 
 Kework and Artin, whom I had armed with navy revol- 
 vers, sprang from their camels and ranged themselves by 
 my side, apparently ready to fight against any odds, if I 
 gave the word. Mohammed and his guards likewise un- 
 slung their old flint-locks and fowling-pieces, and took 
 their station by me, while the two caravans and the 
 prisoners closed up and hurried along with all possible 
 speed. Ahmed, the Circassian zaptieh, did not seem at 
 all concerned, and therefore I felt confident that there 
 was no cause for alarm. He galloped forward to meet 
 the approaching warriors and brought them to a halt 
 about a quarter of a mile away. A parley ensued, and 
 in a few moments they turned and rode sulkily back 
 toward the camp, while the footmen who had appeared 
 from behind the hills to our right disappeared whence 
 they came. I confess I was somewhat surprised to ob- 
 serve that the Turkish Government possessed so much 
 authority over these wild bedouin as to check them 
 from plundering us at the command of one zaptieh. I 
 fancy that if the zaptieh had been a Syrian or an Arab, 
 
 O i ''V i"* c
 
 38 NIP P UK. 
 
 instead of an independent and reckless Circassian, we 
 should not have fared so well. 
 
 That night we encamped on the plain near a large, deep, 
 dry well, about midway between Sukhne and Jubb Ka- 
 bakib. There is no water between these two points, and 
 this well was one of several futile efforts which had been 
 made to find it. I was told afterwards that they had dug 
 one hundred and fifty feet without finding a trace of 
 water. The next night we reached the zaptieh station at 
 Kabakib, which lies in a curious bowl-shaped depression 
 several miles in diameter. The well at Kabakib is ancient, 
 and there are remains near the zaptieh station of an an- 
 cient reservoir and aqueduct. In the Palmyrene and 
 Roman period this was a road station, and water was 
 stored in the reservoir. The plan adopted was something 
 like that followed in the Moabite region, where they col- 
 lect the water pouring through the wadis in the rainy 
 season, and store it in a large reservoir for future use. 
 This reservoir was supplementary to the well, the supply 
 of water from which is inconsiderable. 
 
 From Kabakib to Deir is a very long station, and Mo- 
 hammed insisted that it was impossible to perform the 
 march in one day. I declared that it must be done, and 
 that we must start early in order to do it. By way of 
 proving that it was impossible to make the journey in one 
 day and compelling me to encamp again in the desert, 
 Mohammed made such delays at the start that it was 
 eight or nine o'clock before we actually found ourselves 
 under way. I made amends for this by riding behind his 
 camels and prodding them on, so that we travelled at a 
 much faster rate than usual, in spite of all Mohammed's 
 protestations. Whether it was owing to this rapidity of 
 locomotion or not, I do not know, but one of the camels 
 went mad on the march and came near killing a mule- 
 teer. It was long past dark when we finally reached 
 Deir. Here we rested one day. I found a new use for
 
 AMERICA AND RETURJV. 39 
 
 the Kodak, turning it into a weapon to scatter the mobs 
 of rude boys. The mystery of the unknown overawed 
 them. 
 
 My intention in taking the route from Beirout to Deir 
 had been, as already stated, to explore the roads between 
 Palmyra and the Euphrates. I had intended to turn 
 from Sukhne northward through Tayibeh to Resafa, 
 which is known to have been a line of Roman frontier 
 stations, or else southward, from Sukhne to Salahieh, 
 between Vv^hich points a route was represented on Kie- 
 oert's map. Owing to the hostile attitude of the Arabs 
 it Sukhne I failed to accomplish my purpose. At the 
 ime I congratulated myself on my ingenuity in extricat- 
 ng myself from their clutches without paying blackmail. 
 nIow I perceive that my course was a foolish one, and that 
 r would have been far better for me to have placed myself 
 71 the hands of Ferhan or Fadhil, paid a small backsheesh 
 (f two or three liras — for I am sure that I could have bar- 
 ^ined with them for that amount — and obtained escort 
 fom them to the places that I wished to visit. I had 
 bped that even though I had failed in exploring one of 
 tiese two routes I might have been able to take the road 
 fom Kabakib to Rehaba, thus saving myself two or three 
 dys, and exploring a new road, but this had also proved 
 iipracticable, as the zaptieh could not accompany us 
 c^er that route, and Mohammed was unwilling to take 
 te responsibility of guaranteeing our safety, there being 
 s many hostile Anazeh and Shammar in the neighbor- 
 bod. I have no doubt that the old caravan road from 
 Iilmyra reached the Euphrates, not at Deir, but at Re- 
 hba; and Mohammed and others assured me that that is 
 te road regularly followed by native caravans at the 
 jesent day. Kiepert's map of the region between Pal- 
 ryra and Deir proved to be so far incorrect and mislead- 
 ig that it represented a natural valley running from one 
 c these places to the other. There is no such valley in
 
 40 NIPPUR. 
 
 existence, except in the immediate neighborhood of 
 Sukhne. From Erek to a point some distance beyond 
 Sukhne the country is first hilly and then undulating. 
 After that it is level, with occasional low hills visible in 
 the distance. 
 
 From Deir to Baghdad my route differed little from 
 that of the preceding year. We found cholera cordons 
 in existence between Deir and Meyadin, and again at 
 Abu Kemal, but were informed that the cholera had long 
 since ceased in the Baghdad vilayet, and that the cordons 
 were only maintained for the purpose of levying black- 
 mail on unfortunate travellers. The whole country was 
 in a somewhat unsettled condition, and more than once 
 we found our zaptieh escort not only desirable, but nee 
 essary to prevent us from being plundered. At Abu Ke 
 mal one of the zaptiehs of the station informed us tha 
 the bracelets of the wife of Faris, Sheikh of the Shamma 
 of the Khabor, were in the hands of the Kaimakam d 
 that place, that is to say, he had received them as [ 
 present from Faris, in return for which the latter was pei 
 mitted to rob travellers at his pleasure. 
 
 I did not on this trip stop at the barrack stations, bui 
 as a rule, encamped at convenient points along the rivf 
 between stations, which I found to be far pleasanter tha 
 the method pursued on our first trip. We also followe 
 the river somewhat more closely, visiting the islan 
 towns of Alus and Jibba. I had intended to stop a da 
 or two at Salahieh and Jabrieh to make sondations, bi 
 our progress had been so slow and the delays so mar 
 that I could not afford to take the time for this purpos, 
 but was forced to hurry on as fast as Mohammed and h 
 camels could go. The weather was very dry until w 
 reached 'Anah. After that it became rainy and uncon 
 fortable, and at Hit Mohammed proposed to me to croj 
 the river and go down on the other side, which is ttj 
 regular postal route of the desert camel-post betwet
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 4I 
 
 Damascus and Baghdad. According to him, in the rainy 
 season the country between Hit and Kal'at Feluja, on 
 the south side of the river, is ahnost impassable, owing 
 to the mud. Camels can walk on anything but mud. 
 On mud they slip and slide, and fall down and injure 
 themselves. Mohammed told me that in a similar season 
 he had lost some thirty camels on that road. I was quite 
 ready to consent to the change; in the first place, because 
 it would enable me to see a new country and explore a 
 new route; and in the second place, because I had 
 learned that Mustafa Assim Pasha, the Governor-General 
 of Baghdad, had been removed, and was now between 
 Kal'at Feluja and Hit on his way back to the coast. It 
 was currently reported that his removal was due to com- 
 plaints made against him by me at Constantinople, and I 
 feared that he might believe this to be the case and have 
 an unfriendly feeling toward me. In reality he was re- 
 moved on account of a conflict with the religious leaders 
 of the Baghdad vilajet, and with the Jews of that place. 
 One of the Jewish chief-priests had died and the Jews 
 wished to bury him in the tomb of Joshua, son of Jehoze- 
 dek. Their attempt to do this resulted in a conflict with 
 the Moslems, who, as I have already stated, claim this 
 tomb as the tomb of a saint of theirs, named Yusuf. The 
 Jews succeeded in forcing their way in and burying the 
 priest where they wished. The Moslem authorities 
 undertook to force them to remove him, and the Jews 
 refused to do so. A number of them were thrown into 
 prison, and then began what they claimed was a perse- 
 cution on the part of the Government. It was impossible 
 for me to get at the bottom facts in the matter. Both 
 parties seem to have acted unwisely, and after popular 
 indignation had been aroused I have no doubt that the 
 Jews were abused. The British Consul-General, referring 
 to the matter later, seemed to feel little, sympathy with 
 them, however, and asserted that they had contrived to
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 ,a the persecution in Baghdad to their own advan- 
 tage. 
 
 The contest with the Naqib, or Najib, as the word is 
 pronounced in Baghdad, was of a different character. 
 This ofifice was created originally for the purpose of in- 
 vesitgating the claims of the Se'ids, that is, descendants 
 of the family of the prophet, and registering those who 
 were entitled to wear the green turban. At a later date 
 the Naqib contrived to secure control of the immensely 
 rich shrine of Abd-ul-Kader, and little by little made 
 himself a power in the vilayet second only to the Wali 
 Pasha, if even second to him. Mustafa Assim attempted 
 to curb the Naqib's power and deprive him of some of 
 his prerogatives and gains, with the result that he was 
 himself removed from of^ce. 
 
 The river was much lower than in the preceding year, 
 but it took us a half a day to cross it, ferried over in the 
 pitch-smeared boats of Hit. Then Mohammed insisted 
 on camping for the remainder of the day at Turbah, op- 
 posite Hit, to rest and dry in the faint sunshine the things 
 which had been wet by the rains of the last few days. 
 This gave me an opportunity to explore Hit somewhat 
 more thoroughly, and as Dr. Aftimus was asked to give 
 medical advice, I was able to penetrate the houses of some 
 of the natives, and even to sit upon their roofs. All the 
 work of the town seemed to be done by the women, and 
 at two points there was a constant procession of them 
 the whole day through, going to the river and back, car- 
 rying water in wicker baskets smeared with bitumen. 
 The men and boys were very idle and extremely fond of 
 playing marbles with the knuckle-boncs of sheep. That 
 and sitting still seemed to be their principal occupations. 
 Nevertheless, the town appears to be thriving, as towns 
 on the Euphrates go, and a considerable number of new 
 palm-trees are set out every year. I inquired diligently 
 for antiquities. The people assured me that they found
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 43 
 
 " idols and gold coins " in digging for earth and stones 
 in the hill by the Serai, but they were able to brine me 
 nothing but silver and copper coins, Parthian, Byzantine, 
 Kufic, and Arabic. 
 
 We started from Turbah the next morning at five 
 o'clock, and after travelling for eleven hours and a half, 
 most of the time on the edge of the pebbly hills which 
 stretch back in great grassless prairies, but part of the 
 time on the alluvial surface of the river bottom, fifteen 
 feet or so below the desert plateau, we reached some mis- 
 erable shallow wells with troughs by the side of them, 
 called, we were told, Umm-el-Jemali, or Mother of 
 Camels, where we encamped for the night. There were 
 a couple of caravans of Anazeh here, about whom Moham- 
 med felt very uneasy, the more so as our zaptieh had left 
 us to cross the river to the next station, Ramadieh, prom- 
 ising to send us another zaptieh thence. The only thing 
 of interest which I had observed during that day's jour- 
 ney was a naphtha well, not very far from our starting- 
 point. So far as I could ascertain, the only use which 
 the natives make of the crude oil is medicinal. It is con- 
 sidered good for the sore backs of camels. I presume 
 that borings anywhere in the neighborhood of Hit, on 
 either side of the river, would find abundance of oil. 
 The same is true of Samawa, lower down, and probably 
 of the neighborhood of Haditha, as well as of several 
 other localities along the Euphrates. 
 
 That night a violent storm broke upon us, and toward 
 morning the east wind became very violent. The rain 
 poured down in torrents, and there was loud and inces- 
 sant thunder with no lightning, a curious phenomenon 
 which I had observed in the case of another storm the 
 preceding year. The water poured into our tents, and 
 we were obliged to cover everything with rubber. It 
 was impossible to start the next day, and we remained 
 in camp. There was not a constant downpour of rain,
 
 44 
 
 NIPPUK. 
 
 but a succession of violent windstorm ;, accompanied with 
 deluges of rain and lightningless thunder. The barome- 
 ter was irregular, rising to 76.30, and sinking suddenly to 
 75.90. All of our things were huddled together in the 
 middle of the tent. Cold and half-wet, we could do 
 nothing but sit still, not even read or write. Our two 
 servants were drenched, but cheery, active, and service- 
 able. Every now and then one or two of the tent-pegs 
 pulled out and the tent almost blew away. Then the 
 dam about the tent would break and a stream of water 
 come pouring in. Exery half-hour or so we had to rush 
 out and make repairs. Our Arab camel drivers and guards 
 were huddled together about the baggage hopelessly de- 
 moralized, lying on the ground wTapped in their abbayehs, 
 so motionless and bundled up that I could not tell which 
 were men and which bales of goods, except by stirring 
 them with my foot. Guns, shoes, and narghilehs lay 
 about in the mud. Mohammed's tent was almost 
 wrecked. Once we heard a loud shouting. The wind 
 had torn a large hole in the roof, and Se'id Abdullah was 
 holding on to the cloth and crying that the end had 
 come, and praying vehemently thus: "O Lord! O 
 Lord! The wind has torn a great hole in our tent, and 
 we have not even a rag to patch it with ! O Lord ! what 
 shall we do ? O Lord, help us! The end has come! " 
 I believe that the Arabs are really more afraid of the fury 
 of the elements than of the dangers of war. They are 
 entirely helpless and useless in the face of such a storm. 
 I wandered over to the Anazeh camps near by and found 
 the poor Arabs without tents, lying like dead men on the 
 ground. An enemy could have murdered the whole 
 camp without a man stirring. No one would turn a 
 finger, and even the camels were left to care for them- 
 selves. After the storm I learned that these Anazeh 
 were on their way up from Irak, their camels loaded with 
 dates. Their chief was Turki Bey, who was killed the
 
 AMERICA AND RETURN. 45 
 
 next year in a battle with the Rovvali. They had suffered 
 severely from the cholera. The only places, so far as I 
 could learn, which had been free from the ravages of that 
 plague were Hit, where the sulphur, so abundant in 
 both the atmosphere and the water, seemed to have acted 
 as a disinfectant; and Nejef, where I could only suppose 
 that the people who were alive had become so indurated 
 to infection of all sorts that they were impervious, which 
 was the conclusion reached also by Dr. Bowman, the Resi- 
 dency surgeon at Baghdad. The cholera is, I believe, 
 endemic in the Euphrates valley. Formerly the bubonic 
 plague, or black death, was also endemic there. The last 
 outbreak of this plague was in 1875, and it is claimed that 
 it was completely stamped out at that time. Certainly 
 there has been no revival of it since, unless the present 
 outbreak in Bombay can be traced to the Euphrates 
 marshes. 
 
 The next day, damp and wet, we pressed on to Sakla- 
 wieh, more than eleven hours from our camp at Umm-el- 
 Jimali, at the slow rate of Mohammed's camels. A 
 couple of hours after starting we passed a small square 
 enclosure surrounded by mud-brick walls, which we were 
 informed was called Umm-er-Rus, or Mother of Heads; 
 and Mohammed related an apocryphal story of a terrible 
 battle which had taken place there between the Sham- 
 mar and the Anazeh. Outside of the fortified square 
 there were a couple of small mounds, and the neighbor- 
 hood was intersected by canals, two of which were large, 
 and had been important. Across these canals from the 
 fortification there was a small tel called, we were told, 
 Tel Mohammed. Inside the fortified square no remains 
 of houses were visible, but potsherds in abundance were 
 scattered everywhere. I have no idea what the place 
 may have been. The remains which we saw were pre- 
 sumably Arabic. I had intended to telegraph from Sakla- 
 wieh to Baghdad, but had the same experience as the
 
 46 NIPPUR. 
 
 year before, finding the telegraph wires broken. The 
 next day I endeavored to find at Saklawieh a guide to 
 take me to the ruins of Sfeira, which must be, judging 
 from the name, some ancient Sippara, but no one in the 
 place could guide me thither, neither was there a person 
 to be found who knew where the ruins of 'Anbar were. 
 As I was in a hurry to reach Baghdad, I concluded to 
 forego Sfeira for the nonce; and Aftimus and I, leaving 
 the caravan to follow in two days, pressed through to 
 Baghdad, reaching there by hard riding over the muddy 
 roads just before dark.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 
 
 A Faithful Official — The Mushir — Our Commissioner — An Ugly Trick — 
 A Curious Forgery — The Consuls — Our Workmen — Nebuchadrezzar's 
 Quay — Proposal of Marriage — Arab Stories — Frank Magic — Among 
 the Marshes — The Governor — A Bribe Demanded — A Jolly Rogue — 
 An Honorary Prisoner — A Drunken Prefect — Appearance of Water — 
 French Leave. 
 
 1 REACHED Baghdad December i6, 1889. Haynes 
 and Noorian were in good condition, and both of 
 them ready to accompany me to Nippur. Haynes had 
 been busy procuring stores and boxes for our antiquities, 
 which latter were very dear, as there is no wood in the 
 country. Potatoes also were very dear, as none are 
 grown in Babylonia. Nevertheless, a large supply had 
 been laid in for our consumption, from the truly Ameri- 
 can feeling that they are the staff of life, a necessity, and 
 not a luxury, at any price. The goods which I had 
 shipped from Constantinople were in the custom-house 
 and had been there for some time; but through some 
 oversight Haynes had not been informed of the fact, and 
 they had not been taken out and repacked. There was 
 much breakage ; one of the boxes had disappeared alto- 
 gether; and the photographic supplies, which were in a 
 different shipment, had not arrived at all. I found not 
 a few changes among our friends and acquaintances, and 
 some gaps caused by cholera. This had evidently raged 
 fearfully in Baghdad. Among the few who had re- 
 mained at their posts in the plague-smitten city was the 
 
 47
 
 48 NIPPUR. 
 
 head of the postal and telegraph bureau, M. Latinek. 
 Haynes had informed me by letter, while I was in Con- 
 stantinople, of his courage and devotion ; and in view of 
 his brave conduct, and of the fact that he had been very 
 serviceable to the Expedition, I secured for him a decora- 
 tion from the Sultan. In his gratitude for this he now 
 revealed to me the private telegram's which had passed 
 between the Wali Pasha and the government at Constan- 
 tinople, from which I ascertained definitely, what I had 
 already known in part, that the Governor-General had in 
 every way opposed our return to Baghdad, and had taken 
 no steps whatsoever to chastise Mekota for his conduct. 
 In Mustafa Assim's ])lace, the Mushir, or Military Com- 
 mandant of the vilayet, Ahmed Tewfik Pasha, — known as 
 the little hero of Plevna, because he was the engineer 
 who constructed the defences at that place, — was acting 
 as Governor. He received me veiy pleasantly, but knew 
 absolutely nothing about our affairs, and had received no 
 instructions whatever from Constantinople concerning us. 
 It looked at first as though we might be left to our own 
 devices, to go to Nippur without a commissioner, and 
 with no surveillance and no guard from the local govern- 
 ment. Finally, however, Ahmed Tewfik decided to tele- 
 graph to Constantinople. He did me the honor to call on 
 me at the consulate, and became so interested in what we 
 had to show him, especially the Kodak camera and the 
 views which I had taken with it, that he stayed over an 
 hour. At one of my calls at the Serai, the finger which I 
 had lamed near Damascus being done up in a rag which 
 Noorian had fastened for me with a pin, the Mushir, since 
 he would shake hands with me, and shake hands in a man- 
 ner unlike anything I had ever experienced before, con- 
 trived to catch himself on the pin. He uttered a loud 
 cry and jumped fully a foot from the floor, and everyone 
 in the Serai, thinking for a moment that his Excellency 
 had been assassinated, did the same. I could scarcely
 
 BA CK TO NIPP UR. 49 
 
 restrain my laughter until I had left his presence; but, 
 ridiculous as the matter was, I was afraid that it might 
 have serious consequences and put him against us. For- 
 tunately he was too sensible a man to harbor a grudge for 
 such an accident. The only point on which we came 
 into conflict at all was with regard to the consul. He re- 
 fused at first to permit the consul to accompany me to 
 Nippur, saying that it was not in my permission, and 
 that the law did not allow consuls to take part in such 
 work. This difificulty, however, was entirely due to the 
 unfortunate manner in which the matter had been pre- 
 sented to him. I took Noorian and went to see him 
 privately, and protested very solemnly against the salary 
 which he had named for the commissioner, an amiable 
 and pleasant old gentleman, Mohammed Salih Effendi by 
 name, a protege of his. This man had been nominated 
 for mudir at some town in the vilayet, at a salary of ten 
 liras a month. The Mushir now named him as our com- 
 missioner at a salary of twenty liras a month. But while 
 this salary was really excessive and absurd for the services 
 which the good old gentleman rendered, my protest was 
 intended not so much to change that as to remove the 
 Mushir's objections to the consul's accompanying me. 
 It had the desired effect. I agreed to accept Mohammed 
 Salih Effendi without any further objection, and the 
 Mushir, on his part, found that it was quite proper for 
 the consul to accompany me. 
 
 One unfortunate occurrence there was during my stay 
 at Baghdad. I had brought with me, as stated, two cam- 
 eras for photographing persons and scenes instantane- 
 ously, a Kodak and a Krugner. As Haynes preferred 
 the latter, I turned it over to him, keeping the Kodak for 
 my own use, and it remained with me in the room which 
 Haynes and I occupied together. Up to my arrival at 
 Baghdad every exposure which I had made turned out 
 well. After that time I made some four hundred or more 
 
 VOL. 11 — 4
 
 50 NIPPUR. 
 
 exposures, partly at Nippur, but chiefly during my journey 
 among the Arabs south of Nippur, and at the various ruin 
 mounds which I explored. These were all sent at once by 
 mail to America for development, and all proved to be 
 failures. There was a delay in informing me of this which 
 prevented me from ascertaining until too late that some- 
 thing was wrong with the camera. It was then submitted 
 to the Eastman Company, from whom it had been pur- 
 chased, and they reported that someone who understood 
 photography had unscrewed the outer lens, removed the 
 inner lens altogether, and then returned the outer lens to 
 its place. The result was that it looked from without 
 precisely the same as before, and yet was in fact abso- 
 lutely worthless. This was done while we were at Bagh- 
 dad, whether out of spite or envy, but I naturally did not 
 know of it until I had returned to America. 
 
 While in Constantinople I had seen a small amount of 
 antiquities which were reported to be the result of the 
 Turkish excavations at Abu Habba. In Baghdad I was 
 informed that these were but a small part of what had 
 actually been excavated, and that the greater part had 
 gone into the hands of the native antiquity dealers and 
 been sold in London and St. Petersburg. Some few 
 pieces ultimately found their way to the United States. 
 One of the dealers, Khabaza, whom we had met the 
 previous year, was anxious to show me some antiquities 
 in his possession, and I visited him in his house in the 
 Jewish quarter. Among other things he showed me in 
 all innocence a curious forgery in the form of a tablet, at 
 the top of which was written in cuneiform characters — Ilu 
 Kha-ba-a-za, with the personal determinative before it, 
 that is, a person named god Khabaza. It was from the 
 same shop as those which we had seen at Deir the year 
 before, and was done either in India, or by some one of 
 Indian connection who knew a little Assyrian, and had a 
 fine sense of hum (jr.
 
 Cm id ^. 
 
 
 I 1^ 
 
 .."3 ! I /''iiiW : 
 
 ■ ■-......I..I... i »n i.i» 
 
 Seal Cylinder and Impression. Shamash, the .Sun-god, holds a vase ; 
 above is a crescent, with the emblem of the Sun within. Before 
 the god stands a worshi])per, and behind him, Aa, wife of Sha- 
 mash, in her usual attitude and dress, except that the gown is 
 plain instead of flounced. From an unknown Babylonian ruin 
 mound. Date, circa 2500 B.C.
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 5 I 
 
 Colonel Tweedy had returned from furlough during 
 my absence and resumed his place as British Consul- 
 General. He proved to be an admirable Arabic scholar, 
 and maintained friendly relations not only with the Arabs 
 of Babylonia, but also with the Nejd. He was able to 
 give me much valuable information and advice. Dr. 
 Bowman, the Residency physician, furnished us with 
 some useful medical supplies, and instructed both Afti- 
 mus and me in the actual medical needs of the country, 
 going over our pharmacopceia, and writing out for me 
 directions which proved most useful later. The Russian 
 Consul, a new appointment since my last visit, extended 
 to us many hospitalities. With M. Pognon I endeavored 
 to arrange a visit to Nippur, and made an application to 
 his government for leave of absence to be granted him for 
 that purpose, but in vain. He was always ready to ex- 
 amine for me such copies of inscriptions as I sent him, and 
 translate for me such things as I could not myself trans- 
 late. In this way he rendered me invaluable services 
 later. 
 
 On one of my visits to the Serai, I met a French en- 
 gineer who was laying before the Wall plans for a perma- 
 nent bridge over the Tigris, to take the place of one of 
 the two primitive bridges of boats which now connect 
 the two parts of the city. Where the money to build it 
 was to come from was the question. Everything was 
 already overtaxed. There was a tax of two piastres on 
 each palm-tree, a tax on each bee hive, a tax on each fish 
 caught, a tax on each domestic animal and on each beast 
 of burden. In fact, everything was taxed, nominally at 
 least, and yet there was no money. 
 
 On the way down we had heard much about the Sleib, 
 or SuUabeh Arabs, a curious tribe or race of gazelle hun- 
 ters, who live among the bedouin but are not of them. 
 They were reported to be descendants of the Crusaders, 
 who had fled to the desert after the capture of Tripoli by
 
 52 NIPPUR. 
 
 the Saracens, but I fancy that this tradition is due to the 
 resemblance of their name to the Arabic word for cross. 
 I never had the good fortune to see any of them for my- 
 self, just missing them on several occasions. As the 
 result of my inquiries, I learned that they are few in 
 number, but scattered over a vast territory from Mosul 
 southward to the Nejd. They are not good Mussulmans, 
 and their customs are different from those of the other 
 Arabs. They are never found together in any numbers. 
 They are neutral in all wars, passing freely between the 
 camps of hostile tribes. The other Arabs do not inter- 
 marry with them. They are small of stature, the facial 
 type is rounder than that of the Arabs, and blue eyes are 
 not uncommon among them. They are very poor, living 
 chiefly by the chase, and dressing principally in skins. 
 Occasionally they possess a few donkeys, but never 
 camels, sheep, or horses. They seem to be a remnant of 
 some sort. 
 
 Our caravan left Baghdad on the last day of 1889, ^^'^^ 
 we followed on January ist, both parties reaching Hillah 
 on the second of January. At Khan Mahawil I found a 
 number of our workmen from Jimjimeh awaiting us. 
 They endeavored to kiss our boots and stirrups. We 
 had been a gold mine to them, and although when they 
 left Nippur one and all had stated that they would never, 
 under any circumstances, return, all were now anxious to 
 go back upon any terms. At Jimjimeh they had pre- 
 pared a feast in our honor, of which Noorian and I were 
 obliged to partake. During the summer Abbas and a 
 few others had gone to Nippur privately, with the inten- 
 tion of digging there on their own account. Just at that 
 time Berdi was murdered, and Hamud-el-Berjud showed 
 himself so unfriendly toward them that they left without 
 accomplishing anything. Abbas's companions, as well as 
 all whom I suspected of having been concerned in the 
 robbery of the trenches the previous year, and all who
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 53 
 
 had been lazy, quarrelsome, or unsatisfactory, I refused 
 to re-engage. Abbas, in spite of his iniquities, I par- 
 doned, as he was the most skilful and capable man whom 
 we had. Moreover, his whole family were useful, and it 
 might have been difficult to control the Jimjimeh men 
 without his father, Jasim. 
 
 The rains which had fallen in the last two weeks had 
 not been sufficient to make good the drought of the sum- 
 mer. What was left of the Euphrates seemed to have 
 deserted its original course almost entirely and poured 
 itself through the Hindieh canal into the Abu Nejm and 
 other marshes. The old quay built by Nebuchadrezzar 
 along the eastern bank of the river at Babylon was ex- 
 posed. One could see there the bricks bearing his name, 
 laid in bitumen. The existence of this quay along the 
 present bed of the river shows the error of Rich and 
 others, who in their maps of Babylon mark the old bed 
 of the Euphrates as going through the city itself. In 
 point of fact the channel is the same now as then. 
 We were told that a week or two before there had been 
 absolutely no water in the river, and the people of Jim- 
 jimeh and other villages as far southward as Samawa, had 
 obtained their water by digging wells in the dry bed. 
 
 On our way to Jimjimeh we passed over Babil once 
 more. The view from the summit of the mounds was 
 charming, and I can well believe that in the days of its 
 grandeur Babylon must have seemed a paradise. Below 
 Babil we rode along the river-bank for a considerable dis- 
 tance, passing over some low mounds called el-Ghareire- 
 yeh. Some distance inland from these was the mound of 
 Hameirah. On the mound of Mujellibeh we observed 
 some very massive walls of unburned brick, which had 
 been partially laid bare. Abbas showed me a corner out 
 of which he had taken a barrel cylinder, while two or 
 three more had been found in holes in the face of the 
 wall. At the chief ziaret on the mound of Amram we
 
 54 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 were obliged to pay a friendly toll to the Imam. Inland 
 from this mound I noticed a curiously shaped roof-like 
 heap of earth formerly called Sobeit, but now known, I 
 was told, as Bahnan. In this mound were found several 
 of the phallic-shaped inscribed stones with zodiacal em- 
 blems, known as boundary stones. 
 
 We crossed the river opposite Jimjimeh, wading through 
 eighteen inches or two feet of water, and rode down to 
 Hillah on the other side. Our stay at Hillah was very 
 brief, and would have been briefer, had it not been nec- 
 essary to change our plans somewhat on account of the 
 dried-up state of the country, and the uncertain and con- 
 tradictory information with regard to the possibility of 
 resuming work at Nippur at present. We decided to 
 store a considerable portion of our material under charge 
 of a Jew named Shaoul, whom we had employed as agent 
 the previous year, — who contracted to bring it to us by 
 boat as soon as the water should rise sufficiently in the 
 river, — and to take with us only what was immediately 
 necessary. We employed a few men at Hillah, as before, 
 and among them a new and very useful man, Jasim Ham- 
 madi by name. The head of the Hamals, or street por- 
 ters of Hillah, came to me and begged that I would 
 command Jasim of Jimjimeh to sell him his daughter 
 Sultana, our camp beauty, as wife. He regarded me as 
 the sheikh of my people, and supposed that I had author- 
 ity to command my men as any sheikh of the country 
 would. It seemed that Jasim 's family were not agreed 
 with regard to the girl. The father and Abbas, the elder 
 brother, were not unwilling to sell her, but the younger 
 brother, Tahir, who was unmarried, would not consent, as 
 he wished to trade her off for a wife for himself. The wife 
 whom he had selected was objectionable to the rest of the 
 family who, on their part, would not consent to the trade. 
 I felt that the matter was too complicated for me, and re- 
 fused to exercise my authority as sheikh in the matter.
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 55 
 
 Fortunately for us, the Mutessarif of Hillah, Yaya Bey, 
 was absent in the Abu Nejm marshes collecting the rice 
 tax. His deputy had no instructions about us, and 
 therefore unhesitatingly furnished us an escort, and per- 
 mitted us to depart without objection. Indeed, in order 
 to show us greater honor, he sent a battalion of soldiers 
 to escort Haynes an hour beyond the city when he left. 
 As before, Haynes, with the workmen of the caravan and 
 an escort of zaptiehs, took the direct road to Nippur by 
 way of Kheygan. Noorian, the commissioner, and I, 
 with one servant, started to find the Mutessarif in the 
 marshes, as the Mushir had informed us that it was nec- 
 essary to see and arrange with him. Riding out of Hil- 
 lah we passed a woman who let her veil partly fall, then 
 prayed aloud to Allah to forgive her for letting an infidel 
 see her face. At Imam Jasim we observed great quanti- 
 ties of new graves, evidences of the terrible ravages of the 
 cholera. We spent our first night in a village of the Jebur 
 Arabs, close to the small but promising-looking mound 
 of Zuneh. This mound is about twelve metres high, and 
 a hundred long by fifty broad. A little beyond this was 
 the small mound of Abu Jarun, from which they get both 
 seal cylinders and Alexander gold coins. Turkish of^cials 
 were among the Jebur collecting taxes, and the people 
 were loud in their complaints. Their crops seemed to 
 consist of millet and barley, and the greater part of them 
 had nothing but millet bread to eat. This was so indi- 
 gestible that we, after experimenting upon it at Nippur 
 the previous year, had designated it by the title of 
 
 Nippur bricks." But poor as the people were, they 
 were still compelled to pay their taxes, and, as is usual in 
 civilized as well as uncivilized countries, the poorer the 
 people the larger the proportionate share of taxation which 
 they paid. One reed village not far away caught fire that 
 evening and was burned up in an instant. So rapid was. 
 the conflagration that if the people had possessed any-
 
 56 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 thing except what they wore, and possibly one or two 
 miserable rags on which they lay at night, they must 
 have lost it all. Not infrequently some are burned to 
 death in these conflagrations. 
 
 Sitting about the fire in the muthif that evening, 
 Noorian drew the chief on to tell stories. He informed 
 us that in the days of his father, fifty or sixty years be- 
 fore, a Frank came to Nippur and went and stood on top 
 of the hill. Then he put a strap on the ground and com- 
 menced to read in his book ; and he read the strap alive, 
 and he read until it crept and crept along the ground like 
 a snake ; and then he closed his book and brought work- 
 men, and bade them dig where it stopped. So they dug 
 very deep, and at last they found a golden boat with 
 writing on it. Then he sent a man to fetch this out, but 
 as he took hold of it to lift it a serpent came out and 
 breathed on him, and the trench closed. All this was 
 vividly acted out amid the grunts and excited comments 
 of an interested audience. In part it was manifestly a 
 reminiscence of Layard's visit to Nippur almost forty 
 years before. The strap was a tape-measure, and the 
 book a note-book. In part it was a localized form of 
 certain general magical stories which have been current 
 in the country^ from time immemorial. The golden boat 
 story, in a slightly different shape, Layard found narrated 
 of Nippur by the Arabs in his time. But the chief's 
 recollections extended not only to the remote past; he 
 had heard also of the Franks who had been at Nippur 
 the year before; and each night, he said, they placed 
 palm stakes in the ground all around the hill. Then 
 they went to sleep, and if a thief came he could not pass 
 the palm stakes, nor could he return ; but at the stakes 
 he must stand stiff and cold the night through, and in 
 the morning the Franks would come and catch him. 
 This had clearly grown out of Field's surveying work, 
 where he had used palm ribs as stakes. The Arabs had
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 57 
 
 regarded that as some sort of magic. As we learned later, 
 several attempts had been made to rob us which had 
 failed because, probably, the would-be robbers became 
 frightened; but on their return, to justify their failure, 
 they had told remarkable stories of the magical fence by 
 which we had prevented them from finding or entering 
 the camp. All of these stories confirmed my opinion 
 that I could control the Arabs of the neighborhood by a 
 proper use of their belief in our magical power. 
 
 These Arabs were much interested in our equipments. 
 After we had gone to bed, Noorian lay awake with a 
 toothache, and the Arabs crouched around the fire and 
 talked. One asked the other if the Sultan slept in a bed 
 like ours and wore clothes like ours. " No," said the 
 other, " he wears clothes like ours, only they are all 
 white, and he covers his face, and rides in a chariot, and 
 sometimes he dresses all in gold." 
 
 The next day we passed several ruin mounds, the most 
 conspicuous of which was Umm-er-Rua, the only one for 
 which we heard a name. About four o'clock, we reached 
 the miserable, but picturesque mud village of Umm-el- 
 Baghour, among the marshes. To the north, as far as 
 we could see, the Abu Nejm stretched away like a lake. 
 We entered the town on a low causeway between the 
 Abu Nejm on the north, and less extensive marshes on 
 the south. The land on which the town itself lay was 
 scarcely higher than the marsh about it. Water fowl 
 seemed innumerable, and not very shy, but I did not ob- 
 serve that they were hunted by the natives. The marshes 
 seemed to abound in fish, some of them of enormous 
 size, five feet long. Quantities of these immense fish 
 were exposed for sale. 
 
 The Mutessarif has a serai at Umm-el-Baghour, and 
 there we were received at once. Yaya Bey was a thor- 
 oughly corrupt man. I learned that the gun which the 
 Arabs had taken from me was in his possession, and I
 
 58 NIPPUR. 
 
 made no doubt that he received a bribe for representing 
 that the burning was an accident, and exonerating the 
 Arabs from the charge of plundering our camp. It now 
 transpired that he had done nothing whatever toward 
 providing for our possible return to Nippur. He said 
 that we could only go there with a guard of one hundred 
 or two hundred soldiers, and that we must wait in 
 Diwanieh until he had summoned the Affech chiefs and 
 taken pledges for our security, and obtained from the 
 government permission to send soldiers to guard us. 
 This, he said, would take at least five days, but I con- 
 cluded that it would more likely take forever. What he 
 wanted was a backsheesh from us, and he actually asked 
 me to send to America for some rifles for him. I asked 
 him if I should have them sent direct to him, and he re- 
 plied that we must smuggle them through the custom- 
 house as for ourselves, and then bring them to him. In 
 that event he would do anything and everything for us. 
 I neither promised nor refused. He spoke of the fire as 
 an accident, but I told him point-blank that Mekota and 
 the Affech had burned the camp and robbed us, and that 
 there was no use in making a pretence that it was not so. 
 He was quite indignant at the conduct of his deputy in 
 Hillah in allowing Haynes to go to Nippur. As I could 
 not change his determination that I must stop at Diwanieh 
 until he had obtained from the government permission 
 to send soldiers, and had also taken pledges from the 
 Affech chiefs, I thought it better to pretend to submit; 
 because once at Diwanieh it would not be difficult to find 
 my way out to Nippur, whereas at Umm-el-Baghour I 
 was rather in his power. 
 
 As the serai was very small and did not afford more 
 than sufficient accommodation for the Mutessarif's suite, 
 he billeted us on the Kaimakam, Tahir, a Kurd by birth. 
 This man astonished me by the information which he 
 possessed, so unusual for a Turkish official. He had
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 59 
 
 several books which he knew well, one of them being a 
 Persian paraphrase of Herodotus. He was extremely- 
 interested in our explorations, and asked me many ques- 
 tions about antiquities, even extracting a promise from 
 our commissioner that he would write to him concerning 
 the results of the work. The Mutessarif had abused 
 Bedry Bey, whom he called a bad man, and the late 
 Wali, over whose downfall he openly rejoiced. The 
 Kaimakam joined in the abuse of both of them, but he 
 also abused the Mutessarif and the government in gen- 
 eral. He was himself, according to all accounts, a jolly, 
 amiable rascal, who could not by any means live upon 
 his salary, and was always in debt. He was, therefore, 
 obliged to appropriate as much money as he could, not 
 for the purpose of enriching himself, but only in order 
 that he might spend right liberally and make everyone 
 about him have a royal good time. He entertained us 
 handsomely, and after dinner, as we all sat about smok- 
 ing narghilehs, he gave us some interesting information 
 with regard to the action of the government the preced- 
 ing spring. It seems that as the Kaimakam of Diwanieh 
 had refused to report, as the Mutessarif directed him to 
 do, that the burning was an accident, but persisted in 
 telling the truth, he was removed, and Tahir was sent 
 to make a report in his stead ; which report was practi- 
 cally prepared for him beforehand by the Mutessarif. 
 He evidently regarded himself as quite an old friend and 
 comrade because he had made the lying report to the 
 government in our affair, and had no idea that we could 
 by any possibility bear him a grudge for what he had 
 done, at the order of the government, in order to turn 
 an honest penny. One thing, however, perplexed him 
 very much, and indeed it was a question of his with 
 regard to this which led to his narration of the whole in- 
 cident. In the confidence of our after-dinner smoke he 
 asked me what the word " pepper " meant. It at once
 
 6o NIPPUR. 
 
 flashed across my mind that when I had cabled from 
 Diwanieh to the minister a statement of the treachery of 
 the Arabs and our loss, I had added at the end, " Cable 
 Pepper," meaning thereby Provost Pepper, the President 
 of the Fund. As Diwanieh was a Turkish station only, I 
 was compelled to telegraph either in Turkish or Arabic, 
 and must reach the Committee at home through the min- 
 ister in Constantinople. I therefore replied to Tahir: 
 "Ah! it was you, then, who investigated that matter, 
 and you examined the telegrams, and did not know what 
 my telegram meant." When I explained it to him he 
 roared with laughter, told me how much mystified they 
 had been, how confident he was that it was some cipher 
 with hidden meaning, and then narrated the story of the 
 investigation and report, as I have given it above. He 
 further told us that the Arabs spoke well of us, but com- 
 plained bitterly of Bedry, and that he had written in his 
 report advising that Bedry should not return. 
 
 Hajji Tarfa was staying at his farm on a Sennieh of the 
 Sultan in the immediate neighborhood, and called during 
 the evening. Although he was close to Umm-el- 
 Baghour, the Mutessarif had not summoned him or 
 taken any pledge from him. That was clearly a pretence 
 on his part. I called his attention to this the next 
 morning, and asked why he had not summoned Hajji 
 Tarfa before him at once, seeing that Hajji was there. 
 He insisted that I must be mistaken, and remained in- 
 flexible in his determination that I could not go beyond 
 Diwanieh. He prepared a letter to the Kaimakam of 
 Diwanieh, stating that we were not to be allowed to go 
 to Nippur; and after a hospitable breakfast with the jolly 
 rascal of a Kaimakam we set out for Diwanieh, about noon, 
 accompanied by a /.aptieh bearing the Mutessarif 's order. 
 
 At Diwanieh all was changed since our last visit. 
 There was not a drop of water in the Euphrates, and had 
 not been for six long months. The people drank water
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 6 1 
 
 from wells dug in the dry bed of the stream. The same 
 condition prevailed in the Affech marshes, we were told. 
 The wells ran dry every few days, so that new ones must 
 be dug. Our good old Kaimakam had been removed. 
 One of our entertainers of the previous year had gone 
 insane, another was in the marshes collecting conscripts, 
 and the rest were scattered. Half of the population of 
 the place seemed to have deserted it on account of the 
 drought. The cholera there had been relatively light, 
 but at Umm-el-Baghour and in the Affech marshes, we 
 were told, it had been very severe. The new Kaimakam, 
 Yakob Effendi, was openly corrupt, and an offensive 
 braggart and drunkard as well. He abused our kind old 
 friend, the late Kaimakam, and in fact everyone. We 
 saw him take one bribe, and no man who came on any 
 business could hope to have it attended to until he had 
 paid the Kaimakam. It was hinted to us that a back- 
 sheesh might expedite our business, but we preferred to 
 pursue another course. His drunkenness turned out in a 
 certain way to our advantage, for after he had taken too 
 much rakee he revealed the fact that the soldiers who 
 were demanded for our protection were really not wanted 
 for that, but for the purpose of reducing the Affech. 
 Naturally I did not desire to act as a cat's-paw to help 
 the Mutessarif and the Kaimakam pull the chestnut of a 
 big backsheesh out of the Affech fire, and I determined 
 that if Haynes found sufficient water in the marshes to 
 render work possible, I would take French leave and go 
 on, the Kaimakam and the Mutessarif to the contrary 
 notwithstanding. The Kaimakam insisted upon send- 
 ing out zaptiehs to bring in Haynes, together with our 
 workmen and our luggage, and asked me to write a note 
 summoning him to Divvanieh. I wrote a note, but it was 
 of a slightly different character, intimating that if it were 
 practicable to stay at Nippur I should not take it amiss 
 if he refused the summons.
 
 62 NIPPUR. 
 
 The next day a little stream of water came trickling 
 down the Euphrates, and the whole town turned out to 
 welcome it. The Kaimakam had chairs placed on the 
 bank and we watched it come. It was clear to me that 
 as the water had reached Diwanieh, it must also reach 
 the Affech marshes through the Daghara canal. Never- 
 theless, I thought it wise to wait a little longer for word 
 from Haynes. In the meantime our commissioner, who 
 was quite agreed with me in my view of the matter, wrote 
 a letter to the government at Baghdad, which I supple- 
 mented by a similar document, stating the facts, and the 
 complete failure of the Mutessarif and the Kaimakam to 
 take any steps to provide for our return to Nippur. The 
 next morning a letter arrived from Haynes, saying that 
 he was safe at Nippur, and that Sughub and the es-Sa'id 
 had brought him there. A great crowd of Arabs had ac- 
 companied him from Hillah, Jimjimeh, and Birs Nimrud, 
 eager for work, for there was no money in the country 
 and no employment. He protested against sending 
 soldiers, saying that this would be sure to cause dififi- 
 culty, and probably would bring the Expedition to an 
 end, and expressed his opinion that we should be per- 
 fectly safe with six zaptiehs. 
 
 Noorian translated this part of the letter, which I in- 
 dorsed, and the Kaimakam forwarded to the Mutessarif. 
 The water in the Euphrates had now become quite a 
 stream, and I demanded of the Kaimakam permission to 
 start the next morning. He refused it, and I finally told 
 him that I would stay only if I were detained by superior 
 physical force. He endeavored to dissuade me, and des- 
 patched a messenger to the Mutessarif in hot haste, but 
 I had taken care to inform him of my coming departure 
 at too late a date to make it possible for the messenger 
 to reach the Mutessarif and return in time to be of use. 
 The following morning he attempted to delay me under 
 one pretext and another, but I refused to be detained.
 
 BACK TO NIPPUR. 63 
 
 I mounted my horse and prepared to start without 
 escort. He had gone to the extreme limit of what he 
 dared, and when I actually started he sent a zaptieh after 
 me as escort. We found all the canals and marshes dried 
 up, and were able to take a straight course to Nippur, 
 making the distance between that and Diwanieh only five 
 hours, or somewhat less than fifteen miles. What water 
 had come down the Daghara canal had been dammed first 
 by the Daghara Arabs, and then by the el-Behahtha, and 
 the marshes were as dry as a bone.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A SUCCESSP^UL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 Building Camp — A New Plan — My Chosen Protector — Precarious Situation 
 Useless Zapticbs — A Stolen Donkey — An Exhibition of Fireworks — 
 Recognized as Magicians — A Guarantee Paper — Lack of Water — Sick- 
 ness — A Deluge — Thunder and Lightning — Female Ghouls — Worry- 
 Remarkable Finds — Cause of the Cholera — Friendship with Tarfa — 
 Medical Practice — Size of Excavations — Arab Sheikhs — Shammar 
 Arabs — A Threatened Raid — Neighboring Wars — Domestic Troubles 
 — A Strike — Administering Justice — Food Supply — Money Difificulties 
 — A Gold Tooth — Wages and Workmen — Making Maps — Hunting a 
 Lion — Credulous Commissioner — Arab Entertainments — A Chain Gang 
 — Outlying Ruins — A Parthian Tower — Exporting a Coffin — The Blood 
 Feud — Our Escape — Friendly Relations — Farewell — The Finds. 
 
 ON our arrival at Nippur we found Haynes encamped 
 to the south of the western hilL Sughub, the 
 es-Sa'id chief, with fifteen warriors, had given him escort, 
 and both Sughub and the el-Hamza had strongly advised 
 him to occupy this position, from which he could see and 
 be seen by the Affech. The nearest well was some two 
 miles or more away, in a canal by Berdi's camp. It had 
 been my intention, in order to render us somewhat more 
 secure against fire, to build the camp this year, so far as 
 possible, of adobe. This intention was frustrated by the 
 lack of water, without which adobe could not be made. 
 In lieu of this we had our men dig holes three to four 
 feet deep, and with the earth thus excavated, and ancient 
 bricks dug out of the ruins, we erected along the exca- 
 vated space walls three feet in height, on which we set 
 
 64
 
 '*i 
 
 K- 
 
 - <u 
 
 1- "^ 
 
 \ '* 
 
 ■7: o ^ V 
 
 ,'^-va>. 
 
 
 
 
 \> \-l,, • s' 
 
 ii 2 :2 
 
 S D C D 
 
 •:v^■, 
 
 '•» ; \. 
 
 r, u X 
 
 > . > 
 
 " '^ -^ u. 
 
 >>.: v,;-, > 
 
 2 .^ ^1 
 
 
 ^ 'O „ 
 
 
 ii 1 g 
 
 4^ 0) S 
 
 ^ ^ - ^ 
 
 
 ::; c U 
 
 D ^ OS 
 
 ' ^\T.^ ■' 
 
 ::i rt <i) 
 
 " -Ws' 
 
 ^ ■£ -^ 
 
 3 3 'c 
 
 
 ^ 2 
 
 ■^ 15 
 
 •■..\55V' 
 
 S -^ 
 
 .■«^, , 
 
 d. a 
 
 - i 
 
 H "i 
 
 ^.'4 
 
 5 ^-^ 
 
 'J 
 
 ^-^ i? 
 
 * i
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 65 
 
 peaked frames of poplar poles and palm ribs, which we 
 covered with palm-leaf mats. Our own camp was built 
 with but one entrance, to enable us to guard the better 
 against treachery, while the huts of the workmen were 
 set at a considerable distance away. To render the de- 
 struction by fire less possible, the men were compelled to 
 build their huts in straight lines, forming a larger enclo- 
 sure around our inner camp. Within this larger enclo- 
 sure, and in front of the gate of our inner camp, or castle, 
 we built, after the fashion of the country, a muthif, or 
 guest house, for the entertainment of visitors, who were 
 thus prevented 
 from over-run- 
 ning our camp 
 and spying oul 
 our equipment. 
 I had stated to 
 
 the Turkish au- -__ ^--^=^" " " '"*'''^>,V 
 thorities v(\\ ''^'^ 
 
 , . , . ' CAMP SCENES. OUR MUTHIF, OR GUEST HOUSE. ARAB 
 
 GUARDS IN FRONT, AND ARAB WOMAN BRINGING 
 
 tention of plac- brush for fire-wood. 
 
 i n g myself 
 
 under the protection of one chief, and selected as that 
 chief Hamud-el-Berjud. I realized, from my experience 
 of the preceding year, that it was necessary to have the 
 protection of one of the chiefs, and to accept a guard 
 from him. Turkish protection was practically useless. 
 It was, however, necessary to obtain the consent to this 
 arrangement of Hajji Tarfa, the head chief of the region. 
 At the outset, I must confess, the situation seemed 
 very precarious. The water supply was so scant and so 
 poor that it was very uncertain whether we could find 
 enough for our large camp. Sughub, on behalf of the 
 es-Sa'id, claimed that he had been neglected the preced- 
 ing year, and demanded more recognition and a greater 
 share in our work. Ri'a, Mekota's confidant, and his
 
 66 NIPPUR. 
 
 actual agent in setting fire to our camp, appeared almost 
 the first day with a large number of Affech from Shatt- 
 el-Hosein, Hajji Tarfa's capital, to spy out the land and 
 ascertain what he could secure for himself and his com- 
 rades this year. The robbery of the preceding year had 
 aroused the cupidity of all the Arabs, and fabulous stories 
 of our immense wealth were in circulation. Everything 
 was supposed to contain money, even our boxes of pro- 
 visions. I refused to receive Ri'a. At first Noorian was 
 afraid that this might involve danger, but I was confident 
 that the best way to treat these men was the bold one. 
 Accordingly, by my direction, he told Ri'a that I would 
 not receive him nor have anything to do with him, on 
 account of the crime of last year, and that the accursed 
 money which had been stolen from us would find its way 
 back to us. We should not trouble ourselves to search 
 for it, or to ask about it, for there was a curse upon it 
 which would work itself out. He replied that many had 
 died since we left, to which Noorian responded that many 
 more were going to die. Then Ri'a gathered his men 
 together and went away, and gave us no more trouble. 
 
 The Mudir at Affech sent us a message to say that the 
 Affech were unfriendly. The Turkish government sent 
 us word that it would not be responsible for our safety, 
 and from time to time we received similar intimations, as 
 though the intention were, in case of another accident, 
 to be able to show that it had no responsibility in the 
 matter. The Mutessarif sent us, however, eight zap- 
 tiehs, who were a burden rather than a help. We placed 
 them at the door of the inner camp, in a hut built for 
 them, so that they might guard the entrance. They 
 showed a tendency to levy blackmail on the Arabs who 
 came to sell us milk, poultry, and the like, thus increasing 
 the price of our supplies. There was more or less friction 
 between them and the Arab guards, which almost ended 
 in bloodshed on one occasion. They were afraid to go
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 6/ 
 
 anywhere for us, and even when one of our Arabs stabbed 
 another in a quarrel about a woman they did not dare to 
 arrest him and carry him to the Mudir of Affech. We 
 had to have this done by our Arab guards. They were 
 afraid of the Arabs and the Arabs hated them, and did 
 everything possible to scare and annoy them, telling 
 them that we were going to " sink," and they should all 
 be murdered. Even a conscript, who had escaped from a 
 Turkish troop transport on the Tigris and tramped across 
 the desert to our camp and entered himself among our 
 laborers, openly boasted of the fact, and the zaptiehs did 
 nothing. 
 
 Shahin, Berdi's brother, and acting-chief of Berdi's 
 tribe until the latter's little son should be of age, ex- 
 pected, as Berdi's successor, and our nearest chief, to 
 have us in charge and to furnish the greater portion of 
 our workmen. The es-Sa'id made similar claims, and at 
 the outset representatives of both parties undertook to 
 guard our camp. The Thursday night after our arrival 
 these guards were very active, firing their guns and shout- 
 ing as though we were being attacked by the whole 
 desert. The next morning we found that a donkey be- 
 longing to a workman living beyond our lines had been 
 stolen. The guards on being questioned separately all 
 gave the same answer, which sounded like a speech pre- 
 pared beforehand, that it was not their business to guard 
 our workmen, and it was clear that if they had not com- 
 mitted the theft, at least it was done with their con- 
 nivance. I sent for Shahin, who declared that he knew 
 nothing of it. Noorian told him from me that he knew 
 who had done it, and so did L We knew, in fact, that 
 it was his own younger brother who had committed the 
 theft. Shahin was a Spanish-looking Arab, long, gaunt, 
 and haggard, with a restless eye and a manner that sug- 
 gested insanity. He always impressed me with a sense 
 of poverty and high pretensions. He tried to kiss my
 
 68 NIPPUR. 
 
 hand and asked me to tell him the name of the thief. 
 I replied that he knew, and that he should see that that 
 niijht which would show him that we knew also, and that 
 goods stolen from either us or our men would bring a 
 curse on those that stole them. I dismissed him, some- 
 what alarmed at my mysterious threats, and yet not con- 
 vinced that there was really anything behind them. Then 
 Noorian and I prepared to give the robbers a lesson. 
 The stories which I had heard in the Bedur camp near 
 Zuneh had thrown light on the precise nature of the 
 magical acts ascribed to us, and afforded me a hint as to 
 my method of action. I obtained a number of straight 
 reeds from the marshes and prepared about eight rockets. 
 Just before sunset, when the men were all in camp and 
 at leisure, so that I was sure they would notice what we 
 did, Noorian and I ascended a high point of the mound 
 near by, he solemnly bearing a compass before me on an 
 improvised black cushion. There, by the side of an old 
 trench, we went through a complicated hocus pocus with 
 the compass, a Turkish dictionary, a spring tape-measure, 
 and a pair of field glasses, the whole camp watching us in 
 puzzled wonder. Immediately after our dinner, while 
 most of the men were still busy eating, we stole up the 
 hill, having left to Haynes the duty of preventing any 
 one from leaving the camp. Our fireworks were some- 
 what primitive and slightly dangerous, so that the trench 
 which we had chosen for our operations proved rather 
 close quarters. The first rocket had scarcely gone off 
 when we could hear a buzz of excited voices below us. 
 When the second and third followed, the cry arose that 
 we were making the stars fall from heaven. The women 
 screamed and hid themselves in the huts, and the more 
 timid among the men followed suit. As Roman candles 
 and Bengal lights followed, the excitement grew more 
 intense. At last we came to onx piece de resistance, the 
 tomato-can firework. At first this fizzled and bade fair
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 69 
 
 '"-•^L 
 
 to ruin our whole performance. Then, just as we 
 despaired of success, it exploded with a great noise, 
 knocking us over backward in the trench, behind a wall 
 in which we were hidden, and filling the air with fiery 
 serpents hissing and spluttering in every direction. The 
 effect was indescribably diabolical, and every man, wo- 
 man, and child, guards included, fled screaming to seek 
 for hiding-places, overcome with terror. 
 
 As we crept back to camp we overheard a conversation 
 in the hut of our most intelligent foreman, Obeid, the 
 son of Mullah Ka- 
 dhim. One man told 
 how, by Allah, last 
 year night - thieves 
 started for N u f a r 
 from the el-Budeir 
 and el-Behahtha Ar- 
 abs, but though they 
 knew Nufar well they 
 could not find it. An- camp scenes, ai.wan, son of obeid mullah 
 other told how night- kadhim, with hut of obeid in 
 
 ^, . , , , , BACKGROUND. 
 
 thieves had sought 
 
 to rob us and come near our houses, but they could 
 come no farther, for they were bound fast to the spot. 
 The brother of one of them had been there, and it 
 was true, by x'\llah. All alike agreed that we possessed 
 unknown and mysterious powers. This coup had its 
 effect. Shahin and his followers were subdued, and 
 pilfering was stopped forthwith. 
 
 In the meantime, our negotiations with Hamud-el- 
 Berjud and Hajji Tarfa for protection by the former were 
 proceeding. The Mutessarif had evidently been repri- 
 manded for his conduct by the Government and was now 
 proceeding with more vigor. He had come to Diwanieh 
 and sent for the Affech chiefs to take from them a guaran- 
 tee paper for our protection. One day Abud-el-Hamud
 
 70 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 arrived with a letter from the Mutessarif saying that the 
 el-Hamza chiefs had given a guarantee paper for our 
 security, and that we were to employ no workmen from 
 tribes at odds with them. They wished us to discharge 
 all of our Hillah workmen except the pickmen, and to 
 take none but el-Hamza. Moreover, we were to deal 
 with all their chiefs, and not with one only. To all this 
 I objected, and taking Noorian and the Commissioner 
 with me I set off for Diwanieh the next morning to see 
 the Mutessarif and have the matter arranged as I wished. 
 I found both Yaya Bey and Yakob Effendi changed men 
 since my last interview. They treated me with the 
 greatest respect and humility, doing what I wanted as 
 soon as I asked it. The Mutessarif especially, fairly over- 
 whelmed me with courtesy, although he still continued to 
 beg for a rifle and revolver from America. Everything was 
 settled to my satisfaction, and we left the same day to 
 return to camp. The guide lost his way in the marshes, 
 and we were compelled to spend the night in a Dheleyhah 
 camp on the Daghara, where the people were such bigoted 
 Shiites that they would not give an unclean Christian like 
 myself coffee to drink. When I helped myself and drank 
 out of one of the two cups belonging to the camp, they 
 ostentatiously set it aside as unclean, and expected a 
 backsheesh from me to pay for another to take its place. 
 According to my arrangement with the Mutessarif, 
 Hamud-el-Berjud gave a guarantee paper making himself 
 responsible to restore the double of whatever we lost 
 through thefts by the Arabs. Hajji Tarfa endorsed this 
 guarantee. Hamud and his fellow chiefs were entitled 
 to receive one sixth of the wages of their tribesmen em- 
 ployed by us. In order to make this last condition more 
 valuable, Hamud tried to make me discharge the Hillah 
 and Jinijimch basket-carriers and employ el-Hamza men 
 in their place; in lieu of this, he asked that the Hillah 
 and Jimjimeh men should be compelled to pay tribute to
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. yi 
 
 the Affech chiefs Hke their own men. This I declined to 
 agree to, but arranged to pay him privately four piastres 
 a day per man for a guard of twenty men. I refused to 
 accept any workmen from the late Mekota's village. At 
 the desire of the Affech chiefs, es-Sa'id and el-Behahtha 
 workmen were also excluded, although both the es-Sa'id 
 and the el-Behahtha chiefs threatened us with trouble in 
 consequence. About half of our workmen, two hundred 
 or so, were from Jimjimeh, Birs Nimrud, and other towns 
 about Hillah. The other half we agreed to select from 
 men furnished by Hamud from his own village and those 
 of Abud-el- Hamud and Shahin. I would not, however, 
 agree to pay the chiefs for their men, and insisted on 
 dealing directly with the workmen, engaging them my- 
 self and paying them myself. The chiefs might collect 
 their tribute as they pleased. In point of fact, they used 
 to come on pay-day and mulct their unhappy tribesmen 
 of one-sixth of the maximum wage which they would re- 
 ceive if they worked the whole week. As it rained often 
 several days in the week, and the men were not employed 
 on those days, the one-sixth sometimes amounted to one 
 half the actual receipts. I allowed no rotation in ofifice, 
 such as had annoyed us so much the previous year, and 
 dismissed at once idle, inefificient, or insubordinate men, 
 holding Hamud to a sharp accountability for their short- 
 comings. I refused to deal with any chief except Hamud, 
 leaving the rest to fight out their quarrels with him. I 
 also made it very plain to him that it would be bad policy 
 to drive away or kill the goose that laid the golden egg, 
 and that I was that goose and he its guardian. Of course, 
 he was the object of much envy, and was threatened with 
 war on our account several times by those who wished 
 their share of the spoils; but being in league with Abud- 
 el-Hamud and Shahin, and having the backing of Hajji 
 Tarfa, and the moral support of a sort of commission from 
 the Turkish government, he was strong enough to resist
 
 72 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 pressure, although he often came and complained to me 
 bitterly of the perplexities and dangers of his situation. 
 
 Our efforts to secure water did not at first meet with 
 success. I made two visits to Hamud-el-Bendir, the 
 chief of the el-Behahtha, for the purpose of persuading 
 that tribe to cut their dams and allow the water to come 
 through to our neighborhood. Although they were 
 enemies of our guardians and had no cause to treat us 
 with favor, I was received with much courtesy and my 
 request was granted, or rather, I was permitted to take 
 my own men and myself cut the dams. But there was 
 not sufficient water to come through to us after all. The 
 old canal-beds formed hard dry roads among the tall 
 reeds. The herds of buffaloes, formerly so familiar a 
 sight, had been driven elsewhere, and the few individuals 
 that remained were gaunt and sorry spectacles. The 
 countless wild boars and marsh fowl had vanished utterly. 
 Added to the change of the course of the river, there had 
 
 been a lack of rain. 
 For almost a year 
 not a drop had fallen. 
 The sheep had per- 
 ished by thousands, 
 and the people were 
 as nearly despondent 
 as thoughtless Arabs 
 could be. Our camp 
 contained several 
 hundred souls, and 
 we could obtain a pre- 
 carious supply of 
 drinking-water only 
 by digging wells in the old canal-beds. These quickly 
 ran dry and every few days new wells must be dug. 
 The supply was scant, and the quality was enough to 
 turn a squeamish stomach. Moreover, troops of lazy 
 
 CAMP SCENES. ARAB WOMAN CARRYING WATER 
 TO CAMP FROM WELLS IN CANAL-BED.
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 73 
 
 bedouin would come and camp by our precious wells and 
 pollute them still more. It was, of course, impossible to 
 float a boat, and we were obliged to send to Hillah and 
 bring down by mule loads part of the goods we had left 
 to come by water. 
 
 Under these circumstances we were in hourly dread of 
 the outbreak of sickness, and especially of the reappear- 
 ance of cholera. In point of fact, we had but one serious 
 case of illness in our camp. Dr. Aftimus was taken 
 down with typhoid fever the day of our arrival, and 
 shortly became delirious. For three weeks we nursed 
 him as best we could, while trying to find some means of 
 transporting him to Baghdad. Daily we waited in ex- 
 pectation that the river would rise and that we could 
 send him back safely by boat, and daily he grew worse, 
 until it was evident that the last desperate chance for his 
 life was to transport him by mule panniers to Hillah, and 
 thence by litter to Baghdad. With much difficulty we 
 at last succeeded in securing mules and panniers, and 
 Noorian, taking a two weeks' leave of absence, carried him 
 to Baghdad, where by the kind care of Dr. Bowman, 
 gratuitously given, he was ultimately restored to health. 
 
 But while at the outset we suffered from drought and 
 lack of water, the latter part of the season was distin- 
 guished by such a deluge as the country had not known 
 within the memory of man. It was six weeks from our 
 arrival before the river rose to a point where we could 
 open communication with Hillah by water and bring 
 down the heaviest portion of our luggage ; but before that 
 time the rains had set in. The country all around our 
 camp became one huge puddle, and in spite of dams and 
 trenches, our semi-subterranean storehouses, kitchens, 
 stables, and barns resolved themselves over and over 
 again into cisterns. The horses would be found standing 
 up to their knees in water, and going on a tour of inspec- 
 tion I have found a depth of two and a half feet of water
 
 74 
 
 NIP F UK. 
 
 in the kitchen, and fat Gerghiz, our Chalda,^an cook, in 
 the attitude of Buddha, perched on the highest part of 
 the shelf along the side stolidly smoking cigarettes, while 
 he left the victuals and utensils to float about at will. 
 Dirty old Gerghiz, how he hated water! If it had but 
 been rakee he would soon have drunk the kitchen dry. 
 Nevertheless, or perhaps, therefore, he was a marvellous 
 cook, and could, when some important visitor arrived, 
 like M. Berger, the military attache of the French em- 
 bassy at Constantinople, conjure up a sumptuous twelve 
 course dinner, with entrees rich and rare, out of chicken's 
 skeletons and the sands of the desert. Our roofs of mats 
 were no protection against the diluvial downpours with 
 which we were favored. We had to live in our rubbers, 
 and more than once it was with the greatest difficulty 
 that we succeeded in saving our unbaked clay tablets 
 with their precious inscriptions from resolution into their 
 primeval mud. Indeed, a few were actually ruined. 
 The huts of our workmen were still more inadequate than 
 our own for purposes of shelter against such a deluge. 
 The rain penetrated everything, and for days together 
 women and children had not a dry rag upon them, nor a 
 fire to warm themselves and cook by. They seemed to 
 go into a sort of torpor while this lasted, like birds or 
 chickens. The instant it was over and the sun reap- 
 peared, animation recommenced and every one came out 
 to dry. Of course, during these storms all work in the 
 trenches was impossible. Indeed, the deeper trenches 
 turned into wells and many caved in, destroying some- 
 times in one night the work of weeks. It was an experi- 
 ence which no other excavator in Chaldaea is likely to 
 have for a half century or more, and was a complete re- 
 versal of the almost rainless conditions of our first year. 
 
 But these rains had their advantages. They filled our 
 wells and in due course of time, the marshes also, with 
 the much-needed water. They killed tlie cholera germs.
 
 •*'i< 
 
 \ 
 
 1*?
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 75 
 
 They saved the flocks and crops, and indirectly they were 
 the means of some of our most important discoveries, by 
 forcing us to abandon the trenches in use and commence 
 excavations in new sections; and by washing away the 
 surface in certain places and exposing remains of walls 
 and buildings, thus leading us to dig there. They also 
 cooled the air, and while in the first year the thermometer 
 registered 102° and 105° in the shade in March, it did not 
 reach that temperature the second year before the middle 
 or end of May. The air, too, was clearer than in the 
 preceding year, and several times we saw the snow glis- 
 tening on the distant mountains of Persia, which had 
 been invisible before. 
 
 Once we had a violent storm of thunder and lightning. 
 This seemed to be an extremely unusual thing in that re- 
 gion, and all the people were greatly frightened. Salih 
 Effendi betook himself to his tent and read aloud from 
 the Koran passages intended to charm away the evil 
 spirits of the air. After the storm there was a vivid and 
 beautiful display of cloud-lightning immediately above 
 and beyond the ziggurat of Bel. The people thought that 
 the gods or evil spirits were wroth, and for a while I 
 could fancy myself back in the days when Bint-el-Amir 
 was indeed a ziggurat, and the people regarded any such 
 phenomenon as a manifestation of the wrath of Bel. 
 
 After each rainstorm women and girls from the neigh- 
 boring camps swarmed over the mounds digging up graves 
 with their hands like so many hyenas. You would see 
 them everywhere in little parties, their gowns girded up 
 well above the knee, bent half double, scouring the 
 ground for old seals, beads, and ancient trinkets. When 
 they saw a piece of pottery peeping above the surface 
 they tore up the ground with their hands, pulled the 
 burial jar or coffin to pieces, scattered the bones of the 
 dead, and appropriated such poor relics as they might 
 find in the way either of ornaments or pottery utensils.
 
 1^ 
 
 NirruR. 
 
 
 Almost all the ornaments of the women, and no incon- 
 siderable part of the pottery- used in their domestic 
 economy are derived from this ghoulish industry. One 
 day I saw a woman with several girls digging. The wo- 
 man called to me and told me that the girls were " fal- 
 low," that is, unmarried, and wished to know if we could 
 do nothing to help them to husbands. The lot of an un- 
 married woman in that region is miserable, and even the 
 lot of the married is not enviable. All the night through 
 we could hear, at all seasons, women turning millstones to 
 grind the meal to make the barley bread, the standard food 
 
 of the population. 
 Women carry water, 
 bring the wood, 
 grind and pound the 
 
 ■ rA5^^^^V^%- -S^ "^*^^^' ^"^ b^^e the 
 
 W^^^^S' ^\^^mmA^ J:'^^^" bread. Washing and 
 
 sewing are industries 
 unknown. No one, 
 man or woman, had 
 a change of raiment. 
 All slept by night in 
 that which they wore 
 by day. Most of them 
 had in addition a few poor rags which with some reeds or 
 a mat they placed on the bare ground to form a bed. No 
 hut had more than one room. Here men, women, and 
 children slept on the ground together, and in many cases 
 more than one family occupied the same hut, and some 
 of them took boarders. There was no possibility of build- 
 ing in these tiny reed huts a fire for warmth. The cook- 
 ing was done in jars built into the ground in front of 
 the houses. 
 
 A rainy season such as we had that year brought much 
 sickness in its train. There were colds of all sorts, fever, 
 and the like. We were all more or less ailing most of 
 
 CAMP SCENES. A CAMP BEAUTY. IN THE 
 BACKGROUND, HUTS OF WORKMEN.
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. jy 
 
 the time, and Haynes's health was so affected that he 
 was compelled to leave Nippur some weeks before the 
 close of the excavations and return to Baghdad. In our 
 case, however, it was not only the atmospheric conditions 
 which affected us. These were greatly aggravated by 
 anxiety and worry, from which we all suffered more or 
 less. I, particularly, felt that the failure of this year's 
 work would be a mortal blow. At first, we found noth- 
 ing whatsoever, and it looked for a time as though the 
 others would be justified in their belief that my choice of 
 Nippur was an unfortunate one. It was while Noorian 
 was away at Baghdad with Aftimus that we made our 
 first important discovery. It was on a Saturday night as 
 the men were about to stop work that in a low line of 
 mounds in front of the ancient temple we discovered 
 what I have sometimes designated as " the jeweller's 
 shop." In a room at this point a large, wooden box had 
 held a great quantity of inscribed lapis lazuli and agate 
 tokens; knob-shaped inscribed objects of magnesite, 
 with one of ivory; a large block of lapis lazuli and two 
 smaller ones with tablet inscriptions; a couple of cylin- 
 ders; some gold; pieces of turquoise, malachite, lapis 
 lazuli, and magnesite, unworked; and great quantities of 
 glass axes and fragments, made to imitate lapis lazuli, 
 turquoise, or malachite, many of them inscribed, and 
 most of them badly broken. These belonged to kings 
 of the Kossaean dynasty, especially to Kadashman-Turgu 
 and Kurigalzu II, 
 
 From this time onward there seemed to be no lack of 
 objects, and before the middle of February it was an 
 established fact that Nippur was one of the richest 
 mounds in inscribed objects which had ever been exca- 
 vated. In the Temple Hill we found chiefly stone in- 
 scriptions, most of them fragmentary, it is true, but 
 some in an admirable state of preservation. Here also 
 were great door-sockets with inscriptions, and fragments
 
 78 NIPPUR. 
 
 of art-work resembling that discovered at Tello. There 
 were also found in the Temple a fair supply of beautiful 
 tablets of peculiar appearance, unlike anything which any 
 of us had ever seen before. The objects found in the 
 Temple were, for the most part, of early date. Here we 
 conducted systematic excavations ; in the first place, for 
 the purpose of laying bare the upper structures suffi- 
 ciently to enable us to make a plan of the whole; and, in 
 the second place, for the purpose of making a section at 
 one point which would carry us down to bed earth and 
 enable us to follow the strata step by step, and at the 
 same time determine the nature and use of the ziggurat. 
 At the same time we were cutting a similar section on 
 the old Camp Hill and exploring there an interesting 
 building of the period about 1500 B.C. On this hill we 
 found a cache of fine baked tablets, also of the Kos- 
 saean period. Indeed, toward the latter part of the time 
 it seemed as though we had but to direct the men to put 
 in their spades and we were sure to find tablets or in- 
 scribed stone fragments. Our old experienced diggers 
 said that only Abu Habbah had ever yielded inscribed 
 objects in amounts comparable with those found at Nip- 
 pur. The greatest number of tablets were found in Hill 
 X., the extreme southern end of the western part of the 
 city, close to our camp. Here they were taken out in such 
 quantities that it was almost impossible to handle them. 
 It was toward the very end of our work and after Haynes's 
 departure that we made our best discoveries both here 
 and at the Temple Hill. When he left we had intended 
 to follow shortly, and I had made no provision, either of 
 food-supplies or of money, to remain at Nippur. But we 
 began to find objects in great quantities and I could not 
 consent to leave the mound while we were finding such 
 treasures. The workmen from Jimjimeh and Hillah 
 offered to trust me for their wages, to be paid whenever 
 I should reach their towns, and even advanced me all the
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGA'. 79 
 
 money in their possession to enable me to remain longer. 
 But I am forestalling my narrative. 
 
 Other anxieties there were beside the fear of failure. 
 Some of these I have already referred to, such as the lack 
 of water, sickness, and the like. At the outset our rela- 
 tions with Hajji Tarfa were unsatisfactory. One day he 
 sent Abud-el-Hamud to visit us, evidently for the pur- 
 pose of making me withdraw my statement that it was 
 his son Mekota who had burned our camp. I received 
 Hamud in our muthif in the presence of a number of 
 chiefs and their retainers, who were visiting me at XXw 
 same time, among them Hamud-el-Bendir, chief of the 
 Behahtha. Noorian and Abud-el-Hamud entered into a 
 violent altercation, and finally the former turned to me 
 and told me that Abud persisted in asserting Mekota's 
 innocence ; that his death was not the consequence of any 
 bad conduct toward us; and that it was our own workmen 
 who had set fire to the camp the previous year. Noorian 
 asked me to speak to him myself as the only means of 
 settling the matter. Mustering m_v scant supply of 
 Arabic, and affecting a towering rage, I sprang to my 
 feet, scattering the coffee fire in every direction, raised 
 my hand toward heaven, and declared that, by Allah, I 
 knew who had done that thing, and I knew that it was 
 Mekota. Did they suppose that I was like one of them 
 that such things were hidden from my knowledge? Let 
 no man henceforward presume to come to me with such 
 lies, lest he, too, suffer the same fate! Then I stalked out 
 and left them. This was understood as an avowal on my 
 part that I had caused the cholera, and in connection with 
 the exhibition of fireworks, described before, convinced 
 them of my power. Word was brought to me that Hajji 
 Tarfa's chief wife prayed Hajji not to let their son Mo- 
 hammed come near us this year, for fear that he would 
 do us an injury, and that evil should befall him also, 
 
 for these men are giaours, it is true, but still they are
 
 8o NIPPUR. 
 
 God's creatures, and see what Mekota did to them last 
 year, and the ill that has come upon him. " Shortly after 
 Hajji Tarfa came to call upon me himself. I returned 
 the call and sent him a present, and we became ultimately 
 good friends, exchanging visits frequently. Of course, I 
 never recovered the stolen money, but, on the other 
 hand, I never would consent to say that the curse was 
 removed from the land. Among the presents which I 
 gave Hajji Tarfa I included, by special request of his son 
 Mohammed, an American saddle. Later, this appeared in 
 the possession of our friend the Mutessarif of Hillah, who 
 manifestly derived considerable profit from our presence 
 in the Affech land. 
 
 Another thing which added to my reputation as a wiz- 
 ard, and won me influence in the country, was my medical 
 practice. Love potions, or any other charms, I abso- 
 lutely refused to give, although frequently asked for 
 them. Other members of the party I left at liberty to 
 give them if they wished. So Haynes gave Nahab, the 
 cs-Sa'id Sheikh, as love charms, slips of paper containing 
 such verses as " Little children love one another," " God 
 is love," etc. These Nahab was to have tied in the gar- 
 ments of the coveted fair one by some woman of her 
 camp. They failed of success, however. For myself, 
 I treated only such simple cases of disease as my lay 
 knowledge of medicine and our small stock of drugs per- 
 mitted me to handle with a reasonable certainty of giving 
 relief. Nevertheless, the fame of my healing powers 
 spread far and wide, and the Arabs brought their sick 
 from great distances and literally laid them at my feet to 
 be cured. Some of the cases were very pitiful, and I 
 have fairly hid myself in my tent, sick at heart at the 
 sight of so much suffering that I was powerless to relieve. 
 Other of my experiences were highly amusing. I was 
 much pestered by chiefs who wished to be treated out of 
 mere curiosity to see what I did. For these gentlemen
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 8l 
 
 I concocted a drink composed of ten grains of sulphate 
 of quinine, a handful of sulphate of magnesia, or Epsom 
 salts, a spoonful of sulphur, and a glass of gin or whiskey ; 
 the whole mixed in a tumblerful of water, I made them 
 swallow every drop, mercilessly rinsing the glass and 
 forcing them to drink again and again, until the last par- 
 ticle was consumed. So comical were their wry faces 
 that Noorian had often to beat a retreat to the rear of 
 his tent to laugh unobserved, but I, fortunately, contrived 
 to maintain my gravity. No man ever came to me a 
 second time for that dose, but all reported that it was 
 marvellous for potency and bitterness, and I had much 
 honor in consequence. My most famous remedies, how- 
 ever, were a solution of sulphate of zinc for the eyes, and 
 a horse-liniment which I had brought for the horses, but 
 which I was finally obliged to use on the Arabs because 
 none of our ordinary lotions could penetrate their skins. 
 The former I applied by dropping it into the eye of the 
 patient as he lay flat on the ground, and every evening 
 a crowd of men, with a few women, would dispose them- 
 selves flat on their backs on the ground in front of my 
 tent as an intimation that they wished an application of 
 sulphate of zinc to their eyes. It was certainly a very 
 curious sight, and a second crowd usually gathered to 
 watch the operation. The horse-liniment I was always 
 obliged to apply with my own hands, which the Arabs 
 regarded as constituting the most important part of the 
 charm. After the application my hands looked as though 
 I had rubbed them in mud. 
 
 The fame of our excavations also spread far and wide, 
 and much increased our reputation. Hosts of Arabs, 
 sometimes a whole tribe at a time, came to visit them, 
 much as we would a museum. They usually lost them- 
 selves in the intricate mazes of the tunnels, wells, and 
 galleries. Often you would hear an Arab calling down 
 from above to a tribesman far below, " My brother, how 
 
 VOL. II — 6
 
 82 NIPPUR. 
 
 did you come down there, how shall I come to you ? " 
 To which the other would reply, " Alas, my brother, I 
 know not! Seek rather how I may return to you," In- 
 deed, our trenches were most imposing in appearance, far 
 larger than any that the natives had ever seen before. 
 So far as the mere amount of earth excavated was con- 
 cerned, they were much more than equal in size to those 
 of Abu Habba, Birs Nimrud, and Tcllo put together. 
 The Arabs, of course, believed that we were digging out 
 great treasures, and it was confidently asserted that we 
 had secured the golden boat, or turada, which from time 
 immemorial had been supposed to be contained in these 
 mounds. 
 
 Every sheikh of the neighborhood came to visit us; 
 some of them old friends, and some of them before un- 
 known. Sheikh Nahab, of the es-Sa'id, on his first visit, 
 proudly informed me that he had killed two men since he 
 last saw me. This, he supposed, would enhance his im- 
 portance in my eyes. Later, through Noorian, he begged 
 me to give him a tent within my castle, close to my own 
 tent, for he dared not sleep in the muthif as he feared 
 that he in his turn might be murdered. A petty chief of 
 the Rufe'ya came to visit us and begged for money 
 enough to buy a shirt for a new wife whom he had just 
 taken. He wished to give her a garment, but had no 
 money with which to go to market. It turned out that 
 he, also, had blood on his hands, and it was as much as we 
 could do to carry him safely out of the camp, as some of 
 our Arabs wished to murder him. All of these sheikhs 
 expected, and even demanded, presents, including the 
 sheikhs of the Shammar. 
 
 The latter tribe occasioned us for a time much uneasi- 
 ness. They have their headquarters at Kalah Sherghat 
 on the Tigris, about half-way between Baghdad and 
 Mosul, but migrate every year for a period to the regions 
 below Baghdad. They are unusually warlike, and as
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 83 
 
 they muster no less than five thousand mounted warriors, 
 these annual migrations are a source of annual consterna- 
 tion to the whole country, and even so large a city as 
 Baghdad is. filled with alarm until they have gone north 
 again. They are in friendly relations with the Affech 
 and their allies, which does not prevent mutual depreda- 
 tions, and there is always danger that these may bring 
 about a collision. In February, 1890, large camps of 
 Shammar located themselves close to Nippur. One 
 night a number of camels were stolen from one of these 
 camps by some of their enemies of the old Montefich 
 league. They suspected the Affech or es-Sa'id, and for 
 some time a collision seemed imminent. One day, in 
 particular, was full of excitement. A force of Shammar 
 horsemen was scouring up and down, professedly hunting 
 for the stolen camels, but evidently quite prepared to 
 yield to the temptation of carrying off any unprotected 
 flocks and herds. Affech and es-Sa*id, making common 
 cause, had gathered several hundred footmen on the 
 mounds of Nippur, and were using the top of the ancient 
 temple of Bel as a central signal-station. There I was 
 invited to join them and bring my field-glasses to their 
 assistance. Now the horsemen rode far away into the 
 eastern desert ; then the danger-signal was lowered and 
 the flocks went out to pasture. But behind some old 
 canal-bed in the distance, the Shammar made a volt and 
 came stealing back, taking advantage with consummate 
 skill of every inequality of surface to conceal their mo- 
 tions. Then our men waved a black and white striped 
 abbah in the breeze; the signal was repeated from hill to 
 hill, and the shepherds ran their sheep, trained for gener- 
 ations to such a life, into places of refuge, many hundreds 
 of them gathering just beneath us in the open space be- 
 tween the ancient temple and the city walls. Then the 
 Shammar, leaving cover, would descend at full gallop as 
 though decided to make an open raid ; whereupon our
 
 84 NIPPUR. 
 
 wiirriors would rush down screaming and shouting, bran- 
 dishing their guns and spears to protect their property. 
 When they had ahnost met one another, the Shammar 
 would wheel suddenly and gallop along the edge of the 
 mounds, seeking if the Affech had not left some spot un- 
 guarded. Then dire consternation would prevail, while 
 it seemed as though our footmen could not reach the 
 threatened spot before them, and our very workmen 
 would leave the trenches and join in the race, screaming, 
 gesticulating, and brandishing picks, shovels, and bas- 
 kets. Nothing came of it all, but it was a little like sit- 
 ting on a volcano while it lasted, and it seriously interfered 
 with our w^ork, so that we were glad of the day when the 
 Shammar departed. 
 
 There were, of course, numerous petty wars, in some 
 of which our friends and allies were involved, A certain 
 Artya, — a Daghara chief — a meek, suppressed-looking 
 man, whom I had seen and visited in prison at Di- 
 wanieh on my way to Nippur, escaped and recaptured 
 his castle, massacring the guard of twenty men who 
 held it, among whom was a connection or dependent 
 of Hajji Tarfa's. So there was war between us and 
 them. One day Hamud took ten men out of the 
 trenches; for there was to be a battle that day and they 
 were needed. They all returned safe and sound the 
 following morning. The war was, however, somewhat 
 annoying, since the Daghara were in a position to 
 diminish our water-supply from the Euphrates, and in- 
 terfere with our communications with Hillah, both of 
 which they did for a few weeks until the quarrel was 
 satisfactorily settled. Later, Berdi's murderer, with the 
 connivance and assistance of his widow, succeeded in 
 seizing his mud castle and ousting Shahin. All our 
 guards, with Meshgur, their captain, at their head, 
 marched to the help of Shahin forthwith. The poor 
 murderer, being quite unsupported, abandoned the castle
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 85 
 
 and fled, and the triumphant guards returned to camp 
 enthusiastically dancing and singing, " It was too diffi- 
 cult, Meshgur, but we have done it"; " Our path is 
 edged with diffculties "; " The guard spoils our days," 
 and the like. Other wars there were which did not affect 
 us so nearly, and of course tliere was a general sense of 
 insecurity, which is, indeed, the atmosphere of the 
 country. 
 
 But it was not only wars without which disturbed our 
 serenity; there were also suspicion and distrust within 
 the camp. Our servants the first year had been loyal, 
 faithful, and diligent. They had been trained among 
 the American missionaries in Aintab, and we could rely 
 on them absolutely. Three of them accompanied us the 
 second year. The only difficulty with them was that 
 they spoke no Arabic, and in the case of Mustafa this 
 was increased by the distrust which all Turks seem to feel 
 towards Arabs. He was always fancying that they were 
 plotting some deviltry. But, in spite of these drawbacks, 
 these three men were invaluable, and worth three times 
 as many Baghdad servants. They worked like Americans 
 and we paid them accordingly. The Baghdad servants 
 would only do one thing (a syce, for instance, would care 
 for one horse only), and we paid them native wages, al- 
 ways informing them that, if tliey wished to work as hard 
 and deal as honestly, we would pay them the same wages 
 as the Aintab men. This they were not willing to do; 
 nevertheless, they were jealous and discontented. Finally 
 they were reported by Mustafa to have conspired to 
 plunder us. The rights and wrongs of the matter I 
 never really ascertained, for this was in Haynes's depart- 
 ment, and I left him to manage it, but it became ulti- 
 mately a serious thing, the Mudir of Affech and the 
 neighboring chiefs being dragged in somehow, until 
 there was nothing for it but to discharge the Baghdad 
 men and turn them out of camp. It was an absurd dis-
 
 86 NIPPUR. 
 
 turbance, but really interfered with our work more than 
 the neighboring wars. 
 
 The Hillah and Jimjimeh workmen maintained their 
 attitude of hostility, and on one occasion their quarrel 
 came to blows. Then the Hillah men threw down their 
 tools before me and struck. Several times quarrels took 
 place between individuals in the trenches, and more than 
 once Noorian or I prevented bloodshed only by throwing 
 ourselves on the assailants, separating them, and con- 
 fiscating their arms. It was absolutely forbidden to carry 
 arms in the trenches, and when found they were seized. 
 I had ultimately quite a large collection of knives, 
 pistols, clubs, and other weapons, obtained from such 
 seizures. The men complained that if they brought 
 arms I seized them, and that if they did not bring 
 arms they were sure to be robbed as soon as they got 
 outside of the camp. 
 
 One day there seemed to be a riot in the camp, and 
 in a few minutes some of the foremen and guards ap- 
 peared before me, dragging along between them Hazzam, 
 one of our best workmen. A great crowd followed, 
 everybody gesticulating and shouting that Hazzapi had 
 been caught in the act of murdering his wife; in proof of 
 which a foreman, Se'id Ahmed, waved in the air a pair of 
 ancient pistols that he had taken from him. In the 
 mean time, everyone who could get at Hazzam was dili- 
 gently cuffing and kicking the poor fellow. Indignant at 
 such treatment of an unconvicted prisoner, Noorian 
 violently assaulted a particularly officious zaptieh, and in 
 course of time it was possible to hear the case. It turned 
 out that Hazzam wished to live on one side of the camp, 
 and his wife wished to live on the other. In his absence 
 at work in the trenches she had picked up the hut and 
 moved it to the place she preferred. Hazzam, returning 
 at evening, found that his wife had stolen a march and 
 the house at the same time, and peacefully submitted to
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 87 
 
 the change. Then she took to gossip and gadding, and 
 at last neglected to cook him any food. Finally he got 
 out his old pistols to frighten her into attention to her 
 housewifely, duties by threatening to shoot her with the 
 unloaded weapons. She screamed murder, and the crowd 
 set on Hazzam. My judgment was that no man must 
 shoot his wife, and temporarily I impounded the pistols; 
 but I also decided that no one must interfere in a quarrel 
 between husband and wife, and had it intimated to the 
 woman that she deserved a good beating, and no one 
 should prevent Hazzam from giving it to her if she did 
 not reform. 
 
 We had also two alarms of fire. Once it was in the 
 workmen's huts. Thanks to the arrangement in straight 
 
 lines which we 
 had adopted, 
 we checked this 
 fire before more 
 than sixor eight 
 families were 
 burned out. 
 Another time, 
 an Arab whom 
 we had e m- 
 ployed to cut 
 grass for the 
 horses tried to set fire to the stables. It was discovered 
 in time and put out, but the man escaped to the desert. 
 We always lived in dread of a repetition of the previous 
 year's disaster, on account of the inflammable nature of 
 our surroundings. 
 
 For our physical comfort we made much better pro- 
 vision the second year than we had done the first. Find- 
 ing it impossible to secure edible meat, we purchased a 
 flock of sheep, hired a shepherd, and fatted our own 
 sheep, with the result that we had excellent mutton. In 
 
 CAMP SCENES. OUR FLOCK OK SHEEP AND SHEPHERD.
 
 88 NIPPUR. 
 
 the same way we purchased chickens, keeping a consider- 
 able supply in a chicken-coop which we built in the camp. 
 Green food it was more difficult to obtain. The Arabs 
 ate the interior of reeds from the marshes, and the com- 
 mon mallow and sour grass. On one occasion I was called 
 in to doctor one of our guards in convulsions. He had 
 been poisoned by some herb which he had eaten in his 
 search for green stuff. There was poison in the pot. 
 We endeavored to bring green food from Hillah, but 
 with our best endeavors we could secure very little of 
 that sort of thing there, and a garden which Haynes 
 planted in the camp was not a success. 
 
 More difficult than the question of vegetables, how- 
 ever, was the question of bringing money to Nippur. 
 This was a dangerous and difficult task. To escape 
 Arab robbers, the money had to be hidden in some way, 
 and sometimes our load of vegetables contained more 
 money than green stuff. More than once I found myself 
 embarrassed by the inability to secure cash, on account 
 of the difficulty of communication with Hillah. Once 
 Haynes went up and secured the money, taking a week 
 off from the camp, and Noorian brought a supply when 
 he came back from Baghdad. At other times we were 
 compelled to trust to a Jew, Shaoul, of Hillah, who 
 proved to be most faithful and serviceable. On one of 
 Shaoul's journeys the Arabs actually stole a woman of 
 the Affech who had joined herself to him in order to se- 
 cure safe return to her country. Fortunately, the money 
 itself was never taken. 
 
 This difficulty about the transport of the money was 
 due partly to the necessity of having large amounts of 
 small change to pay our workmen, so that we were com- 
 pelled to carry it by the mule load. Our four foremen 
 received six piastres a day. The best workmen received 
 five piastres. These were a few picked men whom we 
 had engaged in Jinijinich and Hillah to be the heads of
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 89 
 
 gangs, together with a few more whom we promoted later, 
 on account of their proved efificiency. These men 
 wielded a pick, and it was their business to pick out the 
 earth, and so to pick it out as not to injure any objects 
 which might be hidden in it. It was also their duty to 
 detect the mud brick walls of the ancient buildings, a 
 task which is sometimes very difificult. They were also 
 expected to secure good work from their gangs. Ordin- 
 ary pickmen received four piastres a day. Each pickman 
 had as his second a halfa, or scrapeman. This man's im- 
 plement was a triangular hoe. With this he scraped up 
 the earth picked out by his pickman and loaded it into 
 the baskets. He was also supposed to keep a sharp look- 
 out for antiquities, especially small objects in the earth. 
 He received three piastres, or twelve cents, a day. The 
 earth was carried out of the trenches in baskets by men 
 who received two and a half piastres. We should have 
 liked to employ wheelbarrows, but, although I had 
 brought some from America, we could not induce the 
 men to use them without a waste of energy which ren- 
 dered it unprofitable. I had also brought with me picks 
 and shovels, but these proved too heavy for the weak- 
 bodied Arabs, and we had to provide the flimsy and light 
 tools of the country. The workmen went to their work 
 at sunrise. Noorian and I spent the morning in the 
 trenches, examining and directing. At noon each head 
 of a gang reported to me in front of my tent, bringing all 
 the objects found in his trench, and giving an account of 
 the conditions there. After an hour's rest for dinner, 
 work was resumed, and at sunset a similar report was 
 made by each head of a gang. On Saturday afternoon 
 the work in the trenches was brought to a close earlier, 
 and the men reported for payment. Noorian prepared a 
 list beforehand, and Haynes, on the basis of this list, 
 counted out the proper sum of small change and delivered 
 it mysteriously in my tent. The men came up to me as
 
 90 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 they were called, and the money was handed over 
 to them. If they had made valuable finds a back- 
 sheesh was given. In case the week had been a par- 
 ticularly successful one, a sum of money was handed to 
 the foremen to provide a " sacrifice," that is, to buy 
 sheep for a general feast for the whole camp. The 
 chiefs whose men worked in the camp were always 
 on hand on these occasions to take from the tribesmen 
 their tribute. 
 
 On one occasion when the payments were relatively 
 large and some gold was used, a rough Arab who had 
 found his way past our guards at the gate, arms and all, 
 proposed to those about him to shoot me and make a 
 rush for the money. Hamud-el-Berjud crept up and took 
 his stand by me on one side, and Hajji Kework and 
 Artin with their great navy revolvers suddenly appeared 
 on the other. I realized that something had gone wrong, 
 but did not know until all the money had been distributed 
 how near I had come to being shot. Noorian scolded 
 me, very properly, for having allowed the money to be 
 visible to the Arabs. It was the sight especially of the 
 gold which had aroused their cupidity. The yellow metal 
 is very rare among them, and is prized correspondingly. 
 The mere sight of it seemed to excite their lust. Some 
 of them noticed a gold crown on one of my teeth; 
 after that groups of them would come and squat in 
 front of me and watch until I should open my mouth. 
 Then they would nudge one another and point out the 
 gold tooth to the newcomers. I did not know but that 
 they might be tempted to murder me for the gold in 
 my m.outh. Finally, I hinted to them that gold teeth 
 might be a mark of the possession of the gold touch, 
 which enabled me, as they knew, to make gold for them 
 and me; but that neither gold nor the gold touch were 
 transferable. 
 
 During one month we had with us as surveyor, Colo-
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 91 
 
 man D'Emey, a Hungarian engineer in the employ of 
 the Turkish Government. How he happened to arrive 
 when he did was always a mystery to me. But we 
 needed him, for it turned out that the maps made the 
 previous year were in part incorrect and required to 
 be made over again, and so I set him to work. He 
 worked for us as men in Turkish employ are apt to work, 
 and left the plans in such a shape that I was compelled 
 to do the work over again myself in the best manner that 
 my ignorance of such matters allowed. Coloman had 
 been employed in the construction of Baron Hirsch's 
 famous crooked railway in Roumelia, and had many 
 curious stories to tell about that work. 
 
 While Coloman was with us a lion created much con- 
 sternation in the neighborhood. One morning the Arab 
 women, who brought us sheep and buffalo milk, and 
 other products from the neighboring camps, failed to 
 arrive until after sunrise. V/hen they did appear the 
 zaptiehs at the gate told them that I was angry at their 
 tardiness, which had spoiled my breakfast; whereupon 
 one of them, coming and squatting at my feet, related 
 how a lion had sprung out of the reeds as they were on 
 their way and carried off one of their number, so they 
 had turned back, not daring to cross the plain until the 
 sun was up. It was true that there was a lion in the 
 neighborhood, and for several nights he roared about the 
 camp right lustily. By day he secreted himself success- 
 fully in the reeds, and although Coloman, who was a 
 Nimrod, hunted him with a host of Arabs armed with 
 tin cans, on which they beat to frighten him out of his 
 lair, he did not succeed in getting a shot at him. Whether 
 he really ate the woman I could never quite ascertain, 
 they were all such desperate liars. That he ate a num- 
 ber of four-footed animals, buffaloes, sheep, and the like, 
 I know. 
 
 The year before we had allowed a man to bring a wild
 
 9^ 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 boar which he had shot into our camp. This had created 
 much prejudice against us. The second year I found it 
 wise to observe carefully their prejudices, and much 
 to Coloman's disgust I refused to allow a boar which had 
 been shot to be touched by any one in the camp. I also 
 took pains to exclude from our own menu all food which 
 according to their views was unclean, and in general I 
 tried to enter into the life and feelings of the people 
 somewhat more. Obeid, who was the son of a Mullah, 
 used to read the Koran with Noorian, and give me Arabic 
 lessons. He learned to speak freely and fully to me even 
 about religious matters. Others came gradually to treat 
 us in the same way, believing us to be in sympathy with 
 them. 
 
 I completely won the confidence of our Commissioner, 
 Salih Effendi, who came to trust me implicitly. The 
 old gentleman ate at our table, and out of respect to his 
 religion, I gave orders that nothing unclean from a Mus- 
 sulman's point of view should be served. He ate three 
 solid meals a day, did no work, and enjoyed himself be- 
 tween meals making keyff, /. r. , taking his leisure, under 
 a tamarisk bush in the level space to the north of the 
 temple. When the heads of gangs made their reports he 
 sat by my side in the selamlik in front of my tent, and in 
 the evening, when I took stock of the objects found during 
 the day, I dictated to him in Turkish, by the help either 
 of Noorian or the Turkish dictionary, the memoranda 
 for his report to the Museum. At proper intervals I dic- 
 tated for him, also, reports and letters. He grew fat and 
 his life was serene. This serenity and trustfulness Colo- 
 man set himself to destroy, by way of joke. I noticed 
 that the Commissioner had lost his appetite, was growing 
 thin, and beginning to wear a troubled look, but did not 
 know the cause. Then Coloman left and Salih 's serenity 
 gradually returned. Finally, it transpired that Coloman 
 had persuaded him that I was not keeping my word with
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 93 
 
 regard to the prohibition of swine's flesh, and that, in fact, 
 much of the food was cooked in hog's fat, a custom with 
 all Christians. He promised to touch Salih's foot under 
 the table whenever a dish polluted by swine's flesh or 
 hog's fat was presented to him. Having won the Com- 
 missioner's confidence and entered into this compact, 
 what he did was to tread on Salih's toe whenever a par- 
 ticularly toothsome dish came on, until the poor old man, 
 tantalized day by day by seeing before him, but beyond 
 his reach, as it were, the food which his soul loved, grew 
 thin and peaked with worry, vexation, and starvation. 
 He was a kindly, but too credulous old man. One eve- 
 ning, Coloman drowned some flies in his glass, and then, 
 a trick not unknown to children in this country, restored 
 them to life by burying them in warm ashes, at the 
 same time making passes and uttering exorcisms over 
 them. When Salih saw the dead flies issue from their 
 ashy beds, restored to life once more, he fled to his 
 hut uttering sacred words and phrases to protect him- 
 self against the devils with whom the Franks evidently 
 had commerce. 
 
 Once or twice the younger Arabs in our camp got up 
 a masquerade to amuse me and extract backsheesh. The 
 masquerade took the form of imitations of wild boars, 
 and was so admirably done that the first time two little 
 boys wrapped up in an abbah came trotting into the inner 
 enclosure I really thought for an instant that they were 
 actual pigs. They frequently amused themselves with 
 musical entertainments, the instruments being shepherd's 
 pipes of two reeds and oil-cans, which latter we furnished. 
 They were very much like children, and would repeat the 
 same thing over and over again, hour after hour, and day 
 after day. One evening Se'id Ahmed, one of our fore- 
 men, gave a more elaborate entertainment, for which he 
 engaged a professional dancer. These Arab dancers are 
 boys, not women, but are ordinarily dressed as women.
 
 94 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 Their dance is some variety of the dansc du ventre. It is 
 not at all pretty or graceful, nor what we should pro- 
 perly call a dance, but merely ugly contortions with a 
 tendency toward obscenity. In fact, the objectionable 
 feature of Arab entertainments in general was their gross- 
 ness. 
 
 Now and then the Arabs undertook to have entertain- 
 ments in the trenches. They were like little children in 
 their methods of work, as in other matters. Now they 
 would run at full speed with the baskets of earth, all of 
 them singing and each trying to do more than any other; 
 and the next moment they would have dropped everything 
 and fallen to dancing and playing. By keeping them 
 
 constantly in 
 good humor, 
 and under vigi- 
 lant s u r V e i 1- 
 lance, stimulat- 
 ing them by 
 c o m pe t ition, 
 and awakening 
 their interest by 
 explaining what 
 things meant and what they were doing, we got an 
 amount of work out of them which was very unusual 
 and which much exceeded what we had secured in the 
 first year. For this Noorian deserves the credit. Com- 
 paring later the actual amount of work done by our men 
 with the amount done by the Arabs employed by the 
 Turks at the new Hindieh canal and dam, I found that 
 with a much smaller number of men we had removed 
 several times more earth in a much less time than they. 
 Among our Arabs were a few who were half of negro 
 blood. These were physically a little stronger than 
 the other workmen, and mentally slightly more childish 
 and irresponsible. 
 
 CAMP SCENES. ARAB BASKET CARRIERS DUMPING 
 
 EARTH ON THE GREAT DUMP IN FRONT 
 
 OF THE TEMPLE HILL.
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 95 
 
 Toward the close of our excavations, after Haynes had 
 left, and while we were endeavoring to carry a section of 
 the Temple down to bed level, or if that were not pos- 
 sible to Sargon level, we attempted still other means 
 of securing more work. Noorian stationed himself in 
 the trenches with a light chain in his hands, and when 
 interest flagged and the processions of basket-carriers 
 moved slowly and listlessly, he would stand at the 
 outlet, swing his chain in his hands, and bring it down on 
 the back of him whoever lagged, at the same time cheer- 
 ing them on to greater exertions, sometimes by ridicule, 
 sometimes by jest and merriment. It looked like the 
 old days when Nippur was built. Then processions of 
 slaves from distant lands carried in the earth for its con- 
 struction, while task-masters with whips in their hands 
 urged on their lagging steps. Only Noorian's whip was 
 not so used as to do any one an injury. It was a pretense 
 rather than a reality, but a very effective pretense. 
 
 Our excavations during the first year had been scattered 
 over the entire surface of the mounds. It was necessary 
 for us at the outset to probe many places in order to find 
 the right ones at which to excavate. During the second 
 year our work was naturally more concentrated, but at 
 the same time we employed constantly search gangs to 
 run trial trenches in parts of the mounds which had not 
 yet been explored, and also in the surrounding hills and 
 neighboring ruins. About Nippur there are a large num- 
 ber of small outlying hills. The greater part of these are 
 unnamed. Some three miles to the southeastward, to- 
 ward Sukh-el-Affech, is a more extensive mound, called 
 Drehem ; and to the northeastward, about the same dis- 
 tance away, another called Abu Jowan, or Father of Mill- 
 stones. The greater portion of the millstones used by 
 the Arabs of that country are taken from old ruin heaps, 
 and I presume, from the name, that this mound had been 
 particularly fruitful in yielding millstones.
 
 96 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 Farther away, about fifteen miles to the northwest of 
 Nippur, but plainly visible, was the prominent ruin mound 
 of Ziblieh. This had been reported as a ziggurat by the 
 Wolfe Expedition, and also by Layard, although Loftus 
 and Sir Henry Rawlinson were both inclined to suppose 
 it to be a ruin of the Parthian period. I was anxious to 
 explore this mound and the country between it and Nip- 
 pur, where Kicpcrt's map located the " great ruins of 
 Chir/iun," and also the ruins of Abu Jasim. All maps 
 of this region, and also of the Euphrates valley, contain 
 many names which can no longer be found. Sometimes 
 this is due to actual error, more often it is due to a 
 change of names. Modern names of villages are often 
 only the name of the ruling chief, to whom the village 
 belongs. After his death, provided the village still con- 
 tinues to exist, it is likely to change its name for the 
 name of the new proprietor. In a somewhat similar man- 
 ner ruin mounds change their names, according to the 
 whim of the natives. They have received their name, it 
 may be, from something which someone had found upon 
 them, like Abu Jowan, and a new discovery or a new in- 
 cident leads to a change. We found later, for example, 
 that the name Abu Shahrein had vanished, and Nowawis 
 taken its place as the present designation of the ancient 
 ruins of Eridu. So between Nippur and Ziblieh we could 
 no longer find the names Chirzfun or Abu Jasim. We 
 found, in fact, no ancient great ruins. If they ever ex- 
 isted, they must now be buried in the sand hills. But 
 we found instead great fields covered with pottery frag- 
 ments, and the like, indications of a dense population, 
 and also numerous ruins of canals. 
 
 The country between Nijopur and Ziblieh was said to 
 be extremely unsafe, and for a month Hamud-el-Berjud 
 contrived various excuses to delay my trip. It was only 
 when Noorian and I prepared to start by ourselves, to- 
 ward the end of March, unattended, with a small squad
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 97 
 
 of workmen, that the difficulties and dangers suddenly 
 vanished and a guard was furnished to accompany us. 
 Ziblieh lies on the old Shatt-en-Nil, and at the point 
 where it stands several other canals branch out in differ- 
 ent directions. It is not aziggurat, and I do not see how 
 any one could have taken it for one. The tower rises 
 some thirty to forty feet above the plain, is seventy-five 
 feet long and fifty broad, with corners pointing approxi- 
 mately north and south. Underneath are vaults of 
 masonry. Resting on these is a structure of brick and 
 plaster surrounded by a solid wall of unbaked brick. 
 The wall stands on a mound or terrace of rubble or clay. 
 On the top of the mound we found a rough plaster mold- 
 ing, and part of a small half column of the same material, 
 both belonging to the Parthian period. The baked 
 bricks of which the interior portion is composed were 
 yellowish without and greenish within, coarse, uneven, and 
 brittle, and were set in a great profusion of mortar. The 
 unbaked bricks of the outer construction were of inferior 
 quality, the clay little worked, full of air, and not well 
 compressed, so that they crumbled away and dissolved 
 very readily, unlike the bricks of the best Babylonian 
 periods. The straw with which the clay had been mixed 
 to make the bricks was remarkably preserved, so that on 
 breaking them you found not merely the mould of the 
 straw in the clay, but the straw itself. Between each 
 layer of bricks was a layer of reeds. These also were re- 
 markably well preserved, and often where the bricks had 
 been washed away you could see the reeds projecting so 
 far that they rustled in the wind. This seems to have 
 given the name to the place, which signifies something re- 
 sembling a basket. Outside of the ruins of this tower there 
 was nothing of any importance, merely a few irregular, low, 
 small mounds, and fragments of brick and pottery scat- 
 tered over the surface of the flat plain. The Arabs there- 
 about say that the tower was built by an Arab king, Antar,.
 
 gS NIPPUR. 
 
 as a place from which to signal to bring his adherents 
 together in case of a raid. Such stories are naturally of 
 no historical value. The present practice of the bedouin 
 has, presumably, given rise to this particular story, for 
 Ziblieh, Nippur, and similar ruin mounds are the only 
 elevations in the country, and consequently the natural 
 watch-towers and signal-stations. I fancy that Ziblieh 
 was originally a tower to control a canal centre, and that 
 the present ruin belongs to the Parthian period. The 
 mounds nearer Nippur, Abu Jowan, Drehem, and the 
 rest, yielded nothing but coffins and graves. The latter 
 belonged, as a rule, to the Babylonian period, excepting 
 that at Abu Jowan there was a stratum of modern be- 
 douin graves on top of the older Babylonian. I fancy 
 that these were all places of interment at the time of the 
 prosperity of Nippur. 
 
 When in Constantinople, Hamdy Bey had particularly 
 requested me to secure one of the blue-glazed, clay coffins, 
 a specimen of which Loftus had succeeded in carrying 
 from Warka to the British Museum. Hamdy was plan- 
 ning a hall of sarcophagi for his new Museum, the central 
 feature of which was to be the famous Sidon Sarcophagi, 
 and he was anxious to have some specimens from Baby- 
 lonia. The first year our attempts to secure these coffins 
 had proved a failure. The second year I took the matter 
 in hand myself, determined to secure at least one, at any 
 cost. We selected for our attempt a very fine specimen 
 which was unearthed in the low line of mounds in front 
 of the Temple Hill to the southeast. This was excavated 
 very carefully, the earth beneath it being left in position. 
 The excessive rains compelled us to erect a shelter over 
 it, in order that it might have an opportunity to dry, and 
 to save it from destruction by night by the Arabs in 
 search of treasure we were compelled to build a hut near 
 by, and to place there an Arab guard of several men. 
 As soon as the condition of the surface permitted, we
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 99 
 
 cleaned it and covered it with layer after layer of paper, 
 until the outer surface had been made as solid as so 
 xnwzh. papier viache. Then the earth within was removed, 
 Abbas, a thin and wiry Arab, delicately insertin<^ him- 
 self into the cofifin, and scraping the inside clean with his 
 hands. After that the inside was coated with paper like 
 the outside. Then the ground beneath was removed in 
 sections and the bottom of the coffin plated in the same 
 way, until at last, after slow and painful work, lasting a 
 week or more, we had a solid coffin, which was trans- 
 ported to Constantinople without injury or breakage. So 
 successful was the method, and so interesting did the 
 coffin itself prove to be in the Museum, that later Haynes, 
 following the same plan, prepared a considerable number 
 for removal. 
 
 I remember the satisfaction which I felt when our first 
 boat load of antiquities was sent away from Nippur that 
 year, containing this coffin, for which, by the way, a special 
 litter had to be constructed at Hillah, twenty-one boxes 
 of antiquities, chiefly clay tablets, and four sacks of in- 
 scribed door-sockets, too large to be boxed. Our anti- 
 quities were sent out piecemeal that year, and our goods 
 and chattels likewise, to avoid the es-Sa'id Arabs, and in 
 case of disaster to insure the preservation of something. 
 
 I have left to the last my dealings with the es-Sa'id. 
 Unfortunately, the matter of the blood feud was never 
 satisfactorily settled. Sughub, their great chief, escorted 
 Haynes and his party to Nippur, in reward for which I 
 
 decorated him " ; that is, gave and put on him a hand- 
 some Arab dress. He went away apparently satisfied, 
 but the sept of the dead man raised a great outcry, de- 
 manding blood-money from me, and accusing Sughub of 
 having received the money and taken it for himself. To 
 rid himself of suspicion he was obliged himself to join in 
 their demand for the payment of blood-money. I refused 
 to pay on principle. The whole matter was an affair
 
 100 NIPPUR. 
 
 of the Government, not mine, for it was the Turkish 
 guard of the Turkish Commissioner which had done the 
 shooting. I knew that if I weakened, Government offi- 
 cials and Arabs aHke would take such advantage of me 
 for purposes of extortion that I could not carry on the 
 work at Nippur, Then the es-Sa'id, as they could not 
 get the money, demanded, or professed to demand, my 
 blood. One day Hamud, my guardian, arrived in a state 
 of great excitement, real or pretended. As I was riding 
 alone in the plains to the north of Nippur the brother of 
 the dead thief had seen me and concealed himself behind 
 the tamarisk scrub. I rode by within easy shooting dis- 
 tance, and he covered me with his gun. Then " he cursed 
 the devil," and now Hamud had come to beg me to give 
 him ten liras ($44), not as blood-money, but out of pity 
 because he was poor, and gratitude because he did not 
 shoot me when he might have done so. That the burden 
 might not fall on us, he proposed that I should take the 
 sum demanded out of the wages of the workmen, which I, 
 as their sheikh, doubtless had a right to do. Hamud re- 
 ceived an energetic scolding for complicity with the es- 
 Sa'id, for I divined that the matter was, in fact, made up 
 between them. I told him that I would not give anything, 
 and that shame was on him that he had made so cowardly 
 a proposal ; that he was responsible for my safety, and that 
 if a hair of my head were touched he was dishonored, 
 and would not only lose the reward he expected from me, 
 but also come under the ban of the Government. After 
 that he allowed none of us to go abroad without an es- 
 cort, and I especially could not step beyond my door for 
 any purpose whatever without my movements being 
 signalled by the watch; whereupon a couple of Arabs 
 with long guns appeared and attended me until I was 
 safe within doors once more. Nevertheless, the es-Sa'id 
 did not really wish my blood, but my money, and they 
 never gave up hope of obtaining that. At the last, Sug-
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMI'AIGX. lOI 
 
 hub came in person, the day before our departure, to 
 make a final demand, and, being refused, he seems to 
 have planned an attack upon our camp for that night. 
 Not altogether trusting our guards, and knowing the ease 
 with which fire might be set to our workmen's huts, and 
 the loss, and confusion, and plundering which must en- 
 sue, I resorted once more to stratagem, and gave a 
 second exhibition of fireworks; with the result that the 
 es-Sa'id did not make their proposed attack. They then 
 planned to intercept me as we left the country, and try 
 to extort blackmail by threats of personal violence. 
 Foreseeing this, I had sent our men and goods out in de- 
 tachments by boats through the marshes, somewhat after 
 the manner of Jacob with Esau, remaining myself until 
 the last. 
 
 The first load of antiquities went out in April, as al- 
 ready described. Haynes left at the same time with 
 Mustafa and my horse, which had foundered from the 
 intense heat. He was sure that if his departure were 
 known to any one in the camp it would be revealed to 
 the es-Sa*id, and he would be waylaid and plundered, or 
 something worse; for he was always sure that some one 
 was plotting against his life. At his request, therefore, 
 he was allowed to steal away in the night, without the 
 knowledge of any one but myself; and he and Mustafa, 
 with a zaptieh or two, pressed through to Hillah in hot 
 haste, reaching there the following evening. I had planned 
 to go southward from Nippur to make sondations in the 
 mounds in that direction. I disclosed this plan to no one 
 but Noorian, since, had it been known, the Turkish Gov- 
 ernment would have made objections on the one side ; 
 and the es-Sa'id, feeling that I was slipping from their 
 grasp, would have caused trouble on the other. But 
 when everything had been packed upon the boats, in- 
 cluding the Turkish Commissioner, and the zaptiehs, 
 Noorian and I, with two of our workmen, Se'id Ahmed
 
 I02 XlPPi'Ii. 
 
 and Abbas, and one servant, Artin, started with Hamud- 
 el-Borjud for Hajji Tarfa's camp. 
 
 It was to me a very sad leave-taking. The year had 
 been eminently successful, and our relations on all sides, 
 except in the one matter of the blood feud of the es- 
 Sa'id, were satisfactory, both for the present, and also 
 for the future conduct of the work at Nippur. The 
 people seemed to be fond of us, and gathered in great 
 numbers to bid us farewell, and lament our departure. I 
 must confess that I felt like weeping as I bade them 
 good-by. As a last act we distributed backsheesh to 
 Hamud and the guards, and their enthusiasm at our gen- 
 erosity, which from an American standpoint would not 
 have seemed so very liberal, was great. They declared 
 themselves our subjects, and professed their readiness to 
 guard the mound intact against all intruders until we, or 
 our representatives, should return, and prayed Allah for 
 our safe journey and our speedy reappearance among 
 them. 
 
 We floated down to Hamud-el-Berjud's camp in tura- 
 das through the reeds, in channels so covered with the 
 white ranunculus that one might have fancied snow had 
 fallen. Here we lunched with our three chiefs, Hamud- 
 el-Bcrjud, Abud-el-Hamud, and Shahin, and took a siesta. 
 In the cool, toward eventide, we started again, and as 
 darkness was falling landed in front of the magnificent 
 new muthif of Hajji Tarfa, the finest muthif in all that 
 country; and as we journeyed thither we heard on all 
 sides a chorus of men's voices, working at the dams in 
 the rice fields, for the waters were rising mightily, and 
 the dry and parched land of a few weeks before was like 
 to be turned into one mighty lake. 
 
 We were very tired and needed change and rest; but 
 we had to sustain us the consciousness of success. Cer- 
 tainly our year's work had been a success, and whereas 
 the first year we had sent to Constantinople only four
 
 A SUCCESSFUL CAMPAIGN. 
 
 103 
 
 boxes, this year we were sending thirty-six, beside the 
 coffin and the half dozen door-sockets, over forty parcels 
 in all, containing about eight to ten thousand inscribed 
 tablets, or fragments of tablets, and several hundred in- 
 scribed stones and stone fragments, among which were 
 the oldest inscriptions theretofore discovered in Baby- 
 lonia, or probably in the world.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 
 
 Four Ancient Cities — Description of Nufar — Birthplace of Art and Science 
 — Our Expectations — Methods of Work — Supposed Necropolis — A 
 Jewish Town— A Babylonian Palace — Ziggurats — False Hypotheses — 
 Late Remains— The Temple Found — Orientation — The Ziggurat Ex- 
 plained — History of Ziggurat — Its Construction — The Altar — Sardan- 
 apalus — Temple in Ruins — Worship of Bel — Babylonian Religion — 
 Sacred Swine — Relic Shop — Trade with Greece — Inscribed Glass — 
 World Commerce — More Ancient Inscriptions — Sargon of Agane — 
 Fixing Ancient Dates — Thousands of Tablets. 
 
 THE traditions of Assyria and Babylonia point to 
 the lower part of the valley of the Tigris and 
 Euphrates as the home of the religion and civilization of 
 those empires, and in the records which have come down 
 to us four cities of that region stand out pre-eminent 
 above the rest in antiquity and importance: Eridu, the 
 most southerly and westerly, the seat of the worship of 
 Ea, god of wisdom; Ur, the seat of the worship of the 
 moon-god, Sin; Ercch, tltc city of Ishtar; and Nippur, 
 tlic most northerly and easterly, the home of the worship 
 of the great Hcl. These four were rivals for the primacy 
 in the earliest period of which we have knowledge, and 
 after they had lost political importance under the empires 
 of liabylon and Nineveh, they still preserved their relig- 
 ious prtstige through the antiquity and renown of their 
 temples. The sites of all these ancient cities were deter- 
 mined by the labors of Loftus, Taylor, Sir Henry Raw- 
 linson and Sir Henry Austen Layard in the years 1851- 
 
 104
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. I05 
 
 1854. Taylor conducted excavations in Abu Sliahrcin 
 and Mughair, finding inscribed bricks, tablets, and cylin- 
 ders, by means of which they were identified as the ruins 
 of Eridu and Ur respectively. Loftus did the same for 
 Erech or Uruk, which still preserves its ancient name 
 with little change as Warka. Layard undertook excava- 
 tions at Niffer or Nufar, but war and fever compelled him 
 to desist almost as soon as he began. Nevertheless, in- 
 scribed bricks found at that site by him and by Rawlin- 
 son identified it as the ruins of the ancient Nippur. 
 
 The Wolfe expedition, sent out from this country in 
 1885, to investigate the ancient sites of Babylonia with a 
 view to future excavations, reported Niffer as one of the 
 most important and most feasible; and a German expedi- 
 tion which explored the country in 1887, reported it to 
 the Berlin Museum as the most promising ruin-mound 
 in the whole country at which to conduct excavations. 
 When, therefore, in 1888, I solicited from the Turkish 
 Government permission to excavate in Babylonia on be- 
 half of the University of Pennsylvania, and found myself 
 compelled, in accordance with the law, to name a definite 
 site, not exceeding ten square kilometres, I chose, as 
 already stated, Niffer or Nufar, obtaining also Birs Nim- 
 roud, the ancient Borsippa by Babylon, as an alternative 
 in case Niffer should prove impracticable. 
 
 Nufar is situated in the alluvial clay region formed by 
 the deposits of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates and now 
 known by the name of Irak, a little north of the thirty- 
 second parallel of north latitude, at the northeastern edge 
 of the Affech marshes, which are formed by the overflow 
 of the latter river. It is in the Jezireh, or island, between 
 the two rivers, and lies about one hundred miles east of 
 south from Baghdad. The country is absolutely flat, but 
 to the northwest of Nufar there is a region of shifting 
 sand dunes; while from the summit of the mounds them- 
 selves a few ruin heaps are visible in various directions.
 
 I06 XIPPUK. 
 
 and on a clear day in winter one may see the snow glisten- 
 in"- on the Persian mountains one hundred miles to the 
 northeast. The mounds of Nufar are among the most 
 extensive in all Irak, rivaling in this respect the famous 
 ruins of Babylon. In outward appearance, like most of 
 the ruins of the country, they are merely a group of clay 
 hills, which might be mistaken for a natural formation, 
 were it not for the fragments of brick, pottery, and glass 
 with which the surface is so thickly strewn. The main 
 mass of hills or mounds is about a mile in circumference, 
 but about these again there is a slightly raised surface 
 strewn with potter>^ fragments extending to a great dis- 
 tance and shading off imperceptibly into the plain, and 
 small outlying mounds occur at the distance of a couple 
 of miles from the main group. The latter represents the 
 ancient city within the walls. This is divided into two 
 almost equal parts by a deep depression, called by the 
 natives Shatt-en-Nil, or canal of the Nil, running through 
 the mounds from northwest to southeast, and represent- 
 ing an ancient ship canal, which left the Euphrates at 
 Babylon, about sixty miles to the northwest, and on 
 which lay some of the most important cities of the coun- 
 try. The highest mound in the group, and the only one 
 with an individual name, Bint-el-Amir, or Prince's Daugh- 
 ter, lies on the northeastern side of the canal. This was 
 a conical, sharp hill, ninety-four feet above the actual 
 plain level, by Sir Henry Rawlinson's measurements, and 
 twenty-four metres, or about seventy-eight feet above the 
 present level of the canal-bed according to the measure- 
 ments of Mr. P'icld, our engineer. Several points on the 
 southwestern side of the canal reach an almost equal 
 altitude, and the average height of the mounds may be 
 given as forty-five feet above the level of the canal-bed. 
 It will be seen, therefore, that the excavation of the 
 ancient city of Nippur was no mean task. The work was 
 complicated, moreover, by the fact that this mass of
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. lO/ 
 
 earth represented the accumulations of an almost in- 
 credibly long period, of which we knew next to nothing. 
 Bricks discovered by Loftus proved that the temple of 
 Bel had been built by Ur Gur, king of Ur, some time be- 
 tween 2700 and 3000 B.C., and notices in Arab writers 
 showed, as Sir Henry Rawlinson had pointed out, that it 
 was inhabited and the seat of a Christian bishopric as late 
 as the twelfth century A.D. The Jewish Talmud, on 
 what grounds is not known, assigned to it especial import- 
 ance, identifying it with the ancient city of Calneh, men- 
 tioned in the famous tenth chapter of Genesis. Bricks 
 found at Ur, Larsa, and other cities of the South, mention 
 it, generally before those cities, showing its importance 
 throughout the whole of the third thousand B.C. Late 
 Assyrian records also speak of it with reverence as the 
 original seat of the worship of the great Bel. Here was 
 a period of at least four thousand years to be explored, 
 and this was the sum of the knowledge which we had to 
 guide us. 
 
 The question naturally arises. What did you expect to 
 find at Nippur ? The discovery of George Smith, a little 
 more than twenty years ago, that the clay tablets ex- 
 cavated by Layard and Rassam in the mounds of Kouy- 
 unjik, on the site of the ancient Nineveh, constituted the 
 library of the Assyrian kings, and especially of Ashur- 
 banipal, the Greek Sardanapalus, and that among the 
 tablets were fragments of a great epic, including a story 
 of the flood strikingly similar in many points to that con- 
 tained in the Hebrew book of Genesis, has certainly not 
 yet been forgotten by the reading public. Further in- 
 vestigation revealed the fact that not only were the flood 
 legends of the Assyrians and Hebrews closely related, 
 but that the similarity extended also to the stories of 
 creation, the fall, the garden of Eden, and a host of re- 
 ligious conceptions, such as the Sabbath, sacred trees, the 
 serpent, the use of high places, the names and titles of
 
 I08 NIPPUR. 
 
 divinities, the word for temple, and many other points 
 too numerous to mention. All these, added to the kin- 
 ship of the Hebrew and Assyrian languages, already 
 established, proved the closest possible relationship be- 
 tween the two peoples. The language, customs, and 
 ideas of the one were found to supplement and explain 
 those of the other, and it became clear that whatever 
 would throw light on the beginning of the one must also 
 throw light on the beginning of the other. Further than 
 this, a close relation was established between the civiliza- 
 tion of Assyria and that of Greece. Greek mythology 
 and Greek art were shown to be deeply indebted to 
 Assyria. Greek weights bore the same names as those 
 of Assyria. The signs of the zodiac, and with them the 
 knowledge of astronomy, were shown to have been bor- 
 rowed by the Greeks from Assyria. Indeed, the further 
 the investigation was conducted, the more clear became 
 the dependence of Greek civilization upon Assyria. But, 
 on the other hand, Assyrian civilization was shown to 
 have been a derivation from that of Babylonia, The epic 
 of Gilgamesh, or, as it was read until recently, Izdubar, 
 together with other books in Ashurbanipal's library had 
 been, according to the statement contained in the tablets 
 themselves, merely copied from the originals in the tem- 
 ple at Erech. The signs of the zodiac had been estab- 
 lished or rearranged by Sargon, the ancient king of 
 Akkade, in Babylonia, and a whole series of astronomical 
 and astrological observations, and mathematical calcula- 
 tions was referred back to him. Of still other series the 
 exact origin could not be ascertained, excepting only 
 that they were derived from Babylonia. It was found 
 that even the temples of the Assyrians were copies of 
 those of Babylonia; the Assyrian cuneiform characters 
 were derived thence; the language itself came from there. 
 Manifestly, if the originals of the flood story and the 
 various other myths and legends so important for the
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. IO9 
 
 study of the source of the religious ideas of both Hebrews 
 and Greeks were to be recovered and this civiHzation 
 traced to its sources, excavations must be undertaken in 
 Babylonia. Accordingly, before his death in 1876, George 
 Smith began to turn his attention in that direction. Hor- 
 muzd Rassam followed him, excavating in several places 
 in Northern Babylonia, but especially at Abu Habba, the 
 ancient Sippara, in behalf of the British Museum, while 
 de Sarzec conducted excavations at Tello, in Southern 
 Babylonia, for the Louvre Museum in Paris. 
 
 The results of these excavations were astonishing, and 
 in many respects unexpected. The amount of distinctly 
 literary and historical material was comparatively small. 
 On the other hand, de Sarzec's discoveries, and especially 
 his discovery of stone statues of high artistic excellence, 
 threw a flood of light on the early history of art, and the 
 antiquity of civilization in Babylonia; while Rassam, be- 
 sides discovering the very ancient city of Sippara and 
 various documents of great importance for the compre- 
 hension of the religion of the country, also unearthed 
 vast numbers of contract tablets and records which have 
 opened up to us the very details of the every-day life of 
 the people. Considering these discoveries in connection 
 with those already made in Assyria, we believed that if 
 we could excavate the site of one of the great ancient 
 temples, we should learn in the first place how those 
 temples were constructed and what nature of worship was 
 conducted there; in the second place, that we should find 
 records, probably barrel cylinders, which would throw 
 light on the external history of the country and possibly 
 take us back to an earlier date than any hitherto reached ; 
 in the third place, we hoped to find fragments of mytho- 
 logical and religious documents, or even a temple library, 
 which would complete, or at least enlarge, our hitherto 
 scanty knowledge derived from the library of Ashurbani- 
 pal ; further than this we hoped to find objects of archaeo-
 
 no NIPPUR. 
 
 logical and artistic value, and records and contracts of a 
 miscellaneous description, which would add materially to 
 our knowledge of the life, language, and thought-history 
 of early periods. In choosing the temple of Bel at Nip- 
 pur, therefore, which was indicated by various inscriptions 
 and references as the most important and probably the 
 most ancient of the great temples of Babylonia, we hoped 
 to discover some or all of these things. 
 
 It was June of 1888 when we left this country; it was 
 December of the same year before we had secured from 
 the Turkish Government permission to dig. We reached 
 Baghdad January 8, 1889. Here we were delayed over 
 two weeks, first by a toothache of the governor-general, 
 and then by official business, so that we did not reach 
 Niffer until the last day of the month. Another week 
 was spent in preparing and presenting a topographical 
 plan of the mounds, a preliminary condition imposed 
 upon us by the Turkish Government. As we were com- 
 pelled to stop work April 15th, our actual period of ex- 
 cavation during the first year was but little more than 
 two months. The second year, in spite of many ob- 
 stacles, we succeeded in commencing work by the middle 
 of January, and continued our excavations until the 
 middle of May, a period of four months. In all, there- 
 fore, I had six months in which to explore this enormous 
 mass of earth. So far as possible I sought to make up 
 this deficiency in time by working under high pressure. 
 The first year we employed on an average between one 
 hundred and two hundred workmen, and the second year 
 between three hundred and four hundred. But, as Mr. 
 Hrassey once said, you always get an amount of work pro- 
 portionate to the wages of the country; two-dollar men 
 do two-dollar work, and ten-cent men ten-cent work; and 
 ours were ten-cent men. Their methods and equipment 
 were of the most primitive. At the head of every gang 
 was a native of Jimjimeh, a village on the site of ancient
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. Ill 
 
 Babylon, or some similar town, who had spent his life 
 burrowing for antiquities, chiefly as a privateer, in the 
 payment of Chaldsean and Jewish antiquity dealers of 
 Baghdad. This man was equipped with a light, one- 
 armed pick, and it was astonishing to see with what skill 
 he would distinguish some crumbling wall of adobe buried 
 in clay, or with what rapidity he could remove the earth 
 without ever breaking the frail objects that lay hidden 
 there. Behind him came a man with a scraper, a triangu- 
 lar, short-handled hoe, whose business it was to break up 
 and scrutinize the earth set free by the pickman, and load 
 the baskets of the carriers, wild Arabs of the neighbor- 
 hood. Of the latter there were five or ten in each gang, 
 according to the distance to be traversed. We had 
 brought wheelbarrows with us for carting off the earth, 
 but it required so much supervision and such boundless 
 patience to teach wild Arabs to use them that we gave it 
 up, and permitted them to carry the earth in small baskets 
 supported on their hips, after the manner of the country. 
 In many regards, however, we found ourselves their 
 pupils, and certainly, unless they had taught me, I should 
 not soon have learned what deep, narrow trenches, and 
 interminable tunnels may be run through the seemingly 
 loose clay of Babylonian mounds without shoring or any 
 support. We sank small well shafts or deep narrow 
 trenches, in many cases to the depth of fifty feet or more, 
 and pierced innumerable small tunnels, one of them one 
 hundred and twenty feet in length, after the native 
 method, never meeting with a serious accident, and rarely 
 experiencing a cave-in. In praise of our ten-cent work- 
 men it should be said, moreover, that the amount of earth 
 removed by them in the six months of excavations was 
 really very large, so that in cubic feet of earth excavated, 
 and size and depth of trenches, ours far surpassed any 
 excavations ever undertaken in Babylonia ; and de Sarzec's 
 work at Tello, which represented six seasons or there-
 
 112 NIPPUR. 
 
 abouts, was probably not even the tenth part as large as 
 our work of as many months. The credit for this com- 
 parative efficiency is largely due to our interpreter, Mr. 
 D. Z. Noorian, who was also director of the workmen. 
 
 But after all we excavated really but a very small 
 portion of the huge mounds of Nufar. And huge they 
 certainly did seem to us when we found ourselves face to 
 face with the problem of excavation. We felt that we 
 held a ticket in an immense lottery. As will often hap- 
 pen, our first trench was determined by accident rather 
 than design. While waiting for the preparation and ac- 
 ceptance of our map we employed the laborers whom we 
 had brought with us in the erection of a camp. Search- 
 ing for bricks to build drains and the like, they discovered 
 one day a brick wall close to the camp site (I.), on the 
 southern side of the great canal, some of the bricks from 
 which they brought to the camp. Not a few of these 
 proved to bear an inscription of Ur-Gur, who ruled in Ur 
 of the Chaldaeans before 2700 B.C., some five hundred 
 years or more before Abraham was born. This dis- 
 covery led us to open our first trench at this point. But 
 the wall proved to be only part of a late tomb of the 
 Parthian or Sassanian period, built of bricks gathered in- 
 discriminately from the older ruins. In this tomb we 
 found a broken, slipper-shaped cof^n, made of thick 
 baked clay covered with a blue glass enamel and orna- 
 mented with figures representing a woman from the waist 
 upward ; but below the waist developing into ornamental 
 curves. Beside the body in the cofifin others had been 
 buried uncoffined, and there were several vases which had 
 once contained food for the dead, together with orna- 
 ments and utensils of various sorts. Further excavations 
 in this region revealed large quantities of tombs and 
 coffins of the same period piled on top of or across one 
 another in indescribable confusion. In one tomb no less 
 than ten bodies were buried, and in several cases two
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. II3 
 
 bodies had been thrust into the same coffin. At first we 
 supposed that we had lighted upon the necropohs of 
 Nippur, but further examination proved this to be incor- 
 rect. The dead had been buried here at a period when 
 this portion of the city was in ruins, very much as is done 
 in many Oriental cities at the present day. So in Brousa, 
 in the very heart of the city, I have seen the space within 
 the walls of a ruined house utilized for burial purposes. 
 Of course, in due time such a lot will be built over, and 
 houses erected above the graves. In the same city of 
 Brousa I have seen graves by the side of a street, built 
 against the houses; and in Baghdad I have known people 
 to bury their dead in their cellars or courtyards, a custom 
 alluded to \n \.\\q Arabian NigJits. The same conditions 
 prevailed in Nippur, and, while cemeteries existed with- 
 out the walls, and there was a necropolis at no great dis- 
 tance, nevertheless, numbers of people were buried 
 beneath their own houses, and still more in vacant lots 
 and ruin heaps. 
 
 But to cut a long story short, while this trench was at 
 the outset extremely unsatisfactory and our discoveries 
 here during the first year of small importance, so that we 
 were quite misled in our conclusions as to the character 
 of this portion of the mounds, we ultimately obtained 
 results of much interest and importance. The upper sur- 
 face of the mounds at this point, where not cut into 
 gullies by the rains of centuries, proved to be covered 
 with the ruins of a Jewish settlement. The houses, ac- 
 cording to immemorial custom, were built of sun-dried 
 bricks, and the roofs were loaded down with a couple of 
 feet of earth. When they fell into ruins, therefore, the 
 roofs and upper portion of the walls resolved themselves 
 into a mass of earth which effectually protected and pre- 
 served the lower portion of the houses, as well as all but 
 the most fragile of their contents. We found in these 
 houses besides a few household utensils, quantities of
 
 114 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 bowls inscribed in ink with Jewish incantations in the 
 names of demons, angels, and archangels, accompanied 
 often by mystical and illegible characters, and curious, 
 uncouth, and even obscene figures. They were used for 
 medicinal and magical purposes, as similar bowls are used 
 in Eg>'pt at the present day. Water or some other fluid 
 was put in the bowl, and the patient drinking this, took 
 also the incantation into his stomach ; or, as the native 
 expression goes, into his heart, (Whenever a native 
 needed a purgative, he always told me that his heart was 
 sick, and when the opposite, his belly.) We also found 
 part of the outfit of an apothecary or doctor, containing, 
 along with an elaborate show-case, if I may so call it, a 
 couple of jars of what appeared to be some medical mix- 
 ture. All these objects in the Jewish settlement were 
 determined by Kufic coins found with them to belong to 
 the seventh or eighth century A.D. Below these, under 
 a vast mass of miscellaneous and disorganized debris and 
 hosts of graves, we found a Babylonian palace of great 
 e.xtent and some architectural pretensions, having colon- 
 nades of tapering brick columns, wath alcoves and upper 
 chambers supported by square and elliptical columns. 
 This building had been destroyed by fire, and in two of 
 the rooms we found stores of burnt grain. But our most 
 interesting discovery was made in the middle of a small 
 burned room which seemed to be in some way connected 
 with the larger structure, although outside of it. Here 
 was a large deposit of inscribed tablets of baked clay, vary- 
 ing in size from a foot to an inch in length, and contain- 
 ing records of the temple income and the like. These 
 dated from the fourteenth and thirteenth centuries B.C., 
 a period when Babylonia was ruled by a foreign dynasty, 
 the Cossaean, which had its origin in the mountains of 
 the Persian and Median frontier, and the seat of its do- 
 minion in Babylon. As we had almost no knowledge of 
 this dynasty these tablets, although not directly and pro-
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. II5 
 
 fessedly historical, possess a high value, giving us the names 
 and dates of hitherto unknown kings, and throwing light 
 on their government, the conditions and civilization of 
 their times, and also on the administration of the temples 
 and the religious condition of the country at that period. 
 The great Babylonian temples, as we learned from this 
 and similar archives, were often enormously wealthy. 
 They owned and cultivated great tracts of land ; they 
 possessed legions of slaves, and hosts of sheep and cattle ; 
 and were engaged in industries and commerce. From 
 the positions in which we found documents concerning 
 the temple income in Nippur, I am inclined to think that 
 a very considerable portion of the city was the property 
 of the temple. 
 
 But while the situation of our first trench and the con- 
 sequent discoveries of the Jewish town, the Babylonian 
 palace, and the Cosssean tablets was determined by acci- 
 dent, this was not the case with the temple itself. The 
 height and the peculiar, almost conical, shape of the hill 
 (III.) called Bint-el-Amir (" Prince's Daughter "), on the 
 north side of the canal, led us to conclude at the very 
 outset that this was the site of the ziggurat, or high place 
 of the old temple of Bel. It stood toward the northern 
 edge of an irregular plateau of debris, deeply seamed 
 with furrows, fairly well-defined on three sides, but on 
 the fourth or southwestern side somewhat confused with 
 the next series of mounds, so that it was hard to say 
 whether or not they belonged together. This great mass 
 of earth, in its smallest dimensions covering a surface of 
 more than eight acres, with a general height of forty-five 
 feet, or thereabouts, we supposed to be a solid structure 
 or platform of mud brick on which the ziggurat stood, 
 and which itself constituted the lowest stage of that 
 structure. The neighboring and half-connected mound 
 we supposed to represent the chambers for the priests, 
 and the like. A ziggurat, we knew from the work of
 
 jl6 NIPPUR. 
 
 sundry excavators, as well as from the descriptions of 
 Herodotus, to be a sort of rectangular pyramid, consist- 
 ing of a diminishing series of terraces set one upon the 
 other, each toward the edge and not in the centre of the 
 one below. But what was the purpose of these singular 
 structures, and whether, and in what way, they were con- 
 nected with temples had never been definitely ascertained. 
 At Khorsabad in Assyria a ziggurat had been found as an 
 appendage to a royal palace. At Mughair or Ur no 
 buildings were reported in connection with the ziggurat 
 dedicated to the moon-god. At the ancient Borsippa, 
 near Babylon, the ziggurat had constituted a portion of 
 Nebuchadrezzar's great temple to his name god, Nebo, 
 and had been surrounded on two sides at least by build- 
 ings of unbaked brick. Herodotus said that in Babylon 
 the ziggurat formed part of the temple of Bel-Merodach, 
 and was at least partially surrounded by other buildings. 
 On these data we based our working hypothesis. Now 
 the excavators of Borsippa, Ur, and Kalah Sherghat, 
 ancient Ashur, had found in the corners of the ziggurats 
 in those places large inscribed clay cylinders of barrel 
 shape containing the records of the last founders, and it 
 had come to be a tradition that similar records, answer- 
 ing in a way to the documents deposited by us in the 
 corner-stones of churches and public edifices, would be 
 found in the corners of all ziggurats excavated. Accord- 
 ingly our first trenches were directed toward the discovery 
 of the corners of the ziggurat, both above and below, for 
 it was uncertain in which corners and in how many we 
 might hope to find cylinders. Theoretically, it seemed 
 to be an easy matter to find the outer corners from the 
 shape and appearance of the mounds, but in practice it 
 proved a matter of the greatest difficulty, partly because 
 wc had mistaken a building with immense surrounding 
 walls and irregular towers at the corners for a solid, rec- 
 tangular terrace, and partly because the corners of struct-
 
 GEXERAL RESULTS. I I7 
 
 ures of unbaked brick are precisely the points which are 
 liable to be completely ruined. Our outer corners proved, 
 therefore, a thorough ignis fatinis, and we spent an inn- 
 mense amount of labor upon them with very little profit. 
 The corners of the inner structure, which did turn out to 
 be the ziggurat, were not so difficult to find, and were 
 better preserved, owing in part to the freer use of brick. 
 In fact, here we were embarrassed by the excess rather 
 than the lack of corners, for, owing to a curious system 
 of buttresses, and the superimposition of building upon 
 building, we found in all between twenty and thirty cor- 
 ners. All the more prominent of these I explored, but 
 to my great disappointment none of them proved to con- 
 tain the much wished-for documents. They had, in fact, 
 been explored by someone else in ancient times. 
 
 It was not until we commenced some of the inner sec- 
 tions of a long trench planned to stretch across the 
 temple diagonally from its apparent northern to its ap- 
 parent southern corner that we began to ascertain that 
 the plateau did not represent the ruins of a great platform 
 of unbaked brick, the base of a ziggurat. But although 
 we advanced thus far in knowledge, our earlier discoveries 
 in this and other trenches were like to have led us into a 
 grave error of another sort. Wherever we excavated we 
 turned up recent remains, graves of Arabs, made of un- 
 baked bricks set on edge, merely sufficient to prevent the 
 earth from falling directly on the body; old water jars, 
 broken off at the top and used as coffins; brick tombs, 
 built of bricks stolen from ancient ruins; and slipper- 
 shaped clay sarcophagi of the Parthian or Sassanian 
 periods. In one place we found fragments of inscribed 
 bowls from the Jewish town. At another point, close to 
 the surface, I found a large clay chicken-coop, such as is 
 used at the present day in many parts of the Turkish 
 Empire, in size and shape not unlike a bushel-basket, 
 inverted and perforated. These are placed over setting
 
 11 8 NIPPUR. 
 
 hens and young broods by night to protect them from 
 jackals. In another place I found a drinking horn of 
 brown glazed pottery of Babylonian workmanship and 
 Greek design, a memento of the Seleucid rule that fol- 
 lowed the period of Alexander. Elsewhere I unearthed 
 Greek terra cottas. Everywhere we found late walls of 
 miserable mud houses, some of them built against the 
 ziggurat itself, while such inscribed bricks as we found 
 were not in their original constructions, but in late rub- 
 ble walls of tombs and the like. We found nothing that 
 was surely ancient, and much that was late and even 
 modern. On this account one of our assyriologists 
 reached the conclusion that the ruins we had found were 
 those of a fortress of the Sassanian period, built on the 
 site of the ancient temple ; and at the close of the first 
 year I suppose that the majority of the members of the 
 Expedition inclined to this opinion. The workmen, on 
 their part, accustomed to dig for nothing but inscribed 
 tablets, regarded the temple hill as a complete failure, 
 and every head of a gang was eager to be transferred to 
 some other place, and especially to a small hill to the 
 southeast of the temple (V.), in a nose of which we had 
 found a considerable number of contract and similar 
 commercial tablets commencing about 2000 B.C., and 
 extending into the Persian period, about 500 B.C. 
 
 Certainly the results of our first year's excavations in 
 the Temple Hill were not encouraging; nevertheless I was 
 convinced that we had found the ancient temple of Bel, 
 and that important discoveries must attend its thorough 
 exploration. Accordingly, at the beginning of the sec- 
 ond year, I placed the greater part of my men at this 
 point, against their protests that it was a sheer waste of 
 time and money. But the history of these excavations 
 is long and complicated, and we shall do better to turn 
 over to the end and see how it came out, and what the 
 temple proved to be. It comprised an area intended to
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. II9 
 
 be six hundred and fifty feet square by outer measure- 
 ment. By an error of a sort of which there are not a few 
 in various parts of the building, proving the lack of in- 
 struments of precision, the eastern angle was made 
 obtuse instead of right, thus lengthening unduly the 
 northeastern and northwestern walls, and forming an 
 irregular four-sided figure. This area was enclosed by a 
 huge wall of unbaked brick with irregular tower-like 
 masses at the corners. On the southeastern side, or 
 front, this wall still stands to the height of more than 
 sixty feet, about fifty feet thick at the bottom and 
 thirty at the top. On this, around the whole extent of 
 the temple, were rooms and corridors. The surface 
 within this enclosure was filled up to more than half the 
 height of the wall with a mass of rubble and debris, 
 which formed the foundation for a great number of vari- 
 ous structures, constituting a small city in itself. Within 
 the wall on the southeastern side was a large, deep cor- 
 ridor or passageway, and beyond this a second wall, 
 relieved by two solid round towers. Within this, at a 
 slightly higher level than the corridor, were a number of 
 rooms and chambers, kitchens, storerojms, rooms used in 
 connection with ablutions and purifications, and many 
 more, the use of which we do not certainly know. Still 
 moving inward in a direct line we ascend a narrow plat- 
 form, beyond which rises steeply in two terraces the 
 solid mass of the ziggurat proper, a rectangular oblong, 
 with irregular, buttress-like projections on all four sides, 
 surmounted, apparently, by a small brick building. This 
 formed the apex or summit of the whole mass. It was 
 surrounded on three sides by chambers, forming terraces 
 beneath it, and on the fourth side it backed closely on 
 the retaining wall. Such was substantially the form of 
 the temple of Bel, or the building which occupied the 
 site of that tem[)le, as I found it, — singularly lacking, it 
 must be confessed, in architectural grace, and rude in
 
 I20 NIPPUR. 
 
 material, but possessing a massive grandeur due to its 
 vast bulk, and the mountain-like appearance which it pre- 
 sented in the midst of that level country. 
 
 The corners of this building pointed toward the car- 
 dinal points. The same peculiarity had been noticed by 
 the earlier explorers at Ur, Borsippa, and elsewhere, and 
 much has been written about the astronomical and relig- 
 ious purposes of such an arrangement, and the mathe- 
 matical precision of the measurement. I found this 
 orientation to be merely approximate. The corner of 
 the ziggurat at Nippur was twelve degrees east from the 
 magnetic north, and I observed about the same deviation 
 at Ur and Ercch. In the case of another ruin I found 
 the divergence to be as great as twenty degrees. This 
 orientation of temples and other buildings depended, I 
 think, at least at the outset, on natural conditions, and 
 not on astronomical and religious theories. The build- 
 ings of the natives of the present day are apt to be 
 arranged in the same manner in order to catch the wind; 
 for the rivers and the valley trend from the northwest to 
 the southeast, and the prevailing winds follow the same 
 course. Every one, therefore, turns his house with a 
 side to the northwest for coolness' sake, rather than for 
 astronomical theories, and this brings the corners of all 
 buildings approximately toward the cardinal points. 
 
 The most striking feature of this building was the zig- 
 gurat. Ziggurats, as already stated, had hitherto been 
 somewhat of a mystery. When the French first discov- 
 ered one at Khorsabad, in connection with the palace of 
 Sargon, king of Assyria, they supposed it to be an 
 observatory, from the summit of which the ofificial astrol- 
 ogers and magi made their observations of the heavens. 
 With this idea, however, Herodotus' description of 
 Nebuchadrezzar's wonderful ziggurat to Bel-Merodach at 
 Babylon does not agree. He says: "In the middle of 
 the precinct there was a tower of solid masonry, a fur-
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 121 
 
 long in length and breadth, upon which was raised a sec- 
 ond tower, and on that a third, and so on up to eight. 
 The ascent to the top is on the outside, by a path which 
 winds around all the towers. When one is about half- 
 way up, one finds a resting-place and seats, where 
 persons are wont to sit some time on their way to the 
 summit. On the topmost tower there is a spacious tem- 
 ple, and inside the temple stands a couch of unusual size, 
 richly adorned, with a golden table by its side. There is 
 no statue of any kind set up in the place, nor is the 
 chamber occupied of nights by any one but a single 
 native w^oman, who, as the Chaldseans, the priests of this 
 god affirm, is chosen for himself by the deity out of all 
 the women of the land." 
 
 Now the word ziggurat means nothing more than a 
 peak or high place, a term familiar to every reader of 
 the Old Testament in connection with the Hebrew prac- 
 tices of worship before the Babylonian exile. To the 
 early Hebrew mind a mountain top, or an artificial high 
 place, afforded a means of closer access to God. Pre- 
 cisely the same idea attached in Babylonia to a high 
 place, or ziggurat. Moreover, when we examine the lin- 
 guistic testimony of the two countries, we find this fur- 
 ther fact : in the Babylonian cuneiform script the same 
 sign was used to mean both land or country and moun- 
 tain; and in Hebrew one word (shadu) has likewise the 
 same double significance. But identical words for coun- 
 try and mountain could only have originated among the 
 denizens of a mountainous region. Therefore the ances- 
 tors of both Hebrews and Babylonians, although inhabit- 
 ing the plain country of Babylonia and developing their 
 civilization on that soil, were not autochthonous there. 
 Their forefathers, the authors of their language, had 
 been natives of the mountains. Thence their children, 
 descending to the plain, had brought many primitive 
 ideas, and among others the idea of God as a god of the
 
 122 NIPPUR. 
 
 mountain-tops, especially manifesting himself in celestial 
 and aerial phenomena; — the sun, the moon, the stars, the 
 storm with its thunder-voice and lightning-bolt and 
 deluge of rain poured from the rending clouds — and 
 therefore God was especially to be worshipped on high 
 places. Ziggurats were conventional representations of 
 mountains; a survival of ancient, primitive, religious 
 ideas. The ziggurat of the temple of Bel at Nippur, or 
 rather the temple itself, with the ziggurat as apex, was 
 an artificial mountain, and the inscriptions found there 
 inform us that the name of this temple was, in fact, E-kur, 
 or Mountain House, while the ziggurat was called Imgar- 
 sag, Mountain of Heaven, or Sagash, High Towering. 
 The small brick structure that crowned the ziggurat was 
 the mysterious dwelling-place of the unseen god, emblem 
 of the tabernacle above the clouds, and in so far similar 
 to the Holy of Holies of the Jewish temple at Jerusalem. 
 At the base of the ziggurat stood the altar at which were 
 offered the sacrifices to the god that dwelt upon the sum- 
 mit. Such was the origin and meaning of the ziggurat, 
 or high place. The only other region, so far as known, 
 in which similar structures have been discovered, is 
 Southern Arabia. 
 
 The ziggurat of our temple was in height and extent 
 inferior to that of Babylon as described by Herodotus. 
 His had eight stages, ours two; his was a furlong square, 
 ours, measuring over the buttresses, two hundred and 
 sixty-four feet by one hundred and eighty-five. But the 
 arrangement of our temple was such that the whole en- 
 closure, about a furlong square, might be regarded as the 
 lowest terrace, and each change of elevation as a stage, 
 thus making three or four stages instead of two, and con- 
 forming more closely to Herodotus' description. But 
 the only mass of solid masonry was the two-staged struc- 
 ture near the northwestern edge, which constituted the 
 ziggurat proper. Starting at the southern corner of this,
 
 Great Trench ou Temple Hill, looking southeast from tlie Ziggurat ; showing 
 
 walls of houses of last Reconstruction, the removal of which, 
 
 in the centre, has just begun.
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. I 23 
 
 I cut a trench through the centre. It proved to be a 
 soHd mass of unbaked brick, sixty-seven feet and a half 
 thick from. top to bottom. First there were some six 
 feet of immense blocks of adobe, then a mass of smaller 
 sun-dried bricks arranged in a system so singular that 
 there could be no doubt of its homogeneity. A strange 
 find made here was a goose q^2^ contained in a cavity 
 between blocks of unbaked brick. Some humorous or 
 mischievous workman had walled it in two thousand 
 years or so ago, and there we found it still intact. Be- 
 neath the ziggurat we found a mass of ashes, and below 
 these again the remains of other walls of earlier date, the 
 bricks in which contained fragments of still earlier pot- 
 tery. We descended thirteen feet below the bottom of 
 the ziggurat and found everywhere in pottery, bricks, and 
 the like, evidences of a civilization substantially un- 
 changed, but no remains of an earlier ziggurat, and no 
 inscriptions. 
 
 My excavations came to an end in May of 1890. In 
 1892 another expedition was sent out from the University 
 of Pennsylvania under Mr. J. H. Haynes, who excavated 
 there almost continuously from 1893 to 1895. His results 
 throw light on mine, and by the help of that light I am 
 now able to give the history of the ziggurat and the 
 structures preceding it as follows: The earliest buildings 
 on this site were erected probably before 5000 B.C., or 
 even 6000 B.C., but exactly when they were built, or 
 what was their nature we do not know. The earliest 
 dated material is some bricks with the stamp of Sargon of 
 Akkade, 3800 B.C., and of his son, Naram-Sin, 3750 B.C. ; 
 but below these were still more ancient constructions. 
 In Sargon's time, and even somewhat earlier, as we know 
 from inscriptions, these buildings already constituted a 
 temple to Bel, called E-kur; but the form of the temple 
 was different from the form of the later temple which we 
 explored, and, so far as we know, it possessed no ziggu-
 
 124 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 rat. Whether the earlier constructions at this point, 
 antedating Sargon by a couple of thousand years or so, 
 apparently, were part of a temple with the same name, 
 we cannot yet affirm positively, but may fairly conjecture 
 that they were. 
 
 Immediately upon the ruins of Naram-Sin's construc- 
 tions, Ur-Gur, king of Ur, — the greatest builder of the 
 ao-es preceding Nebuchadrezzar, whose constructions are 
 met with everywhere from Ur to Nippur, — having lev- 
 elled the surface for the purpose, erected a massive plat- 
 form of unbaked brick eight feet in thickness, and built 
 upon it the earliest ziggurat of which we so far have any 
 knowledge, either at Nippur or anywhere else. This 
 formed the core of all the later ziggurats. In form it 
 was a rectangular oblong, about one hundred and seventy 
 five feet by one hundred, composed of three stages, rising 
 one upon the other. This ziggurat was built of unbaked 
 bricks, with the exception of a few of the lower courses, 
 chiefly on the southeastern side, where it was faced with 
 baked bricks, bearing the inscription of Ur-Gur, which 
 gives us a date somewhere between 2700 and 3000 B.C. 
 The unbaked bricks of this structure were guarded from 
 the destructive effect of the elements by a mud plaster, 
 which it was the custom to apply over all those parts of 
 the surface of important buildings which were exposed to 
 the air. This plaster was renewed from time to time, 
 and in excavating the ziggurat the traces of many such 
 renewals were found. In addition, large conduits of 
 brick were built at the centre of three of the four sides to 
 conduct the water from the surface of the upper terraces, 
 and thus prevent, as much as possible, dripping from 
 above upon the parts below, and the consequent washing 
 away and breakage of angles. About the base of the 
 ziggurat on all four sides was a sloping pavement of bitu- 
 men which protected the foundations of the ziggurat. 
 The platform of unbaked bricks upon which this structure
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 25 
 
 stood stretched out very much beyond the ziggurat, 
 forming upon the southeastern side particularly an ex- 
 tensive open court, the dimensions of which the excava- 
 tions have not yet enabled us to determine. In this 
 court, and close to the southeastern wall of the zig- 
 gurat, a little north of the central point, stood, presum- 
 ably, a large earthern altar, covered above with bitumen, 
 and having a rim of the same material.' This altar occu- 
 pied in relation to the ziggurat substantially the same 
 position which the altar in the temple of Yahweh at Jeru- 
 salem occupied in relation to the Holy Place of that tem- 
 ple. Access was had to the terraces of the ziggurat by 
 means of a causeway, a little to the south of the altar. 
 This causeway was relatively quite narrow, and the 
 ascent was very gradual, but whether there were steps or 
 merely an inclined plane cannot be determined. 
 
 In spite of the greatest care taken for the preservation 
 of the surface of the ziggurat through frequent replaster- 
 ings, the earth would wash down from the unbaked bricks 
 of which that surface was composed. This, added to the 
 refuse which accumulated in consequence of the crowds 
 that frequented the court, and the dust and sand blown 
 in by the strong winds of the country, gradually covered 
 Ur-Gur's pavement out of sight. Accordingly, some 
 two or three hundred years after his death, King Ur-Ninib, 
 of the dynasty of Isin, laid in the old court a new pave- 
 ment composed of large baked bricks, some of which bore 
 an inscription with his name. He, and other kings, con- 
 spicuously Kurigalzu II. of Babylon, 1 306-1 284 B.C., also 
 repaired the ziggurat from time to time, but without in 
 any way altering its form. Finally, about 1250 B.C., the 
 accumulations of debris having at that time reached a 
 considerable depth, so that, apparently, Ur-Ninib's pave- 
 ment had been buried out of sight, and the level of the 
 
 ' Such an altar was found by Haynes in this position but at a lower level. 
 I conjecture that at a later date the altar stood at about the same place.
 
 126 NIPPUR. 
 
 floor of the court thus raised some two or three feet, at 
 least, Kadashman-Turgu, a king of the Cossaean dynasty 
 ruUng in Babylon, built about the base of the ziggurat a 
 projecting casement of bricks, readily identified by his 
 inscription upon the bricks. 
 
 After this we have no change in the form or dimensions 
 of the ziggurat to chronicle for a space of six hundred 
 years. King followed king, and dynasty, dynasty. The 
 rain-storms wore away the mud plastering from the ter- 
 races of the ziggurat, and from time to time the plaster- 
 ing was renewed. Inch by inch the mud that was washed 
 down filled up the courtyard, and so the ziggurat became 
 gradually lower and lower. Here and there a stray brick 
 with a stamp upon it gives us the name of some king who 
 either made repairs upon the ziggurat itself, or else built 
 or repaired some of the other structures or rooms of the 
 great temple. But none of these kings seems to have 
 added any feature of real importance to the temple, or to 
 have done more for the ziggurat than merely to keep it 
 in repair. At last the Assyrians became masters of the 
 country, and, having conquered it by force of arms, 
 found themselves in turn conquered by the art, science, 
 literature, and general culture of the ancient people, in 
 comparison with whom they were but infants and bar- 
 barians. Babylonia played toward Assyria in the last 
 century of the existence of the latter the same part which 
 Greece played toward Rome in the days of Plautus and 
 Terence, Horace and Ovid. The last of the great As- 
 syrian kings, Ashurbanipal, or Sardanapalus, borrowed 
 his library from the temple of Ishtar at Erech, as we 
 have already seen. In his reverence for the ancient 
 shrines of the Babylonian fatherland, he also undertook 
 on a grand scale a restoration of this most ancient and 
 revered of all temples, the temple of Bel at Nippur. 
 About the original ziggurat, enclosing it on all sides, he 
 erected a new and larijer structure. The lower terrace of
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 27 
 
 this new ziggurat he faced with baked bricks, each of 
 which bears the following inscription: " To Bel, lord of 
 lands, his lord, Ashur-ban-aplu, his favorite pastor, the 
 powerful king, king of the four quarters of the earth, 
 built E-kur, his beloved house, with bricks." This ter- 
 race exhibits the first attempt at architectural adornment 
 in the long history of the ziggurat. Instead of a per- 
 fectly flat, plain wall, Ashurbanipal built a wall relieved 
 by square half columns, like the wall of the ziggurat of 
 the temple of the Moon at Ur. 
 
 After Ashurbanipal's time we find evidence of still one 
 more important restoration of the ziggurat, which changed 
 its form completely. Huge, buttress-like wings were 
 added on each of the four sides, giving the structure a 
 cruciform shape unlike that of any other ziggurat yet 
 discovered. Who was the author of this innovation we 
 do not know, as he did not use bricks manufactured for 
 the purpose with his own stamp upon them. It was cer- 
 tainly, therefore, not the famous Nebuchadrezzar; for 
 that monarch, greatest of all the ancient builders of 
 Babylonia, always left his name and inscription upon his 
 work. I am inclined to think that it was a monarch not 
 far removed from him in time, living, let us say, for the 
 sake of a definite date, about 500 B.C. It was presumably 
 at the same time, about 500 B.C., that the buildings of 
 unbaked bricks, already described as surrounding the zig- 
 gurat, were erected about and quite close to the ziggurat 
 on all sides. I am inclined to think that this restora- 
 tion represents a new religion, and that if the new build- 
 ings were a temple, they were not consecrated to the 
 worship of Bel. These buildings stand on a founda- 
 tion of well-packed rubble, containing many bricks and 
 fragments of bricks with the stamp of Ashurbanipal, giv- 
 ing evidence of the previous destruction of some building 
 or buildings of Ashurbanipal erected on the site of the great 
 open-court of the old temple of Ur-Gur and Ur-Ninib.
 
 128 NIPPUK. 
 
 From this time onward until the temple fell into ruins 
 and was abandoned we have no certain dates. The ex- 
 tent of the accumulations and the evidence of successive 
 stages of occupancy show clearly, however, that the 
 period was a long one, and Greek pottery and terra-cotta 
 heads of Greek manufacture found in the later strata of 
 the houses prove that it extended into the time of the 
 Seleucids. In Constantinople, the accumulation of debris 
 on the site of the ancient hippodrome between the time 
 of Constantine and the Crimean war, a period of fifteen 
 hundred years, was about fourteen feet. Far more rapid 
 is the accumulation in narrow streets between mud 
 houses, as any one who has visited such towns as Bagh- 
 dad and Hillah must have observed. At Tell-el-Hesy, in 
 Philistia, under somewhat similar conditions, Petrie es- 
 timated the average rate of accumulation at five feet a 
 century. The accumulation of dirt, dust, and debris dur- 
 ing the period of occupancy of the houses on the eighteen- 
 foot level in front of the ziggurat was on the average 
 about twelve feet, which at the same rate would give us 
 a period of about two hundred and fifty years. I am 
 inclined to think, however, on other grounds, that it was 
 really nearer three hundred and fifty years. The houses 
 themselves were occupied at two, or, in some places, three 
 levels, new doors being cut above the old ones as the streets 
 or passage-ways gradually filled up. But not only did debris 
 accumulate without and within the houses, the amount of 
 material washed down from the ziggurat was also very con- 
 siderable, and from time to time, as the apparent height 
 of the ziggurat was diminished by the accumulations 
 about its base, it became necessary to add to it above, 
 just as in the houses it had become necessary to cut 
 new doors above the old ones. Two or three such addi- 
 tions to the upper stages of the ziggurat can still be traced. 
 At last men ceased either to make additions or repairs ; the 
 sanctity of the temple of Bel became a thing of the past;
 
 Figurines. In the centre, a Greek terra-cotta head of good workmanship, 
 showing traces of color ; found in rooms of last Reconstruction on Tem- 
 ple Hill. Date, circa 300 B.C. To right and left, rude clay figures, pre- 
 sumably representing the god Bel. Found in burnt houses on Hill X. 
 Date, circa 2500 B.C. In front, below, a dog, of hard, white-enamelled, 
 procelain-like substance. Found in Hill V, 14 metres below surface. 
 Date, circa 2500 B.C. To right of this, an obscene clay figure, from Cos- 
 Sccan grave in Hill V. To left, a blue-enamelled figurine of Egyptian 
 workmanship, from Babylonian grave in Hill I.
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 29 
 
 and both the ziggurat and the buildings about it were 
 allowed to fall into ruins, and men began to bury their 
 dead on the artificial hill where their ancestors had wor- 
 shipped God. On the ruins of the buildings about the 
 ziggurat we found graves and coffins of the Parthian or 
 Sassanian periods, for, unfortunately, our ignorance of 
 Parthian and Sassanian antiquities does not enable us 
 always to distinguish the one from the other. Some- 
 where about or before 150 B.C., apparently, the ancient 
 temple of Bel at Nippur, which had been the great seat 
 of worship for about five thousand years, fell into ruins. 
 And now, a word about the worship of the temple. 
 The great god that inhabited it was Bel, or the Lord. 
 He is represented in clay figurines as an old man. He 
 was one of the ancient trinity, of which the other mem- 
 bers were Anu, the heaven, and Ea, the wise god of the 
 deeps. But Bel especially was the Lord ; his temple at 
 Nippur was the great temple, and is constantly referred 
 to as such in the Assyrian inscriptions. His special and 
 peculiar name was En-Lil, or the Lord of the Storm, and 
 the temple was commonly known as the House of En- 
 Lil, just as the temple at Jerusalem was called the House 
 of Yahweh. His was the central worship of the temple, 
 with its priests and temple musicians, its sacrifices and its 
 psalms. Figurines of the musicians we found in con- 
 siderable numbers, but their only instruments were a 
 sort of tambourine or drum and a double pipe; the same 
 instruments which are in use among the natives of the 
 present day. But, as in the temple at Jerusalem from 
 Solomon's time to that of King Josiah we find, beside 
 the main sanctuary dedicated to Yahweh, minor shrines 
 consecrated to the worship of Ashtaroth, the Sun, and 
 other divinities, so the inscriptions found at Nippur prove 
 that Beltis, Nuzku, Ninib, and probably other divinities 
 were worshipped by the side of Bel within his temple, 
 as though he were the one supreme god and they his. 
 
 Vol. ir-g
 
 130 NIPPUR. 
 
 satellites. In fact, the Babylonian religion is almost a 
 compound of monotheism and polytheism. One moment 
 a god is addressed as though he were one and supreme, 
 and you are ready to imagine that the other gods are but 
 his manifestations or attributes; and the next moment 
 they are invoked as independent beings, his equals or 
 even superiors, and you find yourself in the midst of a 
 crude and sensuous polytheism. Again, through every- 
 thing runs the dualism of sex. Each god has his female 
 counterpart ; and so next in importance to Bel in the wor- 
 ship of this temple stood his Beltis, or Ishtar. Her wor- 
 ship was evidently obscene, and from an episode in the 
 epic of Gilgamesh we may conclude that the phalli scat- 
 tered everywhere through the chambers and about the 
 walls of the temple were used in connection with her cult. 
 Again, as in the pre-exilic religion of the Hebrews we 
 find minor high places or shrines of Yahweh at the gates, 
 so here we discovered on a raised platform without the 
 great southeastern wall, but just within the entrance of a 
 second enclosure, a small shrine of Bel, erected by King 
 Bur-Sin of Ur about 2500 B.C. This consisted of two 
 rooms, the foundations of which we found built of bricks 
 laid in bitumen. All the bricks were inscribed with the 
 name of the king, and at each doorway was a diorite 
 door-socket with a dedication to Bel. This little sanctu- 
 ary faced inward toward the great temple, its door to the 
 northwest, and behind it was a sort of half court, formed by 
 the projection of the side walls. Near this stood a well, 
 connected in some way with the religious rites, and in the 
 court or about the shrine were statues. These had been 
 removed or destroyed, and their existence was attested 
 only by fragments. From these fragments it was mani- 
 fest that the material and workmanship were the same 
 as those of the famous statues discovered by de Sarzec, at 
 Tello. Indeed much about this little shrine reminded me 
 of a temple discovered at that place.
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 131 
 
 The Bel temple at Nippur was, as I have already stated, 
 probably the greatest and most revered temple of Baby- 
 lonia until the time of Nebuchadrezzar, and was doubtless 
 the goal of many a pilgrimage. At the time of the great 
 festival of Bel the city must have been crowded with pil- 
 grims, from regions as far away as Assyria, who had come 
 to pay their vows and feast before their god. Prof. Sayce 
 has conjectured that swine's flesh was eaten at these an- 
 nual feasts, and that the swine was sacred to Bel, of Nip- 
 pur. This conjecture finds some confirmation in a small 
 clay bas-relief of a boar which we found in an outbuilding 
 of the temple, possibly a caravanserai for well-to-do pil- 
 grims. This was either a votive tablet to be deposited in 
 the temple in connection with a vow, or an object of piety 
 to be carried away as a sacred relic. The swine seems 
 to have been taboo, or unclean, in Southern Babylonia, or 
 at least, in the territory of Nippur, in the sense that his 
 flesh was forbidden for unhallowed use. And this throws 
 light on the origin of the Hebrew prohibition of swine 
 flesh. Forbidden at first as consecrated to a god, by a 
 process familiar to a student of such practices, it finally 
 came to be regarded as unclean in our sense of the word. 
 
 Pilgrims from the north came to these feasts by water, 
 entering the city by the Nil canal. From this a branch 
 was conducted into a basin in front of the southeastern 
 wall of the temple. Along the edge of the basin, above 
 the quay, ran a line of booths, or store-rooms, built of 
 unburned bricks, forming on this side a sort of outer en- 
 closure. In the centre of this line was an entrance within 
 which stood the ancient shrine of Bur-Sin, alluded to 
 above. In those booths may have been sold objects 
 needed by the pilgrims. Three booths, immediately to 
 the right of the entrance, were occupied by the manu- 
 facturers of votive objects. In the central one of the 
 three we were fortunate enough to find a considerable 
 amount of stock. This had been contained in a large
 
 132 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 wooden box set in a corner of the room. By some 
 catastrophe the booth was demoHshed. The earth roof 
 and the upper part of the walls fell in and buried 
 the box. Slowly it decayed, leaving evidences of its 
 existence in carbonized fragments, and in the long 
 copper nails by which it had once been fastened. We 
 found its contents, heaped together, softly reposing in 
 the protecting earth. There were quantities of small 
 round coin-like tablets of lapis lazuli, variously dedicated 
 to Bel, Beltis, Ninib, and Nuzku, sometimes bearing in 
 addition the name of some king of the Cossaean dynasty 
 of Babylon (1450-1140 B.C.), and a prayer for his welfare. 
 Other similar tablets were made of agate, cut in cameo 
 fashion. Other votive objects in malachite, turquoise, 
 lapis lazuli, and agate were cut in different shapes, and 
 many of them were perforated with holes for suspension. 
 I am inclined to think that while some of these objects 
 were meant for suspension at various shrines in the tem- 
 ple, others were intended to be carried or worn as charms, 
 and aids to devotion. Those which bore the inscription 
 dedicated " for the life " of such and such a king, were, 
 I imagine, a sort of masses said for the repose of his soul; 
 for in Babylonian, as in Hebrew, soul and life are identical. 
 A king might order a number of inscribed tablets prepared 
 for his " life " or the " life " of his parents or grand- 
 parents, some for deposit in the temple archives as a 
 memorial before the god; some to be distributed to the 
 pilgrims, that in their devotions his name and service 
 should be recorded. Some tablets of the kind intended 
 for deposit in the temple archives we found in process of 
 manufacture. Among these was a fine inscription of 
 twenty lines on a block of lapis lazuli, ending with impre- 
 cations against the man who should profane it or divert 
 it from its use. This was dedicated in the name of a 
 certain Kadashman Turgu, in the Cossaean tongue, or 
 Tukulti-Bcl, Trust in Bl-I, in the Babylonian, who reigned
 
 i ' 
 
 ^■lUtaiHiMiHi 
 
 V 1) 
 
 u 
 
 ~ « 

 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 33 
 
 from 1257 to 1241 B.C. The inscription of a smaller 
 tablet in the name of King Kurigalzu II. (1306-1284) had 
 been completed, and the tablet partly cut off from the 
 block. One heart-shaped agate tablet, perforated for 
 suspension, bore on one side a dedication to Beltis " for 
 the life of Dungi, the powerful champion, King of Ur; " 
 and on the other an inscription to say that Kurigalzu, 
 King of Karduniash, conquered the palace of Susa in 
 Elam and presented this to Beltis, his mistress, for his 
 " life." It had been consecrated to the service of the 
 goddess about 2750 B.C. ; carried off by the Elamites in 
 some of their conquering, plundering tours, five hundred 
 years later ; recovered by Kurigalzu a thousand years later ; 
 re-inscribed and consecrated in the temple at Nippur. 
 Certainly here was an eventful history! We found one 
 seal cylinder, unusually large, but of the same general 
 type as those which the wealthy Babylonians wore about 
 their necks, containing a religious device, and sometimes 
 an inscription recording the name and parentage of the 
 owner. Another seal cylinder was in the works. Indeed 
 the objects found were in all stages of completion and 
 incompletion, from blocks of raw material and fragments 
 of unworked gold up to the finished product, ready to be 
 dedicated in the temple, or sold or distributed to pious 
 pilgrims at the next annual festival. 
 
 Among the other contents of this shop were more than 
 twenty objects of a curious white substance, soft as chalk 
 on the outside, but hard as marble within, and several 
 unworked blocks of the same material. Some of these 
 objects were of a columnar shape, broadening at the top, 
 a conventionalized form of the phallus. But the majority 
 had lost the columnar form and were flattened into the 
 shape of a door-knob. These were pierced with a large 
 hole, and inscribed around the edge or the base. There 
 were seventeen of this shape in all, together with an 
 eighteenth made of ivory. An analysis of the material,
 
 134 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 made by Professor Koenig, late of the University of 
 Pennsylvania, proved it to be magnesite from the island 
 of Eubcea, the only place where this substance is found, 
 and from which it is now exported to this country for use 
 in soda-water fountains. Here, then, we have an evi- 
 dence of trade and intercourse with Greece, probably 
 through the medium of the Phcenicians, as early as the 
 fourteenth century B.C. The material, which was evi- 
 dently rare and highly prized, seems to have been 
 imported into Babylonia principally for the manufac- 
 ture of a peculiar white pottery glaze, much esteemed 
 in ancient Nippur. The lapis lazuli was brought from 
 Bactria, where the ancient mines, still worked, " are 1500 
 feet above the bed of the River Kakcha, a tributary to 
 the Oxus from the northern flanks of the Hindoo Cush 
 mountains." 
 
 But the most interesting part of this shop " find " was, 
 perhaps, a quantity of badly broken inscribed axe-heads 
 of a highly ornamental shape. These were of a blue ma- 
 terial so closely resembling azurite and lapis lazuli that I at 
 first reported them as such. An analysis by Professor 
 Koenig proved, however, to his astonishment and mine, 
 that they were of glass, exhibiting a high degree of art, 
 and generally identical in manufacture with the famous 
 Venetian glass of the fourteenth century a.d. The blue 
 was colored with cobalt, brought presumably from China, 
 and made to imitate lapis lazuli ; and some green glass, a 
 few specimens of which we also found, was colored with 
 copper to imitate turquoise. All the glass objects found 
 at this point had been run in moulds and not blown. 
 Here was a discovery for which I was not prepared ; glass, 
 the presence of which in Babylonian and Assyrian mounds 
 had been generally supposed to be a sign of comparatively 
 modern strata, manufactured in the fourteenth century 
 B.C. by the same methods, and with the same excellence, 
 as the famous glass of Venice.
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 35 
 
 All these glass axes bore votive inscriptions, and one 
 poetical dedication reads : 
 
 " To Bel, lord of lords, his lord, Nazi-Maruttash, son of Kurigalzu, has 
 made and given for his life an axe of polished lapis lazuli ; 
 His prayer to hearken unto ; 
 His petition to accept ; 
 His sighing to hear ; 
 His life to protect ; 
 His days to make long." 
 
 Nazi-Maruttash, King of Babylon, who dedicated this 
 axe, reigned from 1284 to 1258 B.C. Indeed, all the ob- 
 jects found in the " shop " belong to Cossaean kings of 
 Babylon, and cover a period of over one hundred and 
 fifty years, from the beginning of the fourteenth to the 
 end of the thirteenth century. It is the same period to 
 which belong the inscribed Babylonian tablets found in 
 Tel-el-Amarna in Egypt in 1888, and the similar tablet 
 more recently found at ancient Lachish, near Gaza, in 
 Palestine. The last-mentioned tablets, and others found 
 in Cappadocia show that at an early period the Babylonian 
 language and script were the medium of international 
 communication between all the countries of Western Asia, 
 and even with outside nations like Egypt. Babylonia was 
 evidently in close contact with the whole civilized world, 
 and a chief factor in its progress. Politically, at this 
 period, it was inferior to Egypt; nevertheless there was 
 communication between the courts of these two countries. 
 So Burnaburiash( 1342-1318 B.C.) writes about a matri- 
 monial alliance with the Egyptian king, and presents are 
 exchanged between the two monarchs. So much we 
 learned from the tablets of Tel-el-Amarna; and now, 
 since our discovery of glass at Nippur in the time of 
 Kurigalzu, Burnaburiash, and their successors, Petrie has 
 discovered glass of the same description and the same 
 period at Tel-el-Amarna. A few fragments bearing in- 
 scriptions of an earlier date have been discovered else- 
 where in Egypt, and from its treatment it is evident that
 
 136 NIPPUR. 
 
 there, as in Babylonia, it was regarded as a precious thing; 
 fit offering for the gods. It was probably foreign to both 
 countries. But who invented it ? I think that, although 
 the earliest discoveries have thus been made in Egypt and 
 Babylonia, with Greek tradition we must ascribe its origin 
 to the Phcenician coast, and suppose that, at least in the 
 earlier periods, it was manufactured in Egypt and Baby- 
 lonia by artificers imported from that region. 
 
 It may seem strange that this little hillock containing 
 these precious antiquities should have been allowed to 
 exist untouched during all the following centuries of the 
 temple's history. But this very fact is characteristic both 
 of the past and present methods of building in Babylonia. 
 If a mud house go to ruin, its contents are not likely to 
 be disturbed ; for, even should another building take its 
 place, it will probably be built without excavation upon 
 the debris of its predecessor. A notable instance of this 
 •we found in the temple proper. The chambers and corri- 
 dors which I have described as occupying the space within 
 the walls rested on a mass of debris and rubble at a depth 
 of about eighteen feet below the surface. In order to 
 ascertain the meaning and nature of this formation I sank 
 a well in one of the chambers, not far from the south- 
 eastern face of the ziggurat, and ran out tunnels at various 
 depths. In one of these, thirty-seven feet below the sur- 
 face, I found an alabaster vase with the name of a hitherto 
 unknown king, " Alusharshid, King of Kish." The 
 almost hieroglyphic form of some of the characters proved 
 this to be very ancient, and I at once commenced to re- 
 move the chambers at this point, with the intention of 
 excavating a section between the outer walls and the 
 ziggurat down to bed earth. I found at all depths the 
 remains of earlier buildings of sun-dried bricks, but noth- 
 ing which I could date with any certainty until I had 
 reached a depth of twenty-eight feet. There were foun- 
 dations of the construction of Ur-Gur, 2700 to 3000 B.C. ;
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 37 
 
 up to that time supposed to be the original founder of the 
 temple. Still descending, we came upon great quantities 
 of inscribed fragments of alabaster and marble vases of the 
 same hitherto unknown king, one of which, deciphered by- 
 Professor Hilprecht, bore the inscription: " Alusharshid, 
 King of Kishatu, presented to Bel from the spoil of Elam, 
 when he had subjugated Elam and Bara'se." Then we 
 found at about the same level, thirty-seven feet below 
 the surface, three diorite door-sockets of Sargon, King of 
 Akkade, the very oldest king of whom we had any knowl- 
 edge, bearing inscriptions to the effect that he, king of 
 the city, had built this temple to Bel, and also informing 
 us that he was a great conqueror, and that he had con- 
 quered among other lands Elam, and ending with an im- 
 precation on the man who should remove or injure the 
 stones consecrated by him. There was an inscribed tablet 
 found here, and several brick stamps of the same king and 
 his son, Naram-Sin, beloved of the moon-god, were also 
 found at other points. These inscriptions were the oldest 
 ever found up to that time in Babylonia, but later, both 
 Mr. Haynes and I found a few inscribed objects at a 
 slightly lower level, and similar inscriptions have been 
 found at Tello. But early as these inscriptions were, the 
 temple of Bel proved to be yet earlier, for below them for 
 another ten feet I found the same debris full of the re- 
 mains of still older walls, but, unfortunately, without in- 
 scribed bricks or stones, and Haynes' excavations ex- 
 tended still deeper with the same result. Only at one 
 point, beneath the ziggurat, below plain level and not far 
 above the level of virgin soil, I found an inscribed tablet. 
 It may be asked, why do these inscriptions possess 
 such importance ? Sargon, or more properly Sargina, is 
 almost the first great name which comes to meet us out of 
 the shadow-land of prehistoric times in Babylonia. He 
 commenced a series of astrological records, or omen tab- 
 lets. Astronomical occurrences were recorded, and in
 
 138 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 connection with them such historical and other events as 
 were regarded as their consequences. By consuUing these, 
 and observing what astronomical phenomena had been 
 followed by favorable or unfavorable results in the past, 
 it was supposed that omens could be derived for the con- 
 duct of the future. This system of records, begun by him, 
 was continued to a late period, and it is chiefly from frag- 
 ments of transcripts and summaries of his omen tablets, 
 found in the library at Nineveh, that we derive some 
 knowledge of his life and reign. Beginning as King of 
 Agane, or Akkade, in Northern Babylonia, he succeeded 
 in uniting the whole country under his rule. Not content 
 with this, he carried his victorious arms to the coast of 
 the Mediterranean, and even conquered the island of 
 Cyprus. To the southwest his kingdom extended as far 
 as the peninsula of Sinai, whence were brought the door- 
 sockets found by us at Nippur. In the southeast he 
 conquered Elam, in modern Persia. The story of his life 
 is mixed with myth. Born of the daughter of a princess 
 by some unknown father, he w^as exposed on the river in 
 a basket smeared with pitch. Rescued by a waterman 
 and reared as his son, a goddess saw and loved him and 
 raised him to honor. Such is the curious story, remind- 
 ing one involuntarily of the story of the great lawgiver of 
 the Hebrews. 
 
 For the determination of his date we are indebted to 
 Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon. He was something 
 of an archaeologist, loving to restore ancient things, and 
 at the same time to explore their origin. Among other 
 temples he restored that of the Sun at Sippara. This was 
 said to have been built by Naram-Sin, and Nabonidus 
 was anxious, so he tells us in an inscription found a few 
 years since, to see the original archives of its erection, de- 
 posited by him. But to find them was a difficult task, 
 since building had been built on building, much as at 
 Nippur. Finally, he called up his army from Gaza and set
 
 GENERAL RESULTS. 1 39 
 
 them to remove everything until they had found the 
 original archives. At last they were successful, and he 
 gazed upon the inscription of Naram-Sin, " which none 
 before him had seen for thirty-two hundred years." As 
 Nabonidus ruled about 550 B.C., this would give Naram- 
 Sin's date as 3750, and that of his father, Sargon, as 3800 
 B.C., which is generally accepted by assyriologists. Of 
 course the round number in Nabonidus' account is suspi- 
 cious, and still more the fact that it is a multiple of forty. 
 Remembering how in the Bible forty is so often used to 
 mean a generation, and even in one case four hundred and 
 eighty is used to mean twelve generations (i Kings, vi., i), 
 I once thought it probable that Nabonidus had reckoned 
 his thirty-two hundred in the same way, counting from 
 the lists of kings who had preceded him, and making out 
 of those eighty generations at forty years thirty-two hun- 
 dred ; just as the Hebrew chronicler writing in Babylonia 
 had made out of twelve generations four hundred and 
 eighty years. If this argument were valid, then the thirty- 
 two hundred years of Nabonidus' inscription would have 
 to be reduced considerably, and we should be compelled 
 to date Sargon of Akkade not in 3800 B.C., but in 2800 
 B.C., or even later. Inasmuch, however, as very ancient 
 tablets found at Tello and Nippur show us that at a re- 
 mote period there was a system of dating by means of the 
 events in the reigns of different kings, — the tablets being 
 dated in the year after such a king did such and such a 
 thing, etc., giving evidence that there was some sort of 
 chronology in those early days, — I should no longer wish 
 to press this argument ; but it should be borne in mind 
 that the earlier dates are as yet more or less a matter of 
 conjecture. From about 2300 B.C. onward, everything is 
 reasonably accurate, for we have almost complete lists 
 of consecutive kings of Babylon, and means of ascertain- 
 ing their dates, but from that date backward there are still 
 many gaps and much is conjectural.
 
 I40 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 Such, in a general way, were the results of our excava- 
 tions. We failed to find historical inscriptions and the 
 temple library for which we looked; but, on the other 
 hand, we succeeded almost beyond our expectations in 
 unearthing records of a hoary antiquity, and in recon- 
 structing an ancient Babylonian temple of the first rank. 
 But if we had failed to find a temple library, I would not 
 have it understood that we failed to find tablets, and 
 those ancient ones. We found many thousands of tab- 
 lets, chiefly, of course, in a fragmentary condition. At 
 one place, on the opposite side of the canal from the 
 temple, we discovered a sort of registry of records. Thou- 
 sands of inscribed clay tablets, for the most part unbaked, 
 had been stored in one room on wooden shelves along 
 the walls. The roof had fallen in and the shelves decayed 
 away, and the tablets lay in fragments buried in the earth. 
 So numerous were they that it took thirty or forty men 
 four days to dig them out and bring them into camp. 
 These, as well as the great stores of tablets found in other 
 places, are largely business and official records, but they 
 include also " syllabaries, letters, chronological lists, his- 
 torical fragments, astronomical and religious texts, build- 
 ing inscriptions, votive tablets, inventories, tax lists, plans 
 of estates," etc., and much time must yet elapse before 
 all shall have been fully examined. The details of these 
 discoveries will be found in another chapter.
 
 A Mortar of Volcanic Stone ; and fragments of inscribed lias-ieiief in 
 
 Diorite. Found in neighborhood of shrine of Bur-Sin, 
 
 on Temple Hill. Circa 2500 b c. 
 
 Clay Contract Tablet. Inner Tablet and Envelope. From the lime 
 of Abraham or a little earlier.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 
 
 Explanation of the Plan — General Appearance — Jewellers' Shop — Archaic 
 Structures — Ancient Quay — High place of the Gate — Latest Stratum — 
 Last Reconstruction — Three Periods — The Towers — Jachin and Boaz 
 — Ur-Gur's Terrace — Evidences of Iconoclasm — A Sounding Well — 
 Ur-Gur's Ziggurat — Rebuilding the Ziggurat — Inscription of Ashur- 
 banipal — Other Builders — Beneath the Ziggurat — The Oldest Inscrip- 
 tion — Virgin Soil — Meaning of the Strata — History of the Temple — 
 Jerusalem and Nippur. 
 
 THE preceding chapter has given a general summary 
 of the results of our excavations at Nippur in the 
 years 1889 and 1890. It is the object of the three follow- 
 ing chapters to give a somewhat more detailed account of 
 the excavations themselves by means of a plan and maps, 
 and the reader who does not care for such details is po- 
 litely requested to skip these chapters. 
 
 The accompanying plan will give some idea of the 
 temple enclosure at the close of the first two years' exca- 
 vations. The shaded portions on this map represent 
 actual excavations, and the white surface those parts 
 which were left untouched. The straight lines represent 
 walls, and the irregular lines edges of trenches which are 
 not walls. Where not otherwise indicated those walls are 
 of unbaked brick. Brick walls of three different periods 
 are represented by three different forms of marking, as 
 explained on the plan. It will be observed that the zig- 
 gurat on this plan has wing-like or buttress-like projec- 
 tions on all four sides, and is curiously irregular in form.
 
 142 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 The ziggurat as here shown is composed of two stages, 
 represented by the " exterior wall " and the " interior 
 wall " respectively. About it on all sides we found 
 rooms or corridors. These covered a space of something 
 over eight acres, and were enclosed by a huge wall, which 
 stood toward the southeast to the height of over sixty 
 feet, and was almost fifty feet thick at its base, and thirty 
 feet at the summit. On the top of this " great wall," 
 on the southeastern side, was found a series of rooms, 
 fourteen in all, at uneven distances and of different sizes. 
 There were irregular tower-like masses at three of the 
 corners of this wall. The western corner and a part of 
 the southwestern side near the western corner could not 
 be found at all, having been, apparently, destroyed by 
 water. Some transverse walls in this neighborhood sug- 
 gested that there may have been an entrance through the 
 great wall on the southwestern side. At the eastern 
 corner there was a singular blunder, owing to the lack of 
 instruments of precision, by which the angle was made 
 obtuse instead of right, thus giving the enclosure a 
 curiously irregular shape. At this corner there was a 
 confusing arrangement of outside walls of different dates, 
 the connection of which with the great wall it was impos- 
 sible to determine. On the northeastern side there were 
 appearances like those on the southwestern, which sug- 
 gested a possible entrance to the interior, but at a point 
 where the upper levels were much washed away. At the 
 southern corner a series of rooms or buildings had been 
 attached on the western side, connecting the temple with 
 the next series of mounds so closely that they constituted 
 almost a part of it. 
 
 The general level of the enclosure within the great wall 
 below the ziggurat was fourteen metres above plain level, 
 but there were in various parts deep holes and gullies 
 formed by the water, and especially was this true towards 
 the eastern and western corners, at gate-like points on the;
 
 Mi'^i- ^^ /jl*AVJI3 iMmi 
 
 H3 
 
 and 
 J rat, 
 ater. 
 tself 
 :r of 
 aetic 
 f the 
 dred 
 orth- 
 east- 
 
 view 
 [least 
 etres 
 3n or 
 ; half 
 ill be 
 wall- 
 )f the 
 o\v of 
 :st on 
 
 The 
 ocks. 
 n line 
 :ound 
 , tur- 
 Ispar, 
 
 corn- 
 other 
 ;ained 
 ing in 
 
 leav- 
 le po- 
 traces 
 wood. 
 
 o and
 
 "^^i -t Sea?* G)ay isso-^^
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LN THE WORLD. 1 43 
 
 southwestern, northwestern, and northeastern sides, and 
 on the plateau itself a little to the south of the ziggurat, 
 where all the upper strata had been swept away by water. 
 The corners of the great enclosure and the ziggurat itself 
 were not accurately orientated — the northern corner of 
 the ziggurat pointing twelve degrees east of the magnetic 
 north. The total length of the great wall on each of the 
 southeastern and southwestern sides was two hundred 
 metres. This was somewhat increased on the north- 
 eastern and northwestern sides by the error at the east- 
 ern corner already mentioned. 
 
 Turning to the section A,B, we obtain a general view 
 of the contour of the mounds. Moving from southeast 
 to northwest there is first a low mound rising four metres 
 above plain level, behind which again is a depression or 
 gully, the latter sinking to the level of one and one half 
 metres. Comparing the section with the plan, it will be 
 observed that this four metre elevation was a low wall- 
 like mound stretching across the southeastern front of the 
 temple, and containing, for the most part, a single row of 
 rooms. These rooms being excavated, proved to rest on 
 a terrace of earth, about a metre above plain level. The 
 walls were of unbaked brick of large, almost square blocks. 
 In the room of this row through which the section line 
 A,B, runs, in the northern corner of the room, were found 
 large numbers of inscribed objects of ivory, glass, tur- 
 quoise, agate, malachite, lapis lazuli, magnesite, felspar, 
 etc., some in the process of manufacture, and some com- 
 plete, together with gold, amethyst, porphyry, and other 
 material not yet worked. All these had been contained 
 in a wooden box which had been buried by the falling in 
 of the earth of the walls or roof and decayed away, leav- 
 ing signs of its existence in long copper nails, in the po- 
 sition of the objects when found, and in some slight traces 
 of oxidation left in the earth by the decaying wood. 
 These objects were found from one and a half to two and
 
 144 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 a half metres below the surface. The inscribed objects in 
 this treasury belonged to the kings of Babylon of the 
 Cossa^an dynasty from Burnaburiash, 1342 B.C., to Bi- 
 beiashu, 121 1 B.C. This is the room which I have desig- 
 nated as " the jewellers' shop." A few of the small 
 inscribed tokens, about as large as an old-fashioned cop- 
 per penny, were found in the two adjoining rooms also, 
 and one or two more were found below the Camp Hill, on 
 the other side of the canal, and at other points on the 
 hills. This discovery showed that the buildings in this 
 outer wall line belonged to the Cossciean period, and were 
 destroyed not earlier than the beginning of the twelfth 
 century B.C. No later buildings were erected at this point, 
 but here and there, and especially on the ruins of a tower- 
 like portion of this mound, a little to the right of the 
 section line, containing six rooms clustered together, we 
 found later burials of the Parthian period. It was from 
 this tower-like structure that we took the Seleucidan or 
 Parthian coffin for the Constantinople Museum. 
 
 The long and peculiarly shaped attachment projecting 
 at right angles from the southeastern wall at the eastern 
 corner, was of the same general character as the low 
 mound line just described, containing rooms of mud brick 
 resting on a terrace of earth slightly elevated above the 
 plain. No objects were found in the rooms in this pro- 
 jection, nor in the rooms of the mound line just de- 
 scribed, except the Cossaean treasury in the " jeweller's 
 shop," and the late burials already referred to. But if 
 no later buildings were erected at this point, there had 
 existed earlier constructions. To the southwest of the 
 " jeweller's shop " and the section line there is a gate-like 
 breach in this mound line. This corresponds pretty 
 closely with an entrance through the great wall, which 
 we know to have existed in the year 2400 B.C., and pre- 
 sumably also at the time when these structures of the 
 Cossaian period were erected. Digging in this opening
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 1 45 
 
 we found a series of rooms, the mud walls of which were 
 so destroyed by fire and water that only a small portion 
 of them could be traced. Here we found a well of pot- 
 tery rings, and some curious pieces of pottery. At a depth 
 of five metres below plain level we reached virgin earth. 
 These walls belonged to the buildings of the most ancient 
 period of the inhabitation of Nippur, and their situation 
 in relation to the later structures about and above them 
 shows that if the temple existed at the time when they 
 were built, its arrangements were different from those ex- 
 isting in Ur-Gur's time. In his day there was an open 
 space or gateway here, and these structures were already 
 buried beneath the earth. We also conducted excavations 
 in front of the tower-like structure described above on 
 the outer southeastern mound, finding an ancient smithy 
 and the inevitable well-drain of pottery rings, but no 
 objects. 
 
 As the small plain in front of this wall line looked as 
 though it might have been a basin connecting with the 
 Shatt-en-Nil, and as it is still known to the natives by 
 the name of Shatt-en-Nil, I undertook excavations to the 
 eastward of the six-roomed tower, in search of a quay to 
 the canal. I found, considerably below plain level — over 
 five metres below that level at its lowest point — a curious 
 construction of brick, as indicated by the dotted lines. 
 The bricks of this construction were laid, not in bitumen, 
 but in mud. At the southern end was a step-like con- 
 struction running out at an angle, like the arrangement 
 seen in quays in the modern towns of the region ; but I 
 could find no other evidence that this had ever consti- 
 tuted a quay to a canal. There were numerous restora- 
 tions and additions to this wall, which must have belonged 
 to an extremely early period. To the west it turned out 
 into the plain at an angle, as indicated on the plan, and 
 after descending in steps, ceased altogether. At the other 
 end it curved at right angles with its former course and 
 
 VOL II — 10
 
 146 NIPPUR. 
 
 entered a mound, near the summit of which, and much 
 earlier in date, was a platform of large bricks bearing an 
 inscription of Ishme-Dagan, of Isin, 2600 B.C., or there- 
 abouts. I followed it under this mound as far as possible 
 by a tunnel. It belongs to those unexplained structures 
 of the very earliest period, of which I found fragments 
 here and there, but which I was unable to explore thor- 
 oughly, or to date accurately. 
 
 In the depression to the northwest of the outer mound 
 line, marked " booth " on section, I ran trenches to virgin 
 earth, which was there some five metres below plain level. 
 Here I found a few fragments of mud-brick walls, alto- 
 gether ruined, of the same period as those in the gate-like 
 opening. In the debris above them, in the neighborhood 
 of the " shrine of Bur-Sin," we found a pair of clasped 
 hands from a diorite statue similar to those found by de 
 Sarzec at Tello ; several inscribed fragments, including 
 three fragments of bas reliefs ; and an archaic-looking 
 mortar of volcanic stone. These objects are reproduced 
 in the plate facing page 140. They belong to the period 
 of about 2400 B.C., and had evidently fallen from the plat- 
 form about the shrine of Bur-Sin. 
 
 Beyond this gully or depression was a steep hill ascend- 
 ing abruptly to the plateau of the temple, fourteen metres 
 above plain level. At a point on this ascent some two or 
 three metres above plain level we found, on a platform of 
 burned brick, a small shrine of Bur-Sin, indicated on the 
 plan at No. 11. The walls of this shrine were built of 
 burned brick laid in bitumen, and from seven to fourteen 
 courses were still in place. Almost all of these bricks bore 
 a brief dedicatory inscription to Bel by Bur-Sin, King 
 of Ur, often repeated several times on the same brick; 
 and in each of the two doorways, the outer and the inner, 
 were found diorite door-sockets bearing longer inscriptions 
 by the same monarch. As we found it, this little build- 
 ing faced against the huge towering wall, under the debris
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LiY THE WORLD. 1 47 
 
 from which it had been buried ; but at the time of its 
 erection either the wall did not rise above the level of the 
 platform of this temple, or if it did, there was in it at this 
 point a large opening serving as an entrance to the temple. 
 Walls of brick of Ur-Gur, 2800 B.C., we found buried in 
 this great wall. These were part of a causeway ascending 
 from a point about on a level with, and nearly in front of, 
 the shrine of Bur-Sin to the top of the first terrace of the 
 ziggurat. (A fragment of this causeway is indicated at 8 
 on the plan.) This shrine, therefore, held in relation to 
 the ziggurat a position somewhat similar to the " high 
 places of the gates," mentioned in the Hebrew Bible (as, 
 for example, 2 Kings, xxiii., 8). 
 
 An earlier king than Bur-Sin, Lugal-kigub-nidudu, ' 
 King of Ur, some time about or before 4000 B.C., 
 scratched his inscription on the side of one of the blocks 
 of stone afterwards utilized as a door-socket by Bur-Sin. 
 This same monarch's name is inscribed also on door- 
 sockets and other offerings of several ancient kings, found 
 by me at Nippur, including one of the door-sockets of 
 Sargon. His inscriptions also stand by themselves on 
 three large, rude, marble stones, which we found within 
 the temple enclosure. These inscriptions are extremely 
 rude and barbarous in appearance. 
 
 On top of the ruins of this shrine of Bur-Sin, imme- 
 diately below the shrine and apparently belonging to it, 
 was a well of bricks laid in bitumen, which we sounded to 
 the depth of 6.20 metres. How much deeper it descended 
 I do not know, for as we found no objects within, but 
 only a closely packed mass of rubble, which it was ex- 
 ceedingly difficult to remove in such a narrow place, we 
 stopped work at that point. I fancy that the statuary, of 
 which we found fragments in the gully beneath, stood, in 
 
 ' Professor Hilprecht in the first part of his Old Babylonian Lnscriptions, 
 identified this king as Gande or Gandash, founder of the Cossoean dynasty. 
 He corrects this in the second part of the same work.
 
 148 NIPPUR. 
 
 part at least, on this side of the shrine. Above the ruins 
 of this Httle shrine we found a poor wall of mud brick 
 with no clue to its age, and above this an immense mass 
 of loose debris which had slipped down from the temple 
 plateau. 
 
 The " great wall " was of colossal proportions. It had 
 a slope of I in 4. At the bottom it was fifteen metres in 
 thickness; and at the top, as it at present stands, nine 
 metres. For fourteen metres below the level of the 
 plateau this wall was built entirely of unbaked brick, but 
 below this for 5.3 metres it consisted of earth faced with 
 a casing of baked brick .90 metres in thickness; and the 
 slope of this lower part was less than that of the upper. 
 That the whole was not homogeneous and constructed at 
 one time was clear, among other things, from the fact 
 already mentioned, that a portion of the brick causeway, 
 by which in Ur-Gur's day access was had to the upper 
 stages of the ziggurat, was embedded in it. (Further 
 along the wall, to the northeastward, we found another 
 piece of a wall of Ur-Gur embedded in this same great 
 wall.) It was plain that a wall had existed here from time 
 immemorial, which was repaired and built upon by many 
 builders of many ages, until it reached its present height. 
 I am inclined to think that the original wall rested upon 
 bed earth at the depth of 19.3 metres below the fourteen 
 metre level ; to which point we conducted our excavations. 
 (The section shows a depth of only four metres below plain 
 level at this point, but after this plan was completed we 
 conducted the shaft to a further depth of 1.3 metres.) 
 Originally, as shown by a fragment of a transverse wall 
 found at a very low level, and by the fragments of the 
 causeway of Ur-Gur already referred to, there was an 
 entrance over this wall on the southeastern side, which 
 entrance was in existence certainly as late as the time of 
 Bur-Sin, 2400 B.C., and probably, as already stated, as late 
 as the constructions of the Cossaean period ; that is until
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 1 49 
 
 some time in the twelfth century B.C. During all this 
 period this wall, as it then existed, was the retaining wall 
 of a great terrace. 
 
 The buttresses indicated on the great wall in the plan 
 do not belong to the earliest construction, as is shown by 
 the fact that the brick facing at the bottom, already 
 referred to, runs behind and not around them. The 
 transverse walls forming towers at the southwestern and 
 northeastern ends of this wall are also later, as wells sunk 
 at these points showed that the brick-faced w^all ran on in 
 a straight line underneath them. At the time of the last 
 great reconstruction this terrace wall was raised to a much 
 greater height and made a true wall ; perhaps for purposes 
 of defense. After that there is no trace of an entrance 
 on the southeastern side. At that period rooms were 
 built on the top of the wall, as shown in the plan. This 
 new wall stood above ground to the height of 5.5 metres; 
 all below that being the retaining wall of the terrace 
 within. That terrace, as we found it, was composed 
 largely of debris, but in many places, especially along the 
 line of the walls, there was a filling of unbaked bricks in 
 large, square blocks. This was especially true at the 
 southern corner, where we excav^ated to a depth of 11.5 
 metres, that is, to the Sargon level. At the time of this 
 last reconstruction the great wall was continued in sub- 
 stantially its present form around the entire temple area. 
 
 Within this outer wall, there was, on the southeastern 
 side of the temple, as will be seen from both the section 
 and the plan, an inner wall with two irregularly circular 
 towers. The depth of this wall was 9.5 metres, which 
 carries us down to the Ur-Gur level, and it was apparently 
 first built by that king, 2800 B.C. It was repaired and 
 added to, however, from time to time, and received its 
 present form at the time of the last great reconstruction. 
 As we found it, in the upper five metres of its surface, it 
 was beautifully plastered and stuccoed, while the lower
 
 ISO 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 4.5 metres consisted of plain unplastered blocks of un- 
 baked brick ; that is, at that time the upper five metres 
 stood above ground, and the lower 4. 5 metres were buried 
 in the terrace. 
 
 At the time of the last great reconstruction the space 
 between these two walls formed a passage-way or corridor. 
 There was no gate through either the outer or the inner 
 wall on this side of the temple. The only egress from the 
 corridor was toward the southwest, but exactly whither 
 the passage on that side ultimately conducted it was im- 
 possible to determine, on account of the destruction of the 
 upper western surfaces by water. In the corridor itself 
 was a curious tower, wholly without a door, which we 
 penetrated by a tunnel without finding anything within. 
 It belonged to the period of the last reconstruction. The 
 two towers attached to the wall itself were solid, with 
 parapets on top. The inner wall is represented on the 
 section as standing, and on the plan as removed. It was 
 removed at the very close of the excavations in the second 
 year, and a great trench was carried from the outer wall 
 up to the buttress or wing of the ziggurat, in which all 
 constructions were removed down to the Sargon level, 
 1 1.5 to 12 metres below the top of the fourteen metre 
 level. This is the trench marked i on the plan. Mr. 
 Haynes more than doubled the size of this great trench, 
 extending it toward the northeast, and also carrying it 
 northwestward through the projecting southeastern wing 
 of the ziggurat up to the line of the inner and more 
 ancient construction. He also removed all additions to 
 the ziggurat itself on all sides until he had reached the 
 original construction of Ur-Gur. 
 
 As will be seen from the plan and section, the great 
 trench was carried in the first two years only up to the 
 southeastern wing of the ziggurat ; but another trench was 
 carried around the entire ziggurat, and that structure was 
 explored through all its strata by means of tunnels and
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LN THE WORLD. 151 
 
 cuts, by which we were able to ascertain that there was 
 another and older ziggurat inside of that which our exca- 
 vations had laid bare. The cut through the core of the 
 ziggurat (52) showed us that there was at the highest 
 point a solid mass of unbaked brick, twenty-three metres 
 in depth. The outer casing of this, about two metres 
 in thickness, was composed of unbaked bricks in large 
 blocks, similar to those used in the rooms and corri- 
 dors on the plateau below the ziggurat, and in the great 
 walls of the last reconstruction. Beneath this the ziggu- 
 rat was homogeneous, consisting of unbaked bricks of 
 small size, in shape not unlike the ordinary bricks in use 
 to-day. These were the characteristics bricks of Ur-Gur^ 
 and were laid in three ways — first a layer on the sides with 
 the ends out ; then a layer on the edge with the flat sides 
 out ; and then a layer on the edge with the ends out. 
 These bricks were often somewhat crushed out of shape 
 by the weight resting on them. It was in the outer casing 
 that the goose egg, described in the last chapter, was 
 found. Below the ziggurat, at the point 52, the end and 
 deepest portion of that trench, we found first a metre of 
 black ashes and then a metre of earth, with occasional frag- 
 ments of pottery; evidence that the ziggurat of Ur-Gur 
 had not rested on an earlier ziggurat. In a cutting at the 
 other end of the ziggurat (53) we descended about nine 
 metres from the top. We found a different upper stratum 
 at this point, and so many baked bricks as to suggest the 
 existence here at some period of a brick structure, but all 
 surface layers of the ziggurat, of the later and earlier 
 periods alike, were so ruined and worn away by the action 
 of water that it was impossible to reach certainty upon 
 this matter. Here, and in the debris to the northwest of 
 the ziggurat, we found fragments of glazed bricks ' like 
 
 * Identified by Hilprecht in Old Babylonian Inscriptions^ vol. i., Part I.,, 
 as Meli-Shikhu, king of Babylon, 1171-1154, but in vol. i.. Part II., as 
 Ashurbanipal.
 
 152 NIPPUR. 
 
 those found at Birs Nimrud, some of them having an in- 
 scription of Ashurbanipal. As will be seen from the sec- 
 tion, the ziggurat was much steeper on the northwestern 
 than on the southeastern side. It also stood much closer 
 to the edge of the plateau. The accompanying plate gives 
 a view of the northwestern side of the ziggurat and the 
 Temple Hill, and of our excavations there toward the 
 close of the second year. 
 
 Before the excavations began the ziggurat was an almost 
 conical hill, known to the Arabs as Bint-el-Amir," Daugh- 
 ter of the Prince." About this on all sides was a plateau 
 seamed here and there with very deep gullies. The 
 general height of this was fourteen metres above plain 
 level, and about nineteen metres, or something more, 
 above actual bed earth. The ziggurat itself was ten 
 metres higher than the plateau about it. 
 
 Turning to the plan one observes that the ziggurat as 
 excavated by us was peculiarly irregular in structure. On 
 both sides of the northern corner (lo) there was a panel 
 wall of brick. This is part of the ziggurat of King Ash- 
 urbanipal, the famous Assyrian monarch who reigned from 
 669 to 626 B.C. Everywhere else his ziggurat was buried 
 under a new wall of huge blocks of mud brick. 
 
 In view of the great size of the temple area, which 
 covered within its inner walls, as already stated, a surface 
 of about eight acres, it was impossible to excavate the 
 whole of it systematically, removing stratum after stratum. 
 We therefore selected one section in which to do this, the 
 section immediately in front of the ziggurat to the south- 
 east. Between that and the great wall we conducted, as 
 stated, a large trench with the view of ascertaining the 
 successive strata. This enabled us to treat the wall on 
 one side and the ziggurat on the other. Wells and simi- 
 lar shafts were sunk at other points of the temple, wher- 
 ever a favorable opportunity seemed to present itself, for 
 the purpose of confirming, checking, and reinforcing the 
 results obtained from the excavation of this space.
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LN THE WORLD. 1 53 
 
 Our excavations in trench i showed first of all a surface- 
 layer of about a metre of earth. In this upper layer, on 
 the slopes of the ziggurat, were some poor walls of mud 
 brick and remains of a number of rooms or huts of 
 a late period. To the northwest of the ziggurat we found 
 in this stratum two or three Jewish bowls, such as were 
 found in great numbers in the Jewish settlement on the 
 other side of the canal, where coins of the Kufic period 
 gave us, as latest date, the seventh century A.D. Here 
 and there on the plateau of the ziggurat were cofifins and 
 tombs which belonged to the same stratum, although the 
 coffins themselves were frequently found at a lower level, 
 which was to be expected, in the nature of the case. But 
 all of these burials clearly belonged to this period, and 
 not to the one below, because they were made, as shown 
 by their position, after the structures beneath the one- 
 metre level were in ruins. The earliest of them belonged 
 to the Parthian, or possibly the Seleucidan period, and 
 some of them were quite late Arabic. In this stratum, 
 very little below the surface, was a layer of fine white 
 ashes pretty evenly distributed over the surface of the 
 plateau, at least on the southeastern side of the ziggurat ; 
 evidence, apparently, of the use of the hill by alkali burn- 
 ers. The remains of this upper layer of earth point to a 
 period when the temple was no longer a temple, but 
 merely a tel. At that time the side hill of the ziggurat 
 was occupied by the huts of a small town, and the pla- 
 teau beneath seems to have been deemed a fit place for 
 burials. The coffins show us that this period began 
 probably as early as 200 B.C., and the Jewish bowls and 
 some Kufic coins found in this hill suggest some sort of 
 occupancy as late as about the seventh century A.D. 
 
 Below this later stratum, or these later strata, we came 
 to a series of constructions which belonged together, con- 
 stituting one whole. Walls of unbaked brick stood to the 
 height of about 4.5 metres. To the southeast, northeast, 
 and southwest of the ziggurat there were at that time
 
 154 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 series of rooms or houses. Immediately to the southeast 
 of the southeastern wing of the ziggurat a long street ran 
 northeast and southwest. To the northwest of the zig- 
 gurat there was a very fine series of corridors with a few 
 rooms. The whole was bounded by the vast retaining 
 wall already mentioned, and the upper portion of this 
 wall, as well as of the inner wall on the southeastern side, 
 belonged to this period. The characteristic feature of 
 these constructions was the large, square blocks of mud 
 brick of which the walls and houses were erected. The 
 walls of the rooms and corridors were in almost all cases 
 finely stuccoed with a plaster of mud and straw smoothly 
 laid on, and many of them had been tinted, always seem- 
 ingly in solid colors. I found green, pink, and yellow 
 tints. 
 
 In the space occupied on the plan by the great trench 
 (i), were rooms of the same character as those shown on 
 both sides of that trench. (The plate facing page 122 
 represents the condition of this section at an earlier stage 
 of the excavations; that at page 156, after the upper 
 
 structures had been 
 removed in the line 
 of the great trench ; 
 while the plate facing 
 page 160 is a view in 
 the great trench it- 
 self.) In some of 
 these rooms were 
 found great masses 
 of water -jars piled 
 together. The two 
 largest collections 
 w^ere found in a room 
 or suite of rooms, 
 opening by means of steps into the street mentioned above, 
 directly in front of the ziggurat, in trench i ; and in a 
 
 .*'"5^i. 
 
 '*>v.^> 
 
 t»*7 
 
 
 '-^J 
 
 A KIND OF LARGE WATER-FIRKINS IN A ROOM TO 
 THE SOUTHEAST OF THE ZIGGURAT.
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 155 
 
 room some distance to the east of the ziggurat. Several 
 of the rooms in this series of constructions were kitchens, 
 as shown by the fireplaces and other arrangements found 
 in them. In some of the rooms were curious closets with 
 thin clay partitions, as indicated in the plan. In two of 
 the rooms on the corridor to the north of the temple, there 
 were enormous double walls with a curious passageway 
 between, so small as just to admit of the passage of the 
 body. 
 
 In all of these rooms and corridors the doors had been 
 walled up from below once or twice; and all of the doors, 
 as we found them, were at least 1.5 to 2 metres above the 
 proper level of the floors, which occasioned us at first much 
 perplexity. In the case of two of the doors opening into 
 the street directly in front of the ziggurat to the southeast, 
 we found steps descending from the street into the rooms ; 
 and in one case a curious projecting mass of mud brick built 
 into the doorway. The floors of the houses had been 
 originally on a level with the street. Gradually the street 
 filled up with debris and mud washed down from the walls 
 and roofs of the houses, and it became necessary to de- 
 scend from the street level to the house doors by steps. 
 These same conditions I found prevailing in some streets of 
 the modern town of Hillah. The next step was to fill up 
 the houses within to the level of the street, block up the 
 old doorways, and cut out new ones, build an addition on 
 the walls, and raise the roofs. Accordingly, the steps up 
 to the street in the house in front of the ziggurat were 
 blocked as we found them,* and a new door cut above the 
 old one. This was repeated twice in the doorways open- 
 ing on the street. In the interior of the houses or apart- 
 ments, and in the corridors to the north, northwest, and 
 west of the ziggurat there were but two sets of doors, 
 instead of three, since the level of the interiors was only 
 
 * Haynes found precisely the same conditions when he continued the 
 excavation of the street and the rooms adjoining it further to the northeast.
 
 156 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 changed once. The buildings of this series, as already 
 stated, seemed to form one great construction under a 
 common roof, rather than separate individual houses built 
 by private persons. What was the material of the roofs 
 of the apartments and suites in this series of constructions, 
 
 whether mud domes, or earth laid on mats and split 
 
 palms, after the fashion of the present day, I cannot say 
 positively. 
 
 It was evident that these constructions were occupied 
 during a considerable period of time. Some pottery and 
 terra-cotta figurines of Greek work (see plate facing page 
 128) show that a portion of that time, at least, was in the 
 Seleucidan period, but there are no remains which enable 
 us to fix positively a tcrniimis a quo or a terminus ad qucm 
 for these buildings. In one room of this series, to the 
 northeast of the ziggurat, was found an inscribed door- 
 socket of Kurigalzu II. Unlike the diorite door-sockets 
 which the Sargonids and the rulers of Ur brought from 
 Sinai or Northern Arabia, he, a Cossaean, made use of 
 marble or limestone from the Persian mountains. This 
 door-socket was dug up during my absence at Tello in the 
 first year, and the notes taken at that time do not show 
 clearly whether it was or was not in place; but I fancy 
 that the latter was the case. The bricks used in the con- 
 struction of these rooms were strikingly similar to those 
 used in the rooms of Cossaean construction on the mound 
 line to the southeast of the great wall, but other evidence 
 which will be adduced presently makes it almost certain 
 that these rooms, walls, and corridors were built at a 
 much later date, probably after 500 B.C. The outer 
 casing of the ziggurat, the large blocks of mud brick, be- 
 longed to the same period as these rooms and corridors; 
 and that they were part of one and the same re-construc- 
 tion was shown by the fact that the walls adjoining the 
 ziggurat were dovetailed into this outer casing. The 
 wing-shaped form was given to the ziggurat at this period.
 
 ■J :£ 
 > 
 
 U to 
 
 i -^ 
 
 3 J2 

 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 1 57 
 
 The houses or rooms above described had their founda- 
 tions about 5.5 metres below the surface, and rested on 
 earth well packed together, about a metre in depth. This 
 again rested upon a mass of rubble and debris containing 
 no walls, but great quantities of bricks and fragments of 
 bricks, some of them with green-glazed surfaces, and 
 many bearing inscriptions of Ashurbanipal. Everywhere, 
 on the northwest, the southwest, and the northeast, as 
 well as in the great trench to the southeast of the ziggu- 
 rat, we found evidence that there had been a very thor- 
 ough demolition of some former structures containing 
 large amounts of baked brick before that restoration of 
 the temple was made which gave the ziggurat its cruciform 
 shape, and surrounded it with the buildings of unbaked 
 brick, described above. 
 
 Below this mass of earth and rubble, which may have 
 been together about 1. 25 metres in thickness, there had 
 been to the southeast of the ziggurat, as late as Ashurba- 
 nipal's time, an open court paved in brick. Various frag- 
 ments of pavements were found in different parts of this 
 space. I found three pavements in an excavation which I 
 conducted to the Sargon level in a room somewhat further 
 to the northeast than the great trench ; and Haynes reports 
 three successive pavements within five feet in the same 
 general locality. Apparently each of these pavements 
 was once continuous over the whole section, but only 
 fragments still remain here and there. Inscribed bricks 
 found in some of these fragments of pavements show that 
 one of them was the work of Ur-Ninib, King of Isin, who 
 is supposed to have lived about 2600 B.C. In general, 
 however, the bricks of which these pavements were com- 
 posed were uninscribed. The line which is now marked 
 by the inner wall on the plan and section seems to have 
 been at the time of the existence of these pavements the 
 southeastern boundary of the great court of the ziggurat; 
 and the two conical solid towers in that wall appear to
 
 158 NIPPUR. 
 
 have been in existence at that period. I think it not 
 impossible that at that time these were columns of the 
 same general significance as the Jachin and Boaz which 
 stood before the Temple of Yahweh, at Jerusalem. Simi- 
 lar columns were erected in front of all Phoenician tem- 
 ples, and they appear also in ancient Arabian worship as 
 an adjunct of the Temple. Dozy, in his Israelitcn zu 
 Mekka, says: "Among the idols of Mecca there were two 
 stones, which were called Isaf and Naila. According to 
 the representations of Arab writers, Isaf was a man and 
 Naila a woman. Both belonged to the Gorhum and had 
 committed folly in the temple. In punishment for this 
 sin thc}^ were turned into stones. They were placed out- 
 side of the temple as a warning and a horrible example; 
 but in later times the prince of the Chorza's, Amr-ibn- 
 Lohei, commanded to honor them as gods, and men 
 obeyed." Bent found in Mashonaland, in what seemed 
 to be a Phoenician building, solid masonry columns, which, 
 I fancy, had the same significance. The terrace proper 
 at that time extended to the great wall, and the brick 
 causeway by which to approach the temple came out at 
 this point between the two columns, the wall between 
 them marking an inner entrance. Later, when both walls 
 were carried higher and turned into defenses, these towers 
 were furnished with parapets. 
 
 What there was on the other side of the ziggurat in the 
 days before the last reconstruction I am unable to say, 
 excepting for the north, where there were several brick 
 structures. I found still in position fragments of brick- 
 work, noticeably an enormous old tower of partly circular 
 form (38). This, which was only a foundation, but a very 
 large and deep one, implying a tower of great size and 
 height, rested on an older structure of unbaked brick. 
 Within it was packed with rubble. At the last recon- 
 struction it had been built about with unbaked brick so 
 that, as I found it, it was encased in an enormous mass of
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LN THE WORLD. 1 59 
 
 unbaked brick without, above, and below. Outside of 
 this, and lower down the hill toward the plain, there was 
 another brick wall enclosed in a somewhat similar way in 
 later structures of mud brick. 
 
 To return to the great trench (i); almost nine metres 
 below the surface of the plateau we came upon a solid 
 terrace of crude bricks of Ur-Gur, something over two 
 metres in thickness. This constituted an enormous plat- 
 form, or terrace, and was shown by excavations at vari- 
 ous points to have extended beneath and on all sides 
 of the ziggurat, which stood on its northeastern edge. 
 The southeastern part of this terrace, as far as the towers, 
 was originally in an open court. This court was flanked, 
 at least on part of its northeastern side, by buildings, but 
 its further dimensions we do not yet know, nor the char- 
 acter of the buildings which may have stood, in those days, 
 at various points around the ziggurat. At various points 
 above this terrace, toward the ziggurat and near Ur-Gur's 
 causeway, we found a few very beautiful small clay tab- 
 lets, belonging apparently to the second dynasty of Ur, 
 2500 B.C. Immediately below this terrace I found con- 
 structions of mud brick with door-sockets ' of Sargon ; 
 while at the same level in another place Haynes found a 
 terrace and pavement of bricks, bearing the stamps of both 
 Naram-Sin and Sargon. I also found at this level a clay 
 brick stamp of Sargon. Here were found also a number of 
 vases, and vase fragments, chiefly in marble, of a new king, 
 Alu-Sharshid, king of Kish, one of which reads: "Alu- 
 sharshid, King of Kishatu, presented to Bel from the 
 spoil of Elam,when he had subjugated Elam and Bara'se. 
 More numerous fragments of vases of this king were found 
 by me scattered over Ur-Gur's platform, and also in a hole 
 or cellar sunk in that platform, under and by the side of 
 
 'The inscription on these ends with the curse: " Whosoever removes 
 this inscribed stone, his foundation may Bel and Shamash and Ninna tear 
 up, and exterminate his seed."
 
 l6o NIPPUK. 
 
 the second or inner temple wall, possibly originally in- 
 tended as a safety vault for the deposit of the temple 
 treasures. With these latter, in this cellar, were found 
 the three large, unformed, marble blocks bearing the rude 
 inscription of Lugal-kigub-nidudu, already referred to, 
 and a small glass bottle. It looked as though someone 
 had intentionally broken to pieces at this place a quantity 
 of vases of earlier kings. Among the vase fragments 
 found by me, partly here and partly below Ur-Gur's 
 platform, in addition to those already mentioned, there 
 were also inscriptions of kings of Erech, Sirpurla, or 
 Lagash, and other places, of a date as early as 4000 B.C. 
 In the case of one of these fragments it appeared that 
 Bur-Sin of Ur, 2400 B.C., had taken an older vase dedi- 
 cated to Ishtar by a king of Erech, and re-dedicated it to 
 Bel of Nippur, in the same way in which he re-dedicated 
 the diorite door-socket with the inscription of Lugal- 
 kigub-nidudu. 
 
 The Sargon level was 11.5 to 12 metres below the sur- 
 face. This was as deep as my excavations were conducted 
 systematically throughout the trench, though, as stated, 
 I reached the same level in a room to the northeast of this 
 trench, and also at the southern inner corner of the great 
 wall. At the latter place I found nothing which enabled 
 me to date the strata; but conducting a tunnel under the 
 great wall I found quantities of charred wood, indicating 
 a conflagration. A tunnel was also carried through and 
 under the great wall, at the southeastern end of trench 
 I, and here, as shown by the section, we descended almost 
 five metres below plain level. 
 
 But while my excavations in trench i were in general 
 carried down to Sargon level, 11.5 to 12 metres below the 
 14-metre level, toward the northeastern end of this trench 
 I descended by a shaft to a depth of 14.50 metres. My 
 notes on the strata found in this well show that 5.5 
 metres below the surface we reached the foundations of
 
 Scene in Great Trench .m Tem|ile Hill in the latter part of the 
 second year.
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LN THE WORLD. l6l 
 
 the walls of the buildings of the later reconstruction. 
 Below this was formless debris to the depth of 8.40 
 metres. Here we found the mud-brick terrace of Ur- 
 Gur, built of his characteristic small bricks. We reached 
 the bottom of this terrace at 10.50 metres below the sur- 
 face. At the depth of 1 3. 20 metres we found an inscribed 
 vase of Alu-Sharshid, King of Kish. At a depth of 
 12.95 metres' we found a large water-jar of the same 
 type found in all strata late and early. Below this we 
 found sherds and foundations of crude brick walls, but 
 nothing by which date could be fixed. 
 
 More important, perhaps, than the results obtained by 
 this trench were those obtained by the careful excavation 
 of the ziggurat itself, designated in the inscriptions as 
 Imgarsag, Mountain of Heaven, or Sagash, High Tower- 
 ing. By cuts and borings I ascertained that there was an 
 older ziggurat within the cruciform construction. By 
 means of tunnels, as indicated on the plan, I found the 
 eastern and western corners of this, and touched it also at 
 two other points, one on the southeastern side, and one 
 on the northwestern corner. It was proved by my ex- 
 plorations that the ziggurat which formed the core of the 
 existing structure was the work of Ur-Gur. Haynes, as 
 already stated, afterwards explored this ziggurat of Ur- 
 Gur more thoroughly, removing all the later work by 
 which it was covered. Toward the northwestern edere of 
 this solid platform of unbaked brick, Ur-Gur had erected 
 a ziggurat in three stages. The lowest of these stages 
 was about six metres in height, the sides sloping upward 
 
 ' At about this position from the highest strata to the lowest we found 
 water-jars. It was in this immediate neighborhood, in the strata t)f the 
 rooms of the Seleucidan period, that we found the deposit of water-jars 
 represented in the cut on page 154, empty, inverted, and standing one on 
 top of another in three layers. And it was in this general locality, at or be- 
 low the level of the altar and outside the "curb," that Haynes found the 
 great water-jar with "rope pattern" (Hilprecht, Old Babylonian Inscrip- 
 tions, vol. i., part ii., plate xxvii.). 
 
 VOL II— II
 
 1 62 NIPPUR. 
 
 at the rate of one in four. The second terrace set back 
 about four metres from the surface of the one below it. 
 The lower terrace was faced with burned brick on the 
 southeastern side, looking toward the great open court. 
 On all of the other sides there was a foundation of baked 
 bricks, four courses high and eight thick, above which 
 the material used was unbaked bricks covered with a 
 plaster of fine clay mixed with chopped straw, which being 
 often renewed, preserved the crude bricks beneath it as 
 well as if they had been burned by fire. 
 
 In the middle of these three sides was a conduit for the 
 purpose of carrying away water from the upper surface of 
 the ziggurat. This was built of baked brick. There was 
 apparently a similar arrangement for carrying ofT the water 
 in the second and third stages, but it was ruined beyond 
 possibility of restoration. Indeed, both of these stages 
 were so ruined by water that it was difficult to trace or 
 restore them. Around the base of the ziggurat on all 
 sides was a plaster of bitumen, sloping outward from the 
 ziggurat, with gutters to carry off the water. By this 
 arrangement the apparently very perishable foundation 
 of unburned brick was thoroughly protected from de- 
 struction ; and unburned brick protected like this, at least 
 in the climate of Babylonia, is one of the most imperish- 
 able materials that can be found. There were also little 
 holes in among the bricks, for the purpose of receiving 
 and carrying off the water which might drain through; 
 and below and about the ziggurat at various points were 
 drains of pottery rings. 
 
 The first important change in the form of the ziggurat 
 was made by Kadashman-Turgu, 1 257-1 241 B.C. He 
 built around the ziggurat on three sides at the base a 
 casing wall of brick sixteen courses in height, but pre- 
 served and utilized the conduits of Ur-Gur. The next 
 great reconstruction was undertaken by Ashurbanipal. 
 Upon the casing wall of Kadashman-Turgu, he erected,
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE LN THE WORLD. 1 63 
 
 at a slightly different angle and somewhat set back from 
 its edge, a second wall. The conduits he built up with 
 bricks, many of them stamped with his name, and the 
 upper part of the lower terrace he faced on the north- 
 eastern, northwestern, and southwestern sides with a 
 panelled wall of brick, the same which is shown on the 
 plan as exposed at the northern corner, giving to the 
 structure quite a different appearance from that which it 
 had hitherto possessed, and somewhat enlarging its di- 
 mensions; so that when left by him it measured fifty-five 
 metres in length by thirty-five metres in breadth, or very 
 little less than the ziggurat of the temple of Sin at Ur. 
 His work is readily identified by the bricks bearing an 
 eleven-line inscription, frequently on the edge instead of 
 the flat surface, which reads: " To Bel, lord of lands, his 
 lord, Ashur-ban-aplu, his favorite shepherd, powerful king, 
 king of the four quarters of the earth, built E-kur, his 
 beloved house, with bricks." 
 
 The reconstructions of Kadashman-Turgu and Ashur- 
 banipal seem to indicate a filling up of the surface im- 
 mediately about the ziggurat by the washing down of 
 mud from above. This process continued until the 
 greater part of the ziggurat was ultimately buried beneath 
 the accumulations washed down from its own upper sur- 
 faces. When the wall of Ashurbanipal was almost buried 
 there was built upon it a wall of unbaked brick, of which 
 only three courses remain. The crude bricks of this wall 
 are the characteristic bricks of the great reconstruction, 
 which gave the ziggurat its cruciform shape, and which 
 covered the ground about the ziggurat on all sides with 
 the remains of the houses, corridors, and streets, shown 
 in the plans. These bricks are large, almost square, of 
 imposing appearance, but rather rough work — in many 
 cases pieces of pottery being used to fasten the clay 
 together in place of straw. The builder who erected this 
 wall upon that of Ashurbanipal also added the wings or
 
 164 NIPPUR. 
 
 projections on all sides of the ziggurat, and built over 
 almost the entire ziggurat a new construction of unbaked 
 brick, reducing at the same time the number of stages 
 from three to two. Of the previous constructions of the 
 ziggurat, after this builder's work was completed, there 
 remained exposed only a portion of the wall of Ashur- 
 banipal on the lower terrace, at the northern corner, and 
 from that corner as far as the wings on the northeastern 
 and northwestern sides. The rooms adjoining the zig- 
 gurat were dovetailed into the new structure as already- 
 stated, showing that they are part of one and the same 
 work. At a later date a brick wall was built upon the 
 remains of the wall of unbaked brick on the ziggurat. 
 This wall is of a very late date and composed, not of bricks 
 made for the purpose, but of bricks taken from other con- 
 structions; so that the names of a large number of kings 
 are found upon the bricks in this wall. It seems probable 
 that, at the time when this wall was built, the ground about 
 the ziggurat had been so raised by the mud washed down 
 from the surface, that it practically stood upon the surface 
 itself. It seems to have been a retaining wall to pre- 
 vent the further dissolution of the upper portions of the 
 ziggurat enclosed by it. The accompanying plate exhibits 
 below the panelled wall of Ashurbanipal made of baked 
 brick, many of the bricks bearing his stamp. Immediately 
 above this arc seen three courses of crude brick of the 
 later reconstruction, and above this still, the late wall of 
 baked brick just described, an overhanging portion of 
 which strengthens the suspicion that when erected it stood 
 upon the surface. 
 
 I have thus rapidly surveyed the history of the ziggurat 
 in its reconstructions; but it must be added that other 
 kings did work upon both the ziggurat and the temple at 
 large, besides those who were responsible for the great 
 reconstructions. An examination of two of the corners 
 of the ziggurat made by me, the northern and the west-
 
 The Ziggurat on the northwestern side, near the northern corner. Below are visible 
 
 the panelled walls of brick of Ashurbanipal. Above are seen the great 
 
 blocks of unbaked brick of the last great Reconstruction. 
 
 Above this are formless debris and very late walls.
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 1 65 
 
 em, showed that at some time they had been removed 
 ahuost down to the foundation, and afterwards built up 
 again. The bricks of both Ur-Gur and Ashurbanipal 
 were originally laid in bitumen, but the bricks in the 
 corner of the wall were laid in mortar, only those of Ur- 
 Gur and Ashurbanipal having bitumen adhering to them ; 
 thus giving evidence that these corners had been removed 
 for some purpose, and then rebuilt. The walls themselves 
 about the corner were clearly constructions of Ashurbani- 
 pal. It is evident, therefore, that this destruction and 
 restoration of the corners, whether undertaken in the 
 search for archive cylinders, or for whatever purpose it 
 was undertaken, must have taken place at a later date 
 than 626 B.C. Among the bricks of other kings found 
 by me in the ziggurat were those of Bur-Sin of Isin, 
 2600 B.C., who calls himself " the powerful shepherd of 
 Ur, the restorer of the oracle tree of Eridu, the lord who 
 delivers the commands of Erech " ; Ishme Dagan of Isin, 
 about the same date; Kurigalzu II., a Cossaean king of 
 Babylon, 1306-1284B.C. ; and Ramman-shum-usur, of the 
 same Cosssean dynasty, 1201-1173 B.C. ("To Bel, lord of 
 lands, his lord, Ramman-shum-usur, his favorite shepherd, 
 adorner of Nippur, chief of E-kur, built E-kur, his be- 
 loved house, with bricks."); and among those found 
 elsewhere in the temple were bricks of Ur-Ninib, King of 
 Isin, "shepherd of Ur," and "deliverer of the commands 
 of Eridu"; of Bur-Sin of Ur, and of Esarhaddon of 
 Assyria (670 B.C.), showing that many kings of many 
 ages had honored the temple of Bel at Nippur. 
 
 I have already stated that I pierced the ziggurat at its 
 centre, and at No. 52 excavated beneath the level of Ur- 
 Gur's foundations to the depth of two metres, finding 
 there no remains of a preceding ziggurat, but first a metre 
 of black ashes, and then a metre of earth. By means of 
 a deep trench and a descending tunnel I reached near the 
 western corner of the ziggurat, on the northwestern side,
 
 l66 NIPPUR. 
 
 a point some two metres below plain level. In this tun- 
 nel I found a pottery drain well with a platform of bricks 
 at its mouth of peculiar form, flat on one side and convex 
 on the other, with thumb grooves on the convex side; 
 and a brick wall,' made of similar bricks, the mortar used 
 in which was bitumen. At the very bottom of this trench, 
 beneath the ziggurat, and two metres below plain level, 
 we found lying in the earth a beautiful, highly polished 
 jade axe-head, and an inscribed clay tablet, the oldest 
 inscribed object, to judge from its position, found at Nip- 
 pur; being at a lower level than any of the inscribed stone 
 objects found either by me or by Haynes. 
 
 On the southeastern side of the ziggurat, after reaching 
 the inner wall of the Ur-Gur ziggurat by means of a tun- 
 nel, I sank a well to the depth of .50 metres below plain 
 level, and found beneath both the Ur-Gur and Sargon 
 levels a massive construction of mud brick with a curious 
 re-entrant angle, part of which construction lay beneath 
 the ziggurat. All this made it plain that no ziggurat 
 had existed on this spot before the time of Ur-Gur's 
 construction. Mr. Haynes's excavations confirmed this 
 result. Beneath the southeastern wing of the ziggurat, 
 which he removed, and below the Sargon level, at the 
 depth of forty feet, he reported an archaic curb of bricks, 
 which seems to be the same wall found by me on the 
 other side of the ziggurat. Within this curb, and appar- 
 ently at a lower level, he found an altar of unbaked brick, 
 some thirteen feet in length. It was beneath the curb 
 that he found the arched drain of which so much has been 
 writen, the oldest true arch yet discovered. 
 
 Outside of the outer wall of the temple to the north- 
 westward, northeastward, and southwestward, I con- 
 
 ' This seems to be identical with the " curb" found by Haynes in front of 
 the altar to the southeast of the ziggurat. It has been plausibly suggested 
 that this wall, or curb, marked the inner, sacred enclosure of the temple in 
 the earliest times.
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 1(37 
 
 ducted excavations to find the foundations of that wall. 
 At several places I reached a depth of five metres below 
 plain level, and at one or two of six metres. In general, 
 I seemed to find virgin soil at about the former depth, 
 but everywhere at that low level the walls of mud and 
 brick had been so ruined by the moisture that it was 
 almost, if not quite, impossible to follow them. Indeed, 
 it was not always quite clear when we had reached virgin 
 soil. 
 
 Studying the strata and constructions revealed by these 
 excavations, we find at the depth of 11.5 to 12 metres be- 
 neath the surface the remains of Sargon and Naram-Sin, 
 absolutely determined by inscriptions found in place by 
 both Haynes and myself. He found inscribed bricks. I 
 found door-sockets, a clay tablet or two, and a brick clay 
 stamp. Beneath this there are still some seven or eight 
 metres of debris. In this, below the Sargon level, 
 Haynes reported finding clay tablets, I found, as stated, 
 an inscribed clay tablet or two at the Sargon level, and 
 one four metres below that level, beneath the ziggu- 
 rat. Both Haynes and I found fragments of walls and 
 constructions of various sorts at all depths down to virgin 
 earth, and pottery — the pottery and bricks being similar 
 to those found in later strata, and indicating in general 
 a civilization of the same character. 
 
 Resting immediately upon the stratum of Sargon and 
 Naram-Sin, without anything intervening, are the con- 
 structions of Ur-Gur. Naram-Sin is ordinarily dated at 
 3750 B.C., and Ur-Gur at 2800 B.C., or thereabouts. For 
 this supposed intervening period of nine hundred and 
 fifty years there is, therefore, absolutely nothing to show. 
 The stratum of Ur-Gur is very thick, on account of the 
 brick terrace, which occupies a space of 2. 10 metres. 
 Above this is a stratum of about 1.66 metres in thick- 
 ness, in which, in the portion excavated, we found, as 
 traces of different ages, three different pavements of brick.
 
 1 68 NIPPUR. 
 
 Immediately above this comes a mass of debris resulting 
 from the demolition of structures of Ashurbanipal, 669- 
 626 B.C. In the court to the southeast, under the rooms 
 to the southwest and northwest, and under the corridors, 
 we found this mass of rubble a foot or more in thickness. 
 Elsewhere we found brick foundations, apparently of the 
 same period, descending into the strata beneath to the 
 depth of four and six metres. Resting upon this foot of 
 rubble representing Ashurbanipal's constructions were 
 5.5 metres of foundations and structures of mud brick oc- 
 cupied — as the closing up of the doors shows — through 
 three successive periods, in which, as is evidenced by the 
 remains found within, is included at least a part of the 
 Seleucidan period. Above these there is a metre of ac- 
 cumulation dating from 200 B.C., or thereabouts, onward. 
 
 We found in our excavations three periods of icono- 
 clasm ; the first occurring shortly after the time of Bur- 
 Sin of Ur, in which the temple statuary, votive stone 
 vases, and the like, dedicated by former kings, were de- 
 stroyed ; another, immediately following the Cossaean 
 dynasty, in which the " jeweller's shop " was destroyed; 
 and a third, in which some successor of Ashurbanipal 
 utterly destroyed the latter's extensive brick structures. 
 
 Much of the history of the temple is still uncertain. It 
 is only, after all, a fragment which has been excavated, 
 and from that we can merely guess at the remainder. 
 The upper surface belonging to the last reconstruction 
 has been fairly well explored. The ziggurat has been 
 thoroughly examined, and a considerable section of the 
 large courtyard to the southeast of the ziggurat has been 
 removed, but the lack of buildings at this point during a 
 great portion of the period renders the succession of strata 
 there somewhat uncertain. It is desirable to remove in a 
 similar manner, stratum by stratum, some sections of the 
 temple where there were buildings. I explored by wells 
 and borings at several points, but borings or wells are too
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. 1 69 
 
 small to enable us to determine satisfactorily the nature of 
 the strata over so large and complex an area. 
 
 In a previous chapter I have spoken of the object and 
 origin of the ziggurat. I have also called attention to the 
 similarity existing in certain particulars between the tem- 
 ple of Bel at Nippur and the temple of Yahweh at Jerusa- 
 lem. It seems to me that Jewish, Phoenician, and Syrian 
 temples, as we find them described in the Bible and other 
 ancient sources, are in origin similar to the ziggurat tem- 
 ple such as we have it at Nippur. The Holy of Holies 
 corresponds to the mysterious shrine on the summit of the 
 ziggurat; the Holy Place corresponds to the ziggurat 
 proper; outside of this is the altar of burnt offerings; the 
 face of the temple is towards the east or southeast; and 
 the temple is so arranged that one ascends constantly ; the 
 most holy portion being the highest. I do not mean that 
 the Jewish temple at all resembles in its outward appear- 
 ance the temple of Bel at Nippur. It had been developed 
 far beyond that stage. It had its origin, however, in 
 similar ideas regarding the nature of the divinity and the 
 place and manner in which he should be worshipped, and 
 to understand thoroughly the meaning of the Jewish tem- 
 ple and the method of its worship, we must study precisely 
 such a temple as E-kur, the house of En-Lil, the storm 
 god, at Nippur, the oldest temple of which we have any 
 record, and one which exercised a profound influence on 
 the religious development of Assyria and Babylonia, and 
 through them of the whole Semitic world. 
 
 Note. — I wish to acknowledge my indebtedness to Dr. 
 Haynes's later explorations, as reported by Professor Hil- 
 precht in the introduction to his Old Babylonian In- 
 scriptions, vol. i., part ii. While I am not able to say 
 definitely that the explanation of any one part of my 
 work was due to his later discoveries, it is nevertheless 
 clear to me that I should not have understood the bearings 
 of much that I found, had it not been for the light thrown
 
 I/O 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 on them by his later work. I was the discoverer of the 
 ancient temple, but it is largely his work which has made 
 my discoveries intelligible. I found within the curious 
 four-winged ziggurat the ancient ziggurat of Ur-Gur, and 
 I ascertained that it had been repaired or reconstructed 
 by Kadashman-Turgu and Ashurbanipal ; it was Haynes's 
 part, following out my work, to remove the later con- 
 structions and lay bare the older ziggurat within, thus 
 obtaining a more complete and detailed knowledge of the 
 character of that ziggurat. I explored the ziggurat from 
 top to bottom by a cut going in to the very centre; 
 Haynes explored it on the outside, tracing all the sur- 
 faces. I found that there was no ziggurat beneath the 
 ziggurat of Ur-Gur, but that that structure rested on the 
 remains of buildings of another sort, — in other words, that 
 the oldest ziggurat of the temple of Bel at Nippur, at 
 least in that position, was built by Ur-Gur. Haynes 
 confirmed this by his excavations, and made some nota- 
 ble discoveries beneath the ziggurat itself, I found the 
 causeway by which access was had to the upper stages of 
 the Ur-Gur ziggurat on its southeastern side, but I am not 
 sure that I could have understood the bearings of my dis- 
 covery, had it not been for the better preserved piece of 
 the same causeway which was unearthed by Haynes 
 under the southeastern buttress-like wing of the late zig- 
 gurat, I dug down to the structures of the Sargon level, 
 and proved by borings that Sargon was not, as had been 
 theretofore supposed, at the beginning of Babylonian 
 history, but as it were in the middle, — there being eleven 
 or twelve metres of debris above, and seven or eight below 
 his level, I found inscriptions of earlier kings of Kish, 
 Lagash, Ur, and Erech ; and also inscribed clay tablets 
 and fragments of tablets of Sargon's time, and even of 
 a time much earlier than Sargon, going back almost, if 
 not quite, to the period of the foundation of Nippur. 
 Haynes, continuing excavations at the same point on the
 
 THE OLDEST TEMPLE IN THE WORLD. I J I 
 
 lines laid down by me, and, at my suggestion, broaden- 
 ing and enlarging the great trench which I had com- 
 menced, has, by the greater size of his excavations 
 obtained better evidence of the succession of strata; and, 
 by the greater depth to which he carried the trench as a 
 whole, has secured a very much larger amount of very 
 ancient inscribed material, enabling assyriologists to re- 
 construct the pre-Sargonic history, to an extent impossible 
 from the material procured by me. 
 
 I wish also to acknowledge my indebtedness to Profes- 
 sor Hilprecht, whose transcriptions of Babylonian proper 
 names I have generally followed in this and other chap- 
 ters, as well as his chronology. For the translations of 
 inscriptions in this volume I am also in general indebted 
 to him. It should be said of the transcription of proper 
 names, such as Lugal-zaggisi, Lugal-kigub-nidudu, and 
 not a few others, that they are at present merely tenta- 
 tive. The characters forming the words have such pos- 
 sible sounds, but we are not certain that these were the 
 sounds actually used in these and many other proper 
 names.
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 
 
 Tombs with many Tenants — Supposed Necropolis — The Columns — Marks 
 of Conflagration — Exploring a Palace — More Columns — A Jewish City 
 — An Incantation Bowl — Ancient Statuary — Character of Mounds — 
 Dating the Strata — Cosssean Archives — Lowest Level — Use and Date 
 of Columns. 
 
 IN the first year of our excavations our camp was 
 pitched on the highest point of the mounds on the 
 northwestern side of the old canal-bed, at the point 
 marked 24 metres on the plan of levels (see plan facing 
 page), near figure I. on the general plan (see plan 
 in Chapter VII). There was some delay in commencing 
 excavations, as stated in a previous chapter, because, not 
 having filed a topographical plan at the time of appli- 
 cation for a firman, according to the law, it was agreed 
 that after reaching Nippur we should not begin to exca- 
 vate until such a plan had been prepared, and accepted 
 by the Turkish government. 
 
 During the few days while the plan was in preparation, 
 we were occupied in building our camp. For this pur- 
 pose bricks were needed, and workmen were sent out to 
 gather them wherever they could be found upon the sur- 
 face of the ground. Some of the men engaged in this 
 search found a brick structure just appearing above the 
 earth in a gully beneath the camp eastward, and pro- 
 ceeded on their own responsibility to excavate the struc- 
 ture and remove the bricks. Some of the bricks which 
 
 172
 
 uiis of Nippur to the wl/ear ; dotted lines show tunnels. 
 R
 
 c^ 
 
 RoaB4a Buincnlt todicui 
 
 C)
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 1 73 
 
 they brought in were inscribed. This led to an investi- 
 gation of the source of supply, and induced us to com- 
 mence excavations at the point where brickwork had 
 been discovered containing inscribed bricks. This brick- 
 work proved to be part of a tomb made of bricks taken 
 from various structures, chiefly on the Temple Hill, 
 prominent among which were bricks of Ur-Gur, Ishme- 
 Dagan, and Ashurbanipal. In this tomb was found a 
 slipper-shaped clay coffin, covered with a blue glass 
 enamel, and decorated with figures representing a woman 
 from the waist and upward, but terminating in arabesque 
 below. This was broken into two pieces, which were 
 lying separated and at an angle the one toward the other. 
 There was a skeleton in the coffin, and outside of the 
 coffin on the floor were bones indicating other burials. 
 There were in the tomb, further, a green dish, a broken 
 clay horse with rider ( an indication of Parthian origin), a 
 small stone meal-grinder, and a quantity of colored 
 beads, chiefly glass. At one end were steps descending 
 into the tomb, an arrangement which I do not remember 
 to have seen in any other tomb. The peaked roof had 
 fallen in and the tomb was full of earth. 
 
 Not far away we discovered a second tomb. This 
 was built upon a fragment of a brick column, which 
 formed part of the floor, the remainder being paved with 
 a double row of bricks. The entrance was by a low door 
 on the side. Here also the roof had fallen in and the 
 interior was full of earth. In this tomb we found twelve 
 bodies in all, some of which had been buried after the 
 roof had fallen in. We found here also a yellowish, grace- 
 ful, two-handled urn of delicate texture, decorated with 
 two incised lines, and showing faint traces of black color- 
 ing, .15 metres in height. In the earth within this were 
 traces of ashes and one metal bead. Below this there was 
 a bowl of red pottery containing bones, and beneath this 
 a smaller and less graceful two-handled green urn. There
 
 174 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 were further in this tomb a broken green plate, a small 
 green vase, three glass vials of rather pretty shape, about 
 one hundred beads, — some pearl, some glass, and one 
 overlaid with gold leaf — a copper bracelet, three copper 
 rings, and one iron one, three shells, a whorl-shaped weight 
 of unbaked clay, a plain square piece of copper, and thir- 
 teen copper coins and medals, almost hopelessly ruined, 
 but two of them still identifiable as Sassanian. On the 
 ruins of this tomb there were further three slipper-shaped 
 coffins buried ; two of them plain and one enamelled. 
 All about both tombs were coffins — I had almost said 
 countless coffins — of clay, side by side, in nests, one 
 across another, two and even three bodies in one coffin. 
 Sometimes jars had served as coffins. Indeed, the inter- 
 ments were in every conceivable fashion. Naturally we 
 at first supposed that we had found the necropolis at 
 Nippur, and the columnar construction w^hich we un- 
 earthed at this point we imagined to have had some con- 
 nection with the interment of the dead. But as our work 
 proceeded it became manifest that, Avhatever might have 
 led to the choice of this particular spot for so many inter- 
 ments, they had no direct connection with the intention 
 of the building itself, every interment having taken place 
 after the building had lain in ruins for a long period. 
 
 The building which we thus accidentally discovered, 
 and which has not yet been completely explored, proved 
 to be, next to the temple itself, the most interesting and 
 ambitious structure excavated at Nippur up to date. The 
 court of columns which we first laid bare was fifteen metres 
 square. The floor consisted of a pavement of unbaked 
 bricks of small size and good make, two to three metres 
 in depth. Around this, on three sides, ran a sort of 
 edging consisting of a double row of burned bricks, out of 
 which rose four round brick columns resting on square 
 bases, also of brick, descending about a metre beneath 
 the surface. The southeastern or fourth side differed from
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 
 
 175 
 
 the other three sides only in the matter of the brick pave- 
 ment between the columns, for on this side there were 
 four rows, of bricks instead of two, making a complete 
 pavement. On the northeastern side, owing to the slope 
 
 PLAN OF COURT OF COLUMNS, AS SURVEYED BY P. H. FIELD. 
 Scale, .008 M. - i M. Scale of Plan of Column, .016 M = i M. 
 
 of the hill in that direction, the brick pavement and the 
 foundations of the columns were almost entirely washed 
 away; nevertheless, from the little which remained, it 
 seemed probable that this side was the same as the north- 
 western and southwestern sides, and I have ventured to
 
 1/6 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 assume that such was the case. The corner columns 
 were of a peculiar shape, partly rounded, partly square ; as 
 will be seen by a reference to the plan. The corners were 
 twelve degrees off the cardinal points, as in the case of 
 the Temple. In front of this court, on the southeast 
 side, were the remains of a long narrow pavement, on 
 which stood two columns of larger size, but everything 
 else in this direction was ruined by water. 
 
 The columns of the court were almost exactly a metre 
 in diameter at the base. They had been so broken up by 
 later generations to obtain material for building that an 
 entire column could not be restored. The portions of 
 the columns which were still in place, to the height of a 
 metre or thereabouts, were constant in diameter, but some 
 
 ELEVATION SHOWING FOUNDATIONS OF COLUMNS. FIELD. 
 
 of the fragments which we found scattered here and there 
 were of so much smaller size that Field, the architect of 
 the expedition in the first year, was inclined to think at 
 first that they belonged to other columns. It was finally 
 shown, however, that these small pieces, the smallest not 
 being more than about half a metre in diameter, were 
 parts of the same columns. One fragment, somewhat 
 larger than the rest, showed that the rate of diminution 
 of diameter in the upper half of the columns was very 
 rapid. 
 
 These columns were built of bricks especially made for 
 the purpose. It will be observed from the plan that the 
 six bricks of which the bulk of the column is composed 
 form each a segment of a circle, with the apex truncated, 
 so that tlicy do not fit together in the centre, but leave a
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 
 
 177 
 
 considerable space to be filled up by brick fragments of 
 various sizes and shapes, no special bricks having been 
 made for that purpose. The bricks of the columns were 
 laid in mortar, not in bitumen. They were red, hard, 
 and well baked, but somewhat brittle, tending to break 
 up when the attempt was made to separate them from 
 the mortar in which they were imbedded. After the 
 columns were set up they were evidently dressed with 
 some sharp instrument, for the purpose of cutting off pro- 
 jecting edges of bricks and mortar, and making the surface 
 of the columns smooth and true. 
 
 EXCAVATIONS ABOUT THE COURT OF COLUMNS THE FIRST YEAR, 1889. 
 SHOWING TRENCH A B, BISECTING COURT OF COLUMNS. 
 
 Scale, 0.00125 M. = I M. Field. 
 
 It will be perceived by an examination of the plan that 
 the columns are not at exactly even distances from one 
 another. So on the southwestern side the distance be- 
 tween the western corner and the nearest column is 
 1.62 metres, while the distance between the southern 
 corner and the next column is 1.76 metres. The other 
 spaces on that side are 1.69 metres, 1.72 metres, and 1.75 
 metres respectively. Such irregularities are rather char- 
 acteristic of the architecture at Nippur; and I suspect of 
 Babylonian architecture in general. 
 
 It was evident from the line of ashes which ran along 
 by and outside of the columns and the heaps of ashes at 
 each corner that, while the court itself was probably open 
 
 VOL. II— 12
 
 178 
 
 NIPP UR. 
 
 to the heavens, pahn beams had rested on the columns 
 and supported the roof of a building about the court on 
 all four sides. But at the outset the bearings of this evi- 
 dence were somewhat confused, from the fact that after 
 the destruction of the building its site was appropriated 
 for burial purposes, and we were for a time inclined to 
 suppose that part of the wood-remains which we found in 
 and about the colonnade were connected with the burials 
 which had taken place there. Our excavations in the 
 second year gave final evidence that this was not the case, 
 but that the remains of burning were all to be attributed 
 to the structure of which the court of columns formed a 
 
 Elevation of Trench A B, shown in last cut, bisecting Court of Columns, 
 
 near edge of same ; showing depth of excavations beneath the Court 
 
 of Columns ; also continuation and level of trench to both 
 
 sides of same, at end of first year, 1S89. Field. 
 
 part ; for in the second year we were able to show that 
 this court was part of a very much larger structure, which 
 was destroyed by fire. 
 
 During the first year our trenches about the court had 
 cut through a number of walls of mud brick, which were 
 so disintegrated and ruined by fire that, with our lack of 
 experience and the lack of experience of our men in de- 
 tecting matters of this sort, we were unaware that we 
 were cutting through walls. The accompanying plan will 
 show so much of the building as we were able to excavate 
 in the second year. To the northwest of the original 
 court of columns we found an alcove (D in the plan), 
 Avhich had evidently been roofed in, the roof being sup- 
 ported upon two rectangular oblong columns and two oval

 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 1 79 
 
 columns of brick, the axes of which were 1.20 metres 
 and .60 metres. These columns rested on a platform of 
 three rows of bricks, beneath which was a metre of mud 
 brick. As will be observed, this portico was not exactly 
 in the middle. Nothing ever was exactly in the middle 
 at Nippur. 
 
 The court had been surrounded by a building on all 
 sides, excepting possibly the southeast — the walls of this 
 building being of unbaked brick in large blocks. The wall 
 bounding the court to the northeast (P) was so destroyed 
 by water, owing to the descent of the gully in this direc- 
 tion, that it could be traced only over a portion of its ex- 
 tent. On the southwest two passages opened out from the 
 court, one of these giving entrance to a room (R), from 
 which again another door opened into a long corridor (O). 
 This corridor was explored by a trench begun in the first 
 year and continued in the second year, leading under the 
 highest part of the hill, and reaching finally a depth of 
 over thirteen metres. This was a peculiarly difficult por- 
 tion of the mounds to explore, since although the trenches 
 were purposely made of unusual breadth, they constantly 
 showed a tendency to cave in; and although we were 
 fortunate enough to have no accidents, nevertheless more 
 than once we found our trench filled up and the work of 
 several weeks destroyed. Such a cave-in occurred to- 
 ward the end of the second year of our excavations; and 
 as at that time we were also exploring the temple, and 
 much work remained to be done there, I abandoned the 
 further investigation of this building on Camp Hill in or- 
 der to concentrate all of my force on the Temple Hill. 
 Haynes had a somewhat similar experience in the first 
 year of his work, and as his force was small and the 
 amount still to be done on the Temple Hill very great, 
 he abandoned the exploration of this building after a few 
 weeks' work, in which he had done little more than clear 
 out the debris from some of my former trenches, and
 
 i8o 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 %r:: 
 
 
 
 0f& 
 
 m, 
 
 concentrated his work upon the Temple Hill and the hill 
 
 marked X in the plan of levels, in which we made our 
 
 greatest discoveries of tablets. 
 
 In the centre of the Camp Hill, under the 24-metre 
 
 level, the amount of superincumbent earth was so great 
 
 that I conducted excava- 
 tions along the walls of the 
 building largely by tunnels, 
 as will be seen from the 
 plan. There was on what 
 seemed to be the extreme 
 southwestern side of the 
 building a very large fine 
 wall (MM), built of the 
 large blocks of mud-brick 
 spoken of above, burned 
 red for the most part by 
 the conflagration in which 
 the building was destroyed. 
 This, which I judged to be 
 the outer wall of the build- 
 ing, from its position, size, 
 and lack of doors, I traced, 
 chiefly by tunnels, for the 
 distance of fifty metres, 
 finding a corner to the 
 west, but none to the 
 south, where the wall 
 crossed a deep gully and 
 was struck agfain on the 
 
 4 v-' •■iu^-^f^'^mm 
 
 
 ,'.4w*'Ii™»"j(;«S% 
 
 ±1 
 
 11^ 
 
 Y;^ 
 
 GRKAT TRENCH AT CAMP HILL, LOOK- j^g^t mOUnd bcVOUd 
 
 iNG WEST. SHOWING WALL. MM, SEC- ^^^^ mouno Deyouu. 
 OND YEAR. Another passageway 
 
 opening from the main 
 court at S was closed by a door having a brick threshold 
 and a stone door-socket. At the other end of this cor- 
 ridor there had been a similar door and door-socket.
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. l8l 
 
 Charred beams of palm wood in this corridor showed the 
 construction of the roof. Heaps of ashes, with pieces of 
 tamarisk on the brick threshold, were the remains of doors 
 and door-posts. The small chamber marked I, into which 
 this corridor gave access, had apparently served as a gran- 
 ary, and was full of burned barley. It should be added 
 that in the long corridor, O, we found at the point marked 
 by the letter O another deposit of burned barley, as well 
 as the remains of burned palm logs from the roof. 
 
 From the chamber I a passage-way opened into a large 
 room (E), which was divided into two parts by columns 
 different from those in the large court, or in the smaller 
 portico opening from it on the northwest. There were 
 two columns built in the wall, in the manner indicated in 
 the plan, and two round columns set upon square bases, 
 each of the bases consisting of four courses of bricks and 
 resting on mud-brick foundations. The circumference of 
 these round columns was 3.95 metres. Between the col- 
 umns, from one side to the other, ran a low brick wall about 
 as high as the top of the bases ; the top of which, I sup- 
 pose, marked the floor level of this room, so that, as in the 
 court of columns, the square bases of the round columns 
 were originally below the floor surface. This room was on 
 the edge of a gully, toward the southeast, and was entirely 
 washed away from the point where the lines stop. 
 
 The round brick construction marked H, in the series 
 of rooms and corridors opening out of the court to the 
 southwest, was a well, or more probably a water-cooler.' 
 
 It will be seen on looking at the plan that at the south- 
 east of the court first discovered there was a long low plat- 
 form (TT), but no wall, as upon the other side. On this 
 platform, which consisted of three courses of burned bricks 
 resting on a substructure of mud-brick, stood, as already 
 stated, two columns of much larger size than any found 
 
 ' To this day similar constructions are used at Nejef and elsewhere in 
 Irak as water-coolers.
 
 1 82 NIPPUR. 
 
 elsewhere. The base of one of these columns was in 
 place, as indicated at F. Traces of a second base I 
 thought that I discovered at U. Remains of two round 
 columns were found strewn here and there in the earth, 
 from which it was clear that the diameter of the columns 
 at the base must have been two metres ; or more than 
 double that of the columns of the court. This platform 
 lay under a narrow mound separating the gully in which 
 we found the court of columns from a much deeper gully 
 to the southeast. Near one of these columns was a frag- 
 ment of a wall of unburned brick with some courses of 
 burned brick upon it, but what it meant or where it led 
 to I do not know, since everything beyond this point was 
 washed away, and it was impossible to obtain any clue for a 
 reconstruction of the building on this side. The form of 
 the platform, however, and the position and size of the two 
 columns, suggest a gateway and an entrance to the court. 
 Whether the entrance was from another court of the build- 
 ing, or from the outside, it was impossible to determine. 
 
 Toward the northwest and the southwest the difficulties 
 that met us were quite the opposite of those with which 
 we had to contend at the northeast and southeast — 
 namely, the fact of the rapid rise of the hill on those sides, 
 and the immense mass of earth under which everything 
 was buried. The whole surface of the hill to the north- 
 west and southwest was covered with a Jewish settle- 
 ment, the houses of which were built of mud-brick, and 
 in almost every house we found one, or more, Jewish in- 
 cantation bowls. A translation of one of these bowls, 
 kindly furnished me by Prof. Gottheil, of Columbia Uni- 
 versity, reads as follows: 
 
 A remedy from heaven for Darbah, son of Asasarieh, 
 and for Shadkoi daughter of Dada his wife, for their sons 
 and daughters, their houses and possessions; that they 
 may have children, and that these live and be preserved 
 from Shedim and Daevas, from Shubhte and Satans, from
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMXS. 1 83 
 
 curses, night-demons and destruction which may have 
 been prepared for them. I adjure you, O angel who has 
 come down from heaven, whose horn is welted in blood 
 O angel ; who hath command in the East over 
 the secrets of the Almighty . . . may these live and 
 be preserved from this day on. May the spells (of the evil 
 spirits) never be seen hovering over his food ; but may 
 they remain in their own place, biting at the chain . . 
 
 May be banned and excommunicated all Kisi, wound- 
 ings, trouble, cursing, laceration, calamity, ban, curse; all 
 Shedim, Daevas, Shubhte, Lilith, Spirits — all destruction 
 and anything else of evil — that they depart from out of 
 Darbah son of Asasarieh, from Shadkoi daughter of Dada 
 his wife; from Honik, from Yasmon, Ku Kithi, Mah- 
 duch, Abraham, Panui, Shiluch (?), Shadkoi, from their 
 houses and possessions, and from everything which may 
 be theirs. By means of this we loosen their hold from 
 this day and forever. In the name of Yahweh of Hosts I 
 Amen I Amen I Selah I ]\Iay Yahweh, by this, preserve 
 him from ever}' Ashmodai of his soul! " 
 
 In one of these houses on the hill to the southwest we 
 found a curious pottery object, which we supposed to have 
 belonged to a Jewish doctor or apothecary, and to have 
 been intended rather for ornament or advertisement than 
 for use. We concluded that it belonged to an apothecary 
 or doctor, from the fact that there were in the same place 
 several clay bottles sealed with bitumen, containing a 
 mixture which we judged to be intended as medicine, 
 although no chemical analysis has yet been made. Our 
 conclusions may therefore be faulty on this point, but the 
 discovery of Jewish bowls in the same house seems to 
 settle the fact that it belonged to the Jewish colony. 
 
 Kufic coins found in some of the houses of this settle- 
 ment indicated that it was in existence as late as the 
 seventh centurv" A.D. This Jewish town extended over 
 a large part of the mounds to the southwest of the canal.
 
 1 84 NIPPUR. 
 
 from Camp Hill (marked I on the plan of levels) to X, 
 and is everywhere identifiable by the incantation bowls 
 found in the houses, some of which are written in Syriac 
 or even Arabic, although by far the larger part are in 
 Jewish script. In one of the houses on I, close to the 
 colonnade, was found a curious fragment, twenty-one 
 centimetres in height, of a statue in black dioritic stone. 
 On one face, the obverse, was a ram in relief, held behind 
 by a hand with very slender, long fingers. The hand was 
 relatively much larger than the ram, the middle fingers 
 measuring .042 metres, while the height of the ram over 
 its hindquarters is only .II metres. On the edge of the 
 fragment, in front of the ram, the breast and some of the 
 drapery of a human figure can be seen. This is relatively 
 smaller than the ram, and much smaller than the hand. 
 On the reverse is the small of a human back, undraped, 
 and corresponding in size rather to the hand than to 
 either the breast or the ram. I suppose that this was 
 found or dug up by the occupant of the house, some- 
 where, probably,on the temple hill, which was at that time 
 unoccupied, or sparsely occupied, and seems to have 
 served to some extent as a brick quarry for the later in- 
 habitants of other parts of the mounds. 
 
 At the time of the Jewish occupation of the mounds 
 the surface was already very uneven. The Jewish settle- 
 ment occupied in general the higher portions of the sur- 
 face of the mounds, which were thus still further increased 
 in height, while the gullies were left unoccupied. Such 
 partial settlements of the mounds outside of the temple 
 hill, which is more uniform in its strata, and the conse- 
 quent unevenncss of stratification, have rendered the task 
 of determining the dates of buildings and objects found 
 at Nippur one of great difficulty. In one of the gullies 
 on the northeast side of X (indicated by the letter E on 
 the plan of levels) was found a series of rooms of unburned 
 brick belonging to a building destroyed by fire, in which
 
 Piece of Statuary in a hard, black, dioritic stone, found in a Jewish house 
 
 on Hill I, hut manifestly belonging to an earlier period. 
 
 Height of fragment, .21 m. ; diani., .15 m. ; girth, .49 m. 
 
 On reverse, small of back of a human figure.
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 1 85 
 
 were stored tablets of a very ancient period, several of 
 them bearing the seal of Gimil-Sin, of Ur, circa 2500 B.C. 
 At the point marked F on the same mound was found 
 a room used for the storage of unbaked tablets of the 
 same period. These had been arranged on wooden 
 shelves running around the walls, which, when the 
 building was destroyed, fell to the ground with their 
 precious freight. A brick well at this point was choked 
 with earth, which was excavated down to the water level, 
 recovering some hundreds of tablet fragments of the same 
 period, which had fallen or been thrown into it. At C, 
 at a somewhat higher level, we found a fine deposit of 
 tablets of the Cossaean period, circa 1300 B.C. At H, 
 Haynes found remains of the Sargon period (3800 B.C.), 
 almost at the surface. In the same mounds, and often 
 at but a slightly higher level, only on the summits instead 
 of in the valleys, are found the houses of the Jewish town. 
 These houses are in all cases of unburned brick, and re- 
 semble, or, in fact, seem to be identical with the houses of 
 ordinary town Arabs of the present day in Hillah, Shatra, 
 Diwanieh, and similar towns in that region. Not only do 
 we find that the houses of the present day in neighboring 
 towns are identical in structure with those built by the 
 Jews at Nippur about 700 A.D., but the ordinary struc- 
 tures of the earlier periods back to the time of Sargon are 
 of the same type and material ; and it is only in excep- 
 tional cases that the shape of bricks or details of archi- 
 tecture give any clue to date. A similar homogeneity 
 exists in the pottery and household utensils found in the 
 houses and graves. Naturally, as a consequence of long 
 experience, we are finding marks of date in objects which 
 at first seemed undateable, and doubtless, in course of 
 time, as a result of systematic and patient work, we shall 
 be able to assign periods to much of the pottery, bricks, 
 and the like, and ultimately to determine the period of 
 objects found, even where they are not accompanied by
 
 i86 NIPPUR. 
 
 inscriptions. At present, however, we are compelled to 
 rely largely upon inscriptions for chronological purposes. 
 
 I have already stated that the discovery of Kufic coins 
 of the first caliphs in some of the Jewish houses on Camp 
 Hill suggested the date of the seventh century A.D. for 
 the Jewish town on the mounds of Nippur. In another 
 place not far away the houses with Kufic coins were built 
 over the ruins of those containing Jewish bowls, showing 
 that the Jewish era also antedated the Kufic. In the 
 house in which the curious piece of composite pottery 
 mentioned above was found Jewish bowls and Parthian 
 coins occurred together. We can thus carry the Jewish 
 occupation of that part of the mounds about and above 
 the building containing the court of columns back to the 
 beginning of the Christian era or a little earlier, and find 
 that there was a considerable Jewish settlement at Nippur 
 during a period of six hundred years or more. 
 
 But at the same time that a part of the hill was occu- 
 pied by a Jewish town, burials were taking place in 
 other parts, and especially over and about the court of 
 columns; so that, as I have already stated, we at first 
 mistook this portion of the mounds for the necropolis of 
 Nippur. These graves were so confused in time that it is 
 im.possible to talk of strata. One and the same tomb 
 contains burials of different periods. Coins and seals 
 found here show that these burials occurred in the Sas- 
 sanian, Parthian, and apparently also in the Persian and 
 Babylonian periods. Out of this confusion it was impos- 
 sible to obtain any clue to the date of the columnar struc- 
 ture, which I supposed for a long time to be a building 
 of late date — not earlier in any event than the Persian 
 period, and probably influenced in the use of columns by 
 Greek art. It was the connection of the court of columns 
 with the huge, ramifying structure lying under the cen- 
 tral mass of the hill which gave me the means of dating 
 the coloimade, by a cut through the highest part of the
 
 ^ <u -c o 
 
 •5 o c. 
 
 (USD 
 
 OJ 
 
 £ 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 
 
 
 o; 
 
 u 
 
 ~ 
 
 "rt 
 
 u 
 
 c 
 
 'wl 
 
 -^ 
 
 <u 
 
 
 _<u 
 
 5 
 
 1^ 
 
 
 
 
 rt 
 
 
 
 
 
 :/", 
 
 
 
 
 D 
 
 
 i 
 
 J2 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 'C 
 
 'rt 
 
 rt 
 
 CT. 
 
 _ /~ OJ o 
 
 oj = :_ ; 
 
 '^ 'S _' — ^ 
 ^' 5 ? ij ^ 
 
 
 
 
 ■z: 
 
 lU 
 
 V 
 
 r 
 
 - 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 .~ 
 
 'g 
 
 ^ 
 
 o 
 
 j^ 
 
 rt 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 — 
 
 ^ 
 
 r— r 
 
 
 *-ix 
 
 c« 
 
 ^ 
 
 (U 
 
 ^ 
 
 (D 
 
 ^ 
 
 CU 
 
 ^ 
 
 ?^ 
 
 - 
 
 X 
 
 ;^ 
 
 OJ 
 
 5 
 
 ■;: 
 
 (U 

 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 1 8/ 
 
 hill — the part which had the most and the best preserved 
 strata. 
 
 As shown by the plan of levels and plan of building, 
 a broad trench was carried directly through the highest 
 part of mound I, which had been occujDied by our camp 
 in the first year. At the point C, between the 14- and 
 the 16-metre level, the houses which we found at the 
 surface — the lines of which were actually visible without 
 excavation — were above the Jewish settlement; but at 
 the summit of the mound, at the 24-metre level, this 
 proved not to be the case. We excavated first a series 
 of rooms, several of which were plastered and white- 
 washed. The floors of these rooms were about three 
 metres below the surface. The discovery of incantation 
 bowls, one of them written in Syriac characters, in several 
 of the rooms of this series, together with Kufic coins, 
 settled quite satisfactorily the date of this stratum, as 
 about 700 A.D. Below this we found Jewish bowls and 
 Sassanian and Parthian coins. At a depth of five or six 
 metres below the surface we came across a second series 
 of buildings, above and in which were a number of burials 
 in clay slipper-shaped coffins. These burials had evi- 
 dently taken place after the houses in the second stratum 
 had fallen into decay. There was nothing in these coffins, 
 or in the houses beneath them, to determine date. 
 
 Below this we found no buildings and no proper strata, 
 but only a few objects of various sorts loose in the earth. 
 At ten metres below the surface I felt confident that we 
 were in the Babylonian period, but we did not obtain any 
 objects by means of which date could be proved beyond 
 question until we reached a depth of eleven metres, at 
 which depth we were on the level of the court of columns. 
 Here we discovered quite close to the great wall MM, but 
 on the outside of it, in a small tunnel run out from the 
 wide trench, a curious set of pottery stored in a large urn. 
 There were three small boxes, the largest ten centimetres
 
 1 88 NIPPUR. 
 
 square, two of them with covers, and three small vases; 
 all quite peculiar in pattern, colored green and yellow in 
 stripes. The largest box was ornamented with knobs. 
 Along with these were more than a hundred small disks 
 and crescents, mostly in black and white, pierced for pur- 
 poses of suspension. This pottery did not seem to be 
 connected with a burial, nor were there any contents in 
 the boxes or vases excepting the earth which had fallen 
 into them. There were no traces of house-walls at this 
 point. 
 
 While I was still uncertain as to the date of this pot- 
 tery, or, in fact, of anything about this perplexing hill, in 
 a small tunnel from the great trench on the opposite or 
 southeastern side, at the depth of 11.20 metres, we dis- 
 covered two hundred and forty-five baked tablets, practi- 
 cally entire. These lay together in the earth, and the clay 
 about them showed marks of burning. There was no 
 trace of a wall immediately about them. Further exca- 
 vation added about fifty-three tablets found in the adjoin- 
 ing earth, together with a very large number of fragments; 
 all found within a radius of a few feet, and apparently 
 loose in the earth. Scarcely had we made this discovery, 
 however, and secured the tablets, when the trench caved 
 in, and we were unable to remove the superincumbent 
 earth and reach our old level again that year. 
 
 In the first year of his work, Haynes undertook a 
 further excavation of this site, and had the good fortune 
 to discover in the same locality a large number of tablets 
 of the same type. I am unable to identify the precise 
 spot at which he discovered his tablets. Mine were dis- 
 covered at the spot marked B, on hill I, at w^hich point, 
 it will be observed, a tunnel is indicated in the great 
 trench. On examination, these tablets proved to be, 
 without exception, records of the Cosssean dynasty. The 
 large tablet represented in the accompanying photograph 
 bears the name of Nazi-Marruttash, and is a record of
 
 Excavations in Hill X ; sliowing Burned Rooms of the Period of Ine-Sin of Ur, 
 
 circa 2500 B.C. 
 
 Account Tablet of Nazi-iMarruttash, a Cosssean King of Babylon, 1284-1258 B.C. 
 containing Records of Temple Income. Actual length about 20 cm.
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 189 
 
 temple income, as are all the other tablets of this find. 
 They are archives of the Cossaean dynasty, dealing with 
 the receipts of the great temple of Bel. The date of 
 Nazi-Marruttash is 1284 to 1258 B.C. 
 
 It will be observed that these tablets were not actually 
 found in the large building containing the court of col- 
 umns, but, as I think will have been made clear by my 
 account of the excavations, they enable us to date ap- 
 proximately the stratum to which that building belongs. 
 It was in existence at the time of the supremacy of the 
 Cossaean dynasty, and, inasmuch as we have found in the 
 temple excavations that some of the kings of that dynasty, 
 like Kurigalzu II. (i 306-1 284) and Kadashman-Turgu 
 (1258-1241), son of Nazi-Marruttash, were great builders, 
 we may not unfairly presume that this building was 
 erected by the kings of that dynasty somewhere, let us 
 say, between 1450 and 1250 B.C. 
 
 The endeavor to secure dates on the other side, that is, 
 before the erection of the building, by excavating beneath 
 it, was not rewarded with success. The great trench 
 through the centre of the hill was carried to the depth of 
 thirteen metres at the point where it strikes the great 
 wall MM on the southeastern side of that wall. At this 
 depth we found other walls of unbaked brick belonging 
 to buildings of an earlier era, and followed them for a 
 little distance with tunnels, but without result. A long 
 trench was projected across the entire hill to give us a 
 section of the same, as will be seen by Field's plan. Be- 
 neath the court of columns this latter trench descended 
 to the depth of thirteen metres, at which point we were 
 exactly twenty-four metres below the 24-metre level, but 
 nothing was discovered which could throw any light on 
 the question of dates. Here and there we found pottery 
 and household utensils, but always of the same common 
 character which might have belonged to any period from 
 Sargon down to the present time. At the depth of thir-
 
 I go NIPPUR. 
 
 teen metres we came upon a wall of unbaked brick (shown 
 at bottom of trench in cut on page 178) equally lack- 
 ing in characteristic features, and at this point we were 
 obliged to abandon the shaft for fear of a cave-in. 
 
 I have given in some detail the plans of this building, 
 as far as excavated, and an account of the excavations, 
 because a peculiar interest attaches to the use of the 
 round column. Columns of a different form, and very 
 much more elaborate in some particulars, were found by 
 M. de Sarzec, at Tello. I had the good fortune to dis- 
 cover at Abu-Adham, a few hours' distance from Tello, 
 on the other side of the Shatt-el-Hai, a building with 
 brick columns, precisely like those found in the court of 
 columns at Nippur. Abu-Adham is one of a very re- 
 markable group of mounds, lying, unfortunately, in the 
 midst of sandhills, between Hammam and Umm-el-Ajarib, 
 a little to the northward of the direct line between these 
 two places. 
 
 The most important mounds of this group are those of 
 Yokha, or more properly Jokha, which evidently represent 
 a large and important city. These are extensive, but low 
 lying, like those of Tello. Stone fragments are numerous, 
 and one can pick up on the surface quantities of pieces 
 of vases and other similar objects of stone of various sorts 
 extremely well wrought. Such objects, as far as my ex- 
 perience goes, are an evidence of an antiquity antedating 
 2000 B.C., and their appearance on the surface is an indi- 
 cation that these mounds were, comparatively, at least, 
 unoccupied during the succeeding ages. Bricks found in 
 a structure at the surface of the mounds were of decidedly 
 archaic appearance, flat on one side and convex on the 
 other, with thumb grooves in the convex surface, like 
 those found beneath the ziggurat at Nippur in the pre- 
 Sargonic stratum. Loftus, while exploring in this neigh- 
 borhood, found at Yokha a small stone statue of the Tello 
 school of art, dating from 3000 B.C. {Travels and Re-
 
 THE COURT OF COLUMNS. 
 
 191 
 
 searches in ChaldcBa and Susiana, p. 116, note.) The 
 University of Pennsylvania possesses a door-socket from 
 Yokha of about 2600 B.C., and tablets of approximately 
 the same date. 
 
 About a quarter of an hour from Yokha, to the south- 
 Avest, lies a small mound called Ferwa, the surface remains 
 on which are of the same general character as those on 
 
 50 
 
 ^ 
 
 G 
 
 r\ 
 
 c 
 c 
 
 c 
 
 o 
 
 m 
 
 (b 
 
 3 c 
 
 3 C 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 i> 
 
 KZP 
 
 PLAN OF BRICK BUILDING WITH COLUMNS, AT ABU-ADHAM. 
 
 Yokha. Beyond this again are two smaller mounds, be- 
 longing apparently to the same period, on one of which, 
 Abu-Adham, I found the building mentioned above, con- 
 taining a court of columns of a still more interesting type 
 architecturally than those found at Nippur, reminding 
 one somewhat of Solomon's porch of columns, described 
 in the second book of Kings. There were visible two 
 rooms, the larger 30 x 18 metres, and the smaller, or inner
 
 192 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 room, 30 X 15.5 metres, the walls of which without were 
 relieved by half columns in brick. In the inner room were 
 eighteen round columns of brick, each about a metre in 
 diameter, set upon square bases, each side of which meas- 
 ured 1.5 metres. (I am not sure that the two centre 
 columns were not missing.) These columns were similar 
 in construction to those at Nippur. From the evidence 
 of the surrounding mounds, I should judge that this 
 building belonged to the middle of the third millenium 
 B.C. 
 
 Abu-Adham, as already indicated, lies in the sphere of 
 influence of Tello. Less than an hour away toward the 
 Shatt-el-Hai", on the direct road to Tello, lies the burial 
 mound or necropolis of Umm-el-Ajarib. On this latter 
 mound de Sarzec found a head of a type similar to those 
 found at Tello. My men found at the same place a small 
 marble statue of the Tello type, much defaced. At 
 Hammam, also, two hours or so from Yokha, toward the 
 northeast, Loftus found a badly broken and battered 
 statue of Gudea. I suspect that this had been brought 
 originally from Yokha or Umm-el-Ajarib, but it is at least 
 an evidence of the general period of the ruins of that 
 section. 
 
 It is worthy of notice, moreover, that Yokha, Ferwa, 
 and Abu-Adham lie on the course of the ancient Shatt- 
 en-Nil, which emptied into the Euphrates by Warka, or 
 Erech, some three or four hours lower down ; and that in 
 the mound called Wuswas, at this latter city, Loftus 
 found half columns of brick, seven shafts together, used 
 to relieve a facade. He places the date of the building 
 in which these half columns were found at not later than 
 1500 B.C. The use of columns and half columns of brick 
 would seem to have been by no means uncommon in 
 southern Babylonia, wherever, at least, the influence of the 
 artists of Tello was felt, from the middle of the third millen- 
 ium or earlier until about the thirteenth century B.C.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 
 
 Camp Hill — First Tablet Find — Temple Hill — Trial Trenches — More 
 Tablets — Buried Records — Illicit Digging — Dating the Strata — Baby- 
 lonian Houses — Contemporary with Abraham — City of the Living — 
 Pottery Furnaces — Looking for a Gate — Assyrian Remains — A Child's 
 Grave — The Canal Bed — A Burned Town — A Hall of Records — The 
 City Wall. 
 
 IN the previous chapters I have described at some 
 length the excavations at two points, the Camp 
 Hill and the Temple Hill, where important buildings 
 were discovered and partly excavated. I will now ask 
 the reader to follow me rapidly over the various trenches 
 in other parts of the mounds by means of the general 
 view of the mounds (Plate facing page 194), and the plan 
 of levels of the southwestern half of the mounds (Plate 
 facing page 172). At the close of the first year's work 
 Field had prepared in Paris by M. Muret from his plans 
 and drawings two plaster casts representing the mounds 
 as they appeared at the close of the first year's work. 
 One of these is now in the University Museum in Phila- 
 delphia, and one in the Imperial Museum at Constanti- 
 nople. These casts give an admirable idea of the mounds, 
 as a whole, and are generally accurate, with one important 
 exception. The eastern corner of the temple has been 
 crowded forty metres to the westward of its proper posi- 
 tion, quite changing the appearance of the entire eastern 
 portion of that hill. In consequence of this error hill VII 
 
 VOL n— 13 ig3
 
 194 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 has likewise been moved too far westward. In spite of 
 this fault I have used this photograph, because no plans 
 and no drawings give so good a general idea of the 
 mounds. 
 
 Our camp the first year w^as situated on hill I at the 
 point marked with the I. This was almost if not quite as 
 high as Bint-el-Amir. Both of them are marked as 
 twenty-four metres above plain level on Field's plan of 
 levels, which is six metres higher than the next highest 
 point, IX. The hills are numbered in the order in which 
 \ve commenced to excavate them. Our first trench, as 
 already stated, was started on the Camp Hill, to the east- 
 ward of the camp in a gully, and the square excavation 
 (A on plan of levels) shown there is the court of columns 
 described in the last chapter. The H like excavation to 
 the north of this (G on the plan of levels) was a Jewish 
 house, the first which we excavated. As we walked 
 over the place we noticed, in the early morning, whitish 
 lines showing through the darker earth about them. 
 These whitish lines, half a metre to a metre broad, 
 formed room-like enclosures. Excavating, we found 
 that they were above the walls of rooms. Later we be- 
 came familiar with this phenomenon of the walls of 
 rooms showing through the ground in the early morning 
 as lighter colored and drier earth. Our excavations on 
 this hill were very extensive in the second \'ear, as will 
 be seen by a glance at the plan, and in addition to the 
 work on the Cossaean palace and its surroundings, trial 
 trenches of greater or less extent were run at a number 
 of other points with a view to ascertaining, so far as pos- 
 sible, the general character of the hill. On the higher 
 levels we found everywhere Jewish houses, readily identi- 
 fiable by the incantation bowls. These often contained 
 other articles of domestic use, chiefly pottery, spinning 
 weights, millstones, and pebbles used as pestles, sharp- 
 ening stones, and the like. It was at D that the apothe-
 
 
 ' ; 
 
 
 m 
 
 ; 
 
 m 
 
 ^B'^d^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 1 
 
 
 ■- -ih 
 
 ' >-. 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 * 
 
 -- 
 
 J ' '^ 
 
 7' ^^ 
 
 '- 
 
 
 ^' ,(:■"' 
 
 
 
 r 
 
 f 
 
 jr- 
 
 '^. 
 
 r'^Tl 
 
 ^ 
 
 • 
 
 !- 
 
 / ' 
 
 
 
 J 
 
 " ""■-■'■■''•» I"'" »"< 
 
 maJc. AraUit immcrals *.1.i.w llic lieiglll* of li.e 
 
 ' -- ■■■■"'" 
 
 ,:,.„,.... 
 
 
 • ">
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 1 95 
 
 cary's shop was found. In the lower le\'els we found at 
 one place a few stray tablets of the late Baljylonian 
 period, and at another an inscribed lapis lazuli disk of one 
 of the CoSsaean kings. Nowhere did we find traces of any 
 building of importance ; and everywhere we found cofifins, 
 burial jars, and pottery drains. 
 
 The second point at which we commenced excavations 
 was a small hill at the northwestern entrance of the canal 
 into the city, at the point where, judging from appear- 
 ances, the wall line of the city crossed the canal. This 
 mound (II on plan) rose only focir metres above plain 
 level, and was so small that we thought we could explore 
 it with little trouble. Moreover, from its position we 
 judged that it had been connected with the control of 
 the canal, and might prove interesting. Commencing at 
 about plain level, we ran in three small trenches, two of 
 which met, forming a cut through the mound from one 
 side to the other. We found no construction of any 
 sort, but only a mass of debris. In this, along with a few 
 other objects, we found a clay tablet, undated, containing 
 a list of animals given, or to be given, for some purpose to 
 the temple, apparently, and an illegible fragment of an- 
 other tablet. These were our first tablet finds, and 
 greatly aroused our expectations. We could make noth- 
 ing of the hill, however, and abandoned it after a few 
 days, as soon as our narrow cut was completed. We did 
 not understand work of this sort at that time, and our 
 treatment of this hill was not satisfactory. 
 
 The third place at which we commenced excavations 
 was the Temple Hill (III on plan). This we identified 
 correctly from its general appearance on the outside, but 
 our excavations the first year were relatively small and 
 extremely disappointing. The important work on this 
 hill was done by me in the second year, as already related, 
 and later by Haynes in the second expedition. We did, 
 however, trace the great outer southeastern wall as far as
 
 196 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 the buttresses the first year, and the general outHne of 
 the cruciform ziggurat. It was not clear to us at first 
 where the Temple ended toward the southwest, and we 
 supposed that the hill marked III. A was included in its 
 precincts. This proved not to be the case, and the results 
 of our excavations at this point were not, therefore, in- 
 cluded in the last chapter. We found here a series of 
 rooms and a long corridor built of large blocks of un- 
 baked brick, resting on a low terrace of earth and rubble, 
 a couple of metres above plain level. But what the ob- 
 ject of the structure was, or its relation to the Temple, 
 with which it seemed to be connected, we could not de- 
 termine. There were some coffins of the Parthian and 
 Sassanian periods found here, but they had evidently been 
 interred after the building had become a ruin-heap. 
 There was nothing by which we could certainly fix the age 
 of these structures, but there were certain points of re- 
 semblance with the Cossaean constructions in front of the 
 great Temple wall to the southeast. 
 
 Not many days after our arrival at Nippur one of our 
 men found near the bottom of the next hill nose, jutting 
 out into the canal to the southeast of our camp, a couple 
 of stone fragments with old Babylonian characters in- 
 scribed upon them. In hope of finding more material of 
 this sort, we ran two small trial trenches into that hill 
 (IV) at low levels, four and six metres above the plain, 
 respectively. We found a couple of terra-cotta figurines 
 of Ishtar of a common type, a few ordinary pieces of 
 pottery and a copper implement ; but no inscribed objects. 
 We found also some house walls of mud-brick, and a pot- 
 tery drain in such an excellent state of preservation that 
 we could sound it with a plummet to the depth of 13.40 
 metres. As a result of commencing our excavations at a 
 low level in a gully where the water had washed off the 
 upper strata, we had evidently struck at the outset in 
 these structures fairly early Babylonian remains; but as
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. I97 
 
 we found nothing of any consequence we abandoned the 
 place after a very few days to put the men on V, where 
 we had begun to make interesting discoveries. 
 
 Hill V was one of the most satisfactory hills at which 
 we worked, and the only one from which, during the first 
 year, we took any antiquities of value. It was an almost 
 triangular hill at the southeastern end of the mounds, 
 opposite the temple, and at its highest point, which was 
 toward the northern nose, fourteen metres above plain 
 level, or the same height as the great outer wall of 
 the temple. The very first trial trenches which we ran 
 in the northwestern nose of this hill were a success. In 
 one of them we found a few fragments of inscribed 
 tablets, an Ishtar figurine of clay, a small clay elephant, 
 a three-legged terra-cotta table of toy size, several drink- 
 ing vessels, an enormous phallus, and various pieces of 
 pottery. In the other trench we found, quite close to 
 the surface, fifteen tablets from the reign of Samsu- 
 Iluna, King of Babylon (circa 1900 B.C.), Cyrus the Great, 
 and Cambyses, as well as a round tablet of very archaic 
 character bearing the names of four ancient kings of 
 Nippur. In that nose of the hill we found tablets at all 
 depths, and for the most part mixed in with graves and 
 funeral pottery. Near the highest part of the mound we 
 sank a well in the floor of a room of the Xerxes period 
 down through masses of debris and rubble to plain level, 
 which was thirteen metres beneath the surface at that 
 point. This well was reached by a deep, open trench 
 from the northwest, with tunnels run out at various 
 points in the sides, and a further exit by a tunnel to the 
 southwest. 
 
 We found no structures of any importance in this hill, 
 but in a large square cut near the mouth of the deep 
 trench were several houses of unbaked clay. In these 
 were found abundance of remains, and one room in 
 particular, which was stuccoed within with a stucco of
 
 198 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 yellowish-pinkish tint, was full of tablets and jars, the 
 latter containing; fish bones, date seeds, grain, and the 
 like. In a grave in a different part of the trench we 
 found some tablets in a tomb. Here a tub-shaped cofifin 
 had been enclosed in a sort of rough vault of unbaked 
 brick and the tablets lay by the side of the cofifin. In the 
 same locality, but at a depth of ten metres below the sur- 
 face, in a tunnel run out of the northeast side of the great 
 trench, we found a jar containing three tablets of the 
 Hammurabi period ; while more tablets lay on the ground 
 by the side of the jar. One could not but be reminded 
 of the account in the thirty-second chapter of Jeremiah 
 of the purchase by the prophet of the land of his cousin, 
 Hanameel, at Anathoth, on which occasion the contract, 
 written on a case-tablet, that is, a tablet within and an 
 env^elope of clay without, was placed in a jar and buried 
 in the earth.' Beside the kings already mentioned, we 
 found in this mound the first-year tablets of Nabonidus, 
 Evil-Merodach, Darius, and Xerxes, as well as of the 
 kings of the Hammurabi dynasty. The inscribed tablets 
 found here during the first year covered, in other words, a 
 period of about fifteen hundred years, which was not 
 itself singular; but it was singular that we should have 
 discovered at the very outset tablets of Cambyses and 
 Samsu-Iluna lying side by side. 
 
 Near the close of the first year's work we found in a 
 
 ' This passage is obscure in the Hebrew, and the English translations, 
 both the Westminster and the Canterbury versions, render the sense incor- 
 rectly. The eleventh verse read originally : " So I took the deed of pur- 
 chase, both the closed and the open," etc. That is, the deed of purchase 
 was on a clay tablet, " the closed," around which was an envelope of clay, 
 " the open," on which the contract was repeated. The whole was to be 
 buried in "an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days," as we 
 are told in the 14th verse. After the use of clay tablets had altogether gone 
 out and parchment and other similar writing material taken its place, the 
 passage became unintelligible to the late Jewish scribe. What was the 
 sense of a closed, or as he thought of it, sealed, and an open deed ? Evi- 
 dently there was a mystic sense in the words. Some scribe comparing the
 
 TRENCH BY TKENCII. 1 99 
 
 nose of the hill on the western side what we at first sup- 
 posed was a tablet furnace, out of which we took a num- 
 ber of tablets of the Hammurabi period, lookin^^ as 
 though they had been made but yesterday. Just after 
 this discovery came the catastrophe which closed our 
 work. But before we left Nippur, to prevent this trench, 
 which was the one then yielding tablets, from depredation 
 in our absence, we filled it in with earth. It was at that 
 place that the four Arabs from Jimjimeh conducted their 
 surreptitious diggings during the following summer, but 
 without any results of consequence. One or two tablets 
 they probably did secure, and later one of these, a tablet 
 of the Hammurabi period, containing a record of the sale 
 of a plot of land and a well, appeared in Constantinople. 
 I attempted to secure it, but before I could do so, Golen- 
 isheff bought it for the Hermitage Museum, at St. 
 Petersburg. 
 
 The second year I conducted much more extensive ex- 
 cavations at this mound ; and although the yield of tablets 
 was by no means so large as in the hills on the other side 
 of the canal, yet about one fifth or one fourth of the 
 whole amount secured was taken from hill V. I riddled 
 it with trenches everywhere. This year also I was able 
 to reach somewhat more satisfactory conclusions as to the 
 
 verse with Isaiah viii., 16: " Bind thou up the testimony, seal the law," 
 found in it a reference to the law, and wrote on the margin, or between the 
 lines of his copy of Jeremiah, as a pietistic gloss to the word " sealed," the 
 words, "the law and custom," or better, "tradition." A later copyist 
 wrote these words into the the text : " So I took the deed of purchase, both 
 the closed (the law and tradition), and the open." Our translators have in- 
 creased the obscurity by introducing before this gloss the words " according 
 to," so that the passage now reads in the Canterbury version : " So I took 
 the deed of the purchase, both that which was sealed, according to the law 
 and custom, and that which was open." 
 
 It may not be amiss to call attention here to the Roman use for contracts 
 and the like of small wooden tablets similar in size and shape to the Baby- 
 lonian clay tablets. Some of these from Pompeii, badly charred and burned, 
 but still legible, are to be seen in the Museum at Naples.
 
 200 NIPPUR. 
 
 strata, and although we found little in the way of con- 
 structions, yet this hill proved, on the whole, the most 
 satisfactory of all for the study of domestic antiquities, 
 and also of graves. Very little below the surface we 
 found tablets of the Persian and late Babylonian periods, 
 and a few mud-brick constructions identified by the tab- 
 lets as belonging to the same period. These tablets were 
 not, as a rule, deposited together; nor were they, in the 
 greater number of cases within buildings which we could 
 trace. They seemed to lie loose in the earth, as our 
 Arabs reported they discovered them at Jimjimeh, that 
 is, Babylon, and Borsippa. So, for instance, on the top 
 of this hill, one and a half metres below the surface, close 
 to a little hole full of ashes, we found lying together in 
 the earth a number of tablets of the Persian kings, with 
 one of Nabonidus. 
 
 Above this stratum there were no evidences of occupa- 
 tion in the shape of constructions, but there were burials 
 of the Parthian, Sassanian, and Arabic periods, both 
 above and in this stratum of tablets, A little below the 
 Persian and late Babylonian tablet stratum, we began to 
 find burials of the Persian period, one coffin having in it 
 a couple of Persian cylinders. Then we came to burials 
 of the Babylonian period, from 550 to 1000 B.C., one or 
 two of the graves containing Babylonian cone seals. 
 Here we found a few tablets of the middle Babylonian 
 epoch, and one or two of Assyrian date. Below this, at 
 a depth of seven to nine metres below the surface, for 
 depths varied in different parts of the hill, we came upon 
 rooms destroyed by fire, containing large quantities of 
 tablets of the Hammurabi period. The walls of these 
 houses were built of unbaked brick, excepting that at the 
 bottom there were sometimes two or three layers of baked 
 bricks, or occasionally a baseboard of the same, and the 
 door-posts and sills were also constructed of baked bricks. 
 None of these houses were of any considerable size, all of
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 20I 
 
 them looking like the ordinary dwellings of citizens of the 
 present day in such provincial towns as Hillah or Shatra. 
 They were presumably of one story with a couple of small 
 roof rooms reached by stair from the court. To the street 
 they presented a blank wall, and they were built around 
 one or two courts on which the rooms opened. There 
 was no pretence at architecture or ornamentation. The 
 roofs of these houses had been made of palm-beams cov- 
 ered with mats on which was laid a great mass of earth. 
 If the earth on the top was not cared for, a couple of 
 rainy seasons would wash great gullies in it, and bring 
 about the downfall of the whole. If a fire broke out in 
 the house the palm-beams beneath the earth would burn 
 through and let the mass of earth above fall into the 
 room. In one of these ways, all of these houses were de- 
 stroyed, and, the roofs having once fallen in, the upper 
 portions of the walls were washed down by the rains until 
 the earth within the rooms had filled up to the top of 
 what was left of the walls. This washed-in earth pro- 
 tected the lower portion of the walls, as well as all the 
 objects already buried within, against further injurj^ the 
 whole looking from the outside like nothing but a heap 
 of clay. 
 
 Hammurabi is now identified by several assyriologists 
 with Amraphel, King of Babylon, mentioned in the four- 
 teenth chapter of Genesis, in which case he would have 
 been a contemporary of Abraham, living about 2275 
 B.C. Beneath the rooms of his period we found tablets 
 of a still earlier time, but bearing no names by which 
 to date them more accurately. At one place we found 
 several tablets ready to be inscribed, some of them 
 marked with lines and squares, like account tablets, but 
 totally without inscription. We conducted excavations 
 as deep as plain level, and finding in the lowest strata 
 nothing but rubble and common pottery, with no in- 
 scribed objects or constructions of interest, stopped at
 
 202 NIPPUR. 
 
 that point. I only observed on this hill one construction 
 which seemed to have been more than an ordinary house. 
 This was in one of the gullies on the western side of the 
 mound and belonged to the middle, or later Babylonian 
 period. I traced here for some distance a wall which had 
 some architectural pretensions, being adorned by square 
 half pillars at regular intervals on the outside. I could 
 not explore it at the time, as I was obliged to concentrate 
 my work of excavation on the Temple Hill and the Cos- 
 sa;an palace. Indeed, the excavations on hill V were 
 conducted primarily for the purpose of securing inscribed 
 objects, for that was naturally the constant demand of 
 the home committee, and by the discovery of these, or 
 failure to discover them, the success of our Expedition 
 would be judged. 
 
 As far as I examined this hill it seemed to have been, 
 from the period of Hammurabi, at all events, down to 
 the Persian time, the home of well-to-do citizens, rather 
 than the site of the great public buildings of the city. 
 The reason why tablets and coffin-remains were found, as 
 they occasionally were, lying loose in the earth or con- 
 fused among buildings with which they did not belong, 
 is probably due to the fact that tablets and other articles 
 of value were frequently buried beneath the floors of the 
 houses for safer preservation. This is the practice to-day 
 in the country, and I have myself seen a man dig out 
 from his floor antiquities, and other highly-esteemed ob- 
 jects, which he had concealed there. These tablets were 
 of the ordinary so-called contract variety ; that is, they 
 dealt with ordinary transactions of barter, sale, and the 
 like (one from the year 561 B.C., for example, deals with 
 a transaction involving fifteen measures of grain), and in- 
 dividuals seem to have preserved them in many cases by 
 burying them beneath the surface of the ground within 
 their houses, as people in that country preserve their 
 valuables to this day. As already stated, burials of the
 
 . -^^
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 203 
 
 same sort, that is, beneath houses, still occur in the city 
 of Baghdad, and the Arabian Nights refers to the same 
 method of burial as practised in the time of the Caliphate. 
 Of course, if both tablets and coffins were buried beneath 
 the houses, they would be found together afterward lying 
 in the earth, or among constructions of an earlier date 
 than that to which they belonged, precisely as we found 
 them. In some cases the tablets were not buried but kept 
 in the rooms, and when the roofs and walls fell in, they 
 fell into the general miscellany. As already stated, a few 
 case tablets were actually buried with the dead, along 
 with pottery, food, and utensils of various descriptions. 
 At the outset, when we supposed that Camp Hill was a 
 necropolis, we designated hill V as the City of the Living, 
 and no hill did, in fact, give us a better idea of the people, 
 or a larger supply of domestic utensils. Among the 
 curious finds on this hill were a number of privies, which 
 the workmen at once identified by their similarity to 
 the privies now in use in Hillah and other towns; and we, 
 by the sediment within. The well part of these privies 
 consisted generally of pottery rings, but in one or two 
 cases it was made of brick. At the top were platforms 
 of brick, and sometimes three or four privy or drain 
 openings were in one platform, the floor of a small court, 
 or room, constructed for the purpose. It is curious to 
 observe that, whereas on the Camp Hill we found exclu- 
 sively tablets of the Cosssean dynasty, on this hill we 
 found none whatsoever from that dynasty; but, on the 
 other hand, almost all the tablets of the Hammurabi 
 dynasty found at Nippur came from this hill. We 
 abandoned this hill about the middle of March of the 
 second year, because we had ceased to find tablets in 
 paying quantities, while hill X, on the other side of the 
 canal, had begun to yield in an extraordinary manner, 
 and we needed our tablet diggers for that hill. There is 
 doubtless still much valuable material in Hill V, and it
 
 204 • NIPPUR. 
 
 would be desirable some time to cut out a section of the 
 hill, removing it stratum by stratum. The plate facing 
 page 200 represents the appearance of some rooms of the 
 Hammurabi dynasty, in one of the western gullies of this 
 hill. The niche on the side wall about three metres be- 
 low the surface, marks the place where a coffin of the 
 Persian period was found. The door towards the left side 
 below is the opening of a tunnel which leads through to 
 similar excavations in the next gully. The plate facing 
 page 250, in Volume I., shows the appearance of the great 
 trench in tlie northwestern nose of the hill at the close of 
 the first year's work. At the end this trench was thirteen 
 metres deep. The walls of unbaked brick visible near the 
 top of the trench at the deep end belong to a house of 
 the time of Xerxes. 
 
 Between the temple and the Camp Hill was a low, ill- 
 defined mound (VI). From its position in relation to the 
 temple we judged this to possess some importance. There 
 were two points a little higher than the rest, one rising 
 about eight and the other about six metres above plain 
 level. From the position of these and the discovery of a 
 few gypsum fragments near one of them, we conjectured 
 that there might possibly be a gateway there, and decided 
 to run tunnels into both points to test them at as low a 
 level as possible. We found at first in both of these 
 mounds graves of the usual Parthian and Sassanian 
 varieties. We also found similar graves on the very top 
 of the mounds at various points, exposed, or almost ex- 
 posed, on the surface. In the more northerly of the 
 points excavated, we found at a lower level in a tunnel a 
 brick tomb containing ten skeletons. We found no indi- 
 cations of constructions anywhere. The larger trenches 
 were at the more southerly of the two mounds. Here we 
 found a few fragments of tablets, and at the distance of 
 three to four metres below the surface we were plainly in 
 Babylonian strata. In the pottery debris about a well
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 20$ 
 
 we found one very ancient tablet. It was circular, with 
 but a few lines of writing on it containing the names of 
 ancient kings, of Nippur. At a later date it had been 
 perforated and used for some domestic purpose apparently. 
 When the hole was dug to sink a pottery drain this was 
 thrown in with other fragments to fill up about the drain. 
 On the surface at this part of the hill we found a pottery 
 furnace. There was a well-like place of brick, the bricks 
 burned away or made brittle by fire, and on the sides and 
 at the bottom quantities of ashes were packed as from 
 constant burning. The men recognized it as a pottery 
 furnace at once from its resemblance to those in use to- 
 day. Later, we found similar furnaces on hills V and X. 
 
 In the second year, toward the close, I made a few 
 soundings at other points on this mound to ascertain 
 whether there were elsewhere signs of constructions or 
 tablets, and also to ascertain, if possible, the general 
 character of the remains buried here, but without result. 
 At only one place did I find anything of importance. 
 This was on the extreme southern nose. The Shatt-en- 
 Nil, and the basin-like depression to the southeast of the 
 temple are separated by a little ridge of earth which may 
 have washed down from the surrounding hills, and which 
 at its highest point is now some four metres above 
 plain level. In this ridge I ran a trial trench to ascertain 
 what it was, but I found nothing but debris which must 
 have been washed down from the mounds about. Driving 
 the trench into the nose of hill VI, I found a brick stamp 
 of Naram-Sin, and a few extremely archaic tablet frag- 
 ments. Evidently at that level in mound VI we were in 
 the period of the Sargonids. 1 did not find any struc- 
 tures, however, and the trench was no more than a 
 sounding trench. I was unable to form any inference as 
 to the nature of the constructions buried beneath this 
 mound. 
 
 At the very edge of the hills of Nufar, eastward of the
 
 206 NIPPUR. 
 
 Temple Hill, there was a curiously shaped mass of mounds 
 running in a succession of lines or ridges (VII). Part of 
 this mass, apparently, was a continuation of the outer wall 
 line, visible at XI, to the north of the Temple Hill. In 
 the first year we ran a trial trench in this hill to ascertain, 
 if possible, its general character, and whether it was worth 
 excavating at that time. We chose a point which, as it 
 seemed to us, might possibly have been connected with 
 an entrance through the wall without, immediately oppo- 
 site a gate-like depression in the outer edge. We found 
 absolutely nothing. There was a terrace of unbaked 
 bricks of small size resting on a mat, and above this a 
 loose mass of clay, ashes, and rubble, so compounded 
 that one might well have supposed that it had once been 
 the bed of a water-course, had that been possible. We 
 found one coffin here, which from later experience I am 
 able to say belonged to the Babylonian period, and the 
 surface of the mound was everywhere strewn with reddish 
 pottery fragments belonging to the same period. We 
 abandoned the excavations as unprofitable, and I did not 
 sound these mounds further in the second year. 
 
 Hill VIII was a promising looking mound, or collec- 
 tion of mounds, to the northwest of the temple on the 
 eastern side of the canal. The highest point of these 
 mounds was some twelve metres above plain level. Our 
 excavations here resulted in the unearthing of a portion 
 of a fine-looking structure of large blocks of mud-brick, 
 evidently a public building of some sort. We were able 
 to explore but a very small part of this structure, too 
 small to give any idea of its purpose or plan. Nothing in 
 particular was found in connection with this building, 
 which is represented by the square hole on mound VIII 
 in the general view of the mounds; but in the trench near 
 the mouth of the gully leading up to this we found some 
 valuable tablets and tablet fragments. Among these was 
 a tablet of the twenty-sixth year of Ashurbanipal, King
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 207 
 
 of Assyria, and another from the sixth year of his son 
 Ashur-etil-ilani, that is, 620 B.C. Almost all of the 
 tablets found here were found lying together loose in the 
 earth, very little below the surface, in a gully where the 
 water had washed off the upper layers, in a space about 
 the shape and size of a coffin. The Ashur-etil-ilani 
 tablet, with some other fragments, lay close to a little 
 hollow in the ground which was full of ashes. The 
 burials which we found in this mound were, for the most 
 part, of the Babylonian or Assyrian periods. There was 
 one curious feature about them which I also noted in rare 
 cases at V. The urn and tub-shaped coffins were turned 
 upside down, and some of the dishes and jars containing 
 date kernels, grain, fish bones, and the like, within the 
 coffins, were similarly treated. It had evidently been 
 done of set purpose. There was some rather curious 
 pottery found on this mound, including two incantation 
 bowls with illegible and mystic characters and symbols 
 fastened together mouth to mouth with bitumen ; and a 
 very obscene Priapus figure of an ape. In the second 
 year I ran a few sounding-trenches at various points on 
 the eastern side of hill VIII, with a view to ascertaining 
 the general nature of the contents of the mounds; but 
 none of these added anything to my former knowledge. 
 I should judge that the building which we commenced 
 excavating was well worth exploring, and that it was a 
 public building of some importance in the later Baby- 
 lonian period. 
 
 Next southward of hill IV, on the northwestern side of 
 the canal, was a very prominent hill point, rising, accord- 
 ing to Field's measurements, eighteen metres above plain 
 level. In a gully on the southeastern side of this mound, 
 at a point some ten metres above plain level and eight 
 metres below the summit of the mound we ran a sounding 
 trench. Almost at the outset we discovered a curious 
 oval coffin, which, from later experience, I should suppose
 
 208 NIPPUR. 
 
 belonged to the Babylonian period. By this coffin was 
 a mat on which, without any covering, a child's body 
 had been buried. The little skeleton lay on its side, its 
 feet somewhat drawn up, as in sleep. Near the head was 
 a small, plain vase, which had once contained food or 
 drink. The mouth of this had been closed with a green 
 cup which we found in fragments. We found here mud- 
 brick walls of houses, but so broken that we did not suc- 
 ceed in following them far. There were also a few frag- 
 ments of tablets of the middle Babylonian period ; but in 
 general the results of the work in this trench were ex- 
 tremely unsatisfactory. In the second year, in my search 
 for tablets, I bored a few holes on the back of this hill at 
 various points, starting low down in the gullies, as ex- 
 perience had taught me to do, and found some very 
 large tablets of the Cossaean period. Noticing on the 
 top of the hill the whitish lines which mark house- 
 walls beneath, I excavated there also and found a Jewish 
 house with a couple of Jewish incantation bowls. 
 
 Toward the close of the second year, I ran a trench, as 
 shown on the plan of levels, from the bottom of this hill 
 out into the canal-bed to meet a similar trench which 
 started from V on the opposite side of the canal. My 
 object was to find the quays on both sides and determine 
 their level, and also to ascertain, if possible, the depth of 
 the canal itself. I did not succeed in finding the quays 
 on either side. My excavations in the canal-bed proper 
 were conducted to a depth of four metres, always through 
 rubble containing no objects of any sort except minute 
 sherds of pottery, and the like. At this depth I was 
 obliged to abandon the trench, because the rains filled it 
 with water. Later, Mr. Haynes found the quays at a 
 point opposite VI. He also found an interesting terra- 
 cotta fountain in the middle of the canal at that point. 
 
 The hill which yielded far the largest amount of tablets 
 was the hill designated X on the plans, the most southerly
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 209 
 
 portion of the hills on the northwestern side of the canal- 
 bed. As will be seen from the general view, the trench 
 which we conducted on this hill in the first year was cut 
 in the highest portion of the mound, some fourteen metres 
 above plain level. Here we found fragments of tablets 
 of the late Babylonian and Persian periods and mud- 
 brick walls of some constructions of no great importance. 
 The second year our camp was located on the plain just 
 below this mound, and it was this old trench from which 
 we gave the exhibition of fireworks described in a pre- 
 vious chapter. At the time when the heavy rains ren- 
 dered it impossible for us to work in the regular trenches, 
 having a few foremen from Jimjimeh and Hillah whom we 
 were obliged to pay rain or shine, we took them on to 
 this hill and had them dig sounding-trenches at various 
 points in the interior where the water had washed out 
 deep gullies. We soon began to find tablets in large 
 amounts. Our first finds of importance were in a gully 
 just to the northeast of the first year's trenches, at the 
 point marked E on the plan of levels. Here were houses 
 of the same character as those found in hill V, built of 
 mud brick with doorways and baseboards of burned 
 brick, which had been destroyed by some conflagration. 
 In the rooms of these buildings, mixed with the earth 
 which had fallen from the roofs and from the walls, we 
 found quantities of tablets of the period of the supremacy 
 of Ur, 2500 B.C. and thereabouts. Many of these were 
 case tablets, chiefly of a rather small size. Very large 
 numbers of them were marked with seal impressions, 
 several of these seals bearing the name of Gimil-Sin of 
 Ur. One of these seals reads: " Gimil-Sin, the powerful 
 king, King of Ur, King of the four regions; Amil 
 Shamash (servant of the sun-god), son of Ur. Sergi, 
 viceroy of Adab, secretary." Many of the seals con- 
 tained a representation of the god Bel with a votive in- 
 scription. On two or three of the seal impressions I 
 
 VOL. II. — 14
 
 210 NIPPUR. 
 
 noticed an interesting form of the sun symbol, namely, a 
 square cross in a circle. Mixed with the tablets in these 
 rooms, and in general in the stratum on hill X, we found 
 grotesque and, from our point of view, obscene clay 
 figures of a naked female holding her breasts, and with 
 the sexual parts exposed. The noses of these figures 
 were absurdly prominent, and the hair looked like a court 
 wig. Below they were shaped like mummies. There 
 were also clay figures of a bearded man carrying some- 
 thing slung over his shoulder. Occasionally other figures 
 occurred, but the workmanship was always rude to gro- 
 tcsqueness. The houses in this gully were very heavily 
 plastered, but the conflagration which had destroyed 
 them rendered it impossible to determine whether the 
 plaster had been tinted or decorated in any manner. 
 Many of the tablets from these houses also showed marks 
 of the conflagration. The houses of this period are 
 shown in the plate facing this page. 
 
 In this same general locality, washed down into the 
 gully, we found a seal cylinder of lapis lazuli, and here 
 and there occurred fragments of inscribed stone. There 
 were also two magnesite knobs, like those found in the 
 temple. Some of these objects belonged to the Cossasan 
 period. Above the houses of the Gimil-Sin time was a 
 stratum of well-made buildings of small-sized mud-bricks, 
 well set. Above these were tablets of the Babylonian 
 period from looo li.c. ; and above these, at the surface of 
 the mounds, late Babylonian and Persian tablets. Some 
 of the latter were found in a whitewashed room at the 
 highest point of X, near the trench of the first year, 
 shown in the general view of the mounds. 
 
 At the point marked F, to the northwest of, and at a 
 higher level than the rooms of the Gimil Sin period, we 
 made our largest find of tablets. Here, in one room of a 
 house of unbaked brick, about ten metres long by five 
 metres broad, there had evidently been a depository of
 
 TRENCH BY TREXCH. 211 
 
 tablets ; these had been placed around the walls of the 
 room on wooden shelves, the ashes of which we found 
 mixed with the tablets on the floor. We took out of this 
 room thousands of tablets, and fragments of tablets, of un- 
 baked clay. For four days eight gangs were taking out 
 tablets from this room, as fast as they could work, and 
 for four days the tablets were brought into camp by box- 
 fuls, faster than we could handle them. These tablets 
 were of later date than the ones found at E, as might be 
 conjectured from the difference of level. Other rooms 
 of this group contained tablets in fair numbers, but in no 
 other had they been stored in the same way in which they 
 had been stored in F. Close to F, to the northeastward, 
 was a brick structure, on which tablets were found half- 
 imbedded in bitumen. Between the two was a brick 
 well, the bricks laid in bitumen. The debris in this well, 
 like all the debris in that immediate neighborhood, was 
 full of unbaked tablets, with occasional baked ones inter- 
 mixed. We excavated the well to a depth of 14.5 metres, 
 at which point, 4.5 metres below plain level, we struck 
 water, finding for over thirteen metres, fragments of 
 tablets, most of which were badly injured by water. 
 Neither in this series of rooms, nor at E, did we find any 
 pottery or household utensils. 
 
 At the point marked C, well up in a gully to the north- 
 west of F, I found a deposit of tablets of the Cossaean 
 period, all baked and some of enormous size. At almost 
 all points on this hill tablets were found, and almost 
 every one of the trenches represented on the plan of 
 levels produced tablets of different periods, according to 
 their levels. In no case did we find structures of any im- 
 portance. Such walls as we found appeared to belong to 
 ordinary houses, such as we had discovered at V. Later, 
 Haynes ran more trenches on this hill, always finding 
 tablets in great abundance, and at the point H, on the 
 extreme southern edge of the hill, in a gully, entering
 
 212 NIPPUR. 
 
 the mound with a trench at a low level, he found remains 
 of the Sargon period. At one or two points on this 
 mound, at the very top, I found Hebrew bowls. A little 
 below these, at the depth of two or three metres below 
 the highest level, I came on tablets of the Persian and 
 late Babylonian period. About four or five metres be- 
 low the surface we were in the Cossaean period. A little 
 below this we were in the Hammurabi period, and at a 
 depth of from eight to ten metres below the 14-metre 
 level, we were in the times of the kings of Ur. As in 
 the case of hill V, I should very much like to see this hill 
 cut in a sufficiently large section at some one point, and 
 the strata more carefully examined. My trenches here 
 were dug principally for tablets. The tablets found 
 had to do, in general, with temple business. 
 
 Toward the close of the second year of the excavations 
 I made some examination of what appeared to be a wall 
 line to the north of the temple (XI). This was, in fact, 
 the ancient outer wall of Nippur, Nimitti Bel of the in- 
 scriptions. I found here an enormous wall of Ur-Gur, 
 readily recognized by the characteristic small-sized, un- 
 baked bricks of that monarch. Having satisfied myself 
 that this mound was the city wall, I made no further in- 
 vestigation, as the men were required for other purposes; 
 but later, Haynes, at my suggestion, examined it more 
 thoroughly, and found that immediately beneath the wall 
 of Ur-Gur was a wail of Naram-Sin, the crude bricks of 
 which it was constructed bearing his stamp. Here, as in 
 the temple, the construction of Ur-Gur rested immedi- 
 ately on that of Naram-Sin without anything intervening. 
 This wall line is marked XI on the general plan. Anx- 
 ious to ascertain the character of the open space to the 
 north of the temple between this wall and mound VIII, 
 I carried the trench which had been run into the wall line 
 out into the open space a very short distance, and found 
 below plain level a room of mud-brick built against Ur-
 
 TRENCH BY TRENCH. 213 
 
 Gur's wall. I found no objects of any sort there, and I 
 had no time later to make soundings at other points in 
 that open space to determine its character. 
 
 An examination of the general view of Nippur shows 
 that the outer wall, Nimitti-Bel, can be readily traced by 
 the eye only at two points, one that at which I conducted 
 the trench just mentioned, and the other immediately to 
 the northwest of hill VIII. Elsewhere, the wall has either 
 been destroyed, or else it forms a part of the neighboring 
 congeries of mounds. The outer eastern edge of VII 
 seemed to be a continuation of this wall. Just beyond 
 this southward were two small outlying mounds (XII). 
 Anxious to determine what were the limits of the city 
 wall, toward the end of the second year I put a gang on 
 these mounds to make soundings. They did not find any 
 wall or any constructions, but only a formless mass of 
 ashes with burials on top. I was unable to conduct ex- 
 cavations at more distant points with the view of finding 
 the outer wall in other places, and to this day we do not 
 know what was the line followed by it, nor the size of the 
 city enclosed within the wall.
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 
 
 Greek Influence — Clay Coffins — The Slipper Shape — Burial in Jars — Tub 
 and Bowl Coffins — Double Urns — Arabian Graves — Dates of Burials — 
 Objects in Babylonian Graves — Objects in later Graves — A Greek. 
 Grave — Burial Customs — Egyptian Influence — Zerghul and el-Hibba — 
 Body-graves and Ash-graves — Method of Cremation — Grave of a Child 
 — Origin of Coffins — Receptacles for Ashes — Cremation and Interment 
 — Funeral Sacrifices — Abandonment of Cremation — Increasing Respect 
 for Body — Burial displaces Cremation. 
 
 BY far the most ornamental coffins found at Nippur 
 were the slipper-shaped coffins of thick, half-burned 
 yellowish clay, covered with a blue glaze, which, as a 
 rule, became greenish through the action of moisture, and 
 ornamented with lines, bosses, and naked female figures. 
 In this regard the ornamentation of these coffins differs 
 from that of the coffins found by Loftus at Warka, of 
 which a specimen was sent to the British Museum. On 
 those coffins the figures are warriors with high caps, and 
 are identified as Sassanian, particularly by the head-dress. 
 We found only one or two coffins at Nippur with figures 
 at all resembling these. Where there was any ornamenta- 
 tion in the shape of figures it was, as a rule, female figures, 
 naked, with prominent breasts, the hair and lower limbs 
 frequently terminating in arabesque curves. These fig- 
 ures show evidence of Greek influence, and it is probable 
 that this style of coffin was developed first in the Seleu- 
 cidan period, but those which I was able certainly to date 
 were Parthian, as shown by coins and other objects found 
 
 214
 
 :^*^>-,r. /: 
 
 fir^,-" 
 
 Cult'iiis. Ill Hill \ . Slippcr-^hapca Luluii abuve ; 1 ub aiul Lrii Luiuii^ 
 
 below.
 
 COFFINS AXD BURIAL CUSTOMS. 21 5 
 
 with them. They were found on the temple mound, on 
 the ruins of the constructions of the kite Babylonian 
 period described in the last chapter, from the surface 
 down to a depth of 2.5 metres. They were found at the 
 same depths on the other mounds, excepting on the 
 Camp Hill, I. Here, as already pointed out, there was 
 a much greater accumulation of debris of a late period 
 than on the other mounds, and coffins of this type were 
 found as deep as 8.5 metres below the summit of the 
 mound. On this mound also we found a few slipper- 
 shaped coffins with a crown or lip at the head, projecting 
 a few inches. 
 
 Besides the coffins with female figures and the one or 
 two with figures wearing the Sassanian head-dress, there 
 were also coffins Avith the same blue glaze, decorated 
 merely in line and boss patterns. These were found in 
 the same strata as the others and belonged to the same 
 general period. There were also plain coffins of the same 
 style, some of them unglazed but with the line patterns, 
 and some of them absolutely plain without either glaze 
 or pattern. These were all slipper-shaped, generally 
 under two metres in length, with an oval opening at the 
 head, and a hole at the foot of the coffin. Some of them 
 were closed with lids made specially for the purpose; 
 more often they were closed by a couple of beet-shaped 
 urns, less often by pieces of pottery or brick. The bodies 
 were laid at full length in these coffins, generally on the 
 back, more seldom on the side, and where beet-shaped 
 urns closed the openings these ordinarily contained the 
 bones of other bodies. In one case the bones of one 
 body were divided between two such beet-shaped urns. 
 Occasionally there were two bodies, instead of one, 
 within the coffin. When first exposed to the air it was; 
 often possible to detect the texture of the clothing by 
 which they were covered. There was a coarser outer gar- 
 ment of a texture like that of the abbayehs or cloaks worn
 
 2l6 NIPPUR. 
 
 by the Arabs of to-day, and finer inner garments. Fur- 
 ther than this we could not go. The clothing rapidly 
 turned to powder, even when not touched by the hand. 
 Even the skulls and bones soon fell to pieces. We often 
 found these cofifins in nests together, sometimes side by 
 side, sometimes lying one on top of another. 
 
 Once we found not far below the surface on hill X a 
 coffin of a slightly different shape, which my men de- 
 scribed as the shape of a lady's foot. The workmen said 
 that this type was very common at Babylon. The stra- 
 tum where this coffin was found appeared to be Persian, 
 or very late Babylonian. I did not meet any coffins of the 
 slipper-shaped type which I could surely say were beneath 
 the Parthian or Seleucidan strata. There were places, like 
 the surface of some of the low outlying mounds, where 
 burials of all ages occurred pell-mell, and I am not pre- 
 pared to state as an absolute fact that the slipper-shaped 
 coffin docs not occur in the Babylonian level proper, 
 although such was my general impression. The brick 
 tombs which we found were also, with one possible ex- 
 ception, in the same stratum as the slipper-shaped coffins. 
 I have already described the contents of two of these 
 tombs found on the Camp Hill. We found two more 
 among the ruins of the Babylonian constructions on the 
 Temple Hill, one on hill V, and one on hill VI. It is 
 the latter which possibly, judging from its level and the 
 objects found there, may have been of earlier date. 
 
 Besides these burials, which were those of the more well- 
 to-do classes, we found also in the upper strata burials 
 made in common jars or urns. The great water jars, 
 bitumened within, about a metre in height, were the 
 favorite jars for this purpose. Where the narrow mouthed 
 variety was used, the lip was broken off in order to allow 
 the remains to be thrust in. Where burials were made in 
 jars like these the body was doubled together, or divided, 
 since otherwise it was impossible to insert it in the jar.
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 217 
 
 These large bitumened jars are found without change of 
 type from a period considerably ante-dating Sargon, 
 down to the latest period of the mounds, and not only in 
 all parts of Babylonia, but also up the Euphrates, at least 
 as far as Salahieh near Deir. The jars themselves do not, 
 therefore, furnish any clue to the date of the burials, but 
 all such interments were, in fact, found very close to the 
 surface. They are contemporary with, and later than, the 
 burials in the slipper-shaped coffins, but they are also a 
 continuation of a much later use, the only peculiarity be- 
 ing the use of the beet-shaped water jars, instead of urns 
 of another form. 
 
 The characteristic coffins of the Babylonian period from 
 at least 2000 B.C. onward to the close of the Persian era, 
 have the shape of a baby's bath tub, and are not much 
 more than a metre in length. The ordinary relation of 
 slipper-shaped and tub-shaped cofifins in the strata of the 
 mounds is well shown in the plate facing page 214. There, 
 near the surface of the mound, is seen a slipper-shaped 
 coffin, while somewhat more than a metre beneath this 
 there is a tub-shaped cofifin — the one on the left. To the 
 right of the latter is another almost equally characteristic 
 type of this period. This is a large bowl, somewhat more 
 than half a metre in diameter, and of about the same 
 depth. These urns or bowls ordinarily lay on their side 
 in the manner shown in the photograph. The tub-shaped 
 coffins were sometimes enclosed in a sort of tomb of un- 
 baked brick. They were also frequently covered with 
 wood, and in both the tub-shaped and the bowl-shaped 
 cofifins the body ordinarily rested upon a mat. It was, of 
 course, impossible to place the bodies in these coffins at 
 full length, and they were generally separated at the 
 thigh. There seemed to be no rule about the position in 
 which the body should be placed ; sometimes the head 
 was at one end and sometimes at the other, and some- 
 times in the middle. Occasionally two bodies were placed
 
 2i8 NIPPUR. 
 
 in the same coffin. The object seemed to be to place the 
 body in the coffin, and further than this there was no rule. 
 Once or twice the dead had evidently been dressed only 
 in a loin cloth, at other times there were remains of cloth 
 over the entire body, and sometimes there were no indi- 
 cations of cloth, which might, however, have been due 
 merely to the total disappearance of the texture in the 
 earth. In all cases these coffins, both of the tub- and the 
 bowl-types were full of earth that had fallen in from 
 the ground around. 
 
 Occasionally coffins of both of these types were found 
 inverted, and particularly was this the case, as already 
 stated, in hill VIII. Sometimes urns approximating in 
 shape the bowl shown in Plate IV., Fig. 2, were substi- 
 tuted for coffins. Along with these in the older levels, 
 at and before the time of Hammurabi, I found burials 
 similar to those in the mound of Juha, opposite Anbar, 
 described in volume I. page 171. Two open-mouthed 
 urns of the general type shown in Plate VII., Fig. 7, one 
 somewhat smaller than the other, were joined together, 
 the mouth of the smaller inserted in the mouth of the 
 larger, and the junction plastered with mud. Thus joined, 
 these two urns formed a coffin about two metres in length. 
 I did not find coffins of this type in the later Babylonian 
 levels, but the tub and bowl varieties persisted from at 
 least the time of Hammurabi until the time of Nabonidus, 
 without apparent change, either in the texture of the 
 pottery or the style of the coffins. Sometimes, as already 
 stated, I found poorer burials in urns and jars made for 
 other purposes; and once I found a child's body buried 
 in a clay kneading trough. 
 
 There was one other type of coffin of this same period, 
 of which only two specimens were found, the one shown 
 in the plate facing page 220, which may be described as 
 the whale-back type. These coffins were almost, if not 
 quite, as long as the slipper shaped, but without the bulge
 
 COFFLVS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 219 
 
 at the head which gives the latter their characteristic form. 
 They were covered with adobe, which was rounded Hke 
 the back of a whale. How early these appear, or how 
 late, I cannot say, as we found only two specimens in hill 
 IX, at about the same level, in what was clearly the 
 Babylonian period, but which we could not date more 
 closely. 
 
 Of the burials earlier than 2000 B.C., or possibly 2500 
 B.C., I am able to say nothing for Nippur. Later than 
 the time of the Parthian and Sassanian burials we found 
 a few Arabic burials. These consisted ordinarily of little 
 graves of mud brick. The body was laid in the ground 
 and mud bricks, or sometimes baked bricks from various 
 parts of the ruins, were built over it in such a manner as 
 to shield it from direct contact with the earth. 
 
 We were able to date the coffins both by the strata in 
 which they were found, and also by objects found in and 
 with them, especially seal cylinders and tablets. The cof- 
 fins once dated, it was comparatively easy to date pot- 
 tery, implements, and the like, which were found in large 
 quantities in or by these coffins. In the use of metal I ob- 
 served that the gold ornaments were found almost exclu- 
 sively in the Seleucidan, Parthian, and Sassanian graves; 
 whereas the copper and iron belonged almost entirely to 
 the Babylonian burials. The silver objects were more 
 equally divided between them. Such glass as was found 
 in the graves was found in the Seleucidan and later 
 graves; but the finest pottery was in the Babylonian 
 period. That period is, of course, one of great extent, 
 and it must be possible some day to determine more ex- 
 actly the dates of particular forms and ornaments. At 
 present I am able to note only a few peculiarly character- 
 istic types. 
 
 The pottery of the Cossaean period was the most charac- 
 teristic. This is marked by its peculiar glaze. In con- 
 nection with the great palace or public building on the
 
 220 NIPPUR. 
 
 Camp Hill I found some specimens of pottery of this 
 period of very curious shapes, glazed yellow and green 
 (blue) in stripes. This is shown in the plate facing page 
 i88. There was also a considerable amount of white pot- 
 tery belonging to this period, in the preparation of the 
 glaze of which magnesite was used. It will be remem- 
 bered that magnesite from Euboea was found in the 
 mounds in front of the Temple Hill, in a room of the 
 Cossaean period, as described in Chapter HI. 
 
 The following notes on some of these cofifins, and the 
 objects found with them, will give the best idea of the 
 method of burial and of its meaning. The custom of 
 providing the dead with food and drink in the Babylonian 
 time almost, if not quite, died out in the later period, 
 and it will be observed also that there were fewer domes- 
 tic utensils, and implements, discovered in the later 
 graves, such objects as are found being chiefly of the 
 nature of ornaments. I will give first some notes on the 
 cofifins of the Babylonian period. 
 
 In hill V, 5 metres below the surface, we found a tub- 
 shaped coffin, outside length 1.22 metres, inside length 
 1. 10 metres; outside breadth 45 centimetres, height 58 
 centimetres. There were two ornamental lines around 
 the coffin, just below the rim. The sides were very thick. 
 The skull was towards the square, not the round end of 
 this coffin. It was very thick and the forehead low and 
 receding; apparently the skull of a negro. There were in 
 this immediate neighborhood several other burials of per- 
 sons of the same race, mixed in with the more common 
 burials of persons of a higher race having skulls long and 
 well shaped. This coffin had been covered with crude 
 brick. Above the body and on one side of it were the re- 
 mains of boards. On one wrist was a copper bracelet, 
 and in the earth by the head were a lyre-shaped copper 
 nose-ring, and a quantity of beads. There were burned 
 date kernels in this coffin. Outside, below the foot of the
 
 COFFINS AND BUIUAL CUSTOMS. 221 
 
 coffin, to the right, was, a large thick broken bowl or dish, 
 and near the heaci of the coffin were three vases ; all of them 
 with graceful lines. One of these, pointed below, and some 
 14 centimetres in height, was covered with a white enamel 
 and had been originally ornamented with two rings of 
 color about its broadest point, which showed as a very 
 faint yellow. Another, of different shape, with a flat 
 bottom, was decorated with a more elaborate pattern in 
 color on a white body. This pattern also showed faint 
 yellow. The third was of a still different form, but 
 decorated like the first. The white enamel which formed 
 the body in all of these vases was badly put on and 
 blotchy. The beads, of which there were over a hundred, 
 were not round but longish ; a few of them Avere copper, 
 the rest were stones in various colors. I judged this 
 coffin to belong to the Cossaean period. 
 
 Beyond, and slightly above this, there was a large urn 
 or bowl of coffin material, of very thick, half-baked clay, 
 half a metre in diameter at the mouth, and half a metre 
 deep, containing the bones of a child, a copper anklet, 
 and some round beads. 
 
 Close to these two, and at a slightly higher level than 
 the first coffin, was a third coffin, tub shaped, but very 
 small, only 80 centimetres long, 35 centimetres wide, and 
 25 centimetres high. In this were the bones of a very 
 tall person. The skull was well formed and long. There 
 were found in this coffin only beads and a copper instru- 
 ment, similar to those now used by the Arabs to put 
 kohl on the eyes. 
 
 In another part of this hill, at a distance of about 4 
 metres below the surface, we found a broken coffin of the 
 same form as the last, like a bath-tub, longish, oval at 
 one end, and square at the other. This was i.ii metres 
 in length, .56 metres in breadth, and .45 metres in depth. 
 The body was covered with palm wood and the coffin was 
 enclosed in a sort of tomb of unburned brick. On the
 
 222 NIPPUR. 
 
 breast was a metal mirror with the handle turned toward 
 the legs ; and below this, near tjie hands, 26 stones and 
 beads of a necklace, two red-veined marble seals, a pair 
 of copper earrings, a fragment of a lyre-shaped nose-ring, 
 a fragment of a large brooch of the same shape, and two 
 pieces of a silver bracelet. At the head was a small 
 roundish ball-shaped vase, glazed blue originally, I sup- 
 pose, but as we found it, green. 
 
 On top of this w'as another cofifin of the same shape, 
 broken near the foot and mended with bitumen. At the 
 foot of the body in this cofifin was a copper bowl. We 
 found here also a Babylonian seal cylinder, not inscribed, 
 an iron arrowhead, two pieces of an iron dagger, a frag- 
 ment of an iron knife, and an egg-shaped vase with the 
 same green glaze as the one just described. In the clay 
 mud of the tomb outside of these two cofifins was a black 
 polishing stone. Underneath these coffins were wood and 
 mats. The body in the second coffin seemed to have 
 been cut or dissevered at the thighs. Both of these 
 graves were Babylonian, and presumably later than the 
 one first described ; but a more precise date I am not 
 able to give. 
 
 Some .60 metres below the mud-brick tomb last de- 
 scribed, was a large bowl of coffin material ; its height .50 
 metres, and the diameter of the opening .48 metres, lying 
 on its side. In this were found a large clay vase, un- 
 glazed, decorated with a very simple line pattern ; a small 
 clay pitcher of similar material ; a number of beads of a 
 necklace; and two gold rosettes of a nose-ring. At a 
 little lower level a mortar bowl of somewhat similar 
 shape had been buried with the mouth uppermost. This 
 had been closed with wood, covered with mud brick, but 
 the wood had given way and the brick and earth had 
 fallen in. This bowl was .50 metres in height, with a 
 diameter of .70 metres at the opening and .83 metres at 
 its broadest point. On the bottom, wood had been laid
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 223 
 
 before the body was put in. The body had been cut or 
 broken before placing in the bowl. There was cloth on 
 the bones. On the breast was a fragmentary copper cup, 
 or dish. There was also, a green vase, originally blue, 
 pointed at the foot; and fragments of an egg-shaped yel- 
 low vase. 
 
 Leaning against this was a similar urn, broken, of a 
 somewhat greater height, in which we found a skull, a 
 very few bones, and a quantity of ashes. Upon the 
 skull was a copper mirror. 
 
 Not far from the last-described coffins, in the same 
 mound, about four metres below the surface, we found a 
 coffin composed of two urns, the mouth of one fitted into 
 that of the other, both very much broken. The diameter 
 of the opening of the smaller urn was .55 metres. There 
 was a large quantity of ashes within, but the bones of the 
 body were not burned. On the left of the head were ten 
 small clay cups, each about . 1 1 metres in height, some 
 fragments of a metal pin overlaid with gold, and two 
 silver earrings. 
 
 In the same trench, a little more than half a metre 
 lower, was found a tub-shaped coffin covered with un- 
 burned bricks. These had not given way, and the interior 
 of this coffin was almost free from dirt. In the middle of 
 it, by the side of the bones of the skeleton, were a copper 
 cup and a lyre-shaped silver nose-ring. 
 
 Half a metre lower than this, in a neighboring trench, 
 was another coffin consisting of two urns, the lower of 
 which measured .95 metres in height and .75 metres in 
 diameter at its largest point; and the smaller .60 metres 
 and .55 metres. One spot in the larger urn had been 
 broken and mended with bitumen. There were two 
 skeletons in the larger urn, their heads at the bottom, and 
 their backbones along opposite sides. The bodies ap- 
 peared to have been severed at the thighs. The two urns 
 were plastered together with mud. A small wooden dish
 
 224 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 was found in this coffin, but too much decayed for 
 preservation. 
 
 In a tub-shaped coffin on another part of this hill we 
 found the skull at the end of the coffin on one side, and 
 the lower part of the backbone in the middle of the coffin 
 on the other side. In this case the body seemed to have 
 been divided not into two parts, but into three; at the 
 neck and the thighs. About the middle of this coffin 
 we found a copper bowl, a ring, and some beads on one 
 side; on the other side was a green (blue) enamel plate. 
 At the foot, the square end, was a shallow bowl with 
 handles and two small green (blue) vases. In the earth 
 in this coffin were fish bones and the knuckle bones of 
 sheep. Below the body was a mat. 
 
 In a trench to the western side of the Camp Hill, some 
 metres below the surface, and 15 metres below the high- 
 est point of the mounds, we unearthed another tub-coffin 
 which had been covered by pieces of wood on which had 
 rested mud bricks. The skull was at the square end of 
 this coffin, and by the side of it were found pieces of a 
 wooden club ferruled with copper. At the other end 
 was an iron lance head. This body had been cut or 
 broken. Beneath the body was a mat. There were a few 
 ashes in this coffin. 
 
 A few of the tub-shaped coffins found in hill V yielded 
 copper objects of a very graceful type, as shown in Plate 
 III. Fig. 26. One of these coffins, which we found at a 
 depth of 4 metres below the surface, had been broken and 
 mended with bitumen. At the foot there were fragments 
 of palm wood within, and remains of cloth about the 
 bones. In this coffin, by the head, was a copper bowl 
 inverted, a ladle sieve with a long, hooked handle, and a 
 vase of graceful shape; also some fragments of a copper 
 utensil, the use of which was not clear. By the foot was 
 a small copper dipper with a deep pot-shaped bowl and 
 long, hooked handle.
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 22$ 
 
 In the same trench, about a metre higher, in a tub- 
 shaped coffin, were found fragments of a thin copper 
 bowl prettily ornamented with a leaf pattern ; also frag- 
 ments of small copper utensils, one needle-like and one 
 hooked. In the same coffin was a shallow, green-glazed 
 lamp-shaped dish, with a handle rising higher than the 
 rim. In this was a common mussel shell. Near the head 
 of this coffin, and plainly belonging to the same burial, 
 was a large bowl containing five little jars; one three- 
 handled and the others two-handled; all unglazed, with 
 whitish incrustations and black stains. In these jars were 
 the remains of cloth which had contained some objects 
 that had entirely disappeared. 
 
 In the same trench, 1.5 metres below this last coffin, 
 was found another tub-shaped coffin. In this, covering 
 the face of the skeleton, was a copper mirror. With this 
 were six copper hoops of different sizes, bracelets, anklets, 
 and rings ; a graceful vase with a handle like a pot handle ; 
 a long-handled copper ladle; and a sieve ladle with a 
 similar long handle ; also, a small indecent clay figure with 
 the legs drawn up. On the right side of this coffin with- 
 out, level with the top and close to the head, there was a 
 pocket-like hole in the earth, where there had been a 
 basket turned upside down. The basket had rotted away, 
 but the marks of its texture were still visible in the earth. 
 In this pocket were five vases with yellow and green (blue) 
 enamel ; three slender copper bracelets ; two copper pins ; 
 a copper rod with four prongs at the top; several small 
 bone or ivory rings, colored, with flat silver rings between 
 them; and fragments of an ivory tube, possibly a musical 
 instrument. In this coffin there were also a quantity of 
 rude glass beads. Judging from the pottery this may 
 have been Cossaean. If so, then the coffin next but one 
 preceding must belong to the same period, since the cop- 
 per objects found in both are of the same pattern and 
 manufacture. 
 
 VOL. 11.-25
 
 226 NIPPUR. 
 
 In a neighboring trench, four metres below the surface, 
 was found a tub-shaped coffin, cracked, and the cracks 
 repaired with bitumen. The skull was at the head or 
 round end of this coffin. Near it lay a graceful, orna- 
 mental, copper dish (Plate IV., Fig. i), a broken iron 
 dagger, a copper brooch, and a Babylonian cone cylinder. 
 This was apparently a grave of the later Babylonian 
 period, from looo to 550 B.C. 
 
 In the same trench as the last and at the same level, 
 there was a bowl-shaped coffin; height .66 metres, diam- 
 eter of opening .59 metres, diameter at broadest point .64 
 metres, slightly bitumened within. In this was a white 
 enamelled vase of graceful shape, a clay bowl which had 
 contained some liquid, and a clay dish which had con- 
 tained more of the same substance. This substance had 
 left a white incrustation on the surface of the vessels, 
 which crumbled at the touch and adhered to the fingers 
 like fine flour. There were other remains of food, includ- 
 ing date kernels, a few iron nails, a fragment of a spear 
 head, and a small nail-like copper fragment 
 
 The coffins of the shapes above described, as already 
 stated, are Babylonian, and occur from a period about 
 2500 B.C. to about 500 B.C. These are only a very few 
 among the many we found. The following notes refer to 
 the slipper-shaped coffins of later date. 
 
 On the temple plateau, to the southeast of the ziggurat, 
 some .85 metres below the surface, was found a plain 
 white, slipper-shaped coffin, length 1.25 metres, .24 
 metres deep at the head, and .20 metres at the foot; with 
 an opening .55 metres in length by .44 metres in breadth. 
 In this, along with the body, were found a small clay 
 horse and rider, the rider originally painted with red 
 paint. These figures of horses and riders are character- 
 istic of the Parthian period, and are not fcaind in the 
 earlier Persian or Babylonian levels. 
 
 In another part of the temple plateau, 1.5 metres below
 
 COFF/XS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 22/ 
 
 the surface, was found a blue-glazed slipper-shaped coffin, 
 with the common female ornamentation, covered with a 
 lid. This coffin was unusually long, 2.10 metres. In it 
 were found 123 button-like gold objects made for sewing 
 on stuff of some description. These were distributed all 
 over the body, and had evidently been sewed on the gar- 
 ment worn. There was also a large leaf of gold for cov- 
 ering the face ; a small gold bead ; two heavy gold rings, 
 shaped like seal rings, the smaller too small to be worn 
 by any but a child, the latter adapted to the little or, if 
 the hand were very small, the third finger of a woman ; 
 two large elaborate gold earrings with bell pendants, in 
 the centre of which were once pearls, and gold pendants 
 around the sides; a fillet of gold leaf for the head; and a 
 few ruined amber beads. 
 
 Not far from this, half a metre below the surface, was a 
 brick tomb, built with bricks taken from some of the 
 structures on the ziggurat. In this were the bones of 
 several bodies; but no skeleton entire. Scattered about 
 on the floor of the tomb were two heavy gold clasps, 
 apparently belonging to a belt, and two other gold objects 
 belonging to the buckles of the belt. There were also 
 two stone beads and a silver ring in this tomb. 
 
 But the best specimens of coffins of the Seleucidan, 
 Parthian, and Sassanian types were found on the Camp 
 Hill (I), and here, as already stated, they were sometimes 
 at great depths, as on this hill there was a much greater 
 accumulation of later debris, and a later occupation than 
 on any other. At the highest point of the hill, about 
 eight metres below the surface, were found two white 
 slipper-shaped coffins. One of these was very well pre- 
 served, and had been so carefully covered with an oval 
 white lid that no earth had found its way into the coffin. 
 Here the body was found stretched out at full length. 
 The hair on the chin was well preserved, and there was a 
 decidedly offensive odor from the corpse. The right
 
 228 NIPPUR. 
 
 hand was stretched out by the side ; the left hand lay on 
 the body. The body was covered with wreaths of leaves 
 of a vine-like appearance, and what looked like bunches 
 of leaves and flowers. These latter had been tied around 
 the head and breast. We found no other burial resem- 
 bling this in the use of flowers and wreaths. I fancy that 
 it was a Greek burial of the Seleucidan period. 
 
 At a point near the corner of the Court of Columns on 
 this mound, we found a nest of slipper-shaped cof^ns, five 
 in all, pointing in every direction, and lying at different 
 levels; the highest about 2.5 metres below the surface. 
 One of these was blue with female figures; the others 
 plain white. Only one of these contained beads; the 
 others nothing but the bodies. At the same locality, 
 about a metre below the surface, was a slipper-shaped 
 coffin, blue, ornamented with four heads with puffed hair, 
 and wearing a high cap which, from the work of Loftus 
 at Warka, I presume to be Sassanian. Close to this was 
 a plain white coffin without ornaments. In this were 
 found diamond-shaped pieces of gold leaf. I have already 
 stated that, as a rule, the contents of the cofifins of the 
 Seleucidan, Parthian, and Sassanian periods were orna- 
 ments, and not implements, or utensils. In connection 
 with the Parthian coffins we also found quantities "of clay 
 riders on horses, such as the one described above, and 
 objects which appeared to be toys. Jars containing 
 articles of food were also sometimes found with these 
 coffins, but not regularly, as was the case with the older 
 Babylonian coffins. It seemed as though the ideas con- 
 nected with death, and the beyond, had undergone a 
 change, so that men no longer made for their dead the 
 same provision of food, weapons, and utensils for the 
 hereafter, as had been made in the earlier times. 
 
 The best specimens of the beet-shaped coffins, that is 
 the large bitumened water jars used as coffins (Plate VI, 
 Fig. 9), were found on the Temple Hill near the surface.
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 229 
 
 One found on the outer wall line of the temple, sixty 
 centimetres below the surface, lay on its side. The 
 length of this jar was 1.19 metres, and the diameter of 
 the opening at the mouth .30 metres. The mouthpiece 
 had been broken off to admit of the insertion of the body 
 of a child, and then replaced. Outside, at the foot of 
 the jar, was found a plain clay jug, which had contained, 
 apparently, some article of food or drink. At another 
 point on the same outer line of walls, .85 metres below 
 the surface, was a similar jar lying on its side. Here the 
 mouthpiece, after being broken off to admit the body, had 
 been joined on again with bitumen. The body appeared 
 to have been thrust into the jar in any way. 
 
 There was no orientation in the graves of any period. 
 I took careful notes of the direction of the heads, and 
 from the earlier Babylonian down to the latest burials 
 found the coffins lying indiscriminately in every direc- 
 tion, north, south, east and west. 
 
 In only a few cases did we find evident traces of flesh 
 in the cofifins. In some cases, chiefly in jar and urn 
 burials, the bones only had been buried. I judge that in 
 some cases, especially from the Seleucidan period onward, 
 bodies were brought from a distance to be interred at 
 Nippur, among other places in Babylonia — although 
 Nippur was in no proper sense a necropolis — just as now 
 they are brought down from Persia, and other regions, to 
 Nejef and the lesser shrines, like Imam Jasim, which 
 abound everywhere. Such bodies were brought un- 
 coffined and provided with coflins at the place of burial. 
 The regular coffins at the different burial places were of 
 different patterns, and, as we have seen, the most char- 
 acteristic form of ornamentation at Nippur, beginning 
 with the Seleucidan period, was the naked woman, which 
 gave place later to line and boss patterns. 
 
 The anthropoid form of the so-called slipper-shaped 
 coffins, which I suppose to have been introduced by
 
 230 
 
 NIPP UR. 
 
 the Greeks, is presumably due to Egyptian influence. 
 The excavations of Renan and Hamdy Bey at Sidon, 
 showed us the manner in which Egyptian tombs were 
 robbed to provide coffins for Sidonian kings. They also 
 showed us followers of Alexander the Great using coffins 
 imitating in their shape those same Egyptian anthropoidal 
 coffins. But while these stone coffins, or sarcophagi, were 
 anthropoidal and Egyptian within, without they were 
 decorated in a thoroughly Greek manner, with bas-reliefs 
 and the like. From our discoveries I should say that the 
 Greeks of this period carried into Babylonia the use of 
 coffins of this same anthropoidal shape, using in their 
 manufacture the common coffin material of the country, 
 a very thick, underbaked, and crumbly clay, which they 
 proceeded to adorn with Greek patterns, and to ornament 
 further in many cases by a glaze of melted glass. 
 
 It is interesting to compare with my results from 
 Nippur the results of the German explorations at Zerg- 
 hul, or Surghul, and el-Hibba, as recorded by Koldewey 
 in the ZcitscJirift fur Assyriologie, December, 1887. 
 These two mounds were merely necropoleis. They lie 
 on the south side of the Shatt-el-Hai, not far from Tello. 
 The mound of Umm-el-Ajarib, or Aqarib, lying to the 
 north of the Shatt-el-Hai, not far from Tello, was a necrop- 
 olis of similar character, and my slight excavations at that 
 point, described in a suceeding chapter, tend to corrobo- 
 rate the observations of Moritz and Koldewey. Dele- 
 hem, about half-way between Nippur and Bismya seems 
 to have been a similar necropolis, and presumably, there 
 are other mounds of the same character in lower Baby- 
 lonia.' 
 
 Koldewey divides the burials at Zerghul and cl-Hibba 
 into two kinds, " body-graves " {LcicJiengrdbcr), and 
 
 ' In the time of Alexander the Great some of these burial mounds were 
 said to be the tombs of the Assyrian, i. e., Babylonian kings, as we learn from 
 Arrian's account of .'Vlexander's exploration of the region south of Babylon 
 towards the Persian (".ulf.
 
 Nest of slipjier-shaped coffins, found in Hill VI. 
 
 Nest oi slipper-shaped Coffins, by western corner of Colonnade on Camp Hill, with 
 late Brick Tond) in foreground.
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 23 1 
 
 " ash-graves " {Aschcngrdbcr). " The act of cremation 
 began with the leveUing of the place, in which the re- 
 mains of previous cremations, provided such had taken 
 place on the same spot, were pushed aside. The body 
 was then wrapped in mats of reeds (seldom in bitumened 
 material), laid on the ground, and covered all over with 
 rudely formed bricks of unbaked clay, or with a layer of 
 soft clay. This covering w^as quite thin in the upper 
 parts, but thicker near the ground, so that as little resist- 
 ance as possible should be offered to the heat, which 
 attacked the body from above, at the same time that the 
 covering retained the solidity necessary to prevent too 
 early a collapse under the weight of the burning mass 
 heaped upon it. 
 
 " In order to counteract the difficulties arising from 
 the nature of the material used, the rapidly burning 
 reeds, and the bitumen which melted and ran in burning, 
 a sort of oven was in some cases erected. ... In 
 general it appears as though in the oldest period the 
 complete incineration under an open fire was customary; 
 while later the fencing in of the fire in ovens became 
 more common, together with a more superficial burning, 
 which degenerated in part into a sort of symbolism. 
 
 " The flames were not allowed to burn out, but were 
 extinguished at the close of the incineration." 
 
 In general it depended on the intensity of the in- 
 cineration which method (body-graves or ash-graves) was 
 chosen, since the transportation of half-burned remains 
 to another place, or their interment in the customary re- 
 ceptacles for ashes was not practicable." 
 
 " A good example of a body-grave occurs in the grave 
 of a child in one of the houses of the dead excavated at 
 el-Hibba. The child lay with bent elbows and knees 
 drawn up on the right side, and was covered in the man- 
 ner already described with clay, which was reddened 
 above from the fire. After the conclusion of the crema- 
 tion the ashes of the fire had been manifestly brushed
 
 232 NIPPUR. 
 
 aside, the pyre opened at the head end. and this opening 
 fastened up again with damj), green-colored clay, when 
 it was seen that the body had scarcely been injured. 
 Finally the hummock was covered over with layers of 
 fresh unbaked bricks, and in this way the funeral pyre 
 formed at the same time the grave of the child. 
 
 " In another case the covering of the body, which had 
 protected it from the immediate contact of the fire, had 
 been entirely removed after the burning out of the funeral 
 fire, and replaced by an oblong inverted tub," in which 
 Koldewey sees the germ of the later cofifins. 
 
 " If, on the other hand, the cremation were successful, 
 and the body reduced to ashes or even to formless frag- 
 ments," the remains were generally gathered and placed 
 in vases or urns provided for the purpose, which were, 
 however, too small for their intended contents. Often 
 the ashes were merely collected in a heap and covered 
 with a kettle-formed clay vessel. Sometimes the ashes 
 of the body burned, together with bones of animals and 
 date kernels, were all put in an ordinary large-bellied clay 
 jar, covered with a mat, and buried in the ground. Some- 
 times the human remains were placed in a shell or goblet- 
 shaped vessel and covered with a potsherd, while the ashes 
 of the sacrificial victims were placed in a similar vessel by 
 the side of this. These are the so-called " ash-graves," 
 v.^hich were both the more common and the more ancient 
 at Zerghul and Hibba. In the case of the rich, special 
 houses were built to contain the ashes of the dead. 
 These houses were laid out in streets, as in a city, and 
 some of them were quite large and fine. The poorer 
 persons, on the other hand, were burned in the streets or 
 vacant places, and their urns or ashes left lying, or buried 
 anywhere at random. 
 
 In the case of a few body burials, Koldewey notices 
 that the skeletons were well preserved, and that there 
 was no trace of burning. But from the analogy of the 
 other burials, similar in other respects, he assumes that
 
 COFFINS AND BURIAL CUSTOMS. 233 
 
 even in these cases a formal though ineffectual cremation 
 took place. In other cases, where there was no outward 
 mark of burning, skeletons had been broken up and thrust 
 into narrow-mouthed jars, which method of interment he 
 considers as in itself an evidence that cremation had taken 
 place. Where the body was cremated, the cremation was 
 the act of piety, the treatment of the remains after that 
 was of little moment comparatively, and ashes or bones 
 might be placed in almost anything, or even be left lying 
 where they were burned. 
 
 Koldewey notices further the objects found interred 
 with, or by, the dead at Zerghul and el-Hibba. " With 
 the woman were burned her ornaments; with the man his 
 implements of warlike or peaceful employment; with the 
 child its toys." Among the tools and weapons were 
 found mixed together, as at Nippur, stone and copper 
 objects. Pebbles for rubbing and pounding were com- 
 mon. Among the ornaments here as at Nippur bored, or 
 otherwise worked mussel-shells (especially initra papalis) 
 were common. Clay whorls for use in spinning and 
 weaving were also common here as at Nippur, and seal 
 cylinders, in almost all cases destroyed by the fire, were 
 burned with the dead. Burnt bones of animals, birds, 
 and fishes, and burnt date-kernels found with the dead 
 were evidence of sacrificial offerings in connection with 
 the act of cremation. Even incense had been burned 
 in some cases with the body. 
 
 Besides these sacrificial offerings there were buried by 
 the dead, when the ashes or remains of the body were 
 buried after the cremation, vessels containing food or 
 drink. Even wells were provided in connection with the 
 houses of the dead, these wells being made of pottery- 
 rings in the manner described in the following chapter. 
 
 These burials at Zerghul and el-Hibba were all very 
 early, antedating, for the most part very considerably, 
 2500 B.C. 
 
 Comparing the burials at these two mounds with those
 
 234 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 unearthed by me at Nippur, which commence, as already 
 stated, probably not earlier than about 2500 B.C., one can 
 trace a igradual progress from cremation to interment. 
 In the upper strata at Zerghul and el-Hibba, as shown by 
 the German excavations, actual cremation was already 
 giving place to a merely formal use of fire. At Nippur, 
 even in the earliest burials, there are almost no traces of 
 the use of fire. In the oldest burials the bodies are still 
 thrust into narrow-mouthed jars; but these are already 
 giving place to large-mouthed urns, and tub-shaped 
 coffins. The inverted vessels over the burned bodies 
 found in a few cases at Zerghul and el-Hibba, which 
 Koldewey regards as the germ of the later coffins, we 
 found at Nippur, in the form of large urns and tub- 
 shaped coffins inverted over bodies, which showed, albeit, 
 no trace of burning. In many cases the only trace of 
 burning which we found in connection with a burial was 
 burned date-kernels. In almost all cases, after the most 
 diligent search, with Koldewey's admirable article in our 
 minds, we could find no trace of burning whatsoever , but 
 still the bodies were found broken in pieces, and thrown 
 helter-skelter into coffins far too small for them. That 
 even formal cremation had already been, or was rapidly 
 being, abandoned was shown by the fact also that in so 
 many cases the articles of food and drink which used to 
 be buried outside of the coffins were now placed in them. 
 Interment, and not cremation, had become the act of 
 piety, and as the bodies were no longer destroyed by fire, 
 there was an increasing tendency to preserve them intact, 
 which led to an increase in the size of the coffin. So 
 whale-back and lady-foot coffins appear, and at last come 
 with the Greeks the slipper-shaped, anthropoidal coffins, 
 approximately the size and shape of the human body. 
 And yet, to the last, the old customs linger, and we find 
 in the latest strata, bodies broken in pieces and thrust into 
 narrow-necked jars.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 Clay Drains — Phallic Symbols — Nail-headed Cones — Loss of Collections — 
 Door-Sockets — Date of Camels — Stone Objects — A Jade Axe — Stone 
 and Metal — Art of Writing — Inscription of Sargon — Pictorial Writing 
 — Conventional Signs — Older Inscriptions — Advance in Civilization — 
 Date and Origin of Script. 
 
 Clay Drains. — After the coffins, the most characteristic 
 pottery remains of Babylonian mounds are the clay 
 drains. These have been described by some former 
 writers as wells, and according to Koldewey they actu- 
 ally seem to have served that purpose in the houses of 
 the dead at Zerghul and el-Hibba, but in no case which 
 I examined were they used as wells at Nippur, and, in- 
 deed, from their very construction, such a use seemed 
 out of the question. 
 
 In the most primitive form of these constructions (Plate 
 III., Fig. 27) jars were joined to one another by breaking 
 off the bottoms. Ordinarily (Plate III., Figs. 9 and 
 28) pottery rings were made especially for this purpose. 
 Sometimes these rings were perforated, as in Plate III., 
 Fig. 9, and sometimes not perforated. There were also 
 pieces to set on top of the drains, as in Plate VI., Fig. 4, 
 and sometimes sieve-like stoppers with holes (Plate VI., 
 Fig. 7). I have already in Chapter VII. stated one pur- 
 pose for which these drains were used. At the top there 
 were brick platforms, and in one case, on the north- 
 western nose of hill V., I found a small paved court of
 
 236 NIPPUR. 
 
 brick with four of these pottery drains descending from 
 it. Many of them descended some metres below plain 
 level, others stopped in the debris on the hills. The 
 oldest of these pottery drains which I found was earlier 
 than the Sargon period, and stood below the ziggurat at 
 its western corner, but in a much lower stratum than 
 the earliest part of that structure. The latest, which 
 I found on hill V., belonged to the late Babylonian or 
 the Persian period, for, as already pointed out, these two 
 were practically identical; tablets of Nabonidus, Xerxes, 
 and Cambyses occurring together, and cofifins with Per- 
 sian cylinders and late Babylonian cylinders appearing 
 on the same level. I found no pottery drains which ap- 
 peared to belong to the Seleucidan, or Parthian periods. 
 I found, however, surface drains of that date on the camp 
 hills, in the Jewish town, that is, gutters which carried 
 the water off on a slight slant, allowing it to pour down 
 the hills and into the canals, or on to the plain. 
 
 Phallic Symbols. — M. de Sarzec discovered at Tello 
 great quantities of objects of baked clay, like long large- 
 headed nails, some eight or nine inches in length. The 
 inscriptions on these were votive and dedicatoiy. In one 
 wall of burned brick which I saw at Tello these nail-like 
 objects were thrust into the bitumen mortar between the 
 bricks. On removing the outer bricks hundreds of them 
 were found lying in the bitumen between the bricks 
 within. At Warka, Loftus found a wall built entirely of 
 these curious nail-headed cones, arranged in patterns. 
 From the discoveries at these places it was not clear what 
 they were, nor why they should be dedicated. We found 
 at Nippur only one or two fragments of these nail-headed 
 cones, and those in or near the surface. One of these 
 was uninscribed. We found, however, fragments of 
 phalli scattered over the surface everywhere and occur- 
 ring in the dd'bris at all levels. They occurred in espe- 
 cially large numbers by the side of a brick wall (No. 29
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 237 
 
 in plan of temple) near the outer northern corner of the 
 temple. This wall was encased in an immense mass of 
 mud bricks, like the brick tower (48). It evidently be- 
 longed to a period earlier than the last reconstruction, but 
 the bricks, which were laid in bitumen, were unfortu- 
 nately not inscribed, and the exact date I could not de- 
 termine. The phalli lay along the base of this wall in 
 such a manner that it seemed certain that they must 
 have been pushed into the spaces between the bricks, or 
 pressed against the wall and afterwards fallen to the 
 ground. The phalli found here and elsewhere through 
 the mounds were of all sizes, from a foot or more down 
 to an inch, and of different materials, some clay, some 
 porcelain, and some stone of various kinds, some orna- 
 mented and some plain. Some of them represented the 
 male organ in the most completely naturalistic fashion, 
 and others were so conventionalized that their original 
 character was quite obscured. We made a large collec- 
 tion of these objects, and established a complete series 
 from the naturalistic types backward. This series re- 
 vealed beyond all doubt the meaning of the nail-headed 
 cones, which were merely one of the more convention- 
 alized forms of the phallic symbol.' A still more curious 
 and more conventionalized form of this symbol was the 
 door-knob form, found in the " jeweller's shop " (Plate 
 II., Fig. 8). This I should not have recognized as having 
 any possible connection with the phallus, had it not been 
 for other more elongated forms which were found with 
 these knobs, and which graded up from them to other 
 types of our series, putting the matter beyond doubt. 
 These phalli were connected, I suppose, at least originally, 
 with the worship of Ishtar, and were thrust or built into 
 
 ' The German explorers at Zerghul and el-IIibba found similar phallic 
 emblems in those mounds, from the natural memlier up to the inscribed 
 nail-headed cone, used for worship in precisely the same manner which I 
 have described above.
 
 238 NIPPUR. 
 
 ■walls as a votive to her. There is a passage in the epic 
 of Gilgamesh which seems to refer to this use of the phal- 
 lus in the Ishtar cult, where Gilgamesh cuts off the mem- 
 ber of her sacred monster and casts it over the wall to her. 
 Unfortunately our curious and valuable collection of 
 phalli, as well as all our sherds and fragments, were lost 
 en route. It was impossible to make our Turkish com- 
 missioners understand the value of such collections. We 
 made them, as it were, under protest, and carried them 
 to Baghdad. There they had to be handed over to the 
 provincial Government, which would neither give them 
 to us nor forward them to Constantinople with the other 
 objects. They were finally granted to us by the Museum, 
 but by that time they had disappeared. Whether the 
 Baghdad authorities had thrown them out in order to ap- 
 propriate the boxes, which are very valuable there where 
 all wood has to be imported from a great distance, and 
 at much expense, or what became of them I do not know. 
 But at all events, not only our valuable series of phalli, 
 but our other series and collections of pottery markings 
 and ornamentations and glass fragments were thus lost 
 altogether. 
 
 Door-Sockets. — The finest inscriptions which w'e dis- 
 covered in the Temple Hill were on stone door-sockets. 
 The plate facing page 242 exhibits an inscribed door- 
 socket of Sargon, 3800 B.C., and Plate I. shows a similar 
 door-socket of Bur Sin, king of Ur, circa 2400 B.C. Both 
 of these door-sockets are formless masses of diorite, either 
 of them about half a camel's load. A place for the 
 foot of the door-post was hollowed out in the face of the 
 stone, and in this turned a wooden post shod with cop- 
 per, as is shown by the remains of copper in the sockets 
 of several of the door-posts. Both of these diorite door- 
 sockets were brought from Sinai, and judging from their 
 size they were carried on the backs of camels. Each of 
 these makes half a camel's load, and the same is true of
 
 Door Socket of Gimil-Sin of Ur, circa 2400 B.C. Brought from Mugliair. 
 
 Votive nail-iieaded Clay Cwnes of Giidea and Ur-Bau. Batesis of Lagash. 
 Brou<jht from Tello.
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 239 
 
 the door-socket of Gimil-Sin from Ur (see plate facing 
 page 238), and of most, if not all, of the other diorite 
 door-sockets found by us. They were much too heavy 
 for donkeys, mules, or horses, as I found from sad ex- 
 perience, but well adapted to transport by camels. This 
 suggests the use of the camel in that region at an earlier 
 period than hitherto supposed, since one of these blocks 
 bears an inscription of Lugal-kigub-nidudu, 4000 B.C., or 
 earlier. 
 
 Other door-sockets of the Cossjean period were of white 
 stone from the Persian hills, and gypsum from the neigh- 
 boring Arabian plateau, or, more probably, from the 
 country northward toward Assyria. Occasionally door- 
 sockets were made of baked bricks, and we found in one 
 place a large brick of Ishme-Dagan of Isin used for this 
 purpose. Stone was precious in Babylonia, and these 
 rough, unworked blocks of stone, which look to us so 
 formless and ugly, were evidently, from the careful in- 
 scriptions cut on them, highly prized ; so that the king 
 who presented to the temple a door-socket, or even a 
 rough block of stone from Sinai or the Persian mountains 
 was thought to have made a valuable gift. So it was 
 that Lugal-kigub-nidudu inscribed his name on a number 
 of rough blocks of stone which he presented to the 
 temple of Bel, two of which were later used as door- 
 sockets and re-inscribed by Sargon and Bur-Sin of Ur, 
 respectively. 
 
 The doors, as shown from the remains which we found, 
 were made of palm-wood and tamarisk, with occasionally 
 poplar or mulberry, like the doors still used in Irak to- 
 day. We found no evidence of doors plated with copper 
 plates, such as we read of in the Bible, or such as Ras- 
 sam found at Balawat in Assyria. 
 
 Stone Objects. — Stone vases were found mainly in the 
 older period. Lugal-zaggisi of Erech, Lugal-kigub- 
 nidudu of Ur, Alusharshid of Kish, and a patesi of
 
 240 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 Lagash of the pre-Sargonid period, dedicated a large 
 number of stone vases and mortars in the temple. A 
 large number more were dedicated in the period about 
 2500 B.C., by kings of Ur. Almost all of these were in- 
 scribed. In the Cossaean period we found plenty of stone 
 objects, especially in lapis lazuli, agate, malachite, etc., 
 brought from Persia and parts beyond, but nothing 
 in the way of vases. In the Seleucidan period and later 
 we found uninscribed alabaster vases of the shape known 
 as tear bottles. I have already referred to the fragments 
 of statuary found here and there. These belonged to 
 the third millennium B.C. 
 
 We found one or two silversmith's moulds, one of them 
 from the middle Babylonian period, made in alabaster, 
 and various other worked stone utensils. There were 
 also great numbers of millstones in all strata. These 
 were brought then, as now, from the regions of the 
 Euphrates and Tigris, northward of Babylonia. But 
 more numerous than these were the unworked, or practi- 
 cally unworked, pebbles of all sorts. These were found 
 at all depths and from all regions, used as pounders, 
 knife-sharpeners, hammers, and the like. All had been 
 imported, because there are no stones whatever in the 
 country. One pebble found in the debris on the Temple 
 Hill bore what looked like an inscription in unknown 
 characters. We found, however, no stone age of imple- 
 ments, nor any copper or iron age. On the surface of 
 the mounds were immense quantities of flint chips, arrow- 
 heads, spcar-points, and the like. Similar flint imple- 
 ments seem to occur in greater or less numbers in all 
 Babylonian mounds, Nippur included, from the very 
 earliest strata, down actually to the present day. 
 
 As already stated, below the ziggurat, at its western 
 corner and two metres below plain level, I found a beauti- 
 ful, highly-polished jade axe, or adze, the only object of 
 the sort found anywhere in the mounds. But through
 
 MISCELLA NEO US. 24 I 
 
 the lowest strata which we unearthed, side by side with 
 stone hammers, pounding stones, and the Hke, were copper 
 and iron implements. The former metal was more freely 
 used than the latter, it is true, and used for purposes for 
 which we now use the harder metal, but, so far as my 
 observations went, the use of iron was known from the 
 earliest date to which we have been able to trace the 
 civilization of Nippur. 
 
 The Art of Writing. — The inscription on the door- 
 socket of Sargon (page 242) shows that in his time, 3800 
 B.C., the art of writing was already highly advanced. 
 The first sign on the upper left hand corner of the left 
 hand column, a star, indicates heaven, or God. This is 
 manifestly pictorial in origin. The third sign on the 
 same line means a house, and represents either the lines 
 of the mud bricks which constitute the walls of Babylon- 
 ian houses, or the mats of which still more primitive 
 dwellings were constructed. It has been, however, so 
 far conventionalized that the scribe no longer feels it a 
 necessity to carry the perpendicular lines over the whole 
 surface to indicate the outlines of the bricks or mats at 
 all points. The long sign, the first in the fourth line of 
 the same column, means king. This is the figure, or 
 rude outline of the figure, of a man lying flat on his back, 
 with a sign resembling a crown at his head. This crown- 
 like sign is a conventional emblem for great or large, and 
 may be prefixed, added to, or inserted in almost any sign 
 to differentiate its meaning. The figure of the man is 
 swathed or mummified in its outlines, but one sees clearly 
 the outline of the body lying on its back, with a depres- 
 sion just below the head. But while clearly pictorial in 
 origin, this sign is already highly conventionalized. 
 There are in the inscriptions of Sargon's time, or later, 
 several other characters whose pictorial origin can readily 
 be discerned, but of the greater part of the signs in use 
 at that time it is impossible to say from their form what 
 
 VOL. II — 16
 
 24'. 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 their origin is. They have been so far conventionalized 
 that the original picture character is entirely lost. In- 
 deed, some of them are composite, and others are marked 
 with signs of differentiation of an abstract character. It 
 is clear that the art of writing had had a very long his- 
 torv before it reached the point shown by this inscription 
 of Sargon. 
 
 The inscriptions of Lugal-kigub-nidudu and Lugal- 
 zaggisi are somewhat more primitive in character. By a 
 study of these and some of the most ancient inscriptions 
 found by the French at Tello, Professor Friedrich De- 
 litzsch ' has been able to trace back a large number of the 
 four hundred signs used in the Babylonian cuneiform 
 script to their origins. He shows what I have already 
 stated, that behind the earliest cuneiform script lies a 
 picture writing; and by means chiefly of the extremely 
 archaic inscriptions published by Hilprecht in his Old 
 Babylonian Inscriptions, he identifies about forty pictures, 
 most of which had not been identified before. These are 
 in general simple objects, like sun, eye, tongue, hand, 
 foot, grain, arrow, etc. The signs for man and woman, 
 which are pictures of the male and female organs respec- 
 tively, are illustrative of the stage of culture in which 
 this form of writing originated. 
 
 But in the earliest inscriptions which we yet possess 
 these simple picture signs, which are already themselves 
 much conventionalized in form, possess secondary or de- 
 rived meanings, so that the picture of the foot means 
 " go," or " stand " ; of the tongue " speak " ; of the eye 
 "see"; of the arrow "divide," etc. Moreover, the 
 signs are already joined one to another, doubled, and 
 variously modified to produce a large number of very 
 comi)licated characters. There are also some conven- 
 tional signs which are attached to or inserted in other 
 
 ' Die Entstehung des altesten Schriftsystems oder Der Ursprung der 
 Keilschriftzeichen ; dargelegl von Friedrich Delitzsch.
 
 // •
 
 MISCELLANEOUS. 243 
 
 signs, whether simple or complex, to modify their mean- 
 ing, the most common of these being the sign meaning 
 " great." 
 
 There is, in other words, a considerable advance from 
 the time of Lugal-zaggisi to that of Sargon, since it is 
 possible in the inscriptions of the former to recognize the 
 picture character of many signs which can no longer be 
 identified in the latter. How long a time was required 
 to effect such a change ? Was it one hundred, or two 
 hundred, or seven hundred years ? That we are unable 
 to determine from the forms of the characters only, since 
 progress in such matters is not merely a matter of years, 
 but of circumstances and conditions also. 
 
 But while there is considerable progress between the 
 time of Lugal-zaggisi and Sargon in the outward forms 
 of the characters, there is none in the principle of their 
 use. The earliest inscriptions yet found show us, as 
 already stated, the age of pictures long since passed, and 
 a complicated system of writing already invented and 
 even applied for an indefinite period. The difference be- 
 tween the inscriptions of Sargon and Lugal-zaggisi is as 
 nothing compared with the difference between the inscrip- 
 tions of Lugal-zaggisi and the first invention of writing. 
 
 Shall we ever find anything closer to the sources than 
 we have yet found ? That remains for future excavations 
 to determine, but the indications seem to favor such dis- 
 coveries. I have already pointed out that at a depth 
 much lower than that at which I found my few, and 
 Haynes his very many, extremely archaic inscriptions of 
 Lugal-kigub-nidudu, Lugal-zaggisi, and the like, four 
 metres below the Sargon level, and about three to four 
 metres above virgin soil, under the western corner of the 
 ziggurat, along with a jade axe, I found an inscribed tab- 
 let.' It is not, of course, always safe to conclude that a 
 
 ' Since writing the above I have ascertained that Haynes found one or 
 more clay tablets thirteen feet below Sargon level which would be at about
 
 244 NIPPUR. 
 
 tablet, or tablet fragment, belongs in age to the stratum 
 in which it is found, and until more tablets than this one 
 have been found at this same low level, it will remain a 
 possibility that there was " leakage " from above at this 
 point. This " find " suggests, however, that writing on 
 clay tablets was practised in Babylonia long before the 
 time of Lugal-zaggisi, it may be as early as 5000 or even 
 6000 B.C. 
 
 the same level at which I found this tablet, described by me in a previous 
 cha[)ter as the earliest inscribed object yet found. This " find " of Haynes 
 confirms what I have said above as to the extremely early use of clay for 
 writing purposes, antedating stone. As to the date of these tablets, it 
 should be remembered that as yet all these very early dates are conjectural. 
 Admitting even that Sargon's date is thoroughly established, everything be- 
 fore that must be conjectured from estimates of the time during which a 
 certain amount of debris could accumulate, etc. While I believe that the 
 figures given in the text are very conservative, I still wish to warn the reader 
 that tliey must as yet be regarded as conjectural.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 
 
 Nature's Kindergarten — Birthplace of Civilization — The Land of Kengi — 
 The Kingdom of Kish — The Land of the Bow — Erech and its Empire 
 — Supremacy of Ur — Art of Lagash — Religious Supremacy of Nippur 
 — Nippur in the Creation Tablet — The Elamites — Alusharshid the De- 
 liverer — Sargon of Agane and his Empire — Constructions of Naram- 
 Sin — Second Kingdom of Ur — Hegemony of Isin — Third Kingdom of 
 Ur — The Elamite Conquest — A Tablet with a History — Erech and the 
 Gilgamesh Epic — Abraham and the Elamites — Babylonian Supremacy 
 — E-kur destroyed — Babylonians the Destroyers — The Cossseans — Res- 
 toration of E-kur — Foreign Relations of Babylonia — The Second De- 
 struction of E-kur— Assyrian Conquest — Ashurbanipal Rebuilds E-kur 
 — Fall of Nineveh — Final Destruction of E-kur — A New Faith — Per- 
 sians and Greeks — Cessation of Inscriptions — Parthians and Sassanians 
 — Jews and Christians — Arab Conquest — The Abbassides — Turkish 
 Misrule. 
 
 1HAVE already described the Babylonian plain 
 formed by the alluvial deposit of the two great 
 rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, bounded by the 
 Persian mountains on the east, and the Arabian plateau 
 on the west and north. It was originally a narrow gulf 
 of the sea, surrounded by rocky shores, which was filled 
 up by mud brought down by those two rivers, together 
 with the Karun, which unites with them near the point 
 where they empty into the Persian Gulf. This alluvial 
 deposit is fine mud, containing no stones whatever, and 
 is almost incredibly fertile when irrigated. Here was 
 one of the primeval sites of civilization, in which Dame 
 Nature seemed to have provided, as it were, a kindergar- 
 
 245
 
 246 NIPPUR. 
 
 ten for her children. Wheat and the palm were native 
 there, and furnished food of the highest nourishing qual- 
 ity without effort. It was not a forest country, and 
 there were neither wood nor stone with which to build, 
 but the marshes furnished reeds and the palms mats, and 
 nature herself showed men how to make bricks and to 
 form mud into pots and dishes, and finally into higher 
 plastic forms. 
 
 Babylonia is one of the places where civilization and cul- 
 ture originated, and especially it was the birthplace of 
 that civilization to which we have fallen heir. In another 
 chapter I have pointed out that the indications of tradi- 
 tion and of burial customs point to that portion of this 
 plain between Ur and Eridu on the southward, and Nip- 
 pur on the northward, as the original home of civilization 
 and culture, and that the indications of the discoveries 
 at Nippur, as well as of the geology of the country, sug- 
 gest that the settlement of these great cities was made 
 not later than 6000 or 7000 B.C. At that remote period 
 men inhabited this country sufficiently advanced in 
 civilization to found cities, build houses, make pottery, 
 and, in general, carry on the industries of settled and 
 civilized life. 
 
 The earliest inscriptions worth the name which we 
 possess belong to a period probably about or a little be- 
 fore 4000 B.C. At that time lower Babylonia is known 
 as Kengi, which, according to Professor Hilprecht, 
 means " land of the canals and reeds." These inscrip- 
 tions belong to kings the reading of whose names is un- 
 certain, but whose seat of power was manifestly in the 
 south. Through them we learn that Erech, Lagash, or 
 Sirpurla, Eridu, Ur, Isin, Larsam, and, above all, Nip- 
 pur, were important cities at that early period, and that 
 Nippur was the religious centre of the country. At the 
 earliest date to which the inscriptions carry us back, 
 Kengi had already a strong rival to the northward, — the
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 247 
 
 city of Kish ; and the earliest records whicli we possess 
 recount the contests between kings of Kish and of the 
 ' ' Land of the Bow, ' ' and kings of the southland. Among 
 these the most important, and one of the earliest yet dis- 
 covered, is a long inscription of a certain Lugal-zaggisi, 
 high priest of the " Land of the Bow," who conquered 
 Kengi and established the seat of his supremacy at Erech. 
 With much toil and infinite patience Professor Hilprecht 
 restored this inscription from fragments of over a hun- 
 dred vases dedicated by this king to En-lil, and deposited 
 in the temple at Nippur; of which a very few were dis- 
 covered by me, but by far the larger part by Haynes in 
 his later excavations. \\\ this inscription Lugal-zaggisi 
 describes himself as ' ' King of Erech, king of all the world, 
 prophet of Anu, hero of Nidaba, son of Ukush, patesi 
 (High Priest) of the Land of the Bow." But the most 
 interesting and important part of the inscription is that 
 in which he describes his conquests, and his dominion : 
 " When En-lil, lord of lands, invested Lugal-zaggisi with 
 the kingdom of the world and granted him success before 
 the world ; when he filled all lands with his renown, and 
 subdued them from the rising of the sun to the setting 
 of the sun ; at that time he made straight his path from 
 the lower sea of the Tigris and Euphrates to the upper 
 sea, and granted him dominion from the rising of the sun 
 to the setting of the sun, and caused all countries to 
 dwell in peace." 
 
 According to this inscription, at a period antedating, 
 apparently, 4000 B.C., a great empire had been estab- 
 lished stretching from the Persian Gulf to the Mediter- 
 ranean Sea, with Erech in Southern Babylonia for its 
 centre. The fact that such an empire could be estab- 
 hshed is presumptive evidence of a fair degree of civiliza- 
 tion in that extremely early period, not only in Babylonia,, 
 but through all hither Asia. 
 
 Another king of these early times is Lugal-kigub-
 
 248 NIPPUR. 
 
 nidudu. That he antedated Sargon is proved by the fact 
 that on one of the door-sockets of Sargon, found in 
 place by me in the temple of Bel at Nippur, there was an 
 earlier inscription of Lugal-kigub-nidudu. He seems to 
 have reigned a little later than Lugal-zaggisi, and to have 
 had Ur as the seat of his kingdom, although recognizing 
 Erech as a second capital of almost equal importance. 
 So we read in one of his inscriptions that " he added 
 lordship to kingdom, establishing Erech as the seat of 
 lordship, and Ur as the seat of kingdom." I have al- 
 ready referred to the fact that this king dedicated in the 
 temple of Bel at Nippur a number of rough blocks of 
 dioritc and marble, inscribed with his name and a votive 
 inscription to En-lil, some of which were later re-inscribed 
 and re-dedicated by other kings. He also dedicated 
 vases to En-lil and Nin-lil, his divine spouse, a few poor 
 fragments of which were found by me, and many more 
 by Haynes. 
 
 Shortly after his time, Lagash, or Sirpurla, appears to 
 have acquired the hegemony ; and among the earliest and 
 most interesting inscriptions from Tello is the so-called 
 stele of vultures, discovered by de Sarzec at Tello, which 
 Edingiranagin set up to commemorate a victory over the 
 people of Kish and of the " Land of the Bow." From the 
 beginning of our acquaintance with Lagash it seems to 
 have been a centre of art development ; and whereas we 
 have from Nippur at this early period nothing but in- 
 scriptions and perhaps a rude incised tablet or two, — 
 votives to En-lil, — we have from Lagash the rude but 
 forceful stele of vultures, representing in one compart- 
 ment, on top of one another and without perspective, 
 the corpses of the enemy lying on the field of battle, with 
 vultures hovering above them, and in another compart- 
 ment the captives, apparently about to be offered as a 
 sacrifice to the gods of Lagash ; and also two statues of 
 stone from Sinai, dedicated to his god by Ur-nina.
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 249 
 
 It is interesting to note that through this period, while 
 Kengi, Kish, the " Land of the Bow," Erech, and Ur 
 are struggling for supremacy, Nippur plays no role politi- 
 cally, but its temple is honored by the kings of all these 
 places alike, and its god, En-lil, recognized apparently 
 as supreme lord. From the first king whose name has 
 yet been found. En-sag-ana, " Lord of Kengi," who con- 
 quered Kish, " the wicked," all these kings dedicate 
 votive offerings, often part of their spoil, to En-lil, the 
 Bel of Nippur, and several of them assume the title of 
 patesi, or over-priest, of En-lil. Nippur evidently enjoyed 
 from the most remote period a peculiar position as the 
 original religious centre of the country, although how she 
 won it and what was her relation to the civilization of 
 Babylonia we cannot yet determine further. That Nip- 
 pur was older than the earliest inscriptions here discussed, 
 probably by two thousand years or so, has already been 
 shown. In the, as yet, undiscovered records of that earlier 
 period lies hidden, presumably, the explanation of her 
 acknowledged position of religious supremacy. 
 
 A tablet found by Hormuzd Rassam at Abu Habba 
 (Sippara), in 1881-82, containing the story of creation, is 
 sometimes quoted as showing the Babylonian tradition 
 that Nippur was the oldest of all cities, followed closely 
 in antiquity by Erech and Eridu. This has been trans- 
 lated by Pinches in Records of the Past, as follows: 
 
 *' Incantation: The glorious house, the house of the 
 gods, in a glorious place had not been made, 
 
 " A plant had not been brought forth, a tree had not 
 been created, 
 
 " A brick had not been laid, a beam had not been 
 shaped, 
 
 "A house had not been built, a city had not been con- 
 structed, 
 
 " A city had not been made, the foundation had not 
 been made glorious;
 
 250 NIPPUR. 
 
 " Niffer had not been built, E-kura had not been con- 
 structed ; 
 
 " Erech had not been built, E-ana [the temple of Ish- 
 tar, at Erech] had not been constructed ; 
 
 " The Abyss had not been made, Eridu had not been 
 constructed. " 
 
 This seems to show that Babylonian tradition recog- 
 nized these three cities, Nippur, Erech, and Eridu, as the 
 primal seats of Babylonian religion, but I do not think 
 that we can argue from this that Nippur, as a city, nec- 
 essarily antedates the other great cities of the south. It 
 is singular, by the way, that the name of Ur is omitted 
 in this inscription. 
 
 As we have already seen, while Kish and the " Land 
 of the Bow " were frequently politically hostile to Kengi 
 and the cities of the south, and the history of their rela- 
 tions to one another is one of war and of mutual conquest, 
 yet in point of religion both seem to have been akin ; or 
 at least the inscriptions found at Nippur show us that the 
 kings of all these places, without distinction, worshipped 
 En-lil in his temple of E-kur, and offered votives there. 
 There was, however, another foe who in plundering the 
 land robbed the temples and carried away their spoils, — 
 namely, the Elamites, over the mountains toward the 
 southeast. From a very early time the Elamites were 
 Avont to descend upon the Babylonian plain, to harry, 
 plunder, and destroy; and sometimes to make more per- 
 manent conquests. We cannot, indeed, say certainly 
 that they ever sacked the temple of Bel at Nippur, and 
 it may be that the peculiar sanctity of the place, as a re- 
 ligious centre merely, possessing little or no political im- 
 portance, may have saved it from destruction by them. 
 We know, however, that other temples, notably E-ana 
 at Erech, were sacked by them, and at least their kings 
 did not recognize the temple of E-kur by votive offerings. 
 But if the Elamites did not worship at Babylonian shrines,
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 25 I 
 
 they were at least no barbarians, but possessed a civiliza- 
 tion almost, if not quite, equal to that of Babylonia. 
 
 Some time, not long before 3800 B.C., when the cities 
 of southern Babylonia were apparently weakened by the 
 attacks of the Elamites, or even reduced to some sort of 
 subjection to them, Alusharshid, king of Kish, overran 
 and annexed the whole country, as far south certainly as 
 Lagash, where his inscriptions have been found. An in- 
 scription of his on a vase excavated by me at Nippur, 
 one of many dedicated by this monarch, suggests that he 
 came as a deliverer of the country from the Elamites, for 
 in it he says that he dedicates this vase " out of the spoils 
 of Elam and Bara'se." A similar statement is found on 
 the objects dedicated by him at Lagash. 
 
 The next name which we meet is that of the famous 
 Sargon, or Sargina; or, to give him his full name, Shar- 
 gani-shar-ali, son of Itti, king of Agane, or Akkad, in 
 northern Babylonia. His special home-god seems to 
 have been Shamash, but he also honored the shrines of 
 Nippur and Lagash, particularly the former, with votive 
 offerings, and in fact he rebuilt the ancient temple of 
 E-kur. I have explained elsewhere the grounds on which 
 his date has been fixed at 3800 B.C., and the dependence 
 of all earlier dates in our Babylonian chronology on this 
 date. I have also called attention to the peculiar im- 
 portance of Sargon in Babylonian history, not only be- 
 cause of the great extent of his empire, which included 
 in addition to the regions claimed by Lugal-zaggisi, — 
 namely. Babylonia, Mesopotamia, and Syria, — Elam, 
 Cyprus, Palestine, and Northern Arabia, with the penin- 
 sula of Sinai, but still more because of his administrative, 
 scientific, and literary activities. He may fairly be called 
 the Charlemagne of Babylonian history, since he played 
 for science, literature, and organization in Babylonia 
 much the same part which the great Charles did 4600 
 years later in western Europe.
 
 252 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 Sargon was succeeded by his son Naram-Sin, who also 
 honored the shrines of the south, erecting a great wall at 
 Nippur, and restoring or rebuilding E-kur, the temple 
 of En-lil. After him there is a gap of almost a thousand 
 years, of which we know as yet practically nothing. A few 
 names meet us from the inscriptions, but we cannot arrange 
 them in chronological order, nor give a consecutive his- 
 tory of the period. To this time seems to belong, among 
 others, Entemena, patesi of Lagash, some fragments of 
 whose votive offerings I found in the temple at Nippur. 
 
 About 2800 or 2900 B.C., we find the city of Ur exer- 
 cising a hegemony over all of southern Babylonia, and 
 the kings of that city styling themselves princes of Eridu, 
 Erech, Nippur, and Isin. Ur-Gur is the first king of this 
 dynasty of whom we have any knowledge. He v/as a 
 great builder, the greatest of Babylonian builders before 
 Nebuchadrezzar II. of Babylon. To him belong the 
 earliest ziggurats yet explored, those at Nippur and 
 Mughair. It is possible that he introduced this form of 
 construction of conventional mountains on the summits of 
 which the gods might dwell. Professor Sayce has called 
 attention to the proximity and apparently close relation- 
 ship of Ur to Arabia; and I have noted elsewhere that 
 the only other place beside Babylonia and Assyria in 
 which, as far as we now know, ziggurats have been used, 
 is southern Arabia.' Ur-Gur entirely rebuilt the temple 
 of Bel at Nippur, razing, in order to do so, the struct- 
 ures of his predecessors, and building on their ruins. 
 Whether or not he was the first king to build a ziggurat 
 there, at least he completely altered the form and ar- 
 rangements of the temple, giving it that general shape 
 which it retained for the next two thousand years, until 
 after the time of Ashurbanipal. One characteristic feat- 
 ure of Ur-Gur's constructions is a considerable use of 
 
 ' The inscriptions of Ashurbanipal speak of a ziggurat also in the Elamite 
 temple at Susa.
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 253 
 
 baked brick, the wood for baking which must have been 
 brought from other countries, since there is practically 
 none in Babylonia. From objects found we know also 
 that in his time there was a widespread commerce with 
 India, and apparently also with points of Asia farther 
 east, as well as with the regions westward, — as far at 
 least as the islands of the Mediterranean Sea. He was 
 succeeded by his son, Dungi, inscriptions by whom were 
 found at Nippur. 
 
 It is at this period that Lagash, or Sirpurla, again 
 comes into prominence as an art centre under its patesi, 
 or over-priest and ruler, Gudea, a vassal of Ur. Appar- 
 ently there was close intercourse with Egypt in those 
 days, and the art of Lagash was strongly influenced by 
 the traditions of the Nile; at least so one feels in study- 
 ing the diorite statues dedicated by Gudea. It has al- 
 ready been stated that works of art were created at 
 Lagash at a much earlier period. Gudea revived the old 
 traditions, and under him art reached a far higher de- 
 velopment than it ever reached in Babylonia before or 
 since, to the best of our present knowledge. The best 
 work was done at Lagash, then insignificant politically, 
 but still important from the wealth and prestige of its 
 temple, and the influence of the artists of Lagash was 
 felt through all southern Babylonia for half a millennium, 
 or until the time of the Elamite conquest. 
 
 Among other places, Nippur felt this artistic impetus, 
 and I found fragments of statues and bas reliefs of the 
 Lagash school of art, while Haynes found later a part of 
 an inscribed statue. The greater part of the remains of 
 this description found at Nippur belong, however, to 
 the period of a later dynasty of Ur, about 2500 or 2400 
 B.C. 
 
 After the two kings of the Ur-Gur dynasty of Ur there 
 follows a period of uncertain duration, of which we know 
 nothing. Then Isin emerges as the leading state in
 
 254 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 southern Babylonia, presumably about 2600 B.C. The 
 inscriptions of three kings of this city, — Ur-Ninib, Bur- 
 Sin, and Ishme-Dagan, — I found at Nippur, but no one 
 of them seemed to have built very largely there. Then 
 comes, it is supposed, another period of the supremacy 
 of Ur, presumably about 2500 or 2400 B.C. Three 
 kings of this dynasty are known to us from the inscrip- 
 tions found at Nippur, namely, Ine-Sin, Bur-Sin, and 
 Gimil-Sin. I found large numbers of tablets from the 
 reigns of all these kings. Bur-Sin, especially, had done a 
 great deal for the temple of Bel, building, among other 
 things, a shrine before the gate, and repairing the great 
 ziggurat. The kings of this dynasty were evidently 
 powerful, and a tablet found at Nippur shows that Gimil- 
 Sin conquered the Lebanon, or part of it; while Ine-Sin 
 was over-lord of Syria and conducted campaigns in 
 Phoenicia. The Babylonian names of sacred sites in 
 Palestine and the surrounding regions, such as Sinai 
 (place of the Moon God, Sin), Mount Nebo, Anathoth, 
 and so forth, testify to an early connection between 
 Babylonia and Palestine; and the more we learn of early 
 Babylonian history the more ancient and the closer does 
 that connection seem to have been. 
 
 Following the Ine-Sin dynasty of Ur, Larsam, near 
 Erech, seems to have acquired the supremacy for a brief 
 period under an Elamite dynasty, one king of which was 
 Eriaku, who styles himself " Shepherd of the land of 
 Nippur, the executor of the oracle of the holy tree of 
 Eridu, shepherd of Ur, king of Larsa, king of Sumer 
 and Akkade. " The Elamites, those ancestral foes of 
 the Babylonians, had again invaded the country. This 
 time they seem to have made a more permanent conquest 
 than they had ever done before, and to have established 
 a ruling dynasty, with Larsa as its capital, but to the last 
 they remained hated foreigners and oppressors. As al- 
 ways before, they plundered the temples of Babylonia
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 2$$ 
 
 ruthlessly. We found in the " jeweller's shop " at Nip- 
 pur, as already narrated, a curious evidence of this in a 
 small agate object inscribed on one side by the patesi of 
 some unknown city with a dedication to Ishtar, " for the 
 life of Dungi, the powerful champion, king of Ur," and 
 on the other side inscribed thus: " Kurigalzu, king of 
 Karduniash, conquered the palace of Susa in Elam, and 
 presented this tablet to Belit, his mistress, for his life." 
 That is, this tablet had been offered in the temple of 
 Ishtar at Erech, presumably as a votive offering, in the 
 time of Dungi, about 2750 B.C., carried to Susa by the 
 Elamites four hundred and fifty years later, and offered 
 as a part of their spoils in the temple there ; carried off 
 again by Kurigalzu, when he conquered Elam a thousand 
 years after that, re-inscribed by him and dedicated out 
 of the spoils of his conquests in his favorite temple of 
 Bel at Nippur. The Assyrian king, Ashurbanipal, gives 
 us a date for the Elamite rule in the account of his eighth 
 campaign against Ummanaldas, king of Elam. He tells 
 us that sixteen hundred and thirty-five years before 
 Kudur-Nankhundi, king of Elam, laid hands on the 
 temples of Akkad and carried the image of the goddess 
 Nana into Elam. This image he recovered and brought 
 back to Erech. The particular action of Kudur-Nankhundi 
 here referred to took place, 'according to this, in the year 
 2294 B.C. But how long before this the Elamite oppres- 
 sion began, or how long after this it lasted we do not 
 yet know. 
 
 Erech seems to have suffered greatly from the oppres- 
 sion of the Elamites, and, according to its own literature, 
 to have played an important part in the struggles of the 
 Babylonians for freedom ; if, at least, the struggle 
 against the Elamites referred to in the Gilgamesh epic 
 belongs to this, and not to some earlier period. That epic 
 has come down to us in the form in which it was preserved 
 in Ashurbanipal's library in Nineveh ; but Ashurbanipal's
 
 256 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 text was a copy of the version contained in the temple 
 Hbrary at Erech, so that in point of fact the only version 
 of the epic which we now possess is the Erech version. 
 In that version a historical event, the struggle for freedom 
 from the Elamite yoke, in which struggle Gilgamesh is 
 represented as leading the people of Erech in a success- 
 ful war for independence, is combined with the ancient 
 myth in a manner which reminds one of a Burgundian 
 version of the Nibelungen-Lied, in which authentic 
 events of Burgundian history are woven into the old 
 Teutonic myth. But whether the historical events nar- 
 rated in the Gilgamesh epic belong to this or some earlier 
 struggle to shake off the Elamite yoke, at least we find 
 here valuable information about the spirit in which these 
 wars were waged. From other sources we learn that 
 Erech was finally conquered by Eriaku, of the Elamite 
 dynasty of Larsa, and that it was in fact the centre for a 
 long time of Babylonian resistance to the Elamites. 
 
 It was apparently during this period of Elamite suprem- 
 acy that, according to Hebrew tradition, Abraham, the 
 ancestor of their race, immigrated into Canaan, and the 
 fourteenth chapter of Genesis gives us a glimpse of the 
 condition of Babylonia in that period from an outside 
 standpoint. In that chapter we are told of an expedition 
 which Amraphcl, king of Shinar, Arioch, king of Ellasar, 
 Chedorlaomer, king of Elam, and Tidal, king of Goiim 
 conducted against the west land, and particularly the 
 cities of the Jordan valley. Goiim seems to be Gutium, 
 often mentioned in the Babylonian inscriptions. Che- 
 dorlaomer is Kudur-Lagomar ; Arioch, king of Ellasar, 
 is Eriaku, king of Larsa; and Amraphel, king of Shinar, 
 appears to be Hammurabi, king of Babylon. 
 
 I have dwelt thus at length upon the Elamite oppres- 
 sion and the war of independence, because of the fateful 
 issue of the struggle for Nippur and its famous temple. 
 The Elamites were finally driven out, after a long and
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 2$7 
 
 desperate contest, by Hammurabi, once their vassal and 
 ally, as it would seem. He established a new empire 
 with Babylon as its capital. To strengthen his govern- 
 ment he sought to make Babylon not only the political, 
 but also the religious centre of his kingdom, and to trans- 
 fer the allegiance and the offerings of the people from 
 En-lil, the Bel of Nippur, or the older Bel, to the younger 
 Bel, Bel Marduk of Babylon. The issue of the war was, 
 therefore, disastrous to Nippur. Its temple was sacked, 
 its statuary and rich votive gifts wantonly destroyed, 
 and all the power of the new empire was used to destroy 
 the prestige of E-kur, in order to enhance the prestige of 
 its rival Esagila, the temple of Bel Marduk at Babylon. 
 I found hundreds of fragments of vases, statuary, and 
 other objects of stone, the gifts of sixty generations and 
 more, scattered about in the temple, which had been 
 destroyed at this time. In one place particularly, a sort 
 of cellar, just within and below the second wall of the 
 temple on the southeast, where I found the three rough 
 blocks of Lugal-kigub-nidudu, vases and other similar 
 objects had been literally pounded to pieces. Apparently 
 there had been some sort of a depository of temple treas- 
 ures at this point, the treasury had been opened, the gifts 
 taken out, and the inscribed stone objects dashed to 
 pieces then and there; while gold and silver objects, and 
 all things that could be employed for profane purposes 
 were carried away. At the same time the houses on hill 
 X., described in Chapter VI., in which we found tablets 
 and temple records of the time of Ine-Sin, Bur-Sin, and 
 Gimil-Sin, of Ur, were burned. 
 
 Hilprecht, in his Old Babylonian Inscriptions, suggests, 
 that this destruction was wrought by the Elamites. This, 
 seems to me improbable, for three reasons: in the first 
 place, while we know that the Elamites carried off the 
 treasures of E-ana, the temple of Ishtar at Erech, because 
 we learn of the recovery of the spoils of that temple from 
 
 VOL II — 17
 
 258 NIPPUR. 
 
 Susa at later periods, we hear nothing of any spoils of 
 NipjJLir in Susa. Both Kurigalzu and Ashurbanipal were 
 ardent devotees of Bel of Nippur. If either of these 
 monarchs had found anything belonging to the temple 
 of E-kur, in Susa, when they captured that city, it seems 
 likely that they would have restored it to its ancient 
 home. We know that both of them found and carried 
 away from Susa objects belonging to the temple of Ishtar 
 at Erech, but we do not hear that they discovered any- 
 thing from Nippur there. In the second place, those 
 who destroyed the votive objects at Nippur were bent, 
 not on plundering from a foreign god to enrich their own 
 god, as the Elamites seem to have been, but on desecra- 
 tion and annihilation merely. In the third place, it 
 seems clear that on two later occasions, as we shall see 
 presently, the Babylonians destroyed E-kur and its 
 treasures. I am inclined to think, therefore, that on 
 this occasion also, the destruction was the work of Baby- 
 lon, and that the temple of Bel at Nippur was desecrated 
 and destroyed in the interests of the temple of the 
 younger and rival Bel of Babylon. 
 
 But, however this may be, it is at least a fact that with 
 the establishment of the new kingdom of Hammurabi, 
 with Babylon as its capital, the temple of E-kur ceases 
 to be the religious centre of the Babylonian religion. 
 For eight hundred years (if we reckon Hammurabi's date 
 at 2250 B.C.) we find no trace of any reconstruction of 
 the ancient ziggurat. No bricks have been found bear- 
 ing the inscriptions of any king of Babylon during that 
 long period, nor any fragments of vases or votive offer- 
 ings dedicated by them to En-lil, the Bel of Nippur. 
 We have, it is true, an abundance of documents, con- 
 tracts, deeds, and the like, dated in the reigns of these 
 kings, but none of these were found in the temple 
 precincts; and if the temple still continued to exist as 
 such during this period, as I presume it did, at least it
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 259 
 
 played a very secondary part in the religious life of the 
 people. 
 
 Finally,' the Babylonian power became corrupt. The 
 ever hostile Elamites invaded and overran the country 
 from the south, and the new power of Assyria began to 
 press upon it from the north. At last the Cossaeans, or 
 Cassites, from the mountains to the east of Babylonia, 
 taking advantage of the weakness and disruption of the 
 empire, invaded the country, conquered it, drove out the 
 Elamites, and set up a new empire. Almost all that we 
 know of the kings of this Cosssean dynasty, which ruled 
 for over three hundred years, has been learned from their 
 inscriptions and archives found at Nippur. Nominally, 
 Babylon was their capital, but for reasons which we do 
 not yet know, they restored to Nippur its ancient re- 
 ligious primacy, worshipping En-lil, the Bel of Nippur, 
 instead of Marduk, the Bel of Babylon. One of the 
 kings of this dynasty, Kurigalzu,* rebuilt the ziggurat, 
 which had fallen into a deplorable condition of decay ; 
 and votive offerings of nine or ten kings of this line were 
 found among the temple treasures. One of these kings 
 built the great structure containing the Court of Columns 
 on hill I., and both on that hill, and also on hills IX. and 
 X., — that is practically over the whole of that portion of 
 the mounds lying to the northwest of the Shatt-en-Nil — 
 I found archives of the Cossaean kings, relating to the 
 affairs of the temple of Bel. During their time the 
 prestige and wealth of Bel and his city of Nippur were 
 vastly increased. The Tel-el- Amarna tablets, found in 
 Egypt, belong to this period. These show us that Baby- 
 lonian was at that time the language of commercial and 
 political intercourse throughout the whole civilized world. 
 The Cossaean kings exchanged presents and established a 
 
 ' There are two kings of this name, Kurigalzu, the father of Burna-Buri- 
 ash, who reigned 1372-1348, and Kurigalzu, son of Burna-Buriash, 1306- 
 1284.
 
 26o NIPPUR. 
 
 matrimonial alliance with Egypt, and they had commer- 
 cial relations, as we know from the objects found among 
 their treasures, with Greece on the west and China on the 
 east. A votive object dedicated by Kurigalzu throws a 
 curious light on the relations of Erech and Nippur at this 
 period, and suggests an earlier religious rivalry between 
 the two at the time of the Elamite conquest, about 2300 
 B.C. This is the heart-shaped agate object, already de- 
 scribed, with an inscription for Dungi on one side, and 
 an inscription of Kurigalzu on the other. This was 
 originally dedicated in the temple of Ishtar at Erech, and 
 carried off from there by the Elamites. When Kurigalzu 
 captured Susa he restored this votive object, not to 
 Erech, but to Nippur, and re-dedicated it to Beltis of 
 Nippur, apparently emphasizing by this act a hostility 
 between the two temples. 
 
 As already stated, this period of the revival of the re- 
 ligious supremacy of Nippur lasted until the middle or 
 end of the twelfth century B.C. Then the Cossaeans 
 were, in their turn, overthrown by Nebuchadrezzar I., 
 the founder of the native Pashe dynasty, and the seat 
 of religious, as of political, supremacy was again trans- 
 ferred to Babylon. Once more the temple of the ancient 
 Bel of Nippur was sacked, and its treasures destroyed. 
 The great buildings on the northwest side of the Shatt- 
 en-Nil were burned to the ground, but, luckily for us, this 
 did not destroy the tablet archives contained in them. 
 Fortunately, also, in the destruction of the temple itself, 
 a part of the temple treasures was buried beneath the 
 roofs and walls of the buildings, and preserved almost 
 unharmed in the earth, to be unearthed by us. 
 
 The next three and a half centuries are a blank in the 
 history of the temple of Bel at Nippur. None of the 
 Babylonian kings repaired it or offered votives there.' 
 
 ' It is possible that there was one exception to this rule. One inscribed 
 fragment of brick which I found in the temple may have belonged to Mar- 
 duk-nadin-akhe, 1116 B.C.
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 26 1 
 
 The records of this period which I found at Nippur were 
 in the shape of contract tablets and deeds, not a few of 
 these bearing Aramaean dockets, and all found in hills V. 
 and X. One mark of the decadence of Babylonian in- 
 fluence is these very Aramaean dockets scratched on the 
 sides and ends of contract tablets, for convenience of 
 reference and identification. They showed that Baby- 
 lonian had yielded place to Aramaean as the world 
 language, the language of political and commercial inter- 
 course. 
 
 During this period, while the power and influence of 
 Babylonia were on the wane, the power of Assyria was 
 waxing ever greater. At length, in the middle of the 
 eighth century B.C., Babylonia was definitively conquered 
 and annexed to the Assyrian empire. But the Babylon- 
 ians were restive. Over and over again they broke out in 
 revolt against the kings of Nineveh. As a method of 
 checking the influence of Babylon as head and leader of 
 the national aspirations, and thus diminishing her power 
 to incite revolts, the Assyrians at last bethought them of 
 the plan of resurrecting Nippur, the ancient religious 
 capital of the country. Esarhaddon was the first of the 
 Assyrian kings to attempt a restoration of E-kur, some 
 time in the first half of the seventh century B.C. The 
 work which he began was taken up and completed by his 
 son and successor, Ashurbanipal, with great expense and 
 magnificence. This monarch restored the ancient ziggu- 
 rat, facing it on all sides with panelled walls of brick. He 
 built a great tower of brick at the northern corner of the 
 outer wall, and replaced the ancient mud-brick structures 
 within the inner wall by new and finer buildings of baked 
 brick. He also made free use of enamelled bricks for 
 purposes of decoration. Outside of the temple proper 
 we found his constructions and his records on hill VHI., 
 where he erected buildings for purposes connected with 
 the temple administration, as the Cossaeans had erected 
 similar buildings on hills I., IX., and X.
 
 262 NIPPUR. 
 
 He died in 626 B.C., and shortly afterwards his great 
 empire was overthrown. One of the last places, if not 
 the last, which remained loyal to Assyria in Babylonia 
 was Nippur, as shown by the tablets of Ashur-etil-ilani, 
 son of Ashurbanipal, dating from 621 and 620 B.C., which 
 we found in hill VIII., in the first year of our excava- 
 tions. Shortly after this Nippur was captured by Nabo- 
 polassar, who, with his greater son, Nebuchadrezzar, 
 founded a new empire wath Babylon as its capital; the 
 great temple of Bel at Nippur, built by Ashurbanipal, 
 was destroyed by the servants of the other Bel of Baby- 
 lon, and the brick structures with their decorations of 
 enamelled bricks reduced to formless heaps of debris. 
 
 With this destruction the history of E-kur, the temple 
 of Bel, or En-lil, may be said to have come to an end. 
 It was rebuilt again by some later monarch, at or after 
 500 B.C., probably, but in so different a form that we are 
 constrained to believe that it was no longer a temple to 
 Bel of Nippur, but the house of worship of a deity of 
 another cult, or possibly that it was no longer a temple 
 of any sort, but a building intended for other uses. Such 
 is the history of E-kur, as we learned it from the excava- 
 tions conducted at Nippur in 1889 and 1890. 
 
 But the history of Nippur does not end with the history 
 of its temple. Nebuchadrezzar II. was one of the great- 
 est kings that the world ever knew; but his new Babylon- 
 ian empire was short-lived. In the latter half of the 
 following century, 538 B.C., Babylon was conquered by the 
 Persians, and Cyrus established a new kingdom, still with 
 Babylon as one of its capitals. Nippur still continued to 
 exist as a city, and we found there inscriptions of the 
 later Babylonian kings, and of the Persian kings as late 
 as the time of Artaxerxes I., 450 B.C. 
 
 The Persian empire lasted until the year 331 B.C., when 
 Alexander overthrew it and established a Greek empire 
 in its place. His successors deserted Babylon and carried
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 263 
 
 the capital farther northward to Seleucia, a little below 
 Baghdad. From this time on we found no inscriptions 
 at Nippur for, among other things, clay tablets as writing 
 material, had almost entirely given way to papyrus or 
 other equally perishable substances, but we found in pot- 
 tery and clay figures abundant evidence of the occupancy 
 of the city during that period. 
 
 This half-Greek, half-Oriental empire of the Seleucids 
 lasted about one hundred and fifty years, to be over- 
 thrown by the wild hordes of the Parthian horsemen. 
 Now we are on the downward road in the history of the 
 civilization and culture of the region. The Parthians 
 seemed to go backward rather than forward, and the 
 period of their rule was a period of deterioration and de- 
 struction. Four hundred years they held sway, and 
 then gave place to the second Persian empire, the Sassa- 
 nian. The nominal capital of this second Persian empire, 
 as of the lirst, was beyond the mountains eastward, but 
 the real capital was Ctesiphon, which the Parthians had 
 built opposite to Seleucia, on the Tigris. These Sassa- 
 nian Persians were, more or less, fanatical Zoroastrians, 
 and the degree of religious toleration which was allowed 
 under the indifferent Parthians was greatly restricted 
 under their rule. Adherents of other religions, and es- 
 pecially the Christians, were frequently persecuted. 
 What had been left by the Parthians of the shrines of 
 the early heathenism seems to have been finally con- 
 verted to other uses or destroyed under them. Of course, 
 the old superstitions and many of the old rites and prac- 
 tices lingered on, sometimes under changed names, and 
 in spite of persecutions there were not a few Christians 
 in the country, while the Jews were very numerous and 
 powerful, especially along the Euphrates from the neigh- 
 borhood of Ramadieh southward below Babylon, as far 
 at least, as Nippur. The abundant Jewish remains from 
 Nippur during the Parthian, Sassanian, and early Arabic
 
 264 NIPPUR. 
 
 period show what a role they played at that place. Of 
 the Christians we found no certain traces, but Arabic 
 historians, quoted by Rawlinson, declare that Nippur 
 was a Christian bishopric as late as the twelfth cen- 
 tury A.D. 
 
 The Sassanians were more cultivated and civilized than 
 the Parthians ; nevertheless, the four hundred years during 
 which they in their turn held Babylon was also a period 
 of deterioration. At about the beginning of the Christian 
 era an Arabic kingdom, the kingdom of the Nasrides, 
 with Hira as its capital, had been established westward 
 of the Euphrates, on the border of the desert, opposite 
 Nippur and Babylon. In the seventh century after 
 Christ there came another Arab invasion, that of the 
 Mussulmans. The Persians were finally defeated in the 
 battle of Kadesieh, on the Babylonian plain, and in the 
 year 637 A.D. the Moslems became masters of the 
 country. Arabic writers report that Irak was still amaz- 
 ingly wealthy and populous at the time of the conquest. 
 It was full of great cities, and with the influx of the 
 Arabs many new ones were founded, such as Kufa, near 
 the ancient Hira, Wasit on the Shatt-el-Hai, and Bosrah 
 on the Shatt-el-Arab. In the middle of the following 
 century the Abbasside Caliphs acquired the supremacy 
 in the Moslem world, and made Baghdad their capital. 
 Then followed a period of great prosperity, promising 
 for a time to surpass the ancient conditions of the empire 
 of Nebuchadrezzar. But this period was of short dura- 
 tion. The Abbassides soon became corrupt, their empire 
 proved to be rotten, and they were succeeded by Turkish 
 hordes. From that time on the historj- of the country 
 is one of constantly increasing barbarism. The ancient 
 cities, and Nippur among them, became ruin mounds. 
 Persians and Turks struggled for the mastery. P"'inally, 
 in 1638 A.D., Murad IV. captured Baghdad for the last 
 time, and Irak was definitively annexed to the Turkish
 
 HISTORY OF NIPPUR. 265 
 
 empire. Since that time the condition of the country, 
 already devastated by war and ground down by misrule, 
 has grown constantly worse, until now it has become so im- 
 poverished and depopulated that the greater part of what 
 was once the most fertile region in the world is a desert 
 overrun by Arab hordes. In official documents the 
 Turks still call Baghdad " the glorious city," but the 
 glory, not only of Baghdad, but of all the rich plain of 
 Shinar, has long since departed.
 
 CHAPTER XL' 
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 
 
 A Birthplace of Civilization — The Fatherland of Abraham — A Charm 
 against Locusts — An Inscribed Stone — A Necropolis — A Pious Sheikh 
 — Ancient Ruins — An Ungracious Reception — A Parthian Tower — 
 Arab Flirts — A Horse Thief — A Sand Hill — A Cluster of Ruins — An 
 Ancient Inscription — A Happy Find — An Invasion of Locusts — A Box 
 of Tablets — An Ancient Temple — A Poor Tribe — A very Ancient 
 Cemetery — The Home of Babylonian Civilization — Lack of Wood — 
 Sons of Rechab — French Excavations — Babylonian Art — The River of 
 Life — Past and Present — Oriental Hospitality — The Home of Cholera 
 — The Montefich — Place of Pitch — A Door-Socket — Temple of Sin — 
 Ur and Eridu — Dated by Geology — Providential Sandstorm — Hospita- 
 ble Kaimakam — Erech — Gilgamesh Epic — Gilgamesh and Heracles — 
 Canals. 
 
 AN ancient Hebrew tradition, handed down in the 
 Book of Genesis, represents Ur of the Chaldees 
 as the fatherland of Abraham, that is, of the great ances- 
 tor of the Hebrew race. The Chaldees were the inhabi- 
 tants of Babylonia or Chaldea, now called Irak, the 
 alluvial delta of the Tigris and Euphrates, and more 
 properly of the southern portion of this delta. From the 
 latitude of Baghdad southward to the Persian Gulf ex- 
 tends a bay of alluvial silt, the delta of these two great 
 rivers, between the rocky plateau of Arabia on the west, 
 and the mountains of Persia on the east. It is a treeless, 
 stoncless plain, subject to inundations, and often marshy, 
 absolutely flat excepting only for the countless ruin- 
 
 ' For the route of the trip described in this and the following chapter 
 consult map of Irak, at end of Vol. I. 
 
 266
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 267 
 
 mounds representing ancient cities and canals, and a few 
 sand-dunes. It is one of the two, or possibly three 
 centres, to which the civilization and culture of the world 
 have been traced back by means of myths, rites, symbols, 
 customs, traditions, and the like. Our own civilization 
 originated here, and as for the Hebrews, it may fairly 
 be called their birthplace ; for not only does their tradi- 
 tion look to southern Babylonia as their ancestral home, 
 but the evidence of language, religion, and custom points 
 conclusively to the same place. They came from Ur in 
 Chaldea. 
 
 Ur is the modern Mughair, Place of Pitch, opposite 
 Nasrieh, on the western side of the Euphrates. But the 
 Ur of Hebrew tradition may be said to stand, not merely 
 for the city itself, but also for the whole region under its 
 influence in the days of its power, when it held the hege- 
 mony among the many states of southern Babylonia, 
 northward as far as Nippur, and southward to the head 
 of the Persian Gulf. This whole country, therefore, 
 might properly be called the grandfather land of the 
 Hebrews, as the fatherland of their first parent, Abra- 
 ham. It was on the northern edge of this fascinatingly 
 ancient region, among the ruins of Nippur, the modern 
 Nufar, that we had been conducting excavations during 
 the years 1889 and 1890. In the former of those years I 
 had made a brief trip southward as far as Tello, beyond 
 the Shatt-el-Hai canal. At the close of our excavations, 
 in May of 1890, I resolved to take a somewhat more ex- 
 tended journey through so much of the region as should 
 prove practicable, to conduct sondations at various points, 
 and especially to examine the great ruin-mounds of the 
 country, as far southward as Ur, in the light of my ex- 
 perience at Nippur, with the view of supplementing the 
 work of former explorers. I travelled light, without 
 cook and without escort, accompanied by Noorian, one 
 servant, and two picked workmen, Se'id Ahmed and
 
 268 NIPPUR. 
 
 Abbas, trusting entirely to Arab hospitality for food and 
 protection. But, unfortunately for our comfort in the 
 matter of food, it was the fasting month, Ramadhan, 
 when no good Mussulman may eat, or drink, or smoke, 
 from dawn till dark. During that month the Arabs sleep 
 by day and eat by night, and as I wished to work and 
 travel by day and sleep by night, I never could be sure 
 of more than one meal in the twenty-four hours. 
 
 My first night was spent at Shatt-el-Hosein in the 
 muthif, or guest house, of Hajji Tarfa, the great chief of 
 the Affech Arabs, and here the superstition of the 
 modern natives turned me into a prophet after the order 
 of that Balaam who once dwelt at Pethor, by the river 
 Euphrates. A plague of locusts was beginning to invade 
 the country. Against these Hajji requested me to give 
 one of his friends a charm. I protested that I was no 
 magician, but they insisted. Still I protested, until they 
 shrugged their shoulders and were still. Then I knew 
 that I must yield or else incur the odium of churlishness, 
 as one who could but would not. I asked how I should 
 write it, and they replied: " It is well known, in the 
 name of some prophet." Joel seemed to me peculiarly 
 adapted to the purpose, so I addressed a business letter 
 to the spirits of the locusts, commanding them by Joel's 
 name to leave the fields of Hajji's friend untouched on 
 pain of my displeasure. A difficulty arose when the man 
 asked me what to do with this precious document. But 
 the oracular afflatus fell on me, and I bade him keep it 
 about his person, unless the locusts actually invaded his 
 crops. In that case he was to burn it, and cast the ashes 
 on the waters of his canal, calling on the spirits that rule 
 the locusts to obey my behest. It should be their part 
 to drown their offending subjects in the canal. This I 
 supposed would be their natural fate if they came, so 
 that in any case I should have the credit. However, I 
 washed my hands of all responsibility, saying that I had
 
 A JOURNEY TO UH. 269 
 
 made no charms before, nor was I conscious of the power 
 to do so, therefore I could not tell how this would work, 
 and they should inform me of its effect, that I might 
 guide myself in future. 
 
 I knew that Hajji was the possessor of a fine inscribed 
 door-socket, found long since on the mound of Bint-el- 
 Amir at Nippur, and inherited by him from his father. 
 I had never been allowed to see this mysterious heirloom, 
 which he was reported to keep buried somewhere within 
 the walls of his mud castle, but this evening, in exchange 
 for my charm, he so far relaxed as to permit me to see a 
 rubbing of the inscription made by himself, but without 
 permitting me to make a copy of it. It turned out to be 
 an eight-line inscription of Ur-Gur, king of Ur. It 
 merely recorded, however, the fact already known, that 
 this very ancient sovereign had built or restored the great 
 temples of Sin at Ur and Bel at Nippur. Hajji told me 
 that Daoud Thoma had offered him ^50 for this stone. 
 He told me also of a wonderful ruin-mound in the marshes 
 toward Amara, where there was much treasure; but who- 
 ever tried to take the treasure could never find his way 
 out of the marshes. 
 
 The next day, accompanied by a guide of rank, Abdan, 
 who was also to serve as guarantee to other chiefs of 
 Hajji's friendship and protection, we started for Bismya, 
 the first great ruin-mound on our programme. Hajji's 
 only surviving son, Mohammed, escorted us to the bor- 
 ders of his father's land, where he received as a present 
 a Waterbury watch, carefully selected for the incredible 
 time it took to wind it up. It was the season of the 
 Euphrates flood, and the country was inundated and dififi- 
 cult to traverse. Delehem stood by the side of our road, 
 island-like, in the centre of a great lake, quite inaccess- 
 ible, but, as I had visited it and approximately determined 
 its character in the dry season of the previous year, that 
 did not so much matter. It consists of two hills, one
 
 270 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 about sixty and the other about forty feet in height, sur- 
 rounded by a low mound shading almost imperceptibly 
 into the plain. I found here three wells of brick laid in 
 bitumen, and quantities of coffin pottery. From my 
 later experience at Umm-el-Ajarib, I make no doubt that 
 Delehem was a necropolis. It is a prominent ruin, owing 
 to its height, but of small surface dimensions. After the 
 Babylonian fashion, it was so oriented that the corners 
 point approximately toward the cardinal points. 
 
 After we had passed Delehem we entered a peculiarly 
 unsafe region, a sort of land of Nod, full of vagabond and 
 irresponsible Arabs, whose hand is against every man, 
 and every man's hand against them. Some of these fel- 
 lows sprang up suddenly from the tamarisk bushes by the 
 edge of an old canal, calling out to rob us, and shouting 
 for their comrades to come and help them. But when 
 they saw the muzzle of Noorian's Winchester, they van- 
 ished as suddenly as they had appeared. At last we 
 reached the camp of a chief of the Sa'adun Montefich, 
 rich in herds of thousands of sheep and camels, close to 
 the edge of Bismya in the desert. Our entertainer, 
 Hajji Abd-ul-Hadi, proved to have made the pilgrimage 
 to Mecca, like all of the important chiefs whom I met in 
 that region. He had an imam attached to his establish- 
 ment, and he and his people were unusually pious, and 
 prayed frequently in front of his tent, standing in lines 
 and prostrating and rising in unison, with the imam at 
 their head. It turned out that this imam had brought 
 his daughter all the way to Nippur to be cured by my 
 charms the year before. What charm I had given her, 
 whether podophylline pills, Epsom salts, jallap, castor- 
 oil, quinine, sulphate of zinc, or horse-liniment, I do not 
 know. At all events, the charm had worked, and I had 
 great honor in consequence. In regard to medicine they 
 exhibited the same state of belief which we find repre- 
 sented in the ancient inscriptions. It was my magical
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 2/1 
 
 power that had wrought the cure, and the medicine was 
 the charm by which I had overcome the evil spirits of 
 disease. 
 
 The next morning by five o'clock we were at the ruins, 
 where we were able to work until ten, but always gun in 
 hand. It is a very unsafe region, and Abdan was in a 
 state of constant uneasiness, continually urging us to de- 
 part. Both he and the muleteers, men of Affech, averred 
 that certain unpleasant looking Arabs who appeared from 
 nowhere had come to rob us, and were only deterred by 
 the sight of the repeating rifles in the hands of Noorian 
 and myself. Imagine a formless congeries of heaps of 
 clay three-fourths of a mile or more in circumference, 
 and thirty or forty feet in greatest height, strewn with 
 fragments of brick and pottery, with possibly a little por- 
 tion of a brick wall cropping out here and there, and you 
 have a picture, not only of Bismya, but of a host of 
 similar ruins of ancient cities thickly scattered over the 
 surface of the country. In many places, especially in the 
 early morning, the surface of these mounds will be 
 covered over with a white incrustation of saltpetre, re- 
 sembling hoar-frost, and as you walk over them you will 
 see here and there thick lines of dust-colored earth, dif- 
 ferent in appearance from the surrounding soil. The salt- 
 petre represents the decay of ancient remains, and the 
 dust-colored lines represent the tops of ancient walls of 
 unbaked brick. By means of the latter you can some- 
 times trace out the ground plans of ancient houses, it 
 may be four or five thousand years old, in which, perhaps. 
 He buried inscribed tablets older than the time of Abra- 
 ham. And this is the great importance and attraction of 
 these ruins — the immense mass of inscribed material of 
 an incredibly early date which lies buried somewhere 
 under their formless exteriors, and which, when recovered 
 and deciphered, will throw so much light upon the history, 
 religion, manners, and customs of the forbears of our
 
 ■zjz 
 
 NIPP UP. 
 
 civilization. In most cases we do not know the ancient 
 names, much less the history of the cities wdiich these 
 mounds contain, even where they were evidently places 
 of the first importance. 
 
 Of course, five hours' examination could scarcely result 
 in great discoveries. We found remains of a large build- 
 ing, of brick and adobe, and in a clay drain-well of pipe 
 rings, close to the surface, we found several fragments of 
 tablets, and one entire clay tablet, which, unfortunately, 
 did not contain the name of the city. It was evidently 
 a city of ancient date and great importance. It was con- 
 nected with Nippur by a navigable ship canal, the Nil, 
 and the two cities must have been in close relations with 
 one another, for along the course of the canal between 
 the two runs an almost continuous chain of small ruin- 
 mounds. It is not improbable that Bismya represents 
 the ancient Nisin, or Isin, a sort of sister city of Nippur, 
 and one of the most important places in southern Baby- 
 lonia. Like the other great cities of this region the time 
 of its prosperity seems to have been the third thousand 
 B.C., and somewhere toward the middle of that thousand 
 we find it enjoying for a brief period hegemony over 
 much or all of this country. Inscriptions found at Ur 
 and Nippur show that the temples of both cities were 
 restored by Ishme-Dagan and other kings of Isin, and 
 that those cities themselves were among the tributaries 
 of Isin. This is about the sum of our present knowledge 
 of Isin, but if Bismya be indeed the site of this important 
 place, valuable discoveries await the spade of the ex- 
 plorer who shall some day be fortunate enough to dig 
 there. There was no water near Bismya at that time, 
 and the place was very unsafe. 
 
 That night we spent by an unnamed ruin-mound in 
 the camp of a Rufe'ya chief, Hajji Iz'ayr, and the next 
 morning with the sun we set out to look for my last 
 year's friend, Hamud-el-Bendir, who was said to be en-
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 273 
 
 camped near Tel Safi, and from whom I expected great 
 things, Safi is a prominent and promising looking tel, 
 close to the Shatt-el-Kahr, The latter is an enormous, 
 deep canal, as large as a river, but dry, or almost so, 
 since the change of course of the Euphrates; but the 
 ruined mud villages along its banks showed that there 
 had been water there not many years before. Hamud 
 had moved his camp, and we found it two or three hours 
 farther southward, in the midst ©f an almost boundless 
 greensward, an unusual sight in that gray-and-brown 
 country. I gave Hamud the gun which Bedry had 
 promised him from me. He took it and thanked God, 
 but made no pretence of doing anything for us. We 
 gave him a message from Hajji Tarfa, on which he scoff- 
 ingly asked if those ma'dan had sheikhs. He called 
 Noorian a kJioja^ i. e., a Jew, and broke camp the next 
 morning, leaving us to shift for ourselves. 
 
 Thursday, May 8th, we reached the ruins called Ham- 
 mam, or Hot Bath, a very common name for ruin sites 
 in Turkey. The principal ruin is a high tower of un- 
 burned brick, about which are a few low mounds of no 
 great extent. In that absolutely flat country this tower, 
 forty feet or so in height, forms a prominent landmark, 
 visible to a relatively great distance, and is a favorite 
 watch-tower of the bedouin. From the reports of some 
 former travellers I had expected to find here great ruins 
 of a city and temple of the first class, the latter with a 
 ziggurat, or high place. It chanced, moreover, that 
 Loftus, the pioneer explorer of this region, found on, or 
 by, one of the smaller mounds, quite on the surface, a 
 statue of Gudea, patesi of Sirpurla, whose buildings de 
 Sarzec afterwards unearthed at Tello with such splendid 
 results. This helped to increase my expectations of 
 Hammam, only to make my disappointment the greater. 
 The tower-like ruin proved to be no ziggurat, but a 
 square tower, built probably for purposes of defence. 
 
 VOL. II — 18
 
 274 
 
 X/FFUJi. 
 
 The interior was hollow, and digging there we found evi- 
 dences that it had once been occupied by a structure of 
 brick and mortar, around which had been built with sun- 
 dried bricks the solid, massive Avail of the tower. It was 
 not a large tower, some seventy feet square, I should say, 
 Avith an entrance on each of its four sides. The sun-dried 
 bricks of which it was built were in shape unlike anything 
 that I had ever found in old Babylonian ruins. The clay 
 of which they were made was not well worked, and the 
 straw with which the clay was abundantly mixed was in 
 a suspiciously excellent state of preservation. In fact, 
 Hammam bore every mark of a comparatively recent 
 ruin. The low mounds about it, as far as I could probe 
 them, contained nothing, and some of them certainly 
 were merely the banks and beds of former canals. I 
 could nowhere find any traces of important buildings, 
 nor indications of antiquities. Neither do the Arabs ap- 
 pear to find Babylonian antiquities here, as they do at 
 other neighboring mounds. The two experienced work- 
 men whom I had brought with me, after rooting up the 
 ground in a number of places, unqualifiedly pronounced 
 Hammam " no good." It seems not unlikely that it was 
 a tower to protect the canals, erected some time in the 
 post-Babylonian period, and probably later than the 
 Christian era. The statue found there may have been 
 brought from Yokha, or from other of the neighboring 
 ancient sites, and dropped. While there an Arab of the 
 neighboring Ahmed tribe told of the discovery of a stone 
 statue near Umm-el-Aqarib. He and Se'id Ahmed were 
 sent to fetch it. It turned out to be a small sitting statue 
 of marble, so badly mutilated by the Arabs that it was 
 little better than a shapeless mass of stone. We finally 
 dropped it at Tel Ede to make room in our crowded 
 panniers for more valuable objects. 
 
 Tlie incidents of our half-day's stay at Hammam are 
 worth recording as illustrative of the conditions of life in
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 2/5 
 
 that country. Having a few old crusts of barley-bread, 
 some figs, and some nuts, last relics of our last meal at 
 Nippur, Noorian and I went to a stagnant pool of rain- 
 water hard by to eat our lunch. Some women from a 
 neighboring camp of Arabs were bathing there, and at 
 the same time filling their water-skins; the donkeys which 
 carried the skins also standing in the water. As we ap- 
 proached the women donned their blue tunics, but still 
 continued to wash their feet and disport themselves in 
 the pool. Then a man came and drove a herd of camels 
 into the pool to drink. A small, stagnant pool of rain- 
 water, in which men, camels, horses, asses, dogs, and 
 sheep wade and bathe, and out of which all drink; such 
 is the life of the desert ! Seeing us eating, the women 
 commenced to call us infidels, which we stoutly denied 
 ourselves to be. 
 
 Then why do you eat in Ramadhan ? " 
 To travellers it is permitted to eat in Ramadhan." 
 No, it is because you are infidels that you eat in 
 Ramadhan." 
 
 We are not infidels: but we are travellers, therefore 
 we eat in Ramadhan." 
 
 " We do not eat in Ramadhan. You are infidels." 
 
 " That is your ignorance. The Koran says the travel- 
 ler may eat — even in Ramadhan. And as for us, we are 
 not infidels." 
 
 Then who is above ? " 
 Allah is above." 
 
 " Truly they are not infidels, for they believe in Allah. 
 They might even marry some of us." 
 
 Then commenced a very free and amusing play of chafT 
 between them and Noorian regarding their price, their 
 charms, his means, the price he would pay for a wife, etc. 
 One of them in particular was a real flirt. She wore a 
 pair of heavy silver anklets, which she took pains to dis- 
 play with results that would have done credit to a ballet-
 
 276 NIPPUR. 
 
 dancer. Finally Noorian arose to fill our leather bottle 
 with water. I called to him to fill it as far as possible 
 from the point where the women were stirring up the mud 
 and washing their feet, in the hope that it might be a 
 little less filthy. They asked what I had said, and he 
 translated the idea with brutal frankness. Their indigna- 
 tion was quite ludicrous, and they scolded me vocifer- 
 ously. I was, after all, nothing but a vile infidel, and 
 the dirtiest part of their bodies was cleaner than my soul 
 itself. The water in which they had bathed their feet 
 might cleanse, but could not defile me. 
 
 The other incident was more serious, and almost re- 
 sulted in a tragedy. I was trying to take a nap in the 
 shade of the tower in the heat of the day, when I was 
 roused by a gun-shot and the sounds of a general hulla- 
 baloo. Through the carelessness of the muleteer our one 
 good horse had been stolen, and was already fast disap- 
 pearing over the desert, bestridden by a strange youth, 
 who had followed us from Hamud's camp that morning. 
 But Sefa', an Ahmed chief, who had come to bring me 
 some camel's milk and beg me to become his guest, and 
 who was waiting on the other side of the tower until I 
 should wake up, instantly mounted his mare bareback, 
 and, with one follower, Go'ert, started in pursuit. From 
 the top of the mound we watched them disappear in the 
 distance over the boundless plain. At last we saw them 
 returning, the chief mounted on my horse. I descended 
 to meet him. He came galloping up, his loose garments 
 and kerchief head-dress fluttering gracefully in the breeze, 
 and, springing to the ground, his eyes flashing, and his 
 handsome face kindled with excitement, held up before 
 me a naked scimitar, slightly stained with blood. The 
 robber, of the notorious edh-Dhafir tribe, had sought 
 refuge at some tents of the Bene Hakhem, where Sefa', 
 overtaking him, tried to cut off his right hand, according 
 to bedouin ricrht toward those taken in the act of rob-
 
 A JOURNEY TO UK. 277 
 
 bery. He gave him one cut, when the Bene Hakhein 
 rushed out upon him with guns and threatened to shoot 
 him; for the youth was already within their tent-ropes 
 and entitled to their hospitality. So the robber escaped, 
 and only by promptly seizing the horse and galloping off 
 could Sefa' rescue that, not without some danger of being 
 shot by the angry Bene Hakhem — so he assured us. 
 
 I had intended to pass that night at the neighboring 
 mound of Tel Ede, but Sefa' kissed me and entreated 
 me, and of course I could not refuse to become the guest 
 of the man who had just done us such a service. Nor 
 did I regret it. I never received at the hands of any 
 man more charming and simple-hearted hospitality than 
 I received at the hands of this petty chief of a poor and 
 insignificant Arab tribe. 
 
 The talk in the muthif that night, as the coffee passed 
 around, was about the great incident of the day — the theft 
 of my horse. All came, and all took part in the discus- 
 sion, sometimes in loud tones of general harangue, while 
 again a number of little groups would discuss it sepa- 
 rately. Each man told me what he would have done, 
 and boasted of his prowess and the speed of his mare, and 
 all were proud of Sefa', their chief, and cursed the robber 
 and his tribe, the edh-Dhafir, and the Bene Hakhem who 
 had sheltered him. Sefa' had intended to capture the 
 youth and bring him back to me, he said. It would 
 have been the proudest moment of his life, if he could 
 have laid the robber bound at the feet of " the Beg." 
 What would I have done with him ? Would I have cut 
 off his head on the spot ? And they all twirled their 
 rosaries through their nervous fingers ; and Go'ert politely 
 forced his rosary into my hand and made m.e do the same ; 
 for this is their method of silent small talk. 
 
 But not only did Sefa' entertain us, he and Go'ert gave 
 us escort for several days. Sefa' rode a mare which at- 
 tracted my attention, because it was of a breed not found
 
 278 NIPPUR. 
 
 in that region, and I inquired about her. With much 
 dee he said that she had been stolen by his brother, who 
 was the most skilful horse-thief in that country. A day 
 or two afterward I met a man whose right hand had been 
 cut off because he was caught in the act of stealing. He 
 was disgraced for life. Stealing in itself considered is 
 honorable, only to be caught is dishonorable. 
 
 Tel Ede, the next ruin which we visited, proved even 
 more disappointing than Hammam. It also had been 
 reported to be a ziggurat, but it turned out to be a group 
 of natural sand-hills of rather curious formation. One 
 long hog-backed hill, over seventy feet in height, is sup- 
 ported by smaller hills of the same formation, all com- 
 posed of fine beach sand packed together with rock-like 
 consistency. At the base of these are the remains of an 
 ancient Babylonian town of no great size, Mar by name. 
 Some miles southward, close to Erech, are similar solid 
 sand hills, called Nufayji, and not many miles to the 
 northeast is a region of shifting sand-hills, by which the 
 ruins of Yokha and Ferwa are at the present time sur- 
 rounded and half-buried. This latter is a singular and 
 most desolate tract, utterly barren, swept and polished 
 by moving masses of white sand, which is piled in hills 
 by the winds one day, to be carried off and piled elsewhere 
 a few days later, but nevertheless always remains ap- 
 proximately in the same place. The hills themselves are 
 often twenty feet or more in height, and occupy a space 
 of a dozen or fifteen square miles. Another similar 
 region of shifting sand-hills exists just to the north of 
 Niffer. and several more are reported in various parts of 
 Irak. Former explorers have conjectured that this sand 
 has been blown in from the Arabian desert. Leaving 
 out of consideration the difficulty of accounting for its 
 passage over the Euphrates and the marshes which inter- 
 vene between it and the desert, the existence of original 
 sand-hills of the nature of Tel Ede and Nufayji suggest
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 279 
 
 another origin. Layard reports, however, on the basis 
 of information derived from the Arabs, that the sand 
 comes from springs in the ground, out of which sand 
 pours Hke water. 
 
 Yokha, or more properly Jokha, the next ruin-mound 
 which we visited after Tel Ede, is one of the most an- 
 cient and promising of the ruins of this region. The 
 mounds are low and formless, but very extensive, and 
 fragments of pottery and the like are strewn over the 
 plain for a great distance on every side. Fifteen minutes 
 to the southwest of Yokha are the similar but smaller 
 mounds of Ferwa, with Abu Adham the same distance 
 to the southeast of that, and another nameless mound 
 still five minutes beyond this. Evidently an important 
 centre of population once existed here. Close to these 
 mounds, moreover, runs an old canal-bed, said by the 
 Arabs to be the Shatt-en-Nil, or ancient Nil canal. This 
 was one of the greatest ship canals of Babylonian an- 
 tiquity, almost if not quite equal in importance to the 
 river Euphrates itself. It left that stream at Babylon, 
 which owed its commercial importance in part to its situa- 
 tion at this junction of waterways. One branch of the 
 canal, according to the statements of ancient wTiters, con- 
 nected the Euphrates with the Tigris. Another branch 
 ran southward through Nippur, and this we were able to 
 trace past Bismyaand Yokha until it rejoined the Euphra- 
 tes at Warka, the ancient Erech. These great cities, 
 therefore, possessed direct water communication with one 
 another. The importance of this will be perceived when 
 it is recollected that ancient Babylonia was as thoroughly 
 dyked and dammed as modern Holland, and that water,. 
 not land, formed the natural channel of communication 
 in the days of its prosperity. 
 
 At Babylon, Nippur, Erech, and almost all other ruin- 
 mounds which I visited in Irak the surface is strewn with 
 brick, pottery, and some glass, but stone is very rare.
 
 2 So NIPPUR. 
 
 At Yokha and the neighboring mounds, however, stone 
 fragments are quite numerous. In addition to millstones, 
 pestles, pounding-stones, flints and pebbles for domestic 
 use, all imported from other countries, there are quanti- 
 ties of fragments of vases and similar worked objects 
 made of stone, testifying on the one side to a consider- 
 able development of the art of stone working, and on the 
 other, from the nature of the stones used, to commercial 
 intercourse with Arabia, as far, probably, as the Sinaitic 
 peninsula. Such objects are also, so far as my experience 
 goes, an evidence of an antiquity antedating 2000 B.C. 
 In the case of Yokha we can prove this early date with 
 certainty. Loftus found here a small stone statue of the 
 Tello school of art, dating from the third thousand B.C., 
 and the University of Pennsylvania possesses an inscribed 
 door-socket of the same period. The inscription on this 
 stone reads, according to Professor Hilprecht's transla- 
 tion : " Gimil-Sin, the mighty king, king of Ur, king of 
 the four quarters of the earth, has built for Marduk his 
 favorite temple." Unfortunately, Gimil-Sin has not 
 added the ancient name of the city. We only learn from 
 the inscription that this city, whatever it may have been, 
 was tributary to Ur about 2500 B.C., the approximate 
 date of Gimil-Sin, and that it was the special seat of the 
 worship of Marduk or Merodach, the same god who ap- 
 pears later as the patron saint of Babylon, and ultimately 
 usurps the title of Bel, the lord, and becomes the supreme 
 and almost sole god of the country. 
 
 In addition to this stone, the University of Pennsyl- 
 vania also possesses a number of very curious, inscribed 
 clay tablets from Yokha, which have not yet been de- 
 ciphered, but which Pognon and Hilprecht both pro- 
 nounce to be older than 2000 B.C. These tablets seem 
 to contain business contracts and records, but, unfortu- 
 nately, like the door-socket from the temple of Marduk, 
 they also fail to mention the name of the city. We can
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 28 1 
 
 only say that it was a place of wealth and importance in 
 the middle, of the third thousand B.C., and that at the 
 close of that thousand it was already in ruins, and had 
 ceased to be inhabited. This may seem to be an impo- 
 tent and unsatisfactory conclusion, but it must be remem- 
 bered that we are only beginning to find our way in the 
 ancient history of Babylonia, and have as yet few land- 
 marks to guide us, so that even such a result as this has 
 its importance. 
 
 But wealthy and prosperous as it once was, Yokha is 
 certainly not a pleasant place of residence at the present 
 time. There is not a drop of water within three miles, 
 even in the season of the inundations, and the lightest 
 wind raises a suffocating cloud of dust. As there is al- 
 ways considerable wind a few feet above the surface of 
 the plain, at least by day, so there is an almost continu- 
 ous sand-storm on the mounds. 
 
 We arrived at Yokha in rather poor condition. The 
 water at the camp of the Sa'adun chief, Hajji Mensur, 
 where we had spent the previous night, was so animated 
 that we were compelled to strain it through our handker- 
 chiefs before we could persuade ourselves to drink it. We 
 had originally stopped at this camp in the hottest part of 
 the day on our way from Tel Ede to Yokha, merely to 
 get a drink of water, for lack of which our men had re- 
 fused to work longer at Tel Ede, and to ask the way. 
 Hajji Mensur insisted, however, that we should spend 
 the night with him and go on in the morning, and would 
 not take no for an answer. They were very religious 
 people at this camp, and Hajji Mensur, noticing that my 
 tent was lined with green, the Moslem sacred color, bor- 
 rowed it from me for a half hour or so, had all his rugs 
 transferred thither, and turned it temporarily into an 
 oratory, to my surprise and amusement. But although 
 he had thus insisted on making us his guests and had 
 prayed in my tent, our pious host broke camp very early
 
 282 NIPPUR. 
 
 the following morning, apparently for the purpose of 
 making us move on, and to avoid the duty of giving us 
 something to eat. The consequence was that, as before 
 said, we were not in the best condition when we reached 
 the mounds of Yokha. The wand was already quite 
 strong there, and it was with some difficulty that we 
 could erect our tent. Then we set to work to explore 
 the mounds, sending Abdan and one of the muleteers 
 down to the plain to try and get some water and some 
 bread. They did not return, and we grew very thirsty. 
 Sefa' saw a herd of camels a mile or so away, and sug- 
 gested that he and I should go and see if we could not 
 milk one. But when we reached them the camel herds- 
 men were there, and would neither sell nor give us any 
 milk. We learned, however, that there was a Montefich 
 camp a couple of miles farther away, and decided to go 
 to that and see what we could find. On the way we 
 found Abdan sitting on the ground groaning, hugging 
 himself, and perspiring most profusely. He told us that 
 he was dying. In fact he had drunk too much sour milk, 
 and had a bad stomach-ache. The muleteer came along 
 just then, and we hoisted Abdan on a mule and sent him 
 and the muleteer, with the bread and water which they 
 had obtained, back to our people at Yokha ; while we 
 continued our ride to the camp where they had obtained 
 those things. This proved to belong to a Sa'adun sheikh, 
 named Ghalib. He entertained us with considerable 
 hospitality, and insisted on giving us quite a dinner, after 
 which we returned to Yokha, to find everything envel- 
 oped in clouds of sand. Noorian and the men had aban- 
 doned work altogether, and were lying huddled together 
 in the tent, literally almost buried in sand. They were 
 in consequence strongly of the opinion that Yokha was a 
 place where nothing would be found, and anxious to 
 strike the tent and leave at once. 
 
 It was with much diTficultv that I could make one of
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 283 
 
 the men, Abbas, come out and work with me. Now I 
 was convinced by what I had observed that Yokha 
 was not only a very important and ancient ruin, but also 
 that the antiquities did not lie very far beneath the 
 surface. But my first few efforts at excavation were 
 without important results. In the meantime evening 
 was approaching, and Sefa' insisted that we must not 
 pass the night on the mounds. Partly this may have 
 been due to the belief, common also among the an- 
 cient Hebrews, that all ruin-mounds are haunted by 
 evil spirits, but partly it was due to the fact that he 
 feared lest, if we remained on the mounds, we should be 
 attacked by foes of a more carnal nature. For in be- 
 douin regions a barren patch, a no-man's land, is always 
 peculiarly unsafe ; every one is free to rob you there. 
 You must encamp by the tent of some sheikh, in order 
 to secure his protection. Accordingly Sefa' insisted that 
 we should go to the tents of Ghalib to spend the night. 
 At first I declined to go, as it had been my intention to 
 camp on the mounds in order to have as much time as 
 possible to explore Yokha. But Sefa' pointed out what 
 he regarded as sure signs that some neighboring Arabs 
 proposed to attack us as soon as it should be dark, and 
 all the others grew so uneasy that at last I had to give 
 the order to load the mules and strike the tent. How- 
 ever, I made the best use of my time, while they were 
 catching and loading the mules, and Abbas and I worked 
 hard with our picks and scrapers. At last, quite close to 
 the surface, we found an inscribed tablet of unbaked clay, 
 then another, and another. Then we found a fine and 
 very curious tablet of well-baked clay of the most ancient 
 period. Soon we had two or three more similar tablets. 
 But by this time the mules were loaded, and Sefa' was 
 begging us to hasten before it should be quite dark. It 
 is difficult to describe the feelings of the explorer when 
 he has made a " find"; danger, hunger, thirst, and all
 
 284 NIPPUR. 
 
 physical discomforts are unknown in such moments. I 
 finally ordered the mules to go ahead towards Ghalib's 
 camp, while Abbas, my horse, and I should remain until 
 we came to some sort of stopping-place, as it were. When 
 we finally started my pockets were full of as many beauti- 
 ful tablets of baked clay as they could carry, and several 
 more were carefully buried in a sand-heap near the place 
 where we had been digging. Of course we were full of 
 excitement, because here, on a ruin-mound never before 
 explored, whose ancient name even was unknown, we 
 had found inscribed tablets, at least four thousand years 
 old, in a most beautiful state of preservation, ready to 
 reveal to us we knew not what secrets of antiquity. We 
 had not expected quite such a success as this from a little 
 surface-scratching of an ancient mound. Moreover, what 
 we had found gave us assurance of the existence of more 
 material of the same sort close to the first ; and we looked 
 forward with great anticipations to the resumption of the 
 work on the morrow. 
 
 It was long after sunset when we arrived at Ghalib's 
 camp, and I think that that chief had already some time 
 had his evening meal. However, he ordered something 
 to be prepared for us, and while we were waiting for it to 
 be ready I sat on a rug with him in front of his muthif 
 and instructed him in smoking an American pipe, which, 
 being very different from an Arab pipe, afforded him 
 much amusement. Suddenly an army of locusts on the 
 march was upon us. By diligent use of both my hands I 
 kept them off my neck and face, but my legs disappeared, 
 and my tobacco-pouch and other objects that lay beside 
 me were covered to a depth of several inches. They could 
 not penetrate beneath my tight-fitting garments, but the 
 poor drawerless Arabs all around were frantically hopping 
 up and down, and slapping themselves in ridiculous 
 agonies of ticklishness. Ghalib maintained his dignity 
 for some time; but at last he told me that, while he gen-
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 285 
 
 erally wore drawers, he had left them off that day, and 
 got up and joined the dance. I was left alone on the 
 rug, the nearest approach to a stationary human being, 
 so far as I could observe, in the whole encampment. 
 After some time it was reported that the tents at the 
 other end of the camp were almost free of locusts, and 
 we adjourned thither. Our own tent and part of our 
 effects were so buried that we left them behind, sleeping 
 in the open that night. As to dinner, it was past mid- 
 night before we got anything to eat, for the locusts in 
 their first onset had put out the fires and overlaid and 
 permeated the food Ghalib's women were preparing for 
 us, and it was necessary to build fresh fires and cook 
 another dinner. 
 
 The next morning Ghalib broke camp before three 
 o'clock, and we were obliged to do the same. It was 
 only by the most stalwart and persistent begging that we 
 obtained a very little drink of camel's milk to stay our 
 stomachs for the hard day's work before us. We 
 further succeeded in hiring a camel to carry water, and 
 later in the day one of the camel drivers procured us a 
 little barley-bread. With this provision we spent another 
 day in examining Yokha and the neighboring mounds. 
 The heat was intense, so that I could not thole my bare 
 hand on the metal portions of my gun, or even on the 
 sand. But the results repaid us, and we carried off a 
 whole box of tablets when we left, more, in fact, than 
 we were able properly to care for with our lack of prepa- 
 ration for such a " find." They were found all stored 
 together in a hole in the ground, where they had evi- 
 dently been buried by someone between four thousand 
 and five thousand years before. 
 
 From Yokha we went to the sister ruin-mound of Fer- 
 wa, which proved to be a smaller collection of mounds 
 of the same general character. A short distance beyond 
 Ferwa was another ruin-heap, called Abu Adham, where
 
 286 NIPPUR. 
 
 I found the remains of an interesting building, two rooms 
 of which I was able to trace in their entirety. The inner 
 room was a hall of columns, such as Solomon built in his 
 temple at Jerusalem; only these columns were of brick 
 and not of wood or stone. The line of the outer walls of 
 both rooms also was relieved by half columns at regular 
 intervals, making the two appear to have constituted a 
 whole by themselves. The corners of the building, after 
 the ancient Babylonian fashion, pointed roughly to the 
 cardinal points. Altogether this group of mounds seemed 
 to me one of the most interesting in the whole country, 
 and I believe that it is destined to yield results of the 
 most valuable description to the explorer's spade. 
 
 In the afternoon a sandstorm arose. We were on our 
 way to Umm-el-Ajarib (Mother of Scorpions), three miles 
 to the southeast of Yokha, intending to pass the night 
 at such camp as we should find near that place. But by 
 the time we reached Umm-el-Ajarib the air was so full 
 of sand that we could see but a few yards before us, and 
 were obliged to keep close together that we might not 
 lose one another. There was a camp near the mounds, 
 and the water of the inundations was only a quarter of a 
 mile away, but we saw neither, and after vainly groping 
 about, as it were, in the dark, we finally turned back to try 
 and find a camp which I had noticed close to Ferwa on 
 the south. This proved to be a camp of Bene Temim, 
 who are donkey-herds, and, like all donkey tribes, very 
 poor. They were too proud to let us buy food, and too 
 poor to give us much. Our dinner consisted of rice and 
 rancid butter, and the next morning we got nothing. 
 Nor were the facilities for sleeping much better. At first 
 the wind was so strong that we could not pitch our tent; 
 later swarms of mosquitoes fell upon us. The next morn- 
 ing I found a scorpion in my sleeve, and later we dug up 
 two or three more of these creatures at the mounds of 
 Umm-el-Ajarib, together with two snakes, killing a third
 
 A JOURXEY TO UR. 28/ 
 
 snake on the surface. As usual, the Arabs declared the 
 snakes to be poisonous. 
 
 Umm-el-Ajarib is an ancient necropolis. It was a 
 sacred burying-place long before Abraham's day, but its 
 ancient name and the special cause for its sanctity are 
 alike unknown. The burials in the central portions of 
 the mounds were chiefly in cists of brick, of which only 
 the floors and a few courses of the bricks of the sides re- 
 main. The floors were thickly covered with ashes, indi- 
 cating the custom of burning in connection with the 
 funeral rites. The bricks were laid in bitumen as mortar. 
 They were of a peculiar fashion, which I found at Nippur 
 only in the most ancient buildings. The cists themselves 
 were regularly arranged, like cemetery lots, and streets 
 could be traced among them. Generation had been 
 buried over generation, in how many strata I do not 
 know, but the mounds at their highest part measure 
 forty or fifty feet. The whole was drained by a system 
 of wells of pottery rings, set at intervals of twelve or 
 fifteen feet apart. In one of these drains I found a 
 piece of an old Babylonian tablet. Toward the south- 
 east corner the mounds rose to their greatest height, 
 about thirty feet above the general level. Here there 
 was a much larger building and vast accumulations of 
 ashes. Fragments of stone vases and utensils were as 
 numerous as at Yokha. While we were at Hammam 
 there had been brought to us, as already narrated, from 
 the plain below the mounds of Umm-el-Ajarib a badly 
 defaced statue of coarse, white, calcareous stone, about 
 eighteen inches high. It represented a man in a sitting 
 posture with the hands clasped on the breast, like the 
 famous statues from Tello. De Sarzec once made a fly- 
 ing trip to this point, which he incorrectly calls Moula- 
 gareb, and found here a head which is exhibited with 
 the Tello statues in the Louvre. It is regarded as the 
 most remarkable head in that collection, and, although
 
 288 NIPPUR. 
 
 not the oldest, is nevertheless claimed to antedate 
 3000 B.C. At least Umm-el-Ajarib was a very ancient 
 necropolis. 
 
 But Umm-el-Ajarib was not the only site of this nature 
 in that region. Zerghul, close to Tello, is a mound of 
 the same character; Delehem, near Nippur, is another; 
 and similar cemeteries existed in connection with Ur and 
 Erech, On the other hand, no great cemeteries have 
 been found in either northern Babylonia or Assyria. The 
 people of those countries, and even of other remoter 
 regions, seem to have brought their dead to be buried in 
 the cemeteries of southern Babylonia. The reason and 
 meaning of this are apparent. Southern Babylonia was 
 the home of the ancestors of the more northern people. 
 When the first generations migrated northward they 
 carried back their dead to be buried in the tombs of their 
 fathers, just as the Hebrews carried the bodies of Jacob 
 and Joseph back to Palestine. This custom grew into a 
 religious rite, until, in course of time, the cemeteries of 
 southern Babylonia became sacred burying-places,' not 
 only for those who derived their ancestry thence, but for 
 other peoples also. With slight changes, the custom 
 once established passed on from race to race and religion 
 to religion, until to-day we find the modern Mussulmans 
 of Persia bringing their dead to be buried at Nejef, Ker- 
 bela, and other less famous sites in Irak. The ancient 
 and original sacred cemeteries were located, as will be ob- 
 served, in the region which I have designated as the 
 fatherland of Abraham. 
 
 Three hours and a half from Umm-el-Ajarib is the 
 Shatt-el-Hai, or River of Life, a great ship canal which 
 has from time immemorial connected the Tigris with the 
 Euphrates. Irrigation canals run out from this, and the 
 
 ' The statement in Arrian, already referred to, tliat the graves of the 
 Assyrian (Babylonian) kings were in the marshes of southern Babylonia, 
 might be cited in further confirmation of this statement.
 
 A JOURXEY TO UR. 289 
 
 land is cultivated to some distance on cither side. It was 
 beautiful to see the green fields once more, after the 
 brown, barren monotony of the desert, but trees appeared 
 to be as deplorably absent here as elsewhere in Irak. 
 This has always been characteristic of the country. In 
 some regions, as at Nippur, tamarisk scrub and camel 
 thorn are abundant, but in general dung has constituted 
 the principal fuel because of the absence of wood. It was 
 this lack of proper fuel which caused the ancient Baby- 
 lonians to use so extensively sun-dried bricks and adobe 
 as building material, and even to write the larger part of 
 their contracts and similar documents on tablets of un- 
 baked, rather than of baked clay. Only very great kings, 
 who were able to draw their wood from other countries, 
 could afford to make much use of baked clay. The com- 
 parative rarity of bricks, again, caused kings to stamp 
 those which they made with their names and titles, and 
 bricks once made were used over and over again by succes- 
 sive builders. You may find in one and the same wall half 
 a dozen inscribed bricks of different kings living hundreds 
 of years apart, and this is equally true of the most- 
 ancient times and of the present day. I have found in 
 the most ancient walls of the most ancient kings at Ur 
 and Nippur still more ancient bricks used a second or 
 third time. Similarly, in the grand palace of the Persian 
 Chosroes at Ctesiphon, not a few Nebuchadrezzar bricks 
 may be found, and I have lived in a modern house in 
 Hillah built of bricks stamped with the name and titles 
 of the same monarch. 
 
 We were very hungry when we reached the shores of 
 the Shatt-el-Hai, and turned into the tents of a Bene- 
 Rechab chief, Hammadi, whom I had visited the year 
 before, in hope of obtaining food of some sort. These 
 Bene-Rechab were supposed by Loftus to be the descend- 
 ants of that Jonadab, the son of Rechab, mentioned in 
 the Bible, whose sons were so faithful to their father's
 
 290 NIPPUR. 
 
 command not to dwell in houses, and never to drink wine. 
 They, therefore, assumed great importance in his eyes, 
 and he found out many wonderful things about them. It 
 is true that they do not, as a rule, live in houses, but in 
 huts or tents, according as they stand nearer to the 
 bedouin or to the ma'dan stage of civilization, or lack of 
 civilization, for they are in the process of transition from 
 the former to the latter; neither do they, any more than 
 all Arabs, drink wine, but there is no possible connection, 
 it is hardly necessary to say, between them and the sons 
 of Rechab of the Bible. They are not a tribe of high 
 rank, as the Arab rating goes, and were, until recently, 
 among the tributaries of the Sa'adun Montefich. They 
 did not treat us with nobility, and although I doctored 
 most conscientiously an offensive open wound from which 
 their chief was suffering, and even gave him some iodo- 
 form for future use, they gave us no food, nor did we 
 taste any that day until we succeeded in buying some 
 cucumbers on the very shores of the Shatt-el-Hai. 
 
 Our next objective point, Tello, was situated on the 
 southern shore of the Shatt-el-HaY, somewhat lower down. 
 As at this season of flood the land in the immediate 
 neighborhood of this canal on both sides Avas largely 
 under water, we decided to make the rest of the journey 
 to Tello by boat. Accordingly w^e sent the horses and 
 mules on empty with the muleteer and one of our w^ork- 
 men, and engaging for ourselves and our luggage a tur- 
 ada, a long, narrow boat of Indian wood, smeared with 
 bitumen, we dropped down stream to de Sarzec's old 
 camp, which we found occupied by an Arab village. 
 Here, fortunately, the people were willing to sell us a 
 lamb, some unleavened barley cakes, some cucumbers, 
 and some milk, and to loan us a kettle, wdth which equip- 
 ment we were able to secure a good square meal, and of 
 this we all stood sorely in need. Indeed, for my own 
 part, I was so starved and exhausted that I felt a wild
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 29 1 
 
 craving for some strong liquor, and would have been al- 
 most ready to have given an inscribed tablet from Yokha 
 for a bottle of whiskey, I had never understood before 
 how much a craving for stimulants may be due to an ex- 
 hausted system. 
 
 De Sarzec has deservedly won both fame and pelf 
 through his excavations at Tello, or the Ruin Heaps, 
 and the statues which he excavated there now form one 
 of the greatest treasures of the Louvre. These excava- 
 tions were conducted at intervals during a period of nine- 
 teen years, the last expedition terminating in 1894. The 
 mounds proved to cover the site of an ancient city, Lag- 
 ash or Sirpurla, long a tributary of Ur. There were 
 found here, among other things, a number of inscribed 
 statues, for the most part of a greenish-black diorite, of 
 astonishing artistic excellence ; a large inscribed silver 
 vase ; and a building with very remarkable pilasters of 
 inscribed brick ingeniously made in special forms for the 
 purpose; all belonging to a certain Gudea, subject king 
 or viceroy of Sirpurla, some time before 2500 B.C. Lat- 
 terly an immense deposit of inscribed clay tablets has 
 been found here by the Arabs and looted. Similar but 
 less abundant remains of Ur-Bau of Lagash, and Ur-Gur, 
 and Dungi, kings of Ur, were also discovered, together 
 with a number of reliefs and inscribed objects of various 
 kinds of still earlier kings, the most archaic yet found in 
 Babylonia outside of Nippur. The stone inscriptions are 
 all votive in character, and therefore throw little direct 
 light on historical events. On the other hand, the ob- 
 jects themselves possess the greatest value for the history 
 of art, as well as of civilization. They have revealed the 
 existence in southern Babylonia, before 3000 B.C., of an 
 art so highly developed that we must suppose it to have 
 been preceded by centuries of civilization. 
 
 Of course this art was not confined to one provincial 
 town, Sirpurla, although that seems to have been the
 
 292 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 centre of artistic influence, the Weimar of southern Baby- 
 lonia, whose princes were great patrons of art and artists. 
 As already pointed out, a statue of Gudea has been 
 found as far north as Hammam, and work of the same or 
 a similar character has been discovered at Umm-el-Ajarib 
 and the mounds of the Yokha complex. At Xippur also 
 we found fragments of similar statuary. This seems to 
 indicate that a more extensive examination of the ruin- 
 mounds of southern Babylonia will reveal still further 
 remains, which may enable us to trace the history and 
 development of this art further in both directions. As 
 far as our present knowledge goes, it began in the fourth 
 thousand B.C., and ended in the third thousand. Fifteen 
 hundred years later the Assyrians developed an art which 
 is presumably the offspring of the art of southern Baby- 
 lonia, but how, or by what stages, remains to be dis- 
 covered. 
 
 Tello consists of several low mounds covering a large 
 surface, much of which has not yet been explored. De 
 Sarzec's work was very limited in the amount of actual 
 excavation, and his discoveries were, comparatively 
 speaking, on the surface. Walking over the mounds I 
 found a profusion of bricks with Babylonian inscriptions, 
 four different inscriptions in all, and one with a curious 
 bilingual inscription,' Aramaic and Greek, later than the 
 time of Alexander the Great. Inscribed cones could be 
 had by the bushel. These are clay objects, seven or 
 eight inches in length, and in shape resembling large, 
 round-headed nails. They are a conventionalized form 
 of the phallic symbols, which in one shape or another 
 abound all over southern Bab^donia. They were thrust 
 or built into the walls for a religious purpose. 
 
 ' This is an inscription of a certain Adarl-nadin-akhes, or Ramman-nadin- 
 akhe. It is interesting to see tiie ancient Babylonian name reproduced at 
 that late date. The four Babylonian kings whose bricks I found lying on 
 the surface were Ur-Gur and Dungi of Ur, and Gudea and Ur-Bau of 
 Lagash.
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 293 
 
 From Tello we descended to Shatra by turada, sending 
 our horses .around by land as before. There was an ac- 
 tive hfe on the river, and we passed many boats, chiefly 
 loaded with women, the men, as many as there were, 
 naked or half-clothed, pulling on the towpath. V'illages 
 were numerous, and cattle and buffaloes plenty. The 
 latter stood up to their eyes in the water on the fluid 
 banks. Their keepers, naked, or almost so, did the 
 same, whether as a protection against the heat or the 
 tormenting flies. Along the northern shore marched a 
 mighty column of horse-like locusts, looking for a cross- 
 ing. Detachments from the main column were constantly 
 attempting to fly or swim across, and the river was full 
 of their bodies, for ninety-nine were drowned to every 
 one that reached the southern shore. 
 
 Shatra is a comparatively thriving town of five hun- 
 dred houses. In regard to the construction and arrange- 
 ment of its private dwellings it seemed to me to differ 
 little from ancient Nippur. The houses are built of sun- 
 dried bricks or adobe, with a few courses of poor fire- 
 baked bricks below. Toward the street is a blank wall. 
 Through a passage-way, on one or both sides of which 
 may be small rooms, you enter a court. This is sur- 
 rounded by rooms and covered alcoves, and out of it 
 open one or more interior courts for the women and 
 children, the servants and kitchen, etc. The larger 
 rooms are narrow in proportion to their length. The 
 roofs are formed by stretching split palm logs on pop- 
 lar poles from side to side. Over these are spread 
 palm-leaf mats, and the whole is covered with a couple 
 of feet of well packed earth. The roofs are reached from 
 the court by stairways entirely without balustrades. 
 Sometimes you find a small roof room, more often there 
 is nothing which could be called a second story. Toward 
 the street and the neighboring houses there is usually a 
 parapet of sun-dried bricks to shield the roof from the in-
 
 -94 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 trusion of other eyes, but toward the court there is 
 nothing. The roofs and the courts constitute the bed- 
 rooms of the entire population during the greater part of 
 the year. On the outskirts of the city are a number of 
 huts of reeds and mats, the homes of the poorer and 
 semi-nomadic inhabitants. As for the everyday hfe of 
 the people, Abraham might dwell in Shatra to-day and 
 find little change, except for the use of coffee and to- 
 bacco. And if no such ancient sheikh can be found 
 among its inhabitants, at least not a few modern sheikhs 
 of the Sa'adun Montefich have houses there, which they 
 occupy during part of the year, and you find the same 
 combination of bedouin and town life, and the same pos- 
 sibility of easy transition from one to the other which 
 existed at Ur of the Chaldees in the days of Abraham. 
 
 Belal Effendi, one of the principal men of the place, 
 took us in and entertained us with a hospitality that re- 
 minded me of the Arabian Nights. His house and all he 
 had was mine, and he sought to forestall my every act by 
 some attentive courtesy. When we went to the bath his 
 servants had anticipated us, incense was burning, and 
 handsome cloths were spread in my honor, and the bath- 
 man had been instructed to refuse a fee. The roof of his 
 house was surrendered to me for a bedroom. The first 
 night as I went to bed a wailing arose from a roof hard 
 by. A soul had departed, and the women were wailing 
 for the dead. It is a horrible, weird, uncanny noise, but 
 half-human, the same which has been used by the people 
 of the East since time has been, but such as in our 
 Western lands only the violently insane seem capable of 
 uttering. In the distance, on the edge of the town, the 
 jackals, like disembodied children, were crying piteously, 
 fit accompaniment to the uncanny death-wail. 
 
 At evening, as the shadows began to fall, I used to sit 
 in front of Belal's house and watch the life of the 
 country. A little way from me sat the kaimakam (pre-
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 295 
 
 feet), the kadi (judge), the officers of the garrison, and 
 all the notables of the town. That street along the river 
 was both the lounging-place of fashion and the business 
 centre of the community. Horses and mules and don- 
 keys were always drinking and bathing. Women in nose- 
 rings, blue tatoo, and one blue cotton garment came to 
 fill their water-jugs, taking advantage of the opportunity 
 to wash their feet, or even, if no man were close at hand, 
 to take a surreptitious dip in the cooling, muddy fluid. 
 Long boats crowded with wild, picturesque Arabs were 
 constantly arriving and departing. Although it w^as 
 Ramadhan, life along the river front was active and 
 diverting. 
 
 It was in the neighborhood of Shatra that the cholera 
 epidemic originated which swept Irak and travelled into 
 Persia in 1889, reaching Europe through Russia in 1892. 
 Shatra itself suffered so terribly that the people deserted 
 their houses and fled into the desert, burning all the reed 
 huts as a disinfectant. It is asserted by the authorities 
 that cholera is endemic in that region, as the Bubonic 
 plague was in all Irak until it was stamped out a genera- 
 tion ago. It is a flat country, very little above the water 
 level, and there are permanent marshes of large extent. 
 The life of the natives is barbarous and insanitary in the 
 extreme. 
 
 Friday, May 24th, we started down the River of Life 
 for Mughair, sending our horses empty through the 
 marshes. As we descended the stream grew smaller. 
 Branches ran off hither and thither, the marshes grew 
 larger, villages became infrequent, then ceased altogether. 
 Still there were buffaloes with their keepers wallowing in 
 the mud, and the march of the locusts continued as be- 
 fore. Boats we met in numbers, towing up the stream. 
 There was little wind, the heat was intense, and the fly- 
 bites maddening. We met a turada which had come up 
 the Euphrates from Bosrah, and the people, noticing my
 
 296 NIPPUR. 
 
 helmet of Indian pith, caHed out one to another, " Have 
 the English come here, too ? " Finally the stream lost 
 itself in little channels in the mighty marshes which 
 stretch out behind Nasrieh. Night fell, the boatmen, 
 worn out, proposed to stop until dawn at some miserable 
 huts in those fever-stricken, mosquito-tormented marshes, 
 and even Noorian was of the same mind, but I threat- 
 ened and persuaded, and we pressed on, reaching Nasrieh 
 late at night, after a journey of fifteen hours and a half, 
 there to go supperless to bed on the roof of a khan. The 
 next day we were surprised to see about us a new and 
 thriving looking city, built of real brick, which at first 
 sight one might have fancied to be a small German factory 
 town transplanted thither by magic. It was built some 
 twenty years since by Nasr Pasha, a great Montefich 
 chief, who ruled the whole country from Bosrah to the 
 mounds of Bismya. He was ultimately enticed to Con- 
 stantinople, where he died in honorary confinement. 
 Once rid of him, the Turks succeeded in reducing the 
 Sa'adun Montefich to actual subjection to the govern- 
 ment of the Sultan, and Nasr's city is now the seat of a 
 Turkish governor, or mutessarif. It is surrounded on three 
 sides by rice marshes. Across the Euphrates is the 
 desert, and in the distance, some miles back from the 
 river, rise the tower-like ruins of Mughair, or Place of 
 Pitch, so called by the Arabs on account of the bitumen 
 used for mortar by the ancient builders. 
 
 Taylor conducted inextensive but successful excava- 
 tions here in 1854, and from inscriptions found by him, 
 Mughair was identified as the ancient Ur. Since that 
 time nothing has been done toward the exploration of 
 this most important site. The natives have exploited it 
 somewhat as a brick mine, and at the time of my visit 
 thousands of bricks were piled up ready for removal. I 
 found lying on the surface a diorite door-socket of unusual 
 size, bearing an inscription of Gimil-Sin, king of Ur,
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 297 
 
 which reads: " To Sin, the iirst born son of Bel, his be- 
 loved king, has Gimil-Sin, the beloved of Sin, king of 
 Ur, king of the four quarters of heaven, etc., built his 
 beloved temple." Several stones containing similar in- 
 scriptions of the still more ancient king, Ur-Gur, were also 
 lying on the surface. All of these had been more or less 
 defaced by superstitious Arabs. On two more stones 
 the inscriptions had been rendered illegible, and on still 
 another the inscription had been entirely chipped away. 
 I also found several inscribed bricks, but none differing 
 from those already found byTaylor. The large door-socket 
 I carried away with me in order to prevent its utter de- 
 struction. As it was too big a load for anything but a 
 camel, it occasioned me much trouble and expense. 
 Properly speaking, it should have been turned over to 
 the Imperial Museum, but the stupidity, obstructive- 
 ness, and corruption of local officials rendered such a 
 course impossible, and finally, in order to save it from 
 destruction, it was sent to Philadelphia. 
 
 The ziggurat of Mughair has fortunately not been 
 quarried by the Arabs. It is in an excellent state of pre- 
 servation, as such ruins go, and is the best specimen of 
 this class of construction to be seen in Irak. First comes 
 a large platform, built of unbaked brick, and rising about 
 twenty feet above the plain. On top of this is a rectang- 
 ular oblong, one hundred and ninety-eight by one hun- 
 dred and thirty-three feet, consisting of a solid mass of 
 unbaked brick, faced with baked bricks. The corners of 
 this are roughly toward the cardinal points. The side 
 walls are relieved by square half columns. On this stands 
 still another smaller stage, also consisting of a solid mass 
 of sun-dried brick faced with kiln-dried, the whole rising 
 to a height of seventy feet. On the northeastern side of 
 this upper stage are the remains of some sort of entrance 
 or approach to the building which originally surmounted 
 the zicrcrurat. The calcined condition of the surface of
 
 298 NIPPUR. 
 
 the upper stage shows that this building contained wood, 
 and that it was destroyed by fire, but more than this 
 cannot be determined. Outside of the ziggurat or high 
 place I traced an enclosing wall, within which must have 
 been the temple courts and chambers, and possibly minor 
 shrines of related deities, the ziggurat itself being dedi- 
 cated to the Moon, Sin, who is described as the son of 
 Bel of Nippur. 
 
 By means of the inscriptions we are able to trace, at 
 least in part, the history of this temple. The first con- 
 struction of which we now have evidence is that of Ur- 
 Gur, about 2800 B.C., and the lower of the brick stages 
 seems to be substantially as he left it. It was restored 
 by Ishme-Dagan of Isin, and by Gimil-Sin toward the 
 middle of the same millennium, three or four hundred 
 years later. Then follows a restoration by Kurigalzu, a 
 Cossaean king of Babylon, in the fourteenth century B.C., 
 and finally by Nabonidus, the last king of Babylon, 550 
 B.C. It was one of the most renowned and revered seats 
 of worship through the whole Babylonian and Assyrian 
 period, and is referred to over and over again in the 
 records of the Assyrian kings. That the worship con- 
 ducted here also affected the ancestors of the Hebrews 
 it is fair to presume from the name of their sacred moun- 
 tain, Sinai, or mountain of the Moon-god. 
 
 But Ur was not only the seat of a great temple. It 
 was a great city of the first political importance, as we 
 have seen, dominating southern Babylonia about 4000 
 B.C., during the first part of the third thousand B.C., and 
 again toward the middle of the same millennium. It 
 was also a manufacturing centre, as is shown by the great 
 heaps of slag which form part of the ruin-mounds that 
 surround the temple area. Both Ur and its sister city 
 Eridu were also commercial towns, and teak found in the 
 ruins of the latter proves an early connection with India. 
 Eridu, which was at least as old as Ur, is represented by
 
 A JOURNEY TO UK. 299 
 
 the ruin-mounds of Novvawis, or Abu Shahrcin (Father 
 of Two Months), just visible from the top of IVIughair on 
 the very edge of the Arabian plateau, in the roaming 
 grounds of the lawless edh-Dhafir. Here Ea was wor- 
 shipped, the god of wisdom, and the father of mankind, 
 whom some would identify with Yah or Yahweh, the god 
 of the Hebrews. It is with this god that the Babylonian 
 legend of the origin of civilization seems to be connected, 
 according to which a fisherman came out of the Persian 
 Gulf each morning and taught the savage natives of the 
 land the arts and sciences, but above all the art of social 
 life, and each evening disappeared again in the waves of 
 the sea. This is, to be sure, a myth of a familiar type, 
 but the form it here assumed shows that the Babylonians 
 themselves regarded southern Babylonia, and especially 
 the sea coast, as the source of their civilization. 
 
 South of Eridu we find mention of but one city, Surip- 
 pak, the ship city, where the records were buried during 
 the flood. Both Ur and Eridu seem to have been orig- 
 inally located near the sea, if not on it. But at the pres- 
 ent time they are one hundred and twenty miles in a 
 direct line from the head of the Persian Gulf. Here 
 we have the means of fixing approximately the date of 
 civilization in southern Babylonia. The rate of alluvial 
 deposit at the head of the Persian Gulf, from the time of 
 Alexander until now, has been on the average about one 
 hundred feet a year. Assuming this as the rate of de- 
 posit for still earlier periods, we find that Ur and Eridu 
 would have stood on the shore of the sea about 6000 to 
 7000 B.C. This we may accept as a terminus ad qiicm ; 
 before this the country to which we have traced the 
 stream of civilization was not in existence. Of course it 
 must not be supposed that we can carry back our written 
 records to that period ; much less have we done so. The 
 earliest writing found as yet antedates somewhat 4000 
 B.C., with the exception of a few tiny tablets, which may
 
 300 
 
 NIPP UR. 
 
 be a thousand years or more earlier, but the bulk of the 
 earliest inscriptions belongs to the third thousand B.C. 
 This was the golden period of the south, after which the 
 star of empire travelled northward. I have seen no 
 mound which seemed easier and safer to excavate, or 
 promised richer results than Mughair. 
 
 From Mughair I had intended to proceed to Abu 
 Shahrein, which Taylor and Loftus had shown by their 
 excavations to cover the ruins of ancient Eridu. But on 
 inquiry no one knew where Abu Shahrein was to be found. 
 Some, to be sure, professed to know all about it, but on 
 more careful investigation it turned out that they were 
 professing a knowledge which they did not possess, in 
 order not to confess ignorance to the foreigners. The 
 general opinion was that it must be in the region south- 
 ward, about which no one knew anything except that the 
 edh-Dhafir lived there, and that it was so unsafe that no 
 one would be willing to go with us. We were already 
 suffering from the consequences of exposure and lack of 
 food, and our animals were also pretty well used up; 
 moreover, we had the great door-socket of Gimil Sin to 
 carry, together with all the material which we had picked 
 up at Yokha and Tello, and we could secure no extra 
 animals. Under the circumstances it seemed hardly 
 sensible to go into the dreaded edh-Dhafir country on a 
 hunt after an unknown site. And yet, all the time, it was 
 close at hand, and we had actually been looking at it with 
 our field-glasses from the top of Mughair, for, as I after- 
 wards learned, Nowawis is the Abu Shahrein of Taylor 
 and Loftus, and therefore the ancient Eridu, city of Ea. 
 
 Abu Shahrein being out of the question, there now 
 remained to be visited, as the fourth of the great cities of 
 the most ancient period, Warka, the ancient Erech. 
 Samawa on the Euphrates forms the most convenient 
 starting point for this trip, and toward Samawa I directed 
 my march. On the journey we had one rather unpleasant
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 3OI 
 
 experience. The weather was intensely hot and my 
 horse foundered. Then one of our pack-mules became 
 exhausted. This delayed us, and when at half-past four 
 we reached a camp of the Bedur Arabs we were com- 
 pelled to halt there because of these mishaps, and because 
 there was neither food nor water for a long distance be- 
 yond. The Bedur did not want us, and sought to excuse 
 themselves from the duties of hospitality, which are of 
 necessity binding toward travellers in a land where noth- 
 ing can be bought. But we insisted on being fed, and 
 even threatened to seize and kill a sheep if they would 
 not do it for us, until finally, out of very shame, they 
 grudgingly prepared a meal. In view of their unfriendly 
 attitude we asked for a guide, purposing to push on 
 through the night, in spite of the jaded condition of our 
 beasts. They refused to furnish one on pretence that a 
 hostile tribe, the Zeyad, was in front of them. A guard 
 against pilferers, which it is customary for a chief to give, 
 was also refused, and it became plain that they meant 
 to rob us in the darkness. We set up our beds in the 
 open, brought everything into a heap in the centre, tied 
 the horses almost to our beds, and took every precaution 
 to prevent robbery by other means than superior force. 
 But nature proved our most efficient protector. Before 
 I was ready to go to bed an overwhelming storm of wind 
 and sand fell on us from the desert. The Bedur tents 
 were blown down and every man had his hands full try- 
 ing to save his property from flying off in the hurricane. 
 I was sitting in my chair by the side of my bed when the 
 storm began, and there I was obliged to stay the livelong 
 night, embracing my bed with my arms, and holding my 
 chair by sitting on it. Noorian's position was exactly 
 the reverse. Sleep was impossible, and I whiled away 
 the monotony by a species of singing, which the Arabs 
 seemed to regard in the light of an incantation in con- 
 nection with the storm. When we saw ourselves at dawn
 
 302 
 
 A IP PUR. 
 
 we were heaps of sand. There was no water to wash 
 with, not even a drop to moisten our dust-choked throats, 
 and nothing to eat until we had reached Samawa ahnost 
 eleven hours later. 
 
 There we were guests at the government house, where 
 we met with a warm welcome from Khalil Bey, the 
 kaimakam, an old friend of the Expedition, the same 
 who had been removed from Diwanieh because he re- 
 ported that the Arabs burned our camp. It was the last 
 day of Ramadhan, and after the glare and intense heat 
 of the road it was pleasant to sit on his verandah, over- 
 hanging the muddy, swirling waters of the Euphrates, 
 with its fringe of graceful palms, and wait for the Beiram 
 gun, signal that the last sun of Ramadhan had set, 
 and the compensating feast begun. To us, the feast of 
 Beiram was a feast indeed. 
 
 After two days spent in feasting and assisting Khalil 
 Bey to govern his district, we started in a turada for 
 Warka, the ancient Uruk, Erech, or Orchoe. The two 
 zaptiehs who accompanied us were instructed on no ac- 
 count to let us spend the night in the ruins, because 
 Warka is a desolate place and very unsafe, but to go to 
 el-Khudhr. After starting we over-persuaded them. 
 Leaving the Euphrates about half-way between Samawa 
 and el-Khudhr, we crossed a great swamp, spreading out 
 like a sea, and full of islands of submerged tamarisk and 
 thorn brush, abounding in wild boars and water fowl. It 
 was late in the afternoon when we came to camp on the 
 eastern edge of the marshes, a mile and a half from the 
 ruins. It was a night of misery, not because of the Arabs, 
 of whom our kaimakam had been afraid, but because of 
 the mosquitoes and sand flies. I was the only one who 
 made any pretence of sleeping. The rest wandered up 
 and down the whole night, or gathered twigs and made 
 smoke. Under the circumstances we were early at the 
 ruins.
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 303 
 
 Ancient Erech once disputed with Nippur, Ur, and 
 Eridu the primacy of southern Babylonia. It was the 
 special seat of the unclean worship of Ishtar, or Astarte. 
 In connection with the temple of this goddess there was 
 a library' of inscribed clay tablets, from which Ashurbani- 
 pal's scribes derived the originals of many of the tablets 
 which they copied for the royal librarj^ at Nineveh, and 
 especially for the famous series of Izdubar, or Gilgamesh, 
 tablets, in the eleventh of which is contained the Baby- 
 lonian flood story. This series constituted an epic in 
 twelve books, based on a nature myth, and arranged ac- 
 cording to the signs of the zodiac, with Gilgamesh as the 
 hero. In the form in which w^e have it from the scribes 
 of Erech, local coloring is given by special reference to 
 the worship of Ishtar, as practiced at that city. The re- 
 volt of Erech against Elamite domination is also woven 
 into the story, reminding one of a Burgundian form of 
 the Nibelungen Lied, in which incidents of Burgundian 
 history are interwoven with the original Teutonic myth. 
 
 The deeds of Gilgamesh, the hero of the myth, are 
 supposed to have furnished the original for the labors of 
 the Greek Heracles. In connection with this theory it is 
 well to recollect that the Phcenicians, as well as the 
 Hebrews, owed their origin and their mythology to 
 southern Babylonia. It was through them, if at all, that 
 such myths reached Greece. Much interest, therefore, 
 attaches to a colossal, hitherto almost unnoticed, figure 
 of the Phoenician Melkart, found by Cesnola in Cyprus, 
 and now in the Imperial Museum at Stamboul. It repre- 
 sents the demi-god holding a lion by the hind legs, in 
 much the same attitude in which Gilgamesh, or Izdubar, 
 is represented on Babylonian seals and Assyrian monu- 
 ments, and is similar to the Assyrian colossal figures of 
 Gilgamesh of the eighth century B.C., except for the 
 characteristic heaviness and ugliness of the Phoenician 
 type. Gilgamesh and Melkart are evidently confounded,
 
 304 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 if not identical, and we know from Greek remains that 
 Melkart and Heracles are similarly confounded, so that it 
 is pretty clear that the myth of Gilgamesh has been trans- 
 ferred to Heracles. Gilgamesh is also by some identified 
 with the Nimrod of the Hebrews. 
 
 Loftus conducted some excavations at Warka in the 
 fifties, since which time the mounds have remained un- 
 touched. Probably his most important discovery was a 
 large necropolis, where the bodies were buried in clay 
 coffins piled one over the other to a depth of sixty feet. 
 But his excavations were on too small a scale to unearth 
 the most valuable treasures of the earlier periods, which 
 lie, as at Nippur, at a great depth, covered by an enor- 
 mous mass of debris, for Warka is one of the three or 
 four very largest ruins in the country, and represents a city 
 inhabited from the earliest period until long after the 
 commencement of our era. The highest mound is Abu 
 Berdi, Father of Marsh Grass, which is about ninety feet 
 in height. This consists of a solid mass of sun-dried 
 brick, with a layer of reeds between each twelve courses, 
 whence the name. It represents the ziggurat, or high 
 place, of the ancient temple of Ishtar, and stands toward 
 the northwestern side of a rectangular plateau. The 
 whole so closely resembles in size, arrangement, and out- 
 ward appearance the mound in which we discovered the 
 temple of Bel at Nippur that it is safe to assume that the 
 temple of Ishtar at Erech and the temple of Bel at Nip- 
 pur were on the same general plan. Besides Abu Berdi 
 there are two other very prominent hills at Warka, in 
 both of which traces of Loftus' trenches are still visible. 
 On one of these ruins of a structure, apparently of the 
 Sassanian period, and therefore later than the Christian 
 era, were still exposed. I am not sure that I found 
 Loftus' necropolis, but while searching for it I unearthed 
 a couple of slippcr-shapcd coffins of half-baked clay, 
 covered with a thick blue glass enamel, and similar to-
 
 elkart holding a Lion's Skin, Colossal Stone Figure found by Cesnola at Cypr 
 Now in the Museum at Constantinople.
 
 A JOURNEY TO UR. 305 
 
 the coffins from Nippur, except that instead of human 
 figures these two were ornamented in arabesque. Doubt- 
 less there are great treasures awaiting the digger at Erech, 
 but his task of excavation will be a difficult one, because 
 of the lack of water, the sand and dust storms, the in- 
 security of the region, and the vast size of the mounds. 
 No excavations have been conducted at Warka since 
 Loftus' time, but it is still one of the principal sources of 
 supply for seal cylinders and other smaller antiquities, 
 which the Arabs find and dispose of to dealers, who ulti- 
 mately send them to Europe. It is the Arab women who 
 find most of these while searching for ornaments for their 
 own persons. After a rain-storm they can be seen in 
 great numbers traversing the ruin-mounds, bent down so 
 close to the ground that they almost seem to be on all 
 fours. When they find signs of a coffin they dig a hole 
 with their fingers, as deftly and savagely as real hyenas, 
 tear out the contents, ruthlessly scatter the buried bones, 
 and appropriate the ornaments and utensils buried with 
 them. Every woman wears strings of beads and curious 
 odds and ends gathered by her own resurrectionary in- 
 dustry, or bequeathed by ghoulish ancestors. Gold ob- 
 jects are usually sold in the towns and melted down, while 
 the seal cylinders, so highly prized by archaeologists, are 
 commonly sold to wandering Jewish wool merchants. 
 
 As at Nufar, there are several smaller mounds around 
 Warka, outside of the ancient wall line, representing 
 suburbs, and what the Hebrews called " daughters." 
 Prominent among these are the two small hills called 
 Owlad Ibrahim, Sons of Abraham, for Arabic tradition 
 connects this whole region with the Father of the He- 
 brews. A dozen miles away, south of east, lay the im- 
 portant city of Larsa, now the mounds of Senkareh, 
 where Shamash, the Sun-god, was worshipped. Beyond 
 this still, Loftus found the ruin-mounds Tel Sifr and 
 Medain, also representing ancient cities. 
 
 VOL II — 20
 
 306 NIPPUR. 
 
 Ill ancient days this whole country teemed with a vast 
 population, and was dotted with innumerable cities, of 
 which I have only mentioned a few of the more import- 
 ant. Another class of ruins, the ruins of the ancient 
 canals, I have not noticed at all, although they are, if 
 possible, more numerous, more striking and more char- 
 acteristic than the ruins of the cities. They run like great 
 arteries through the country, lines of mounds, ten to thirty 
 feet high, stretching in all directions as far as the eye can 
 reach. Once they carried life-blood to every part of the 
 land, for the life of this country is water. Give it canals 
 and reservoirs and dams to distribute and control its water- 
 supply, as Nebuchadrezzar and other great kings did, and 
 it is capable of supporting by its enormous productivity an 
 incredibly large population. Break its dams, choke its 
 canals, and it lapses into poverty and barbarism. Such 
 is its present condition. There is a very scanty popula- 
 tion, largely in the bedouin state. There are few towns, 
 and those without industry or commerce. There is no 
 irrigation, excepting of the rudest sort, close to the river 
 banks; and the land is alternately inundated and parched. 
 There is no government excepting heavy, oppressive, 
 and irregular bribes and taxes. There is a general state 
 of insecurity. There is not a road in the whole country, 
 and no means of locomotion ; and the most primitive and 
 obstructive ignorance prevails everywhere. The first 
 parent of our civilization is in his decrepit second child- 
 hood, but in the Tigris and Euphrates exists for him a 
 fountain of perpetual youth. Some day water from that 
 fountain will be held to his shrivelled lips, the life-blood 
 will course once more through his atrophied veins and 
 arteries, and he will rise to a new life, strong and vigor- 
 ous as when in days of yore he begat nations and know- 
 ledge together.
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 
 
 Official Life — Unpaid Salaries — Treatment of Prisoners — Objections to 
 Railroads — The Plagues of Irak — Bitumen Deposits — A Relic of 
 Heathenism — Credit and Jews — On the Tow Path— The Marshes — 
 Assyriiim S/agnum—Y'eTsia.n Sacrifices — Pilgrim Marriages — Sunni and 
 Shiah — Hira and Hauran — Arabian Invasions — Estates of the Sultan — 
 Donkeys — Brigands — All's Shrine — Noorian a Pilgrim — Burial Customs 
 — Kufa — An Arab Legend — The Story of Tarfa — Near the Montefich 
 — Monitor Lizards — Treasuries of Nejef — Shrine of Husein — Kerbela 
 — A Prohibition Stronghold — Emir of the Haj — More Marshes — 
 Hindieh Dam — A Tooth Brush — Arab Marriages — Arab Character — 
 Gan Eden — Kufas. 
 
 AT Samawa on the Euphrates my trip through the 
 Fatherland of the Hebrews and of civilization had 
 ended, and from Samawa began my journey to the sacred 
 cities of Nejef and Kerbela, those goals of pilgrimage for 
 pious Shiites alike in life and in death. But between the 
 two journeys I enjoyed a brief period of much needed re- 
 freshment as the guest of Khalil Bey, kaimakam of 
 Samawa, the faithful old friend who, as kaimakam of 
 Diwanieh, had refused the year before to make a false 
 report on our doings at Nippur, and had been transferred 
 to this inferior post in consequence. 
 
 The government house in this outpost of civilization 
 was a very primitive affair, and life was simple and 
 patriarchal. Everything was transacted in one room. 
 There we drank our morning coffee, received calls, at- 
 tended to business, smoked cigarettes, drank uncounted 
 
 307
 
 3oS A'lFFi'R. 
 
 teas and lemonades, ate our mid-day meal, repeated the 
 morning's routine until sunset, ate our dinner, and held 
 a social gathering until bedtime. I say we, for we all 
 governed the town together, and everything was done in 
 common. It was an informal sort of parliament, in which 
 every one seemed entitled to speak who felt so inclined. 
 People came and went. Sometimes the kaimakam, or 
 the kadi, or some other pious man, called for a rug and a 
 jug of water, and went out on the balcony to say his 
 prayers. The chief business, Avhen we had any, seemed 
 to be claims against the government, which were invari- 
 ably rejected on the ground that there was no money in 
 the treasury to pay salaries, much less outside claims. 
 Among others, an Austrian, Dr. Blau, formerly military 
 physician in the Turkish service, now dealer in antiqui- 
 ties, long resident in Samawa, argued his claim before us 
 in vain. One evening an Indian Mussulman, on a pil- 
 grimage to the sacred cities, appeared before the court in 
 a half-naked condition to complain that the zaptiehs 
 had robbed him of all his money and most of his clothes. 
 Another night some mutinous zaptiehs burst in upon us 
 and demanded payment of some of their arrears, declar- 
 ing that they had no money with which to celebrate 
 Be i ram. 
 
 The condition of these men was in no wise peculiar. 
 As a result of two year's questioning of the numerous 
 zaptiehs with whom I came in contact, I found that they 
 received payment on an average of five or six months out 
 of the twelve. They are the police, the tax-gatherers, 
 the messengers, the letter-carriers and general factotums 
 of the Government in the provinces. Their nominal 
 wage is about four dollars a month, with a small allow- 
 ance of barley bread, and, if they are mounted, an addi- 
 tional allowance of barley and forage for their mules or 
 horses. But in spite of the small salaries, the position of 
 zaptieh is in great demand. One on-bashi (captain of a
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 3O9 
 
 hundred), told me that thirteen years before he had paid 
 sixteen mejidies (fourteen dollars) as backsheesh to secure 
 his promotion to the post of chaous, or serjeant. Some 
 one had " swallowed " the money, and he had never been 
 promoted. He naively explained that the serjeant had 
 better opportunities than the on-bashi or corporal for 
 appropriating a share of the taxes, so that under favorable 
 circumstances in the tax season he could earn ten liras 
 (forty-four dollars) a month. However, the corporal, 
 and even the private, have their pickings, so that to be 
 enlisted at all a man must pay a bonus of eight dollars, 
 or about four months' actual wages. Of course they 
 could not live on their wages, our corporal said, even if 
 they were paid. This man, I may add, was unusually 
 nice in all ordinary relations of life, and very pious. The 
 testimony of all the others whom I questioned corrobo- 
 rated his general statement. As a natural result of such 
 a system, the zaptiehs rob the Government on the one 
 side and the people on the other, levying on the latter 
 very much at will, as I had occasion more than once to 
 observe. The condition of the higher ofificials is sub- 
 stantially the same. 
 
 One day, under Noorian's guidance, I visited the 
 prison ; two rooms and a court in the government build- 
 ing, where the prisoners live, finding themselves, but 
 doing no work. The better-to-do prisoners had gone 
 home to celebrate Beiram, having furnished bondsmen to 
 answer for their reappearance, and only the penniless and 
 friendless wretches remained behind. They were glad to 
 see us, and eager to tell us their histories. Of course, 
 they all insisted that the kadi was corrupt, and justice a 
 purchasable commodity which they could not afford. All 
 told us their stories. One was imprisoned for debt, two 
 for rape, one for shooting a man, and one for theft. All 
 but the debtors protested innocence, in which they were 
 not unlike the prisoners in our own jails. All declaimed
 
 3IO NIPPUR. 
 
 also against the delays of justice, claiming that they had 
 been in prison untried for months. There was little dif- 
 ference in this regard between the Turkish jail of Samawa 
 and the old Tombs in New York. What were the offenses 
 of the bail cases, and how long they remained untried, I 
 did not ascertain. 
 
 One night in our little parliament, after all had tasted 
 coffee, and the kaimakam had tossed cigarettes to the 
 more distinguished among us, the talk fell on steam and 
 electricity. Both the kaimakam and the kadi deprecated 
 the construction of a railroad from Constantinople to 
 Baghdad, holding that it would injure the morals of the 
 people, and make the country an easy prey for the 
 foreigner. It was railroads and telegraph lines, they 
 opined, which had enabled Germany to conquer France. 
 Had France wisely refrained from building either she 
 would still be unconquered. Noorian felt called upon 
 to show the kadi his mistake, and impress upon his mind 
 the backwardness of Turkey in comparison with other 
 lands. The kadi sulked, then arose in dudgeon, and the 
 meeting broke up in a huff. 
 
 Another night we were unpleasantly reminded of the 
 proximity of the desert. After the universal custom of 
 the country, we were sleeping on the roof, when a sand 
 storm arose, nearly carrying our clothing into the river, 
 and compelling us to take refuge in a little room with 
 tight closed doors and windows, where we suffocated for 
 some hours before it passed over. Owing to the heat of 
 the climate, a night within doors in Irak between April 
 and November is almost unendurable. In July, 1889, 
 the average daily maximum temperature at Baghdad was 
 114° in the shade, and in 1890 we encountered the same 
 temperature more than once in June. The kaimakam, 
 who was a native of Trebizond, on the Black Sea, suffered 
 sorely from this heat. He also complained bitterly of 
 the insects, and the snakes, scorpions, and lizards which
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 3II 
 
 crawled over his walls and dropped down from his ceiling 
 when he tried to take an afternoon siesta. I did not find 
 the heat so trying, owing to the extreme dryness of the 
 atmosphere and the constant wind. Serpents and scor- 
 pions occasioned me no trouble, and the fleas became a 
 matter of indifference ; but the flies were the most terrible 
 pest I have ever been called upon to endure. The count- 
 less myriads of tickling, buzzing, biting things, from 
 which there was no escape from dawn till dark, in house 
 or field, in motion or at rest, irritated me to such an ex- 
 tent that I often seriously feared lest I should temporarily 
 lose control of my senses and commit some act of wanton 
 violence, or run amuck, like the Malays. The common 
 flies were the worst pests because of their permanence ; 
 the sand flies, which, in themselves considered, are far 
 more terrible, were fortunately only temporary crises. 
 These sand flies of the Euphrates are very small, fragile 
 looking insects, apparently consisting of little more than 
 wings and stings. As a protection against them only the 
 very finest netting is of any value, and when they come 
 in large numbers nothing seems to avail. They do not 
 confine themselves to the exposed portions of the body, 
 moreover, but find their way through or under all cover- 
 ing. Their bite is peculiarly venomous, and the irritation 
 is accompanied with a sharp, burning sensation. They 
 sometimes descend upon you for a night or two at a time 
 in vast numbers, almost like a cloud. I recall the attempt 
 I made to dress myself on one such occasion. They had 
 penetrated the sheets or under the sheets, tightly as 1 
 had fastened my bag bed at the mouth, and finally drove 
 me out. There the main army was waiting to devour 
 me, and the agony of those three minutes before I could 
 cover myself was almost insupportable. The physical 
 pain was so great, that it was only by the strongest effort 
 of the will that I could control myself sufficiently to put 
 my clothes on, which reason told me was the only safe
 
 312 NIPPL'Ji. 
 
 course. I wanted to run and throw myself into the river. 
 And yet I believe that I do not suffer from them as much 
 as most people. 
 
 However, we were much less exposed to all these pests 
 in the Government house at Samawa than on the march, 
 and our visit to the hospitable kaimakam was a period of 
 real recuperation and enjoyment. Samawa is a place of 
 about 7000 people. In old times the town of this name 
 lay on the Ateshan canal, but that site was long since 
 deserted, and the present town lies on the banks of the 
 Euphrates, surrounded by palm groves and gardens of 
 willows, pomegranates, apricots, oranges, lemons, al- 
 monds, and cucumbers. The latter is the great fruit of 
 the country, and in many places and at certain seasons 
 the only fruit to be had. For days at a time we almost 
 lived on cucumbers. On the river front before the Gov- 
 ernment house there was considerable life, and many 
 boats coming and going, especially pitch-smeared boats 
 from Hit, loaded with bitumen and stones. A battalion 
 of soldiers is stationed at Samawa, and the Turkish uni- 
 form was much in evidence, especially on the bridge of 
 boats, at one end of which stood the barracks and at the 
 other the serai. The bath at Samawa was supplied from 
 a spring of sulphurous water, and there is another similar 
 spring at Ain-el-Daoud, opposite el-Khudhr. Along the 
 edge of the Arabian plateau, and wherever that plateau 
 is deeply seamed by cafions, or broken and faulted by pres- 
 sure from beneath, one is apt to find bitumen, naphtha, 
 or sulphurous springs, and I presume that borings will 
 some day develop vast deposits of mineral oil, bitumen, 
 and the like, underlying much of that barren plateau. 
 
 At last the day came when our good kaimakam was 
 obliged to set out on a tax-collecting expedition to re- 
 plete his empty treasury, and we chose the same time to 
 commence our pilgrimage to the sacred sites. But at the 
 very outset we were obliged to omit from our itinerary
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 313 
 
 one sacred spot of a most interesting character, cl-Khudhr. 
 This is a grove of the same description as the once famous 
 Daphne, near Antioch, and is a reUc of heathen days, 
 when such sanctuaries were not uncommon tlirough the 
 East. It serves as a place of asylum, where all life, even 
 that of birds and beasts, is inviolable. Some members 
 of the British survey, in 1838, not knowing the nature 
 of this grove, and seeing game there in abundance, shot 
 some of the sacred animals, in revenge for which desecra- 
 tion the outraged natives attacked the expedition and 
 tried to massacre its members. The name, el-Khudhr, 
 the Evergreen, is also applied by Moslems to Elijah, and 
 accordingly he has come to be regarded as the patron 
 and founder of this old heathen sanctuary. Doubtless I 
 should have visited this spot, which I had seen from 
 across the river in my journey from Mughair, but it lay 
 southward ; Nejef and Kerbela lay in the opposite direc- 
 tion ; to visit it would have involved a delay of two or 
 three days, at least, and time was growing precious. 
 Moreover, I had used up all my money, and as there 
 were no Jews in Samawa, I could not get any more, for 
 where there are no Jews there is no credit, and bills and 
 drafts are useless. At Nejef I hoped to meet Shaoul, 
 the Jew of Hillah, to whom I had written. Under the 
 circumstances, it was desirable to get there as soon as 
 possible. 
 
 As the land route to Nejef was neither good, safe, nor 
 interesting, and no mules for our baggage could be had 
 in Samawa, we decided to go by boat, and engaged for 
 the purpose a large turada, on which we erected a hut of 
 mats to serve as a protection against the sun. It was an 
 unlucky venture, as the sequel proved, for we had the 
 wind against us during the whole journey, and were com- 
 pelled to resort to the tow rope, so that it took us four 
 days instead of the promised one and a half. 
 
 Starting up the Euphrates, about two hours above
 
 314 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 Samawa we left that river and entered the Shatt-eU 
 Ateshan, or river of the Ateshan. This is the termina- 
 tion of a series of canals constructed or restored in the 
 time of Nebuchadrezzar, and again in the time of Alex- 
 ander the Great, to carry the Euphrates water along the 
 edge of the Arabian plateau, and thus fertilize the barren 
 tract between the river and the desert. Unfortunately, 
 the land there proved to be slightly lower than the land 
 about the old bed of the river, so that at the present day 
 a large part of the water goes to form great marshes, 
 only the smaller part pouring back again through the 
 Ateshan into the Euphrates proper. Nevertheless, the 
 Ateshan at the time of my visit was larger than the old 
 bed of the Euphrates above the junction, and the current 
 was both swift and strong. 
 
 It was tedious work towing up against this stream, and 
 there was nothing to see. On the south side, a short 
 distance away, Avere the bluffs which form the limit of 
 the Arabian plateau ; on the north lay the marshes of 
 Oueine. There were no villages and no traffic, what few 
 boats there were having been impounded at Shenafieh, 
 the one town on the canal, to carry brick and stone for 
 the Hindieh dam. It was afternoon of the second day 
 when we reached Shenafieh, and there we lay the remain- 
 der of that day and the whole of the following day, be- 
 cause a strong west wind was blowing, and our primitive 
 boatmen were afraid to venture on the mighty sea of 
 Ncjef ; for the water was deep, they said, and great waves 
 arose. They told us dire stories of disaster, and of the 
 recent loss of sixteen persons on that dangerous piece of 
 water; but it turned out that they lived in Shenafieh, 
 and wished to take the opportunity to visit their families. 
 They left us and the boat and went their way, and we 
 had to await their return. Shenafieh was an extremely 
 uninteresting village of mud huts, and very hot, so that, 
 clothed in my pajamas and an Arabic abbah, I took
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 315 
 
 refuge in a sort of cellar to a coffee-house, where the 
 water jars were kept, and played backgammon the greater 
 part of the day. A native brought us some Parthian 
 seals, Kufic coins, and a silver coin of Charles the Third 
 of Spain, It was interesting to observe that the antiqui- 
 ties which turned up here were all late, but, as for pur- 
 chasing, I was absolutely without money, and could 
 purchase none of them, late or early. 
 
 The next day, after another long delay of caution at 
 the head of the Ateshan, and many misgivings because 
 of the strong head-wind, we at length found ourselves 
 embarked on the sea of Nejef. In the maps this sea was 
 represented as consisting of two parts, separated by a 
 strip of land, the eastern part marsh-like and dotted with 
 islands ; the western a deep basin of water stretching to 
 the southern gate of Nejef itself. This latter part was 
 known to the geographers as the Assyrinni Stagnuin, and 
 was regarded as a real inland lake, occupying a natural 
 depression in the surface of the Arabian plateau, while 
 the eastern part was treated as a mere temporary inunda- 
 tion, due to lack of dykes. I was greatly surprised to 
 find that during the last few years the deep western part 
 has been drained entirely dry, in consequence of which 
 boats can no longer go to Nejef. The shallow eastern 
 half is still as described in the maps. Part of this eastern 
 half is really nothing but a marsh, dry in the autumn and 
 winter, but during the spring and summer a shallow sheet 
 of water with numerous small islands showing above the 
 surface. On one of these, somewhat higher than the rest, 
 I observed a ruin mound, Tel Trum, with the remains of 
 a large brick structure belonging to the period of the 
 Arabs of Hira, or Kufa. 
 
 Toward evening, after sailing and poling for ten hours 
 and a half across the sea, we landed at a reed village with 
 a ruined mud fort on a tiny islet called Umm-er-Roghlat, 
 Mother of the Marsh Grass. Several boatloads of Persian
 
 3i6 A'iprrR. 
 
 pilgrims on their way to the shrine of AH had landed here 
 to spend the night, and were preparing delicious tea on the 
 shore. To some of these our boatmen sold for a rupee 
 (thirty-five cents) a miserable sick sheep which they had 
 picked up a couple of days before, and which I had re- 
 fused to buy from them. It was bought to be sacrificed, 
 or sacrificially eaten, at Ali's tomb at Nejef, a pious way 
 of cheating the saints with cheap gifts, which I found 
 not uncommon. 
 
 There was an unusually large number of pretty women 
 among the islanders, but all complained that they were 
 beaten by their husbands, a complaint which, if investiga- 
 ted from the other side, might prove to be connected with 
 the lax morality prevailing along the pilgrim routes. 
 Beside the ordinary bad practices of the country regard- 
 ing marriage, the Shiite Moslems have in connection with 
 their pilgrimages a curious practice of temporary marriage. 
 The pilgrim marries a woman for a day, week, or month, 
 as the case may be ; the price and the time are agreed 
 upon beforehand ; the marriage is regularly performed by 
 an imam ; at the end of the stipulated time the man 
 divorces his temporary wife, and she is ready for another 
 contract of marriage. The orthodox, or Sunni, Moslems 
 do not practice this sort of temporary marriage, but they 
 also have in regard to female pilgrims a curious rule. 
 No female without a husband may make the pilgrimage 
 to Mecca. A pious widow desiring to become a pilgrim 
 must take a husband for the occasion. She, or her family, 
 make a financial arrangement with some poor man or de- 
 pendent to marry her, make the pilgrimage, and divorce 
 her on their return. This marriage must be actual and 
 not ceremonial. Sometimes, after the return, the man 
 takes advantage of his position, and refuses to divorce 
 the woman. This constitutes an awkward situation, for 
 among Mohammedans the man alone has the right of 
 divorce. This right is arbitrary, and he can divorce his
 
 NEJEF AXD KEKBELA. 317 
 
 wife for any or no cause. If he says the fatal words, the 
 marriage tie is severed, and she must go. However, 
 they can marry again the next day. This may be re- 
 peated three times, after which she must marry someone 
 else, and be divorced from him before her first husband 
 can repossess her. Some arrangement must then be 
 made with another man to marry her for a day or two ; 
 but here also is the awkward possibility that the ad 
 interim husband may break his agreement and not 
 divorce her at the stipulated time. 
 
 The difference between the Sunni, or orthodox Mos- 
 lems, and the Shiite, or Persian sectarians, is in one way 
 the same as that between the Pharisee and Sadducee in 
 ancient Judaism ; the former accepts the Koran plus tradi- 
 tion, the latter the Koran only. But in other directions 
 the comparison fails. Among Mussulmans it is the party 
 of tradition which is the more liberal in the matter of 
 contact with infidels. A Sunni may dip his fingers with 
 a Christian in the common dish ; the Shiite regards food 
 touched by a giaour, or a vessel out of which a giaour 
 has drunk, as polluted. The Shiites are doctrinally 
 tainted with pantheism, and hold to incarnations of the 
 deity. For all intents and purposes, they set Moham- 
 med's cousin, AH, before Mohammed himself, as such an 
 incarnation, and hence show peculiar reverence to the 
 tombs of Ali and his son Husein, whom they regard as a 
 martyr. Naturally, since the tombs of both Ali and 
 Husein are in Irak, the natives of that region, with few 
 exceptions, are ardent Shiites, and the political sympa- 
 thies of the country are with the Persians and against the 
 Turks. Indeed, as this is a family quarrel, the Shiites 
 hate the Turks more than they do the Christians, in spite 
 of the uncleanness of the latter. 
 
 As Umm-er-Roghlat was a very small island, where 
 we could get no coffee nor provisions of any sort, while 
 the islanders, pilgrims, and fleas filled every available
 
 3l8 NIPPUR. 
 
 spot, wc concluded to re-embark and push on by night 
 to the edge of the sea, where, on a Sennieh of the Sultan, 
 there was said to be a farm of our friend Hajji Tarfa, 
 chief of the Affech Arabs. About ten o'clock we stuck 
 in the mud or sand opposite a point called Ras-el-Ain ; 
 the boatmen waded about in every direction, but found 
 no channel, and while we were thinking how and in what 
 direction to get off we all fell asleep and slept till morning. 
 
 When I awoke we were ascending the Meshrab canal, 
 to the north of the sea of Nejef, being towed against a 
 very strong current. On our right ran a low, long range 
 of hills, called by the Arabs Haswa, that is pebble-hills. 
 By an error of understanding these were given in the 
 maps made from the old English surveys as a ruin-mound 
 named Ashaya. A little higher up on the other bank, I 
 saw what looked to me like some small pebble-hills, but 
 the Arabs insisted that they were the ruins of the famous 
 city of Hira. Unfortunately, owing to the fluid nature 
 of the intervening region, I could not well get at them 
 to determine the question. Hira was the capital of a 
 state founded by Arab emigrants from southern Arabia 
 in the early centuries of the Christian era. A similar 
 state was founded at or about the same time in the 
 Hauran, south of Damascus, and the wonderful rock-cut 
 cities and black basalt ruins of that region testify to its 
 wealth and importance. It became an Arab outpost on 
 the edge of the Roman empire, while Hira played a 
 similar role toward Persia. 
 
 Central and southern Arabia have from time imme- 
 morial been a breeding ground from which tribes and 
 nations have poured northward. We find evidences of 
 such movements in the ancient Babylonian and Assyrian 
 records. Sometimes small tribes roamed into Babylonia, 
 continuing for a longer or shorter period to preserve their 
 nomadic state. Sometimes it was the movement of a 
 nati(jn, pushed out of its original abode by causes of
 
 NEJEF AXD KERBELA. 319 
 
 which we are ignorant. Such, I imagine, was the Chal- 
 dean invasion, against which Sennacherib and Ashurbani- 
 pal battled so strenuously in the eighth and seventh 
 centuries before Christ. Such was the movement of the 
 Arabs who founded the kingdom of Hira. The greatest 
 of all these Arab migrations, and the one which most 
 profoundly affected the history of the world, was a re- 
 ligious movement — the Mohammedan invasion. But it is 
 not always realized that since that invasion, and even 
 since the Turkish conquest of Mesopotamia, within the 
 last two or three centuries, hundreds of thousands of 
 Arabs have poured northward, overrunning a great part 
 of Mesopotamia. It is with good cause that the Turks 
 view Arabia with the gravest apprehension. We are apt 
 to regard it as an insignificant and almost uninhabited 
 desert; but in reality it plays the same role for the Eu- 
 phrates and Tigris valleys, and for Palestine and Syria, 
 which Scythia once played toward Europe. It is a 
 mysterious country, a region always seething, and which 
 may at any moment pour forth a flood of conquering 
 warriors. 
 
 Somewhere toward noon we landed at Abu Seheir, or 
 Father of Stones, a small new village on the edge of the 
 Arabian plateau. The houses were built partly of a mor- 
 tar-like limestone, which underlies the sandy and pebbly 
 surface of the plateau, and partly of bricks from the ruins 
 of the Arabic period ; for here, excepting the canals, one 
 finds no traces of the early Babylonian times. There 
 were abundant palm groves everywhere, and a general 
 aspect of prosperity, in striking contrast with the usual 
 barren and miserable conditions of the country at large. 
 It proved to be a Sennieh, or private domain of the Sul- 
 tan. Under the recent administration of the privy purse 
 his Majesty has acquired immense tracts of land in all 
 the Asiatic provinces of the Empire; not to speak of the 
 numerous valuable concessions for steamboat monopolies,
 
 320 NIPPUR. 
 
 quays, mines, and the like. In the v^ilayet of Baghdad 
 alone, he is said to own more than one half of all the 
 cultivated land. As his property is not subject to taxa- 
 tion, this has seriously embarrassed the finances of what 
 was formerly the most productive province of the Em- 
 pire ; but, on the other hand, his estates are managed 
 with an energy and foresight which are conspicuously 
 wanting in the general administration of the country, and 
 are a real boon to his tenants. Canals are dug for irriga- 
 tion, dykes built to prevent innundations; the tenants 
 farm the land on half shares, and in case of distress they 
 are sure of some degree of consideration, or even of as- 
 sistance in the shape of a loan of seed, cattle, and the 
 like. Wherever in Irak you see a particularly prosperous 
 village, you may conclude that it is the private property 
 of the Sultan. 
 
 Resting through the heat of the day, toward evening 
 we hired some donkeys and started for Nejef, the golden 
 dome of which was visible to the northeast. When I am 
 not riding a donkey I have the greatest sympathy for the 
 race. They appear the very incarnation of patience, 
 weary diligence, and long-suffering. Their sad faces be- 
 speak an existence so joyless that I could weep to look 
 at them. But mounted on a donkey the view changes. 
 Such causeless perversity, such total aversion to a proper 
 progress cannot be found in any other beast except the 
 crooked camel. They are not weary, for they can run 
 rapidly where you do not want them to go, and their 
 melancholy air of being imposed upon proves to be 
 largely due to a constitutional objection to oblige. It is 
 no use beating a donkey, it only gives him the opportun- 
 ity he desires of appearing abused. Take out your case- 
 knife and prick him gently behind. It sounds cruel, but 
 it is true kindness. He sees that you have read his 
 heart, and you have no need of pricking him a second 
 time. His listless misery vanishes at once, and his
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 32 1 
 
 better nature asserts itself — so long as you hold the knife 
 ready for use and no longer. 
 
 Our course lay along the edge of the plateau, by the 
 side of the depression once occupied by the sea of Nejcf. 
 We passed a couple of ruins of the Arabic period, one of 
 them, Te'airazat, occupying the place assigned on the 
 map to the ruins of Hira. This is, I presume, the real 
 site of that city, but we could not stop to examine the 
 place, for we were trying to reach Nejef before the 
 city gates were closed for the night. Darkness over- 
 took us, thanks to the door-socket of Gimil-Sin from 
 Mughair, still a long way from our destination. How- 
 ever, our donkey drivers consoled us by the information 
 that there was a hole in the wall through which we could 
 enter without trouble. Suddenly, out of the sand hills 
 three men with long Arab flint-locks rushed at us, while 
 a fourth with a donkey to carry off the plunder remained 
 behind. They evidently mistook us for a guileless cara- 
 van of Persian pilgrims bringing corpses to be buried at 
 Nejef, and the money to bury them. We called to them, 
 but they returned no answer and continued to advance. 
 Then we dismounted and showed them the muzzles of 
 three Winchesters and a double-barrelled shot-gun. With 
 that they would have bade us good-night, saying that 
 they were on their way to visit a plantation which they 
 had in that region. But our men stopped them, took 
 away their guns and beat them, only the man with the 
 donkey escaping. Not at all sure of my ground, and 
 being uncertain of the advantage to a Christian of bring- 
 ing three pious Moslem brigands as his prisoners into a 
 fanatical Moslem sacred city, I impotently let matters 
 take their own course. So my men beat the robbers and 
 cursed them, and then returned their guns and let them 
 go to rob the next poor unprotected gang of pilgrims. 
 
 A little later, as we approached the gate of the city, 
 several men sprang from among the tombs and ran toward. 
 
 VOL. II— 21
 
 322 NIPPUR. 
 
 US. Our zaptieh called out that these, too, were robbers, 
 but when we had made ready to resist them we found 
 them to be welcome friends, Shaoul, the Jew of Hillah, 
 bringing us money, and some of our former laborers giving 
 him escort. He had heard from earlier arrivals of our 
 presence at Abu Seheir, and persuaded the kaimakam to 
 keep the gate open to admit us after dark. And so, 
 after all, we entered the sacred city by the gate, and not 
 through a hole in the wall, for which privilege we had to 
 pay accordingly. 
 
 The next morning at sunrise I saw from the roof of the 
 khan the beautiful golden dome and minarets of the 
 mosque of the tomb of Ali, next to Mecca the most 
 sacred spot of the Moslem world. I expected to find a 
 city so fanatical toward strangers that I could not trav- 
 erse the streets without an escort. Such were the con- 
 ditions at the time of Loftus' visit forty years before, 
 and no account of any later visit has been published. 
 But all has changed since then. Although Christians 
 may not now live in the city, yet hatred of the Turks has 
 at least helped to make the people look with favor on the 
 " Franks," for in the latter both the Persians and the 
 Arabs of Irak see their only hope of deliverance from the 
 Ottoman yoke. I could wander through the city at will, 
 and only the mosque was forbidden ground. Even this 
 I photographed standing in the gateway, but this photo- 
 graph, like all the others which I took on this trip, was 
 destroyed by the inexplicable tampering with my camera 
 in Baghdad. Noorian and Artin, although Christians and 
 Armenians, were smuggled into the sacred precincts by our 
 Arabs, the latter as a Persian, the former as a Turk from 
 Stamboul. Noorian reported that at the entrance they 
 made him kiss the chain across the gate, and both the door- 
 posts. Then he entered the court, which was surrounded 
 by alcove-like rooms, open in front, such as one finds in 
 all the great khans on the Persian pilgrim routes. The
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 323 
 
 walls were' decorated with tiles and small mirrors set in 
 silver. Out of this court arose two minarets, plated with 
 finely beaten gold from the height of a man and upward. 
 In front of him stood the shrine or ziara, surmounted by 
 its golden dome. He put off his shoes and entered this, 
 escorted by soldiers and guided by a Se'id, a green tur- 
 baned descendant of the family of the prophet. Within 
 there was a sight of barbarous magnificence. The walls 
 and roof were covered with polished silver, glass and 
 colored tiles. The resting-place of Ali was represented 
 by a silver tomb with windows grated with silver bars, 
 and a door with a great silver lock. Inside of this 
 was a smaller tomb of damascened iron work. He 
 was made to take hold of the grating of a window 
 and the Se'id prayed in a sort of poetr}^ Noorian 
 repeating after him, somewhat thus: "Ali, prince of 
 believers, righteous man of God, I have come from a 
 distant place, over mountains and deserts and valleys, 
 through perils great and manifold, on behalf of my 
 father, on behalf of my mother, on behalf of my sisters, 
 on behalf of my brothers, on behalf of my wives and chil- 
 dren, on behalf of my health, on behalf of my wealth, to 
 entreat thy intercession to obtain my desire." The 
 whole ended with a petition that his pilgrimage might 
 be acceptable to God. Men were hanging to the bars of 
 other windows, and even to the lock, praying vehemently, 
 begging for an entrance into an inner communion with 
 God, Some three or four more prayers were offered in 
 different parts of the building, including one toward 
 Mecca in respect for Mohammed.' But Mohammed was, 
 in fact, subordinated to Ali, according to the usual Per- 
 sian practice. Noorian was too nervous to notice things 
 as fully as he wished, and our men also were nervous and 
 
 ' It should be said that the Imam who escorted Noorian was also a priest 
 of Ishtar, and in the intervals between prayers was offering, for a suitable 
 consideration, to provide him with a woman.
 
 324 NIPPUR. 
 
 hurried him. He purposed making another visit, but 
 the following day a Baghdad merchant recognized him 
 on the street, and after that the risk was too great, for if 
 he had been detected he would surely have been killed. 
 However, he had accomplished the rare feat of penetrat- 
 ing and exploring this famous mosque. 
 
 Nejef is a thrifty-looking city of some twenty or thirty 
 thousand inhabitants, surrounded by a wall, which is be- 
 Ffinnine to fall into ruins. Wall and houses are both 
 built of bricks from the ruins of Kufa, the quondam 
 capital of the caliphate of Ali, and every day you see 
 numbers of donkeys bringing bricks from that site. The 
 water at Nejef is the best I drank in Irak. It is brought 
 into the city by an underground aqueduct from the Hen- 
 adieh canal, a few miles to the north, and what is not 
 consumed by the population passes on to water the gar- 
 dens now being planted in the deep, dry bed of the 
 former Assyriiiui Staguum, eighty or a hundred feet be- 
 low the level of the town. There are also wells, but the 
 water from these tastes of lime. Outside of the walls, 
 over the sterile, sandy plateau, stretch great fields of 
 tombs and graves, for Nejef is so holy that he who is 
 buried here will surely enter paradise. Among other 
 graves, I saw that of Mekota, the Affech chief who 
 burned our camp the year before. Some of the bodies 
 are brought from great distances. Caravans of pilgrims 
 are constantly arriving, generally from Persia, bringing 
 corpses in all stages of decomposition. Pestilence would 
 seem to be the inevitable consequence ; nevertheless, Nejef 
 and the similar Kerbela remained untouched by the 
 cholera plague of 1889. Physicians who investigated the 
 phenomenon reported that the natives had become so in- 
 durated, or inoculated, by constant habitation in an 
 infected atmosphere that cholera appeared to have no 
 effect whatever. 
 
 In old times people used to be buried anywhere within
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 
 
 O-O 
 
 the walls, only those who could not, or would not, satisfy 
 the greed .of the imams remaining without ; but these 
 conditions have been reformed, and, with the exception of 
 a small number who obtain interment at a great price in 
 the vaults beneath the tomb of AH, the departed are now- 
 buried without the walls. Funerals arc constant at all 
 seasons; both of those who have been brought to Nejcf 
 as corpses, and of those who have come there to die in 
 the odor of sanctity. One night on the balcony of the 
 khan one of the latter sort died close beside me. I be- 
 came aware of it in the morning, when I was awakened 
 by a request to me to move my bed so that they might 
 carry out the corpse. 
 
 From an archaeological point of view, the practices 
 which I observed at Nejef were of the greatest interest, 
 for, almost in detail, they illustrated the customs of the 
 early Babylonian period. The same role which is now 
 played by Nejef, Kerbela, and such lesser shrines as 
 Imam Jasim near Hillah, was played in the old times by 
 Erech and other sacred cities. To these the dead were 
 brought for interment from great distances. They seem 
 to have been brought uncoffined, as is frequently the 
 case at the present day, wrapped in reeds and mats. 
 Clay cofifins were purchased on arrival, or large bitumen 
 water-jars, in which the bodies were buried. The great 
 bulk were interred without the city walls, but some found 
 resting-places nearer the sacred precincts, and their re- 
 mains are strangely mingled with the ruins of houses, 
 temples, and public buildings. Then, as now, contract- 
 ors brought down in large numbers the corpses of those 
 whose friends could not themselves transport them. 
 These were often buried in quantities together in one 
 tomb, or tumbled pell-mell into the graves and tombs of 
 others. The same practices prevailed during the Baby- 
 lonian, Persian, Parthian, and Sassanian periods which 
 now prevail under the Moslem domination, and if the
 
 326 
 
 iVIPFUR. 
 
 shrines have shifted their locahties, the sacred traditions 
 of burial in the soil of Irak have been preserved intact. 
 
 In booths near the gates of the mosques in Nejef and 
 Kerbela I found pilgrim tokens for sale. These were, for 
 the most part, small, round, rectangular, or octagonal ob- 
 jects of clay, often decorated with a hand, or with a circle 
 for the forehead to touch in prayer, and reminded me of 
 the ancient pilgrim tokens which I found in a booth be- 
 fore the gate of the great temple of Bel at Nippur. It 
 was only another instance of that remarkable persistence 
 of custom in Irak which over and over again enabled our 
 Arab workmen from their own present use to explain the 
 meaning of an ancient object by which I was hopelessly 
 mystified. They were using the same objects which the 
 Babylonians had used four thousand years ago, and pre- 
 sumably, so far at least as the common people are con- 
 cerned, they were living the same life, excepting only for 
 the modifications introduced by the use of coffee and 
 tobacco. 
 
 One day we visited the site of ancient Kufa, one and a 
 half hours east a little north of Nejef, on the edge of the 
 Hindieh canal. There is a large mosque here, on the 
 site where Caliph Ali used to worship ; but the once im- 
 portant city has vanished from the face of the earth, the 
 remains of the renowned capital of the living caliph having 
 furnished the material for the city of the dead which has 
 sprung up about his tomb. At the beginning of the cen- 
 tury travellers report extensive ruins still in existence, 
 but these have been carried away, and only a few founda- 
 tions and low mounds may still be seen near the mosque, 
 or scattered among the palm-groves and huts of the mis- 
 erable modern village. Even these are rapidly disappear- 
 ing, to furnish building material for the inhabitants of 
 Nejef. On the shore of the Hindieh. or rather at the 
 time of inundations on an island in the stream, lies a 
 ziara of Nebbi Yunus, marking one of the several spots at
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 327 
 
 which, according to Moslem tradition, the great fish 
 vomited forth the prophet Jonah; all of them probably 
 the sites of ancient shrines of some Babylonian god. 
 
 To the west of Kufa is the dry bed of a great ancient 
 canal, now called Cheri, or Sa'adeh, a continuation of 
 the still used Henadieh. Local tradition says that a rich 
 man of Bosrah loved a beautiful maiden, Sa'adeh, who 
 lived on the Euphrates far to the north between Hit and 
 Anah. But Sa'adeh loved the shady river banks, and 
 would accept his wooing only on condition that he carried 
 her to Bosrah by water under shade trees. So he built 
 this canal, and planted trees along the bank. It is in 
 reality the great canal which Nebuchadrezzar carried 
 along the edge of the Arabian plateau from a point a 
 little below Hit to the Persian Gulf, thus redeeming by 
 irrigation a large tract of hitherto barren land. 
 
 The next day we started for Kerbela and the shrine of 
 Husein. In addition to the usual khan fees, we were 
 obliged to pay for the large water-jars in our part of the 
 khan, for they had been polluted by our use, and must 
 be broken. Here we parted with our guide, Abdan, who 
 left us to return to the Affech. He had become singu- 
 larly pious. On the march he used to eat with us and 
 revile the Shiites for their exclusiveness, but, once arrived 
 at Nejef, he, like the rest, treated us as unclean. The 
 night before he left us we questioned him about the 
 Affech and the Montefich. Twenty-one years before, in 
 the time of Midhat Pasha, he said, a new mutessarif was 
 sent to Hillah. He summoned Hajji Tarfa to meet him 
 at Diwanieh. There he demanded of him the arrears of 
 taxes of the Affech, and that they should promise to 
 pay taxes in future. Hajji replied that it would be im- 
 possible to pay the arrears, because they really did not 
 have the amount of money necessary to do so. The 
 mutessarif was a hard drinker, and drunk at the time. 
 He became abusive, and Tarfa remained silent. At last
 
 328 NIPPUR. 
 
 the mutessarif struck him on the head with a staff he 
 held in his hand, and told him he would come with sol- 
 diers and take all they possessed and carry off their young 
 men to be soldiers in the Turkish army; for he had also 
 demanded of Hajji that he enforce the conscription 
 among the Affech ; and this likewise Hajji had declared 
 impossible. Hajji went home, and in a few days the 
 mutessarif followed him with a battalion of soldiers. 
 Hajji said nothing, but the tribes heard all, and the 
 Affech and Daghara gathered armed, in great numbers, 
 at Shatt-el-Hosein. Then they surrounded the mutes- 
 sarif. First they killed the beasts of burden, then they 
 fell on the soldiers, and massacred all who were not 
 Arabs. These they let go free. Some one cut off the 
 mutessarif's head and brought it to Hajji. When Midhat 
 heard of this, he made war upon the Affech. He stopped 
 the Daghara canal from flowing into their land. He en- 
 gaged Nasr Pasha with a thousand Montefich horsemen 
 to assist him. For three years the land of the Affech 
 Avas ruined, and Hajji Tarfa and his followers were fugi- 
 tives in the desert. Mohammed ibn Shkheir, a chief of 
 the Behahtha, was appointed head chief in Hajji's stead. 
 At last, after three years, by the intervention of Nasr, 
 who was a friend of Hajji, he was restored to his land, 
 and a fine of $io,ooo laid upon him. On account of this 
 money he was twice imprisoned in Baghdad, but he had 
 paid the last instalment last year, and is now in high favor 
 with the Government. Yet the Government has never 
 succeeded in levying taxes on the Affech, or introducing 
 the conscription. 
 
 Of the Montefich, Abdan said that the only true Monte- 
 fich are the Sa'adun. These came from the neighborhood 
 of Mecca about four hundred years ago. The Rufe'a, 
 Ba'ij, Ahmed, Bene Hakhem, el-Bedur, Bene Rechab, etc., 
 are separate tribes whom they subdued and ruled over. 
 They reached their highest power under their great chief,
 
 NEJEF AiVD KERBELA. 329 
 
 Nasr Pasha. He was made independent mutessarif of the 
 Montefich, and received the encouragement and support 
 of the Turkish Government in bringing all the independ- 
 ent tribes under his rule, incorporating them, in fact, with 
 the Montefich, and setting his kinsmen and friends to be 
 their sheikhs. But Nasr became too powerful, so he was 
 enticed to Constantinople, and kept in honorary banish- 
 ment there. At first one of his sons was appointed 
 mutessarif in his stead, but after a time the Government 
 sent a Turk to be mutessarif. The Montefich refused to 
 acknowledge him, or to be ruled by any one but a 
 Sa'adun of Nasr's family. The Turkish mutessarif had to 
 take to flight. The Government attempted negotiations, 
 but the Sa'adun remained firm. Then the Government 
 attacked them and broke the power of the Montefich, 
 and now all the subject tribes are free once more; never- 
 theless, they hold the Sa'adun in great honor. When 
 Nasr heard of this war he died of a broken heart. 
 Hamud-el-Bendir is a step-son of Nasr. His father for- 
 merly ruled the Bene Rechab. Abdan himself had been 
 a confidential agent of Nasr Pasha's, and now held the 
 same relation to Hajji Tarfa. He was by birth a Moham- 
 merah Arab, and came from the neighborhood of Baghdad. 
 
 Shaoul left us at Nejef to go to Hillah and procure 
 more money, for we had used up all he brought, and at 
 Nejef there were no Jews and no bills of exchange. 
 However, I found the Persian merchants anxious to sell 
 us goods on credit, and left Nejef some fifteen pounds in 
 debt. The door-socket we sent on by Shaoul, as we had 
 failed to induce either the kaimakam of Samawa or the 
 kaimakam of Nejef to take charge of it. 
 
 Three hours from Nejef we passed a large new khan in 
 process of erection, as a charitable foundation for the 
 entertainment of pilgrims. It was a bequest from a Per- 
 sian, named Merza, lately deceased in Nejef. A little later 
 we ran down a monitor lizard, or 'arwal, about three or
 
 330 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 four feet long. In running, the creature straightened out 
 its legs and galloped, standing as high from the ground 
 as the goats of the country. When overtaken, it turned 
 about and showed fight. I do not wonder that old trav- 
 ellers mistook the creatures for alligators, and told mar- 
 vellous stories of deadly encounters with them, in which 
 the poor lizards were naturally always defeated. 
 
 About noon we reached Khan Hamat, or Desert Khan, 
 a singular cluster of five khans in one. Here were a 
 number of Persian pilgrims, and a man from Nejef who 
 gave us some particulars regarding the great wealth of 
 the shrine of Ali. There are five treasuries, he said ; one 
 for jewels, one for money, one for rugs, one for arms, 
 and one for spices. What is given to the shrine may 
 never be sold or used for any outside purpose, and the 
 accumulation of treasure is enormous. 
 
 Across the Hindieh marshes we could see the town of 
 Kefil, where Jews and Moslems alike reverence the tomb 
 of the prophet Ezekiel. This is generally supposed to be 
 the actual place of his interment. Birs Nimrud was also 
 visible, the most conspicuous and imposing of all the 
 Babylonian monuments. 
 
 About sunset we started again and reached Kerbela 
 two hours before dawn, after a beautiful, moonlight ride. 
 On the road we met a number of pilgrims, all, like our- 
 selves, in donkey caravans, for no mules or horses were 
 obtainable, all having been impressed by the Government 
 for purposes which I did not ascertain. As we arrived, 
 the call to prayer was sounding from the minarets, and 
 Noorian hastened at once to the Mosque, Meshed Husein. 
 He spent more time in this than in the Meshed Ali at 
 Nejef, for Abbas, his conductor, who had unexpectedly 
 become pious since our visit to Nejef, fell a praying tedi- 
 ously, and, in order not to betray himself, Noorian was 
 obliged to imitate all his motions. Poor Abbas suffered 
 for his ill-timed piety at a more convenient season.
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 33 1 
 
 Noorian reported Meshed Husein to be a mosque of 
 enormous- size, much larger than Meshed Ali. The wood- 
 carving is abundant and fine, but the mosque is not so 
 rich in gold, and the plating on the minarets only de- 
 scends to the muezzin gallery. In the middle of the 
 great court stands a third minaret of tiles, said to haye 
 been built by a freed slave, and hence called the Minaret 
 of the Slave. There is another very curious shrine at 
 Kerbela, that of Sheikh Abbas, some connection of Ali 
 by marriage. He is a bad and very violent man, but 
 forces people to worship him. He has been known to 
 go into the market and take a gun and sword and hang 
 them in his ziara. He beats and maltreats people if they 
 do not reverence him and make him presents, and his 
 pcncJiant is arms of every description. His cult seems to 
 be a species of devil worship. 
 
 Kerbela owes its existence to the fact that Husein, 
 All's son, was slain here, by the soldiers of Muawia, the 
 rival aspirant to the caliphate. His tomb is shown in the 
 ziara, together with a second tomb, which, I was told, 
 was that of Hassan, his brother, who was, however, 
 really buried at, or near, Mecca. The city is situated on 
 the edge of the alluvial soil, just touching the Arabian 
 plateau, among plantations of palm-trees. It has a popu- 
 lation of about sixty thousand, and seems to be a thriving 
 and prosperous place, essentially Persian. The newer 
 parts of the city, outside of the old walls, are built with 
 broad streets and sidewalks, presenting an almost Euro- 
 pean appearance. The old walls are mostly broken down, 
 although there are still gates at which the octroi duties 
 are levied. No Jews or Christians are allowed to reside 
 either there or at Nejef. Until some fifty years ago, both 
 of these cities were practically self-governing hierarchies. 
 At that time the Turkish Government undertook to de- 
 prive them of their liberties, and especially to enforce the 
 military conscription. The Kerbelese resisted, and Ker-
 
 33^ 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 bela was bombarded and taken, and a great many people 
 lost their lives. Taking warning by the fate of Kerbela, 
 Nejef opened its gates and submitted, hence the better 
 preservation of the walls of Nejef. After this there were 
 many tumults and outbreaks, so our informant said, but 
 the Turks were " patient, and now one zaptich governs 
 both towns. 
 
 We encountered a spell of midsummer heat in Kerbela, 
 the thermometer registering between one hundred and 
 ten and one hundred and twenty degrees in the shade. 
 By day my room in the khan was almost intolerable, but 
 we could not leave the city until Shaoul's messenger 
 should have brought us money from Hillah. At this 
 season the whole of Irak is swept by high, hot winds 
 from the northwest. Out of doors, provided the head is 
 well protected against the sun, these assist one to bear 
 the heat, but within doors they raise the heat to an al- 
 most insupportable degree, unless tempered by blowing 
 through or over water. In well-equipped houses, there- 
 fore, the windows are kept blocked by mattresses of 
 camel-thorn soaked with water. In Baghdad the well- 
 to-do inhabitants pass the day in half-underground rooms, 
 called serdab, and many make use of the punkah in ad- 
 dition. But while the heat by day is intense, the nights 
 on the roof are not bad. 
 
 During the period of my stay the street in front of my 
 window became a market-place. A " man with a hat" 
 was sure to be a purchaser, and as the khanjees claim a 
 percentage on all goods sold within a khan, the mer- 
 chants brought their rugs and other goods, and spread 
 them on the sidewalk in front of my windows, hoping 
 thus to attract my attention and escape the fee. One of 
 the peculiar industries of Kerbela is forged antiquities. 
 But the thing which I most wanted I could buy neither 
 here nor at Nejef, namely liquor. They told me that 
 the right hand of him that sold it would be cut off.
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 333 
 
 Others said that that law no longer held, but that an 
 immense fine would be imposed. The very vagueness of 
 their information seemed to show that such a case had 
 never occurred. Among the Turkish officials, however, 
 there was rakee in abundance, the prejudices of the 
 natives to the contrary, notwithstanding. The Turks, 
 following the letter of the law, seem to regard distilled 
 liquors as permitted, and only wine as prohibited. As 
 for the prejudices of the Shiites, they enjoy ofTending 
 them. The Shiites, in their turn, view the Turks with 
 hatred and resentment, and would welcome any " in- 
 fidel ' ' power whatsoever which should oust the Turks and 
 take possession of the country, believing that Europeans, 
 in spite of their " infidelity," would govern more justly, 
 and with more consideration for native prejudices than 
 the Turks. 
 
 At Kerbela I saw for the first time some sheep from 
 the Nejd, in Central Arabia. The hair was very long 
 and silky, and in form the creatures resembled goats, but 
 they had the meek and stupid sheep-face, and the enor- 
 mous, broad, fat tails which mark the sheep of Asia. 
 Later, at Baghdad, I met another inhabitant of the 
 Nejd, an emir, the agent of Mohammed-er-Reshid, the 
 great chief who is reported to have conquered and united 
 the tribes and petty states of central Arabia, and estab- 
 lished an independent and formidable kingdom there. 
 The Persian pilgrims usually visit Imam Musa near Bagh- 
 dad, then Kerbela, and lastly Nejef. Near the latter 
 place, at Kasr Rehaba, on the edge of the desert, they 
 are taken in charge by this emir, the representative of 
 Mohammed-er-Reshid, who escorts them across the Nejd 
 to Mecca, where they arrive in time to celebrate Kour- 
 ban Beiram, the great feast of the Moslem year, and to 
 offer the ram of substitution, as Abraham sacrificed the 
 ram in place of his son Isaac. This is the Haj, or pil- 
 grimage, and those who return alive bear thereafter the
 
 334 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 title of hajji, pilgrim, while those who die go straight to 
 heaven. I found the emir who had charge of this haj on 
 behalf of Mohammed-er-Reshid to be quite an Arabian 
 Cook. He was very anxious to have me join his person- 
 ally-conducted tour across the Nejd, and held out every 
 possible inducement. Certainly, it was a tempting 
 chance, but, unfortunately, time was pressing. More- 
 over, he was suspiciously anxious to learn from the 
 British Resident whether I was an emir, or nobleman, in 
 my own country, and, failing that, whether I could write 
 " little pieces of paper," which would be good for gold 
 in Baghdad or Damascus. There seemed a possibility 
 that I might be detained indefinitely in the Nejd, and 
 kept employed in writing " little pieces of paper." 
 
 At last Hamza Ahmed, one of our old workmen, arrived 
 from Hillah with money from Shaoul, and we were able 
 to start. As the whole country was flooded, I once 
 more allowed myself to be persuaded to go by boat, 
 sending the horses to wade around and meet us at Jim- 
 jimeh, on the site of the ancient Babylon. A donkey 
 ride of an hour and a half brought us to a miserable reed 
 village on the shores of the Suleimanieh marshes. Noor- 
 ian's fez and rifle, and a possibly somewhat too assertive 
 manner, caused us to be suspected of an intention to im- 
 pound boats for the Turkish Government, and the boats 
 and their owners disappeared in the marshes. The 
 people everywhere have the greatest apprehension of 
 having their boats or their beasts impressed for Govern- 
 ment service ; for, although they are nominally paid for 
 services thus rendered, they say that the money is always 
 
 eaten," and they receive nothing. But though the 
 men had taken to flight, the women seemed agreeable 
 and quite ready to enjoy a little chaff. Noorian told 
 them that we wished to buy two pretty girls, and de- 
 scribed the luxury in which they should live. From 
 their actions I judged that they would not be unwilling
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 335 
 
 to consider the matter. They took great pains to show 
 themselves off, and asked who was pretty, and what we 
 would pay. At last, almost by main force, after a phys- 
 ical and linguistic tussle with a couple of women, Abbas 
 succeeded in securing a very small boat. It took longer 
 to find the poles and two men to handle them, and it was 
 long past sunset before we started. There seemed to be 
 but little depth of water, and we did a great deal of slow 
 poling over mud and wading for the channel. Three 
 hours and a half of this work brought us to a little village 
 called Diwanieh, on the Hindieh canal, where with some 
 difficulty we secured a larger boat, and were finally de- 
 posited at the place where the new dam was being con- 
 structed about three o'clock in the morning. 
 
 Since the time of Alexander the Great, if not before, 
 the Hindieh canal has been a perpetual source of trouble 
 to the rulers of the country. He either built or enlarged 
 this canal, and brought it into connection with the canal 
 of Nebuchadrezzar. The lay of the land, as already 
 stated, is such that the Euphrates soon showed a ten- 
 dency to abandon its proper course, and, descending by 
 the Hindieh, to form great marshes to the west and south 
 of Borsippa. Dam after dam has been erected, and 
 broken. The last dam broke about ten years ago, and 
 by the summer of 1889 the Euphrates had entirely aban- 
 doned its proper course. For months, at Hillah and be- 
 low, the river bed was entirely dry. At Babylon, the 
 ancient quay of Nebuchadrezzar was exposed in its full 
 extent, and to get water to drink, people dug wells at 
 the foot of it. On the other hand, the country to the 
 west of the Euphrates suffered almost as seriously from 
 excessive inundation, a great part of the region being 
 converted into swamps. At the time of my visit the 
 work of restoring the Euphrates to its proper bed had 
 been going on under the direction of French engineers 
 for two years. At a favorable point, where the Euphra-
 
 7^T^6 NIPPUR. 
 
 tes and Hindieh are only one kilometre apart, a canal 
 was dug connecting the two. A dam was then erected 
 in the Hindieh for the purpose of forcing one half of the 
 water back through this canal into the old bed. Con- 
 tracts were made with the sheikhs of various villages to 
 furnish bricks from the ruins of Babylon. Boats loaded 
 with these bricks and with stones brought from Hit and 
 other points higher up the Euphrates were sunk to form 
 a foundation, and on this was erected a dam of brush, 
 earth, and bricks. The work was finally completed after my 
 departure from the country, and I am informed that one 
 half of the water now descends by the old bed of the river. 
 That afternoon we dropped down what was left of 
 the Euphrates to the village of Jimjimeh, on the site of 
 Babylon. It was from this place that we had taken a 
 large part of our skilled workmen during the two years of 
 our excavations at Nippur. Digging for antiquities is 
 almost a natural instinct with the men of Jimjimeh. 
 They are like rats. They burrow the most amazing 
 tunnels, and sink the narrowest, deepest wells through 
 debris which you would suppose needed the support of 
 beams and planks. The mounds of Babylon are in parts 
 so riddled by their holes that one could imagine them to 
 be a large rabbit warren. But they are enterprising, and 
 do not confine themselves exclusively to Babylon. In 
 connection with Baghdad and Hillah antiquity dealers, 
 they also conduct surreptitious excavations in other places, 
 sometimes several days' journey distant, and the antiqui- 
 ties from these excavations always find their way to 
 London. 
 
 We received an ovation at Jimjimeh, almost the whole 
 population meeting us by the water, and escorting us 
 into their little village of mud-huts. Two feasts had 
 been prepared in our honor by two of our old overseers, 
 Obeid and Jasim. As we could not eat both, we chose 
 the feast of the former, and ascended his house-top.
 
 NEJEF AND KERB EL A. 337 
 
 He had the previous year accompanied Field to Beirout 
 and Constantinople, and brought back with him certain 
 somewhat confused ideas of civilization. So now, along 
 with the soap and water and towels for the pre-prandial 
 ablution, he produced with great 6clat, to the delight of 
 his fellow-townsmen, proud of their association with such 
 an event, a tooth-brush, a relic of my former comrade. 
 It went to my heart to refuse him the honest satisfaction 
 to his pride of seeing me use the instrument. I and my 
 horses had long drunk out of the same pail, but this was 
 too much. At a common tooth-brush I drew the line. 
 Poor, pious soul, little did he know that it was made of 
 the bristles of the accursed swine, and that he was pol- 
 luted, and his very entrance into the paradise of pure 
 Shiites endangered by its presence in his house. No 
 good Moslem can use a tooth-brush, much less a Shiite 
 Moslem. 
 
 That night, by lamplight on the roof, I paid my work- 
 men the money I still owed for the two last weeks' work 
 at Nippur. The men of Jimjimeh had agreed to work 
 and be paid at some later date, and some of them had 
 even come and offered me money. In a country where 
 each man with right regards his neighbor as a potential 
 thief, the trust which the men reposed in me was of the 
 rarest, and I prized it, not only for itself, but as a sign 
 that we had established a reputation which would be of 
 great assistance to the work in future. 
 
 Venality, after sexual indulgence, is the greatest fault 
 of the natives of Irak. Money can buy everything, and 
 for that a man will sell even the honor of his women. All 
 honor belongs to the rich, and no disgrace is greater than 
 poverty. But, having obtained money, the Arab spends 
 it on women. I remember a conversation in a guest-hut 
 on the borders of the Daghara canal, into which we 
 stumbled one night, having lost our way back to camp. 
 The Arabs were anxious to know our quality and our in- 
 
 VOL. 11. — 22
 
 338 NIPPUR. 
 
 comes. The Turkish commissioner invented such facts 
 as he thought best adapted to the situation, teUingthem, 
 among other fictions, that Noorian had a salary of five 
 liras a month. " How many wives has he ? " " None," 
 This seemed to them quite inconceivable, and called forth 
 numerous inquiries and expressions of amazement. "Ah," 
 sighed one at last, " if I had so much I would buy me 
 five wives." Marriage with them is a mere purchase, 
 and they speak of buying a woman, and haggle over her 
 price as they do over any other article of merchandise. 
 Abbas told me that his wife cost him fifteen liras (sixty- 
 six dollars), and the wedding feast sixteen. He was not 
 satisfied with her, and wished to buy another who would 
 cost him ten liras, which sum he hoped to obtain from 
 me. In fact, fifteen liras is a very high price for a man 
 in his station to pay, and ten ought to buy a very good 
 article. Tahir, Abbas's younger brother, proposed, in- 
 stead of paying money for a wife, to trade off Sultana, 
 his sister, our camp beauty. Such are their ideas of mar- 
 riage. Their conversation, their songs, and their games 
 are simply filthy. 
 
 We had proposed to start early the next morning for 
 Baghdad, but poor Jasim and his good old wife, our faith- 
 ful washwoman and general factotum at Nippur, felt so 
 badly over their rejected feast, the old woman shedding 
 tears, that, to the imminent peril of our digestive appa- 
 ratus, we had to stay and eat it the next morning. It 
 was hard to say good-by to the workmen, who had been 
 almost like our children for two years, for, with all his 
 faults, the Arab is peculiarly lovable. He is dishonest, 
 and as unstable and unreliable as a little child, but he is, 
 after all, nothing but a child, and in that lies his charm. 
 The whole community escorted us some distance beyond 
 the gate of the town, out into the ruins of Babylon, 
 coming back time and again to kiss our hands and say 
 good-by once more.
 
 NEJEF AND KERBELA. 339 
 
 It was half-past one when we reached Khan Mahawil. 
 The heat was intense, and men and animals were suffer- 
 ing so severely from the sun that I was forced to call a 
 halt until evening. About seven we resumed our jour- 
 ney. Between Mahawil and Baghdad there is at the 
 present day but one village, Mahmudieh, and that is 
 really nothing but a collection of khans and coffee-houses. 
 But in olden times this was probably the most populous 
 and highly cultivated portion of the whole country, and 
 even of the world. It is traversed by a perfect network 
 of lines of mounds, the remains of ancient ship canals, 
 while for miles at a time the ground is literally covered 
 with fragments of pottery and heaps of slag. It is the 
 region which was called in Babylonian and Assyrian 
 antiquity Gan Eden, Garden of Eden, or Garden of 
 Pleasure, and which doubtless furnished the local color- 
 ing for the beautiful Hebrew picture of the primeval 
 earthly paradise. As late as the time of Herodotus it 
 raised three crops of wheat yearly. Now it is an utter 
 desert, excepting for the khans at which the Persian pil- 
 grims rest with their dead on their way to seek admission 
 to their heavenly paradise. 
 
 But it was not my desire in that intense heat to linger 
 in the deserted Garden of Eden, which I had already 
 traversed several times. I had decided to press through 
 to Baghdad in one night, and so Noorian and I rode 
 ahead without guides, leaving the caravan to follow us 
 more slowly. It was four A.M. when we reached Mahmu- 
 dieh, where we drank tea and coffee, and slept an hour 
 or two on benches by the side of the road. 
 
 About the middle of the morning we caught sight of 
 'Akerkuf, towering above the plains, then of the golden 
 minarets of Imam Musa, and finally the welcome green 
 of the palm groves of Baghdad along the banks of the 
 Tigris could be distinguished. By the advice of some 
 Zobeid Arabs we took a short cut, crossing the Tigris in
 
 340 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 kufas some distance below the city, and rode up on the 
 east side, only to find that Haynes had rented the house 
 of an Indian Nawab on the west, or native side of the 
 river. 
 
 These kufas are the characteristic boats of the region, 
 and have been in use from the earliest times, as we see 
 from the representations on the ancient monuments. 
 They are nothing but round baskets of brush, smeared 
 with bitumen, and may be of any size. Ours was big 
 enough to hold twelve men and several horses. It was 
 a foretaste of home to find ourselves in the familiar, 
 clumsy things once more. And Baghdad, the city of 
 Harun-er-Rashid, really appeared to us like home itself 
 as we entered the American Consulate on the 7th of 
 June, 1890, after an absence of six months.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 Leave Baghdad — Plans for Future Work— A Persecution of Christians — 
 Blackmail — A Locust Plague — A Comical Error — Alliance Israelite — 
 Bad Water — Hidden Antiquities — Danger Ahead — Pretended Brigands 
 — A Treacherous Zaptieh — The Beirout Custom-house — Sidon — Monks 
 of Bethlehem — The Philistine Plain — Ancient Gaza — Jerash — Roman 
 Inscriptions — A Druse War — Turkish Barracks — Corrupt Officials — 
 Russian Methods — Antiquities Delayed — Psychological Phenomenon — 
 Brigands and Conspiracies — Abrizan — The Sultan's Gift — Another 
 Expedition. 
 
 IT was the 7th of June when I reached Baghdad. Dr. 
 Selim Aftimus had left three weeks before for Bei- 
 rout, cured of his fever. I found that the antiquities had 
 not been shipped for Constantinople, and apparently no 
 steps had been taken looking to that end. This was ag- 
 gravating, as I had written and telegraphed to Constanti- 
 nople to have them expedited, hoping that they might 
 reach there about the same time that I did, and that the 
 division of " finds " might be completed before my return 
 to America. A new Governor-General, Sirri Pasha, now 
 filled the place of Mustafa Assim. He was an active, 
 energetic man. but reported to be unusually corrupt. 
 I sent word that I should like to pay my respects to him, 
 but received the reply that he would come and call on 
 me, which he did the same day, — an unusual mark of 
 honor. Nevertheless, I could not succeed in having the 
 antiquities expedited, nor was I even allowed to see the 
 
 341
 
 342 NIPPUR. 
 
 outside of the boxes in which they were packed, so jeal- 
 ous were the authorities. 
 
 When the Committee sent me out the second year, it 
 was at first proposed to lay on me the condition that I 
 should re-engage no one who had accompanied me the 
 first year. At my earnest request this condition was not 
 insisted upon, and I was left free to do as I thought best; 
 but a written paper was put in my hands recommending 
 me not to re-engage any one. This recommendation I 
 had disregarded after careful consideration, and re- 
 engaged both Haynes and Noorian. The result seemed 
 to me to have justified my conduct so completely that, 
 before leaving Nippur at the end of my second campaign, 
 anxious to see the continuance of our excavations as- 
 sured, and feeling that I could not myself, in justice to 
 my other obligations, continue in the field for a third 
 year, I wrote to the Committee urging the appointment 
 of Haynes as my successor and the prosecution of the 
 excavations under him in the autumn. In Baghdad I 
 received a dispatch to the effect that the continuance, or 
 discontinuance, of the Expedition would depend on the 
 result of the division of the " finds." That is, if I could 
 bring back to Philadelphia a sufficient representation of 
 antiquities, money to continue the excavations would be 
 forthcoming, otherwise not. I had, therefore, a double 
 reason for wishing to expedite the transport of the an- 
 tiquities. It was evident, however, that nothing was to be 
 accomplished by staying in Baghdad, and so I prepared 
 to start for the coast forthwith, leaving the Expedition 
 property and equipments stored with Haynes. 
 
 For cheapness and speed I engaged my passage by a 
 steamer from Bosrah for Suez, touching at Aden, but at 
 the last moment this vessel was chartered for pilgrim 
 transport, and I finally had to decide to return by the 
 old route up the Euphrates. Accordingly mules were 
 engaged, and on the evening of the i6th I set out from
 
 CONCL USION. 343 
 
 Baghdad, accompanied by our two faithful Armenian 
 servants, Hajji Kework and Artin. 
 
 Noorian's contract was now ended, and he left me at 
 Baghdad to visit his home at Sert, in Armenia. Later he 
 returned to this country, to put the experience acquired 
 in two expeditions to practical use, as a dealer in antiqui- 
 ties. Haynes arranged to remain at his own risk in his 
 position as consul until the Committee at home should 
 decide whether or not it would conduct further excava- 
 tions at Nippur. As the result of my experience, I be- 
 lieved that excavations could be conducted continuously 
 the whole year through. In consequence of the reports 
 of former explorers, we had, in the first two years, ex- 
 cavated only during the winter months, but I found that 
 I was able to travel by day in those regions in June, and 
 that Europeans lived and worked in Baghdad, Bosrah, 
 and elsewhere through the whole summer. I could see 
 no reason why we should not in the same way live and 
 conduct excavations at Nufar. To live under high pres- 
 sure, as I had been doing during the four months of the 
 excavations in the second year, would soon exhaust any 
 man ; but to excavate with a small force of fifty, or there- 
 abouts, concentrating them in one spot, seemed quite 
 feasible. To my great satisfaction, I found that Haynes 
 agreed with me in this matter, and was prepared, if the 
 Committee wished it, to conduct excavations for eigh- 
 teen months consecutively, winter and summer together. 
 I now proposed, therefore, to the Committee that he 
 should remain in Baghdad as consul until after the divi- 
 sion of " finds," and that if our part of these was satisfac- 
 tory he should then resign his consulship and conduct 
 excavations at Nippur for eighteen months, with a force 
 of about fifty Arabs. 
 
 While at Nippur I had heard reports of conversions of 
 Moslems in Baghdad through the work of the English 
 Church Mission, and of a consequent persecution of Chris-
 
 344 NIPPUR. 
 
 tians. In Baghdad I learned somewhat more of the facts 
 in the case. One Moslem, a mullah, had been baptized. 
 He was arrested by the Turkish authorities, and would 
 have been put to death, presumably, had he not claimed 
 Persian nationality. He was finally turned over to the 
 Persian authorities, and what became of him I do not 
 know. The English medical dispensary was forcibly 
 closed, and guards stationed at the door. Many of the 
 Moslems who had been visiting this dispensary, and all 
 those who were reported as having attended the preach- 
 ing services, were arrested and thrown into prison ; some 
 fifty in all. The native preacher, through whose agency 
 the mullah had been converted, was banished. The 
 English Government made no protest, and took no action 
 in the matter, although shortly before, when the Jews 
 were reported to have been persecuted by Mustafa As- 
 sim Pasha, it had interfered energetically. Nothing most 
 remotely approaching the propagation of the Gospel 
 among Moslems is tolerated in Turkey, and a Moslem 
 changes his religion at the peril of his life. Some years 
 before, when this mission station was in the hands of the 
 Society for the Conversion of the Jews, a mullah was 
 converted at Baghdad under most romantic circumstances. 
 He may be said to have converted himself by the read- 
 ing of the New Testament, since the missionary then 
 stationed there carefully refrained from preaching to the 
 Moslems. One night he came to this missionary and 
 told him that he had long been a Christian at heart, and 
 that he was leaving Baghdad that night to go to some 
 country where he might be baptized and openly profess 
 Christianity. He left, but his intention was in some 
 way discovered, and he was murdered on the road not 
 far from Baghdad. 
 
 My trip up the Euphrates was neither fruitful in inci- 
 dents nor valuable from the standpoint of exploration. I 
 travelled by night and rested by day. Having learned ex-
 
 CONCL US ION. 345 
 
 perience from our uncomfortable trip down the Euphra- 
 tes the first year, I carried two small tents with me, one 
 for myself and one for the men, and did not trust to the 
 hospitality of the zaptieh barracks. My tent was old 
 and rickety, however, and was wrecked on the road two 
 or three times, so that against my will I was compelled 
 sometimes to resort to those flea-infested haunts. At 
 Fehemi I was obliged to take refuge in the barracks for 
 another reason : immense numbers of Anazeh were en- 
 camped all about, and the corporal in charge would not 
 guarantee my safety outside of the walls. Indeed, I was 
 compelled to pay a small backsheesh to the Anazeh chief 
 to obtain a safe passage through their hordes from 
 Fehemi to Anah. 
 
 There was a locust plague that summer, and every 
 green thing except the palms had been eaten up by the 
 all-devouring insects, and in some places even the palm 
 leaves had been nibbled and gnawed. Millions of locusts 
 had fallen into the Euphrates and perished there, and at 
 many points the great river stank like a cess-pool. As I 
 ate my dinner, the locusts would often descend upon it 
 in such quantities that I could scarcely see the food. To 
 secure a mouthful of the bread I held in my hands I was 
 compelled to brush a free place, and before I was ready 
 for another mouthful the bread was once more buried 
 under the bodies of locusts. 
 
 At Deir I called upon my old friend the Governor, 
 and was the fortunate means of securing for the English 
 permission to excavate at the mound of Deir near Abu 
 Habba, north of Babylon ; or rather, of preventing their re- 
 quest for that permission from being refused. In compli- 
 ance with the law of excavations requiring the submission 
 of a topographical plan to the local authorities, they had 
 submitted, with their request for permission to excavate 
 at Deir, a supposed map of the place. This the authori- 
 ties at Constantinople had referred, not to the Wali
 
 346 NIPPUR. 
 
 Pasha of Baghdad, but to the Mutessarif of Deir on the 
 Euphrates. The engineer of the Sanjak, an unusually 
 intelligent young fellow from Baghdad, insisted that it 
 was not a map of that place; but the mutessarif, who did 
 not so much as know the meaning of a map, declared 
 that he was ignorant and unfit for the post of engineer, 
 and should be dismissed unless he could explain the map 
 properly. The map was submitted to me. It was an 
 entirely imaginary composition, representing nothing in 
 heaven or earth, being intended merely to comply with 
 the technicality of the law of antiquities, which requires 
 that a topographical plan shall be submitted before per- 
 mission to excavate can be granted. By good fortune, 
 the name " Yuseffieh Canal " appeared on this precious 
 document, which suggested to me that the ruin-mound 
 of Deir near Abu Habba was intended, since there is a 
 canal of that name there. The mutessarif accepted my 
 explanation, the engineer retained his office, and the 
 English received permission to dig at Deir in Babylonia, 
 which they did the following winter. If all reports may 
 be believed, they found the place already thoroughly 
 looted by Arabs digging for one of Daoud Thoma's 
 brothers, and the excavations were not a success. 
 
 I was compelled to delay one day at Deir to obtain 
 camels to carry water over the desert route to Kabakib. 
 This gave me the opportunity of meeting an Armenian 
 who had studied in the Medical Department of the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania. He had established a medical 
 practice at Deir on the Euphrates, and w^as a most en- 
 thusiastic and loyal son of the University. The Vicar 
 Apostolic of the Armenian Catholics of the place also 
 called on me at the khan to ask my aid in establishing a. 
 school. It was a most laudable enterprise, toward which 
 I gladly contributed what I could. It is a pity that some 
 organization has not done for the Christians what the 
 Alliance Israelite is doing for the Jews. At Baghdad
 
 CONCL USION. 347 
 
 there is an admirable Jewish school supported by the 
 Alliance, to which the Jews from all that region resort, 
 but there are no Christian and no Moslem schools worthy 
 of the name. The consequence is that the Jews far out- 
 strip the other native elements of the population in intel- 
 ligence and enterprise, and exercise an influence out of 
 all proportion to their numbers. 
 
 The trip from Deir to Kurietain proved to be a very 
 trying one. At Kabakib we found the water in the well 
 almost exhausted, and what was left full of dead locusts. 
 My tent broke down at this point, and I was obliged to 
 take refuge in the barracks. Here I tried to sleep in the 
 only habitable room, while a party of rough zaptiehs 
 talked, quarrelled, and told stories, fleas and flies bit me, 
 and hundreds of locusts crawled over us all. We left 
 here before sundown and rode sixteen hours to Sukhne. 
 My wild beast of a missionary horse was altogether be- 
 side himself, because the zaptieh rode a mare, and did 
 nothing but plunge, bolt, kick, and rear the entire six- 
 teen hours, so that sleep on his back was impossible, and 
 I could not even rest myself by alighting at intervals and 
 walking. Half way we consumed the last drop of water 
 which the camels had brought from Deir, and they turned 
 back. At Sukhne we found the one water pool, which 
 constitutes the water supply of the place, almost abso- 
 lutely undrinkable. The water is, in any case, strongly 
 impregnated with sulphur. The little town stands just 
 above the pool and drains into it. For months great 
 companies of bedouin had been encamped in the neigh- 
 borhood, driving their sheep, asses, horses, camels, and 
 women into this pool to get water day after day. Add 
 to all this that hundreds of thousands of locusts had 
 fallen into it and been drowned, and that their decompos- 
 ing bodies were left in the pool, and you may form some 
 idea of what we had to drink at Sukhne. Along the 
 Euphrates there had been times when tea was not strong
 
 348 NIPPUR. 
 
 enough to drown the taste of the locusts in the water, 
 but the coffee had always been drinkable. Here it only 
 seemed to add one bad taste more to the loathsome med- 
 ley already existing. 
 
 The Kaimakam of Tadmor was at Sukhne on a tax- 
 collecting trip, and he and his men occupied all the avail- 
 able space in the barracks. As already related, my tent 
 had been wrecked at Kabakib, and the men and I had 
 but the little cook tent between us. There was not a 
 breath of air, and the thermometer went up to iio° and 
 over in the shade. There was not a tree nor any shelter, 
 and the glaring white rocks and staring sand made the 
 heat doubly intolerable. What with the water and the 
 heat, and a bottle of beer that I had brought from Deir, 
 when the time arrived for our departure I was so sick 
 that I could not mount my horse. I told my men to 
 strike the tent, however, saddle the animals, and prepare 
 to start, and to wake me at the end of exactly two hours. 
 Then I took as large a dose of brandy as I could swallow, 
 lay down on the ground and fell asleep. The brandy 
 and the cooler air of the evening revived me, and at the 
 end of two hours I was able to mount and ride on with 
 the Kaimakam of Tadmor to Rakka. Here we found 
 better conditions, and when we reached Tadmor the next 
 day I was quite myself again, and able to go about 
 through the town to explore the ruins and hunt for an- 
 tiquities. I lunched with Sheikh Paris, who had a fine 
 bed from Paris, and some guns which Mr. Wilfred Blunt 
 and other friends had given him. The Parisian bed 
 looked singularly out of place in the Arab house. Later, 
 Paris sent to my tent a beautiful Palmyrene bas relief. 
 The inhabitants, concluding from my arrival with the 
 kaimakam that I was a friend of his and would not be 
 interfered with, also brought to my tent a considerable 
 number of bas reliefs, some of which were unusually 
 good. As I walked through the streets of the town
 
 CONCL USION. 
 
 349 
 
 within the limits of the old temple, I was invited into a 
 house. The door was then closed, and excavations com- 
 menced in the middle of the floor. Here, as it proved, 
 the owners had secreted some very good Palmyrene 
 pieces. In another house, into which I was similarly 
 invited, the busts were hidden in an oven built into the 
 wall. Others had buried them in the gardens about the 
 city. As dusk fell, and I prepared to depart men ap- 
 peared from all sides bringing more busts and bas reliefs, 
 dug out from various hiding-places, until at last two or 
 three large camel loads were lying in and about my tent. 
 With some difficulty I secured camels and packed the ob- 
 jects in great sacks on their backs. 
 
 The following morning our resting-place was Ain-el- 
 Bweida. Here, as at Kabakib, the ancient Palmyrene 
 well had run low and was full of dead locusts. The water 
 was stinking black mud, the smell of which was so nau- 
 seating that I had to hold my nose to get it into my 
 mouth. My men had more self-control than I, and con- 
 trived to exist without drinking, but my thirst was so 
 raging that I felt an absolute necessity of pouring some- 
 thing liquid down my throat, even if it were the vilest 
 black mud. 
 
 That night we attempted to push through to Kurietain. 
 We halted for a few minutes' rest at Kasr-el-Hair, in- 
 tending merely to dismount and feed our animals and 
 ourselves, but every one fell sound asleep, and I, waking 
 after a couple of hours, found the entire party wrapped 
 in the deepest slumber, while horses, mules, and camels 
 strayed about at will. It was mid-morning when, en- 
 tirely exhausted and worn out with thirst, heat, and the 
 long journey, we arrived at Kurietain. Here I became 
 the guest of the native Protestant missionary, whose ex- 
 istence I had not ascertained on my former visit. Word 
 reached us, through parties coming from Damascus, that 
 the authorities were searching all caravans from Palmyra
 
 350 NIPPUR. 
 
 for contraband antiquities, and that there was no chance 
 of our entering the city with the goods in our possession. 
 The camel drivers were alarmed lest they should be 
 arrested and cast into prison, and refused to go on by 
 the Damascus route. A zaptieh offered to guide us across 
 the anti-Lebanon into the Bek'a and so down to Baalbek, 
 and I decided to accept his offer. The next day we 
 stopped at a miserable little village on the road from 
 Deir to Homs. This road was a curiosity. Sections of 
 a few hundred yards or so had been built, leaving inter- 
 vening sections of the same size untouched. So long 
 had the work been under way that the completed sec- 
 tions had in the meantime fallen into decay. We were 
 the guests of a Christian family, who entertained us most 
 hospitably. 
 
 The next night, going through the mountains of the 
 anti-Lebanon, the zaptieh got up a pretended attack by 
 brigands. He had been telling gruesome tales of rob- 
 beries and murders on the route to prepare the way for 
 this coup. His object was to obtain a larger backsheesh 
 at the end as payment for his heroism in rescuing us 
 from robbers, but I was not taken in. After sunrise we 
 descended into a little valley opening into the Bek'a. 
 Here men were working in the fields, reaping the grain. 
 As they saw us, they dropped their work and grasping 
 handfuls of the heads of wheat ran toward us screaming 
 and gesticulating wildly. It is the custom of the 
 country. They offer the traveller who comes through 
 their fields the sweet new grain to eat, and demand of 
 him a backsheesh in return. 
 
 We spent the day at Ras-el-Baalbek as guests of the 
 native Protestant missionary, and that night we travelled 
 down the Bek'a to Baalbek. Although it was mid-July 
 the air was bitter cold, sweeping down from the snow- 
 fields on top of the Lebanon, and all of us were so be- 
 numbed that we could not sit our beasts, but were com-
 
 CONCLUSION. 351 
 
 pelled to dismount and jump and beat our hands across 
 our breasts to keep the blood in circulation. But long 
 before we reached Baalbek the sun had risen, and it had 
 become as intensely hot as during the night it had been 
 cold. I left the caravan behind me, and with the zaptieh 
 pressed on to the town, where I took a room in the hotel. 
 The caravan, arriving a couple of hours later, camped in 
 the gardens south of the great Temple of the Sun. I 
 was so tired when I reached the hotel that I fell asleep 
 on a chair in my room waiting for breakfast to be served. 
 I waked up to find that my rascally zaptieh had taken 
 my pipe and tobacco out of my belt-pouch, and was 
 about to enjoy a smoke from my pipe. Indignant at the 
 fellow's extreme impertinence, I snatched the pipe from 
 his hands and literally kicked him out of the room, where- 
 upon he went to the kaimakam, and informed him that 
 our luggage consisted of a large quantity of contraband 
 antiquities from Palmyra. By good fortune, a dragoman 
 who was present heard the zaptieh's report, and told the 
 kaimakam that he lied ; that he himself knew us well, had 
 seen all of our luggage unpacked with his own eyes, and 
 that there was nothing but kitchen utensils and clothes, 
 and such things as all travellers have. He came to see 
 me, this dragoman, and I engaged him to take me over 
 the ruins. May he be forgiven for his kind-hearted fib! 
 
 Leaving the caravan in charge of Hajji Rework to 
 come on at its leisure, I left Baalbek in a wagon the next 
 morning and struck the coach road from Damascus to 
 Beirout at Shtora, boarded the diligence there, and 
 reached Beirout that evening, July lOth, rejoining my 
 wife and family. Here I was somewhat perplexed to 
 know what to do with the antiquities which I had so 
 rashly purchased at Palmyra. I could not send them to 
 Constantinople. They would simply have been seized 
 by the customs authorities at Beirout, and either de- 
 posited in the garden of the Serai there until they were
 
 352 NIPPUR. 
 
 destroyed, or sold to some antiquity dealer. On the 
 other hand, the customs authorities were willing, in con- 
 sideration of a very moderate backsheesh, to pass them 
 out of the country. They even insured them against 
 seizure by themselves, depositing caution money as a 
 guarantee of their good faith. 
 
 That was a very interesting custom-house. As there 
 was nothing contraband, to the best of my knowledge, 
 in my personal and household goods, I let them go 
 through the custom-house and pay the regular export 
 duties. This caused me endless annoyance and much 
 loss. Among other things, one of the inspectors took a 
 fancy to a curious ladies' prayer-rug which I had brought 
 from Baghdad, and seized it on the ground that it was 
 embroidered with a verse from the Koran, and might 
 not, therefore, be exported to an " infidel " country. I 
 would have paid him a reasonable backsheesh to pass the 
 thing, but this proceeding irritated me, and I determined 
 that that official should never own the rug, whatever else 
 might become of it. Hajji Kework, seeing how matters 
 stood, stole the rug without my knowledge, when the 
 officials' backs were turned. But this only irritated the 
 inspector and destroyed my last chance of an amicable 
 settlement. It might also have caused the too-faithful 
 Hajji a term of imprisonment, but he searched diligently, 
 and lo, there the rug had been lying all the time where 
 both he and the officials had failed to observe it ! Then 
 the German Consul-Gencral took up the matter (our own 
 consul was absent on a sick leave). He had long wanted a 
 test case, but had not been able to make one, because 
 merchants dread such conflicts with the authorities. It 
 means continual petty annoyances in their business, in- 
 volving ultimately much loss. As I was leaving Beirout, 
 I had nothing to lose, and was quite ready to make the 
 fight. All summer long, while I was in Palestine, they 
 fought over that absurd rug, which cost me originally, if
 
 CONCLUSION. 353 
 
 I remember aright, about $1.50. The case was appealed 
 to Constantinople, and was finally decided against us. I 
 was informed that I could not export to an " infidel " 
 country any sacred writing, if it were even so little as 
 three words from the Koran embroidered on a prayer-rug; 
 but, on the other hand, the rug was mine, if I would give 
 guarantees that it should remain in the country. There- 
 upon, I formally presented it to Munif Pasha, the Minis- 
 ter of Public Instruction, and had it forwarded to him at 
 the expense of the Turkish Government. I thought that 
 he would appreciate the joke; but found on my return 
 to Constantinople that, while he was pleased at my con- 
 sideration in sending him a present, he could not under- 
 stand why such a cheap thing had been sent to him with 
 so much pomp and circumstance. 
 
 In Beirout I learned that our antiquities had not yet 
 reached Constantinople, nor even left Baghdad. I wrote 
 and telegraphed both to Baghdad and Constantinople, 
 but without result. The fact was that the money to 
 move them was not forthcoming. I offered to pay for 
 their transport, but the Museum would not permit me to 
 do so, on principle. It meant to assert itself against the 
 Wali of Baghdad, if it took all summer, which it did, and 
 much more beside. It was necessary for me to wait 
 somewhere until the antiquities should arrive, and I re- 
 solved to spend the time in a trip through Palestine, the 
 money for which had been most generously presented to 
 me by friends of the Divinity School in Philadelphia. 
 My wife and children sailed for Switzerland on the 23d 
 of July, and I left Beirout a couple of days later, accom- 
 panied by Hajji Kework and Artin, who begged me as a 
 reward for their faithfulness to take them with me to- 
 Jerusalem. 
 
 No part of all my stay in the East was more full of in- 
 terest and instruction to me personally than my trip 
 through Palestine ; but I shall not ask the reader to follow
 
 354 NIPPUR. 
 
 me in detail through a region so well and so often de- 
 scribed. Only a few of my experiences and observations 
 were of general interest. At Sidon I naturally visited the 
 spot where the famous sarcophagi were found, and was 
 interested to hear that when the sarcophagus of Tabnit, 
 the Phcenician king, was opened, it was found to be 
 filled with a liquid, in which lay the body as fresh as 
 though buried the day before. Only the nose, which 
 projected above the liquid, was black and withered. 
 Unfortunately, the workmen, supposing the liquid to be 
 water which had leaked in, poured it off before they 
 could be stopped, and the body quickly became corrupt. 
 
 A somewhat gay young Lothario, whom I had met the 
 year before on a Mediterranean steamer, kindly guided 
 me about and showed me everything, including some 
 forged Phoenician inscriptions, which seem to be manu- 
 factured there to satisfy the tourist demand. The amount 
 of glass objects found in graves here and along the shore 
 southward to Tyre is astonishing, and, next to fruit, an- 
 cient Phoenician glass is probably the most valuable 
 commodity exported from Sidon to-day. Waxing confi- 
 dential, my host told me of some of his experiences and 
 escapades, including one in which a young Moslem girl 
 was drowned by her family in the fountain in the court- 
 yard. I disbelieved this story at first, but found later 
 that it is a custom of the country for the men of the 
 family to drown in a well or fountain the maiden who 
 has brought shame on their house; but the man, unless 
 taken in the act, goes free. 
 
 On Mount Tabor I was joined by Mr. Dean Walker, 
 then a tutor in the Protestant Syrian College at Beirout. 
 At Bethlehem we had a comical experience. Arriving 
 there about dark, ill, and unable to walk much, I told 
 our men to pitch the tents in the town. They selected 
 a likely looking square; and we, leaving them to get 
 dinner, went out to explore. Returning between eight
 
 CONCLUSION-. 355 
 
 and nine, we were met by some zaptiehs who informed 
 me that the Governor wished to do him.self the honor of 
 making our acquaintance. I told them that I was ill, 
 and really could not, much as I should like to do so, call 
 upon the Governor just then, as I had not yet had my 
 supper. But they said the Governor was very urgent to 
 see us, and we were obliged to go. He was courteous 
 and apologetic, but we had pitched our tent directly in 
 front of the door of the Church of the Nativity, and the 
 Latin, Greek, and Armenian monks had sent him word 
 that if he did not have us removed at once they would 
 telegraph a complaint against him to Constantinople. 
 They were very unreasonable people, those monks, he 
 said, and when they were not quarrelling with one another 
 they were always finding fault with him, until his life 
 was made a burden. He begged us, therefore, to com- 
 ply with his request to move our tents, and the captain 
 of the zaptiehs offered us the hospitality of his house and 
 his table during our stay in Bethlehem. Surely never 
 were offenders more kindly dealt with. I sent for one 
 of the monks, made my apologies for the mistake of our 
 men in unwittingly pitching the tent before the church 
 door and asked permission, in view of the lateness of the 
 hour, to remain where we were for the night, promising 
 to move before early mass the following morning. My 
 proposition was accepted ; the monk abused the kaima- 
 kam, the kaimakam showed his opinion of the monk by 
 actions more eloquent than words, and the incident was 
 closed. 
 
 From Hebron we journeyed to Gaza by way of ancient 
 Eleutheropolis in the Shephelah, all about which are the 
 most interesting troglodytic dwellings. Here we were 
 joined by a delightful young American friend of Walker's. 
 He had reached Jerusalem that morning, and, learning at 
 the consulate that we had left the day before for Bethle- 
 hem and Hebron, hired two horses to take him and his
 
 356 NIPPUR. 
 
 luggage to the latter place, and started in pursuit. Find- 
 ing a good road, he galloped on, leaving the man and the 
 baggage horse to follow more slowly. Learning at He- 
 bron that we had started for Gaza an hour or two before, 
 he followed us, leaving his baggage to shift for itself, and 
 the owner of the horses to put such construction on his 
 actions as he pleased. He ultimately recovered his bag- 
 gage at Jerusalem, and settled with the aggrieved owner 
 of the horses by purchasing the steed he had so uncere- 
 moniously appropriated. 
 
 At Hebron we had heard that the Philistine plain was 
 unsafe, owing to bedouin raids. At a village on the 
 plain we had such alarming news of the unsettled condi- 
 tion of the region that my muleteer endeavored to throw 
 my baggage on the ground and flee with his animals. 
 I was forced to give him a thrashing, after which we pro- 
 ceeded to Gaza in safety ; and from that time onward our 
 muleteers were ready to follow us whithersoever we 
 would. 
 
 At Gaza we were the guests of a medical missionary of 
 the English Church Mission Society. Under his escort 
 we visited Petrie's excavations at Tel Hesy. It was long 
 after dark when we reached home, and the servants of 
 the mission were weeping and wailing, supposing that we 
 had been gobbled up by the bedouin. In such mortal 
 terror do the town dwellers stand before the children of 
 the desert I 
 
 I had the good fortune to discover at the base of a 
 mound, supposed to be a natural hill, near a mosque in 
 the outskirts of Gaza, an ancient wall of unbaked brick. 
 The entire mound proved to be composed of debris. 
 This seemed to show that the modern town of Gaza oc- 
 cupies the site of the ancient city. I have no doubt that 
 excavations in this mound would result in interesting dis- 
 coveries. But of all the sites which I saw in western 
 Palestine, the one which seemed to me the easiest to be
 
 CONCL USION. 
 
 357 
 
 explored and the most promising of results to the ex- 
 plorer, was the site of the city of Samaria. 
 
 On our return to Jerusalem we found the Greek and 
 Latin monks engaged in a pitched battle over some 
 sacred place at the foot of the Mount of Olives. Finally 
 the Turkish soldiers interfered on the Greek side and 
 rolled the Latin monks down the hill ; after which there 
 was temporary peace. From Jerusalem we crossed the 
 Jordan, and went as far southward as Madeba, which 
 was then occupied by a colony of Christian Arabs from 
 Kerak, who were building themselves houses out of the 
 ruins of the ancient town. That which they had un- 
 earthed was from the late Byzantine period, immediately 
 preceding the Arab conquest. There were a few inscrip- 
 tions, some remains of churches, and a bath in a private 
 house with the mosaic floor intact. Here we were the 
 guests of a Roman Catholic missionary, M. Biver, who 
 was doing a most admirable work. The state of the 
 country was such that we were unable to visit Kerak; so, 
 after looking at Ma'in and other sites around Madeba, Ave 
 journeyed eastward to Mesheytta, beyond the pilgrim 
 road in the desert. This remarkable ruin, a palace in the 
 desert, was begun and never completed. On the outside 
 of the walls there is some most interesting stone carving 
 done by different artists. The building is commonly de- 
 scribed as a palace of Chosroes, but I was inclined to 
 think that it must be even later, and that it might belong 
 to the period when the Egyptian Sultans ruled Syria, and 
 the road eastward of the Jordan, from Kerak to Damas- 
 cus, was frequented and well fortified. 
 
 Between Madeba and Mesheytta lie some remains of 
 the crusading period. Going northward from Mesheytta 
 we visited the extremely interesting ruins of Haraibet-es- 
 Sukh, or, " Ruins of the Market Place." These, and all 
 the ruins from that point northward belong to an earlier 
 period than the ruins on the surface in Moab ; namely, to
 
 358 NIPPUR. 
 
 the first two post-Christian centuries. At Madeba I 
 learned that, in addition to the Greek inscriptions which 
 I saw there had been discovered and carried away a 
 Nabataean inscription of a King Aretas. At Amman, 
 as I was leaving the town, I saw a similar Nabataean in- 
 scription which had just been discovered. It was on a 
 very long and very heavy block of stone. Both at Am- 
 man and J crash (the ancient Gerasa) I was grieved to see 
 the way in which the thrifty Circassian colonists, who had 
 been planted in those places, were destroying the wonder- 
 ful ancient ruins to make themselves homes. They were 
 a courageous and hardy set of men, and although few in 
 number had so handled the Arabs in the neighborhood 
 that none ventured to molest or interfere with them. 
 They were independent in their bearing, industrious, and 
 minded their own business, leaving us to attend to ours, 
 so that at both of those towms I could almost fancy that I 
 had dropped into a European village. Nevertheless, they 
 were working sinful havoc with the priceless antiquities. 
 
 At Jerash I had the good fortune to discover some few 
 new inscriptions, and a days' journey northward of that 
 place, near an unknown town, I discovered and copied 
 an unimportant inscription of Septimius Severus. We 
 went from Jerash to Rimteh, and from there to Der'at, 
 or Edrei, the ancient city of Og. Here I endeavored to 
 find someone who could show me the underground city 
 described by Wetzstein, but, either from their own na- 
 tive surliness, or because Circassians had guided us to the 
 place, the natives refused to show us the entrance, or 
 even to receive us in the town ; and, when I attempted 
 to make a search on my own account, they became so 
 unfriendly and menacing, that we were obliged to leave 
 without seeing those famous underground streets and 
 houses. 
 
 P'rom here we went to Bosrah, where the officers in 
 command told me that they had some good whiskey, and
 
 CONCL USION. 
 
 359 
 
 invited me to come and carouse with them. They ca- 
 roused so hard and so long that the next morning I was 
 unable to bid them good-by before my departure. There 
 was war between the Druses and the Turks at that time, 
 and no travellers were permitted to enter the Hauran; 
 but we, having come by the back way, as it were, with- 
 out official escort, and w^ithout announcing our intention 
 beforehand, entered the country without difficulty. The 
 Druses regarded us as friends, because we were to them 
 Englishmen, and the Turks could not treat us otherwise, 
 so that all places were open ; but, unfortunately, my faith- 
 ful Hajji Rework was taken seriously ill, and to save his 
 life I w^as obliged to go to the Turkish military camp at 
 Suweida, and apply to the commanding officer for medi- 
 cal attendance by his physician. There had been a battle 
 fought at this point, and the result of the war was a draw. 
 The Turks held the ground that they had held before, 
 and the Druses that which they had held ; but the official 
 reports declared that the Turks had beaten the Druses 
 and quieted the country. These wars are of continual 
 recurrence. They are the result partly of Turkish mis- 
 gov-ernment, and partly of the Druse and Arab hatred of 
 the Turks, and desire for independence. The Turks be- 
 lieve that they are due to English intrigues, and the Eng- 
 lish certainly do maintain most suspiciously friendly 
 relations both with the Druses of the Hauran and also 
 with the Arabs of the Nejd. Although the Turks do 
 not seem to conduct their military operations with much 
 skill, and their wars usually result in an apparent draw, 
 nevertheless they have been, and still are, slowly pressing 
 southw^ard on the eastern side of the Jordan, establishing 
 military stations, extending the telegraph, and bringing 
 the country into actual, and not merely nominal, subjec- 
 tion to the Porte, Since my visit they have carried their 
 arms southward as far as Kerak, whereas at that time, 
 1890, the whole country w^as virtually independent, and
 
 360 NirruR. 
 
 no one could journey through it without making arrange- 
 ments with the sheikhs Hving there. 
 
 As it proved necessary to carry Hajji Rework to Dam- 
 ascus or Beirout, where he could have proper treatment 
 and the rest requisite to his cure, I consented to go out 
 in the quickest way possible, and the Turkish command- 
 ant sent us by the military road under escort of a guard of 
 soldiers. At the first barracks at which we stopped, they 
 had the usual carouse after dinner. The major in com- 
 mand and the telegraph operator fell into a lively argu- 
 ment about America, The former finally informed me 
 that there were two Americas, a new and an old, one dis- 
 covered four hundred years ago, and one discovered about 
 ten years since. Between these two is a strait of water, 
 and under this they are digging a tunnel. It was for that 
 that so many Syrians were going out of the country, in 
 order to work at this tunnel. In such guise had the 
 fame of the Isthmus of Panama and the proposed canal 
 penetrated the Turkish provinces. I slept in the com- 
 mandant's room that night, and the first thing in the 
 morning he insisted on preparing two strong glasses of 
 bitters, one for him and one for me, as a preventive 
 against the fever. 
 
 We skirted the edge of the Lejja that day, and I fell 
 ill of the fever, in spite of the bitters, and was obliged to 
 stop at some Turkish barracks while the caravan went on. 
 The next day I overtook them, but the day following 
 that I was down with the fever again, and reached Dam- 
 ascus with great difficulty. From there I went to Beirout 
 by the diligence. The cholera had broken out once more 
 and was spreading rapidly in our direction, and I found 
 that it was necessary to move with haste, or I should be 
 quarantined on the way to Constantinople. Indeed, our 
 ship was the last from that region to pass the Dardanelles 
 without quarantine. It was a Russian steamer, and 
 Russian influence is all powerful in Turkey. Moreover,
 
 CONCLUSION. 361 
 
 as the captain told us later, when the quarantine doctor 
 came on board he gave him two gold pieces ; whereupon 
 he signed a clean paper, and we went forward without 
 question. 
 
 Among our passengers was an educated Turk, a devout 
 Mussulman and a mullah, but not intolerant; one of the 
 best informed, most upright and straightforward men I 
 met in the Empire. After we had become acquainted he 
 told me his story. He was an inspector of schools in 
 the Department of Public Instruction, and had been sent 
 to Damascus to examine and report on the schools in that 
 province. On investigation, he discovered that over 
 $40,000 had been embezzled by the provincial superin- 
 tendent of schools and the Wali. They offered him 
 $1000 first, and afterwards more, if he would make a 
 report satisfactory to them. He refused, and demanded 
 the return of the money. Suddenly he was arrested, 
 accused of Icse niajcstd, tried, convicted, and sentenced 
 to imprisonment. In prison he almost lost his life, and 
 believed that an attempt was made to poison him. 
 Finally he was released, and was now on his way to Con- 
 stantinople, preceded by the report that he had been 
 guilty of lese majcstd. The crime most feared at the 
 Palace is conspiracy or treason, and there is no surer way 
 of winning the favor of the Sultan than to bring proofs, 
 real or plausible, of the disloyalty of some official, and 
 no greater danger can befall any subject of the Empire 
 than to be accused of treasonable utterances. I met this 
 poor fellow afterwards in exile, and again, still later, 
 living in Constantinople under police surveillance, in 
 dread of his life. The school official whom he had ac- 
 cused of embezzlement bought himself a good office in 
 Constantinople, and the last I heard of him, he was 
 " flourishing like a green bay-tree." 
 
 At Smyrna I visited a Greek school which contained a 
 museum of antiquities. This school was under English
 
 362 NIPPUR. 
 
 protection, having been built at a time when Enghsh in- 
 fluence was dominant in the Orient. Now English pro- 
 tection is almost worthless, and the authorities lamented 
 that they were not under Russian protection, which is 
 worth having. The reason why Russian protection is 
 valuable was shown by an incident which occurred in 
 Constantinople shortly afterwards. The Armenian mes- 
 sengers of the various consulates went down to the post- 
 ofTice in Galata one morning to get the mail. They did 
 not return, but in course of time police officers brought 
 their respective mail-bags to the different consulates, with 
 the information that their Armenian messengers had been 
 arrested for seditious gathering on the street. The Rus- 
 sian Consul seized the ofificer who brought him the news, 
 put him in ward, and sent word to the authorities that 
 he should hold him as a hostage and retaliate on him 
 anything done to his messenger. The Armenian was 
 promptly sent back, and, after questioning him and 
 satisfying himself that he had been arrested without 
 cause, the Consul ordered him to kick and cuff the police- 
 man, and to treat him precisely as he had himself been 
 treated ; after which he let the policeman go. 
 
 In the house of a Greek merchant in Smyrna I saw a 
 beautiful collection of terra-cotta figurines. Like most 
 men of his race, this merchant was intensely patriotic, 
 lie had purchased these tcrra-cottas with a view of en- 
 riching the Museum at Athens, and later I saw there a 
 fine collection presented by him. In Constantinople a 
 collection of Rhodian pottery, Trojan glass, and coins of 
 all ages was offered me for sale. The collector of these, 
 also a Greek, had become financially embarrassed, and 
 wanted ready money. The Rhodian pottery he had ob- 
 tained in a curious manner. The Turkish authorities had 
 excavated in Rhodes, but failed to pay their commis- 
 sioner. To reimburse himself, he surreptitiously sold all 
 the objects found, and reported that he had found nothing.
 
 CONCL USION. 363 
 
 On my arrival in Constantinople, Hamcly Bey met me 
 with great kindness and enthusiasm. He had the Sidon 
 sarcophagi unboxed for me to examine, and authorized 
 me to publish such account of them as I might wish. He 
 desired to have them known in America, and, moreover, 
 he desired to have Americans conduct excavations in the 
 Turkish Empire. I was the first archaeologist, he told 
 me, who had treated him honestly and like a gentleman, 
 and the Americans should not suffer because they had 
 been honest. But in spite of all this friendliness the 
 antiquities were not in Constantinople, nor had they even 
 left Baghdad. This, however, was not Hamdy's fault. 
 He had done everything possible, but the corrupt and 
 energetic Governor-General of Baghdad, who believed 
 that he could make something out of the Americans by 
 holding back the objects until they gave him a present, 
 and the indifferent and faineant authorities at Constanti- 
 nople, who never telegraphed when or what they said 
 they would, had proved too much for him. I saw the 
 Grand Vizier and the Minister of Public Instruction and 
 urged them to expedite matters, but with many friendly 
 words there was no action, and it soon became evident 
 that the antiquities could not reach Constantinople for 
 three or four months. I endeavored to make arrange- 
 ments by which Hilprecht could take my place in the 
 matter of the division, coming to Constantinople as soon 
 as the objects should arrive, going over them with the 
 authorities, receiving our portion, and cataloguing and 
 arranging the part which was to remain in the Museum 
 at Stamboul. But this proved unacceptable to the 
 Museum authorities, who did not at that time know Dr. 
 Hilprecht, while they did know me, and at last it was 
 arranged that I should return to America, coming back 
 to Constantinople when Hamdy notified me that the ob- 
 jects had arrived. In the meantime the Committee at 
 home, naturally, would not consent to place another ex-
 
 364 NIPPUR. 
 
 pedition in the field under Mr. Haynes. They had ex- 
 cavated tor two years and seen no return of any sort. It 
 was absolutely necessary that the division of the objects 
 found should take place, and their portion be carried to 
 America before they would consent to consider further 
 work at Nippur. 
 
 I reported to Hamdy the conditions existing at Tad- 
 mor, Jerash, and Amman, and begged that steps might 
 be taken to prevent the destruction of antiquities, espe- 
 cially at Jerash and Amman. I told him of the wonder- 
 ful state of preservation of the ruins of the two last named 
 places, but that now the Circassians had turned the theatre 
 at Amman into a stable, while at both places they were 
 tearing down priceless buildings to obtain stones to build 
 their houses. He asked me to report this in writing, 
 which I did ; he presented my report to the Government, 
 and obtained orders to protect the ancient ruins, with a 
 speed and ease which surprised me. The following year 
 I had the good fortune to be the intermediary through 
 whom he was informed of the theft of the famous Siloah 
 inscription, which had been cut out of the tunnel below 
 the hill of Ophel at Jerusalem, carried away and sold to 
 a collector. For greater security, a forgery of the in- 
 scription had also been made. Both of these Hamdy 
 secured, and they are now in the Imperial Museum. In 
 acknowledgment of my services, he invited me when they 
 arrived to unpack them and assign them their position in 
 the Museum-. 
 
 It was the last week in September when I reached Con- 
 stantinople. On the 13th of October I left there for 
 America, going by way of Greece and Italy, in order to 
 see what I could of the excavations at Athens, Naples, 
 and Rome, and rejoining my family at Zurich in Switzer- 
 land. In Constantinople there was everywhere talk of 
 approaching war, and I had heard and seen much of the 
 unrest in the country and among the diplomats. Inter-
 
 CONCL USION. 
 
 36s 
 
 nal affairs were going from bad to worse through Asia 
 Minor and the regions further eastward, where the Kurds 
 were constantly becoming more unruly, while the Turk- 
 ish authorities were encouraging them in their outrages 
 upon the Armenians. Among the inmates of the Hotel 
 de Byzance, where I stayed, was a storm petrel of a war 
 correspondent. He had been reporting to a London 
 Tory paper the movements of the Russians on their side 
 of the Caucasian line, and their intrigues and plots in 
 Turkey; and to a Liberal paper he had been reporting 
 the outrages of the Kurds and Turks upon the Armenians, 
 the corruption of the Turkish Government in the prov- 
 inces, and the general disintegration of the Empire. The 
 reports for the Tory paper about Russia were telegraphed 
 or mailed from Erzeroum in Turkey, and the reports for 
 the Liberal paper regarding the horrible conditions prevail- 
 ing in Turkey were telegraphed or mailed from Tiflis on 
 the Russian side of the border. I lived so much in these 
 war rumors at the time that it had a strange efTect upon 
 me on my way across the ocean a little later. 
 
 We sailed from Antwerp on the ist of November, and 
 in a storm at sea I was thrown across the cabin, striking 
 on my head, tearing off a considerable portion of the 
 scalp, and all but fracturing the skull. When I was 
 picked up I appeared to be conscious. I did what I was 
 directed to do, and answered all questions sensibly, but 
 in reality I did not know who I was. There came rush- 
 ing through my mind scenes of disturbances in Armenia, 
 of the marching of troops back and forth among the moun- 
 tains, in which I seemed to have some part, while at the same 
 time I had a subconsciousness that that was not my sphere 
 in life. I fancied that I had gone insane, and that I should 
 never recover my reason or be able to think intelligently 
 or connectedly again. In vain I sought for a clue to 
 my identity. Little by little I found myself able so to 
 marshal and control the scenes which were passing hur-
 
 366 NIPP UP. 
 
 riedly before my mind as to determine definitely that I 
 was not a military officer. Then a name came to my 
 mind as my own, the name of Hamdy Bey. An instant 
 after there was the same subconsciousness that Hamdy 
 Bey w^as not I, but outside of me. But from that as a 
 clue I now began to work more definitely toward my own 
 identification. I asked myself who and what was Hamdy 
 Bey? At length I remembered that he was one of the 
 Commissioners of the Public Debt, and I explored my 
 consciousness to find whether I was connected with that 
 institution, only to receive the answer, no. Then it 
 flashed across me that Hamdy was also Director of the 
 Imperial Museum, and from that I moved on to a percep- 
 tion that he was connected with archaeology and explora- 
 tion. When I had gotten so far I was able to identify 
 my sphere of activity. My consciousness said that I was 
 connected with archaeology and exploration, and so I 
 groped my way along until finally I remembered who 
 and what I was, and astonished those about me by saying 
 aloud: " Oh, now I know who I am! " They told me 
 that it was a half an hour after the accident before I said 
 this. During all that time I had felt not the slightest 
 pain, even while the surgeon was sewing up the wound, 
 the mental anguish had been so great, but as soon as the 
 mental strain was relieved, I became conscious of acute 
 physical pain. I have mentioned this little incident on 
 account of its rather curious psychological interest. 
 
 It was the middle of April, 1891, when we finally re- 
 ceived word that the Nippur " finds " had reached Con- 
 stantinople, and I was dispatched by the fastest possible 
 route to join them there. It was early in May when I ar- 
 rived, but it was June before anything began to be done. 
 I had arrived toward the end of Ramadhan, and nothing 
 could be done during that fast. Then came the feast of 
 Beiram, and nothing could be done during that feast. 
 This was followed by the circumcision of the princes, and
 
 CONCL USION. -i^Sj 
 
 this also precluded all possibility of official action. Then 
 the brigands captured the Oriental Express, and carried 
 off some Europeans, whom they held for ransom in the 
 mountains. Delightful tales we heard of their gentle- 
 manly and pious leader, Athanasius, who was said to 
 hold prayers with his prisoners night and morning. There 
 were sessions of the ministry constantly. Then the police 
 spies, apparently to make amends for their failure to dis- 
 cover the brigands in the very heart of Constantinople, 
 began to unearth plots. The Sheikh of the Mewlawi 
 quarter of the city was accused of plotting to dethrone 
 the Sultan and put his brother Reshid on the throne in 
 his stead. He and some others were arrested and appear 
 to have been sent to join " ^Mohammed's garden party." 
 Nevertheless, acts of brigandage still continued, and the 
 police spies became still more active. I was more among 
 the Turks during this visit than at any time before, and 
 saw more of the workings of the Government as it affected 
 the natives. One man, who held a high position in the 
 state, told me that within a short time fifty of his intimate 
 friends had disappeared completely from the face of the 
 earth. They were sent for to the Palace one by one, and 
 that was the last that had been seen of them. No one 
 was secure, for at any moment information might be 
 lodged at the Palace by some spy, and the information of 
 the police spies always seemed to be believed. Even on 
 the occasion of the great illuminations of the Bosphorus, 
 in honor of the Sultan's birth and accession to the throne, 
 I found that the police agents went beforehand from 
 house to house to tell the people how many lanterns they 
 must show, and the man who did not obey their com- 
 mands was likely to be reported to the Sultan the next 
 morning as disloyal or a traitor. 
 
 The Armenian persecution was becoming more pro- 
 nounced. Armenians were cast into prison on any pre- 
 text, and almost ever>' week we heard of new outrages by
 
 368 NIPPUR. 
 
 the Kurds. In Erzeroum the Turkish soldiers took a hand^ 
 and beat a number of inoffending Armenians to death in 
 the streets, for which a number, not of Turks, but of 
 Armenians were arrested and cast into prison. The 
 American missionaries also were interfered with. Their 
 books, after being passed by the censor at Constanti- 
 nople, were seized in the provinces. New and more 
 vexatious rules of censorship were promulgated ; schools 
 were closed on all sorts of pretexts; and everything pos- 
 sible was done to hamper their work. 
 
 The Armenian Feast of the Transfiguration afforded 
 me a new opportunity of observing the persistence of 
 ancient rites under new names and with new meanings. 
 This feast occurs at midsummer, and not, as with us, on 
 the 6th of August. The Armenians celebrate it by as- 
 cending mountains in memory of our Lord's ascent of the 
 Mountain of Transfiguration. They also pour water on 
 one another, Avith a merry-making and jesting which re- 
 mind one of April Fool's day. In reality, this is the 
 ancient Persian Feast of Abrizan, or Sprinkling, which 
 occurred in midsummer and was celebrated in the manner 
 described. It has been appropriated as the festival of 
 the Transfiguration, because of the ascent of mountains 
 connected with the observance of Abrizan, which sug- 
 gested our Lord's ascent of the Mountain of the Trans- 
 figuration. 
 
 Toward the close of my stay, as I was returning from 
 the Museum one day, there was a disturbance in the 
 street, and a band of soldiers came marching by, go- 
 ing from the Palace to the Sublime Porte. My old 
 friend, the Grand Vizier, Kiamil Pasha, had been de- 
 posed, and a new man put in his place. For a time 
 Kiamil was kept under arrest in great danger of his life. 
 Munif, the Minister of Public Instruction, was also de- 
 posed. Rut, fortunately, before this, my affairs, so far 
 as these two dignitaries were concerned, were completed.
 
 CONCL US/ON. 369 
 
 Some time in June the Sultan finally authorized the 
 Museum to give us a portion of the objects found. It is 
 the policy of the Turkish Government, while by its law 
 of excavations it retains the right to take everything 
 found, to give to the excavator a portion proportionate 
 to the expense and risk incurred by him. Hamdy had 
 kept his promise faithfully, and the Sultan's gift was a 
 worthy one. I was told, however, that I must find my 
 own way of passing the Sultan's gift through the Sultan's 
 own custom-house; but this the ingenious Bedry arranged 
 with little difficulty on the payment by me of £6 (he 
 had suggested ;^2o). 
 
 It was September before my work of unpacking, repack- 
 ing, cleaning, photographing, and making casts and 
 squeezes was completed, and I was ready to start for 
 America, leaving matters in such shape that I felt confi- 
 dent that Haynes could take my place and go to Nippur 
 to excavate. I arranged with Hamdy that the objects 
 which were retained by the Imperial Museum should not 
 be exposed or given to others to study, but that the Uni- 
 versity of Pennsylvania should be permitted to send over 
 its assyriologist. Professor Hilprecht, to make the first 
 study of those objects, and that in return for this he 
 should catalogue and arrange them and such other Baby- 
 lonian and Assyrian objects as the Museum contained. 
 This arrangement was afterwards carried out most suc- 
 cessfully, Professor Hilprecht doing an extremely difficult 
 and valuable work, and at the same time making himself 
 persona grata with the Turkish authorities by his effi- 
 ciency and his willingness. 
 
 I reached home in October. 1891, and at once com- 
 menced agitating for another Expedition to Nippur under 
 the lead of Haynes. He had resigned his position as 
 Consul long before and returned to America, but he 
 seemed to be the one available man for the work. Our 
 excavations had been expensive, and the delays in ob-
 
 370 NIPPUR. 
 
 taining results very tedious; some of the original sub- 
 scribers were dead, others had lost interest, and the 
 question was where we could get the money to continue 
 the work in the manner proposed. It seemed to some, 
 under the circumstances, preferable to abandon the ex- 
 cavations, and to devote ourselves to the publication of 
 what we had found, sending Hilprecht to Constantinople 
 to study and copy the inscriptions left there, and purchas- 
 ing antiquities with such extra funds as might be avail- 
 able. This seemed to me to be a mistaken policy, and 
 one which Avould fail to reap the best results from our 
 previous expenditure. My work I regarded as but the 
 beginning of the exploration of Nippur. The more 
 speedily my excavations could be followed up and com- 
 pleted, the more certain we were to obtain great results. 
 We had opened the door into a very treasure chamber, 
 full of the most ancient records of the world. It was 
 possible now to enter with ease, but if we delayed, the 
 door would be closed and the golden opportunity lost. 
 Dr. Williams, like myself, warmly advocated the dis- 
 patch of another Expedition under Haynes. In the 
 spring of 1892 Dr. Pepper took the matter up, the money 
 was raised, and a new expedition decided upon. 
 
 Our photographic work during the first two years had 
 been to so large an extent a failure, that it was at first 
 proposed to dispense with all photographic outfit this 
 time, and so reduce expenses. It seemed to me that 
 photography was essential, if it were our intention to 
 excavate scientifically and report our results intelligently 
 to the world. I believed in a very free use of photo- 
 graphy; particularly in photographing the work in the 
 trenches frequently and systematically, and photograph- 
 ing objects found in situ, and again in camp, with 
 numbers corresponding to those used in the note-books 
 and catalogues. I had failed to have the camera used 
 as I wished during my work, but believed that another
 
 CONCLUSION. 371 
 
 attempt should be made to utilize it, and that such use of 
 photography would greatly enhance the value of Hayncs's 
 work of excavation. Arrangements with Haynes were 
 finally made at a meeting at Dr. Pepper's house in 
 Newport between Dr. Pepper, Mr. Clark, Mr. Haynes, 
 and myself. Photography was admitted, with the re- 
 sponsibility, in case of failure, resting upon me, and I 
 was left to draw up with Haynes the plan of work, and 
 to draft general instructions for the conduct of the ex- 
 cavations. 
 
 That summer I spent in copying my maps of trenches, 
 plans, etc., and writing a volume of notes as large almost 
 as this present volume, that Haynes might have before 
 him complete details of the work of the first two years. 
 It was my idea that he should, above all things, ex- 
 cavate the ziggurat of the temple and carry down the 
 deep trench in front of it, which I had begun, to bed 
 level, deepening and widening the same. I proposed 
 that he should remove the buttress-like projection of 
 the ziggurat on the southeastern side, up to the wall of 
 Ur-Gur's ziggurat, and, further, that he should exca- 
 vate beneath that ziggurat itself. In those excavations 
 I believed that he would find the most ancient inscrip- 
 tions, and at the same time, by means of them, trace the 
 history of the temple in its buildings more completely 
 and to a remoter period than I had done. The explora- 
 tion of the temple I regarded as the work of first im- 
 portance, but I also suggested that, if time and force 
 permitted, he should re-open my excavations on Camp 
 Hill (I), and complete the exploration of the great Cos- 
 saean structure at that point. Tablets he would find in 
 greatest abundance on Hill X, and from my experience 
 it seemed to me desirable to enter that hill by a section 
 from plain level, which would, I was sure, give the best 
 results, and at the same time enable him to study the 
 strata far better than the method of digging which I had
 
 372 NIPPUR. 
 
 pursued in the first exploration of the hill. At all places 
 in that hill I was sure that there were tablets without 
 stint. Further, if time permitted, I thought it desirable 
 to examine a little more carefully the hills immediately 
 adjoining the Temple Hill on the southwest and north- 
 east respectively, VI and VII, We had found nothing 
 in them, but their position in relation to the temple made 
 me feel that they should be examined further. I was 
 also anxious to see Mr. Haynes, if possible, complete the 
 examination of the outer wall, Nimitti Bel (XI), and of 
 the canal-bed of the Shatt-en-Nil, begun by me. 
 
 But it is needless for me to repeat my recommendations 
 in detail. My object has been to help the reader who 
 may wish to follow this subject further to see how my ex- 
 cavations and Haynes's are related. Here my connection 
 as director with the great work of the University Expe- 
 dition to Babylonia came to a close. How successfully 
 Mr. Haynes carried out the work which we had planned, in 
 his long and arduous excavations, covering three years, 
 1893 to 1895, and what wonderful treasures he unearthed, 
 he has related in another volume. But the work of ex- 
 ploring Nippur is not yet completed. A very small part 
 of the ancient city, and even of the temple, has been 
 thoroughly excavated, and the treasures of antiquity 
 which await a further discoverer are undoubtedly greater 
 and more wonderful than those we have as yet unearthed.
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 NOTES ON PLATES. 
 Plate I. 
 
 THIS plate contains objects of all ages and from differ- 
 ent points. They were set up by Haynes to test his 
 camera and the plates. The result was one of the 
 best photographs which we obtained of objects found in the 
 second year, and the only photograph of some which we y)os- 
 sess. Many of the photographs both of the first and second 
 years were ruined because the rolls and plates were kept too 
 long in the heat of Babylonia, and altogether the photographs 
 of both the first and second years proved far from satisfactory. 
 Commencing at the left-hand upper side the first object, a 
 small toy-like clay figure of a camel rider, was found in the 
 late Babylonian stratum on hill V. These figures are finished 
 only on one side, the other being left flat. 
 
 The next object, the glass jug, as well as the similar glass 
 jug at the other end of the upper row, was found in the very 
 uppermost stratum on the Temple Hill (III.), and is not earlier 
 than the Seleucidan period certainly. These jugs are not 
 quite symmetrical in shape, the glass is extremely thin, and 
 prettily colored, in the one case bluish, in the other purplish. 
 In general, the glass objects found at Nippur were of late 
 date, and while glass fragments were very numerous in the 
 later strata, there were few or none in the earlier. We found, 
 as already stated, glass axes and other objects made in imita- 
 tion of lapis lazuli, turquoise, and malachite in the " jeweller's 
 shop," belonging to the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries B.C. 
 
 373
 
 374 
 
 NIPPUR. 
 
 We also found a small glass bottle with the door-sockets of Lugal- 
 kigub-nidudu, circa 4000 B.C., and a few glass beads occurred 
 in earlier graves ; but these were exceptions, and the greater 
 part of the glass found belonged to the post-Babylonian 
 period. The small glass vase which forms the central object 
 in this row is one of several of the same type, found with the 
 slipper-shaped coffins. Another specimen is represented in 
 plate VIII., Fig. 4. This type is not earlier than the Seleuci- 
 dan period. 
 
 The inscribed object leaning against the first glass jug to 
 the left is a clay brick stamp with reversed inscription of 
 Sargon of Agane, 3800 b.c. I found several of these in the 
 debris on the Temple Hill above Ur-Gur's platform ; and 
 one, along with a door-socket of Sargon, in the remains of a 
 building of that monarch below the Ur-Gur platform. No 
 stamped brick of Sargon was found by me ; but Haynes was 
 more fortunate. The inscription on this stamp reads : " Sar- 
 gina, king of the city, king of Agane, built the house of 
 En-lil." 
 
 The next object to the right of the glass jug is a fragment 
 of a bowl or mortar of a hard and heavy volcanic stone. It 
 was found in the debris near the shrine of Bur-Sin in front of 
 the great entrance of the temple, and belongs to a period not 
 later than about 2400 B.C. The same bowl is figured on the 
 plate facing page 140. It represents a contest between a bird 
 and a serpent. A considerable number of fragments of 
 statuary, bas-reliefs, and inscribed bowls and mortars were 
 found here. Some of these date from the pre-Sargonic 
 period. 
 
 The small dog in front of the glass vase to the right of this 
 is made of a hard glazed porcelain, almost white. This is 
 represented in larger size in the plate facing page 128, and, 
 as there stated, belongs to an early period, probably before 
 2000 B.C. In the first year we found in the same hill, V., but 
 in a somewhat later stratum, a bitch with a litter of five 
 puppies, made of the same material, and colored white. 
 
 The broken naked female figure suckling a child is, I sup- 
 pose, an Ishtar idol or sacred figure. Quantities of such little
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 375 
 
 clay figurines of the goddess, more often without the child, 
 were found in all the Babylonian strata from about 2000 b.c. 
 onward. We also found a number of the clay moulds in 
 which these were made. This type is flat and unformed be- 
 hind, a sort of high relief. The oldest type is that represented 
 in plate II., figures 9 and 10, a less perfect specimen of which 
 is shown on this plate, immediately beneath the camel rider. 
 Those were found in hill X., and are from the middle of the 
 third millennium B.C. This type was found more particularly 
 in hill V. Gradually these figures became more decent. 
 First the sexual parts were suppressed, and finally the figures 
 were clothed. 
 
 The small clay tablet with a low relief next to tliis was 
 found in debris in the Temple Hill, about eight metres be- 
 neath the surface, and should, therefore, belong to a period 
 not later than the middle of the third millennium b.c. It repre- 
 sents a tree, apparently a palm, and on either side, rampant, 
 an animal resembling a long-horned goat, each with the head 
 turned backward, and the forefeet bent, almost touching the 
 trunk of the tree. Length of tablet, .085 m., breadth, .076 m. 
 
 The bearded head to the right of this is in unbaked clay. 
 This was found in the debris on hill V., about 2 metres below 
 the surface. I should judge from its appearance that it be- 
 longs to the Assyrian period. Several other heads of a similar 
 character, but very much inferior to this artistically, were 
 found on the same hill. All the others were baked. 
 
 The fragment of a naked female figure holding the breasts 
 with the hands, standing on top of the brick on the left-hand 
 side, has already been noticed. 
 
 The brick on the left-hand side beneath this bears an in- 
 scription of Ur-Ninib, king of Isin, circa 2600 B.C. This was; 
 found in a pavement in the great court of the temple to the 
 southeast of the ziggurat, above the pavement of Ur-Gur. 
 The brick at the right-hand side of the same line bears an in- 
 scription of Esarhaddon, king of Assyria, 681-669 B.C. This 
 brick is unusually large. It was found in later debris on the 
 Temple Hill. Other bricks of this king, of the ordinary size,, 
 bear an inscription in a different script. The inscriptions on
 
 376 NIPPUR. 
 
 these bricks indicate that both of these kings restored the 
 temple of Bel. 
 
 The inscribed stone between these bricks is a diorite door- 
 socket of Bur-Sin, of Ur, from his shrine by the great entrance 
 to the temple. On the under side, not visible in this position, 
 is a rudely scratched inscription of Lugal-kigub-nidudu. 
 Two door-sockets of this king were found, one at the inner, 
 one at the outer door of his shrine. The inscriptions on 
 these are votive, merely recording the name and titles of the 
 king, and the fact that he built the temple of Bel. 
 
 The two double figurines of clay, in the lowest line, at the 
 extreme right and extreme left, are from the late Babylonian 
 or Persian strata. None of these were found entire, but only 
 the upper parts. They were most common on hill X., but 
 were also found on hill I. They are flat, and unworked 
 behind, like the figurines from hill V., described above. Some- 
 times similar single figures were found. The only musical in- 
 struments represented are the double pipe and tambourine or 
 drum. 
 
 The grotesquely rude clay figure of a man carrying some 
 object over his shoulder, comes from the burnt rooms of the 
 Ine-Sin period, on hill X., and belongs, therefore, to the mid- 
 dle of the third millennium B.C. This is presumably the Bel 
 corresponding to the Beltis figures shown in plate II., figures 
 9 and 10. These figures are all hollow within, and worked 
 on both sides. This fragment is. 08 m. in height. Other speci- 
 mens of the same tyi)e are represented in the plate facing page 
 128. What the objects carried by these figures over the 
 shoulder are, I do not know. Besides these human figures 
 found in the burnt rooms at X, there were found also one or 
 two fragments of grotesque clay figures of bird-headed animals 
 and the like. 
 
 Next to this, to the right, is a piece of a clay tablet in low- 
 relief, representing the upper part of a man, with a high, 
 horned headdress. The ears are formed and attached like 
 an animal's ears. To his right the figure holds in both hands 
 a staff with a target on top. The length of the fragment is 
 .065 m., the breadth of the tablet, .055 m. This was found in
 
 APPENDIX A. 377 
 
 hill v., four metres or more below the surface, and may date 
 from looo to 1500 B.C. 
 
 The fragment of a clay tablet to the right of this is from 
 the same hill, and presumably of the same period. It repre- 
 sents the lower part of a man, walking, and carrying a spear 
 or a staff. This fragment is .06 m. square. All these tablets 
 are unworked on the reverse. Besides those represented here 
 we found one of a man with a fringed garment and a staff ; 
 one of a three-branched, candlestick-like object ; one repre- 
 senting an indecent scene between a man and a woman ; and 
 several representing animals, two of which are shown in the 
 next plate. 
 
 Plate II. 
 
 Fig. I is a clay rattle in the form of a chicken, .085 m. in 
 length. This was found in hill VI., not far below the surface, 
 and may belong to any time from the Persian period onward. 
 
 Fig. 2 is a fragment of a clay tablet, representing a wild 
 boar, of excellent workmanship. Length, .089 m., height, 
 .059 m. It was found in III., A, in a long corridor adjoining 
 the temple on the southwest, a structure which belonged, I 
 should judge, to the Cossasan period. Several similar tablets 
 were found later in the temple, and in hill V., on the side 
 looking toward the temple. 
 
 Fig. 3 is a clay tablet representing in low-relief a lioness- 
 like animal. Length, .095 m., height, .045 m. This was found 
 in hill v., two to four. metres below the surface, and belongs 
 to the later Babylonian period. Among the other tablets of 
 animals found in this hill was one representing a dog, one 
 representing an Indian humped ox, and a very good one repre- 
 senting gazelles. 
 
 Fig. 4. Clay horse with rider. Height, .17 m., length, .11 
 m. The rider wears a very high, nightcap-like headdress. 
 This was found in a child's grave, near the surface, on the 
 Temple Hill, and was, presumably, a toy. Similar figures 
 were frequently found in the graves of the Parthian period. 
 
 Fig. 5. Clay elephant ; height, .083 m. 
 
 Fig. 6. Clay table ; height, .093 m.; diameter, .065 m.
 
 378 NIPPUR. 
 
 This and the preceding were found in the first trench run 
 in the western nose of hill V., in the first year of the excava- 
 tions. This trench was begun at a low level, and there were 
 found in it on the first day, besides these two objects, a few 
 inscribed tablets of the late Babylonian period ; an egg-shaped 
 jar, without handles, decorated with a simple line pattern, 
 containing, in the earth within it, fish bones, ashes, and pieces 
 of wood ; two two-handled jars, the handles formed by run- 
 ning a stick through the clay ; a clay horse's head ; three- 
 small broken jars of the shape represented in plate VI., Fig. 
 12 ; and a large, hollow phallus, .24 m. in height, of rude 
 workmanship. I fancy that, with the exception of the horse's 
 head which may have been dropped there at a later period, 
 all these objects were late Babylonian. A tablet found not 
 far from this spot was dated in the first year of Evil-Mero- 
 dach, 561 B.C. It records a gift of fifteen measures of grain. 
 The elephant and table were presumably toys buried with a 
 child. 
 
 Fig. 7. A clay bas-relief representing a contest between a 
 man and a lion ; unworked on the reverse. On the plinth are 
 five illegible Aramaic characters. This was found in the 
 debris in one of the rooms on the Temple Hill, southeast of 
 the ziggurat. From the workmanship and the Aramaic char- 
 acters I judge that it may belong to the seventh or eighth cen- 
 tury B.C. It is figured in Plate XXVI., Vol. I., Part II., of 
 Hilprecht's Old Babylonian Inscriptions. 
 
 Fig. 8 represents one of seventeen inscribed objects of mag- 
 nesite, of doorknob-like shape, found in the " jeweller's 
 shop " on the Temple Hill. They average .045 m. in height ; 
 diameter of base, .068 m., and of upper surface, .07 m. ; 
 diameter of hole, .01 m. There was an eighteenth similar 
 object of ivory. There were with these a few other objects of 
 a different shape, resembling these, but much more elongated, 
 with the base larger than the top, and the latter more convex 
 than in the doorknob shape. Comparing these latter with 
 some of the specimens in our collection of phallic symbols, it 
 was evident that they were conventionalized plialli. This 
 conclusion reached, it seemed clear that the doorknob-like
 
 ri.ATE ir.
 
 APPENDIX A. 379 
 
 objects were still more conventionalized forms of the same 
 symbol. It was very natural that tlie mystery of life should 
 excite the worshipful admiration of primitive man, and the 
 world over the penis and vulva appear as religious emblems. 
 In Babylonia we are able to trace in detail the process of con- 
 ventionalization of these symbols, which went hand in hand 
 with the development of dress, and of those ideas of propriety 
 which forbid the mention or exhibition of the sexual parts. 
 I have already pointed out that the nail-headed cones, shown 
 in the plate facing page 238, are phalli. But along with these 
 conventional forms, cruder and more naturalistic forms of the 
 phallus persisted in Babylonia down to a late date, as they 
 did also in Greece. The so-called boundary stones, of which 
 several are exhibited in the British Museum, containing im- 
 portant inscriptions, and covered with curious zodiacal-like, 
 mystic figures, are in their upper i)arts unmistakable, and 
 even offensive, representations of the male organ, as were the 
 famous Hermes columns in Athens. The inscriptions on the 
 doorknobs are all votives to Bel by various kings of the Cos- 
 saean dynasty. 
 
 Fig. 9. A grotesque statuette of a naked female, holding 
 the breasts ; sexual parts conspicuous ; nose absurdly promi- 
 nent ; headdress like court wig ; shape below like mummy ; 
 length, ,115 m. This is presumably a Beltis figurine. The 
 type was common in hill X., in a stratum belonging to the 
 middle of the third millennium B.C. The mummy-like form 
 of the lower part should be compared with the character for 
 man in the archaic Babylonian script {cf. the door-socket 
 of Sargon, plate facing page 242, lines 4 and 6). That char- 
 acter represents a man of just such a mummy form lying on 
 his back. 
 
 Fig. ID is a somewhat different type of Beltis figure from 
 the same place ; height, .105 m. In this, as in the preceding, 
 the nose is bird-like, and the eyes lobster-like ; there is a 
 necklace about the neck, and the breasts are held by the 
 hands ; but the sexual ])arts are not so conspicuous, and the 
 lower part is not mummy shaped. This type is, in fact, a 
 slight advance from the preceding.
 
 380 NIPPUR. 
 
 Fig. II. An incised slab of white marble, in two pieces, 
 the larger, .18 X .10 m., the smaller, .16 X .07 m. Thickness of 
 slab, .0275 m. ; reverse unworked. The edges of the two 
 pieces do not quite join. At the right-hand upper corner the 
 god Bel is seated on a throne. He wears long robes, and on 
 his head a high, horned crown. His beard is long, his nose 
 prominent, and the eye large out of proportion. The head, 
 which is in profile, is turned over the left shoulder, to enable 
 the artist to represent the body in front view. The left hand 
 crosses the breast ; the break of the stone runs through the 
 right hand and arm. The feet of this and all the figures are 
 exceedingly long and flat. In front of Bel stands a worship- 
 per, naked and uncircumcised, holding up toward the god 
 Avith his left hand a long, thin vessel, with a very long spout, 
 similar to those used by worshippers on Egyptian wall paint- 
 ings, but unlike anything found by me in Nippur. The right 
 hand and lower arm of this figure are broken ; the nose is ab- 
 surdly long, the face and head smooth ; the head is in profile, 
 the body in front view. Behind him was a duplicate of the 
 Bel figure, facing in the opposite direction ; but the upper part 
 is broken off. Below these is an incised line, and below this 
 the representation of a man, with a crown-like headdress, 
 hunting gazelles, which nibble at reeds. This picture was re- 
 peated twice, the two standing back to back. All of one 
 picture and the lower part of the other are broken off. Be- 
 tween the two pictures there was a hole through the slab, 
 .018 m. in diam. The work on this slab is rude, but forceful. 
 It was found in the debris in one of the rooms of the last re- 
 construction on the Temple Hill, to the southeast of the zig- 
 gurat, not far below the surface, but is manifestly ancient. It 
 is figured as Plate XVI., in Vol. I., Part II., of Hilprecht's Old 
 Babylo7iian Inscriptions. On the same page is a representation 
 of a similar slab found by Haynes on hill X. This latter con- 
 tains a brief dedication by a certain Ur-En-lil, /. e., " Man of 
 En-lil," to his god En-lil, or Bel. From the form of the char- 
 acters in this inscription Hilprecht argues that it is very old, 
 belonging, perhaps, to a ])eriod not far removed from 4000 
 B.C. If his argument is valid for that slab, it fixes the date of
 
 APPENDIX A. 381 
 
 this slab also. Such slabs or tablets were, as we learn from 
 an inscription of Ashurbanipal, hung up on the walls of the 
 Babylonian temples by those who wished or had received 
 something from the gods. Presumably the clay tablets de- 
 scribed above, and the inscribed lapis lazuli tablets found in 
 the "jeweller's shop " served a similar purpose. 
 
 Plate III. 
 
 Fig. I. A silver ear-ring, or more probably nose-ring, of 
 rich pattern ; diam., .05 m. This was found on hill V, near 
 the summit, in a grave of bricks about two and a half metres 
 below the surface. There were no bones found in this grave, 
 but two vases, one with remnants of grain within ; this nose- 
 ring, and another of the same metal and ornamented with 
 stones, but smaller ; a silver seal ring, the stone in which had 
 decayed away, and one hundred and five beads of a necklace, 
 of different stones, silver, and, apparently, lead. Judging 
 from the stratum it may have been late Babylonian or Per- 
 sian. Beads were among the most common objects fouiid in 
 graves, and I have a record of as many as 600 from one grave. 
 The use of necklaces would seem to have been common with 
 men as well as women. 
 
 Figs. 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 12, and 15 are iron knives, hatchets, spear- 
 and arrow-heads from graves, especially in hill V. In one 
 tub-shaped coffin, of a period earlier than 1000 B.C., and proba- 
 bly nearer 2000 B.C., we found eleven iron arrow- and spear- 
 heads, together with a razor-like knife. I have not figured 
 here any of the copper objects ; but we found, as stated else- 
 where, knives and swords of that metal. We found nails and 
 spikes of both metals. We found also saws, knives, and 
 arrow- and spear-heads of flint, and one jade axe. As already 
 stated, there were no stone, copper, and iron ages in the ruins 
 of Nippur. 
 
 Fig. 7. A pair of copper tongs, toothed, length, .077 m. 
 These were found in the late strata on the Temple Hill. 
 
 Fig. 8. A copper nose- or ear-ring of a very common form, 
 designated by us lyre-shaped, found in Babylonian graves 
 certainly from 1500 B.C. onward. They were often wound
 
 382 NIPPUR. 
 
 with silver wire. Sometimes they occurred in pairs, some- 
 times singly. An average specimen of this type measured .04 
 m. across the base, with a height of .025 m. There were of 
 course nose- and ear-rings of other shapes, and these were fre- 
 quently set with jewels. The stones most commonly used for 
 this purpose were pearls, which were also used for beads of 
 necklaces. 
 
 Figs. 9, 16, 27, and 28 are specimens of the clay drains de- 
 scribed in Chapter IX. Fig. 27 represents the rudest type, 
 where the drain was made of jars, with the bottoms broken 
 out, set one on top of another. These drains were packed 
 about with all sorts of rubbish, in which we sometimes found 
 ancient tablet fragments. These drains were often quite deep, 
 and we sounded some to a depth of thirteen or fourteen 
 metres. The average diameter is about a half-metre. Fig. 
 9 shows the upper rings of one of the most carefully con- 
 structed of these drains. Into the top of this fits, inverted, 
 the piece shown in Plate VI., Fig. 4 ; and on top of this the 
 sieve, shown in Plate VI., Fig. 7. 
 
 Figs. 10, II, and 17 are copper bracelets and anklets of or- 
 dinary types from Babylonian graves. Almost all of these are 
 rude, making little pretence at ornamentation. We found 
 great numbers of these, sometimes as many as six in one 
 grave. 
 
 Figs. 13 and 14 are ivory pins from Babylonian graves. Some 
 of these were hair pins, some looked like knitting-needles. 
 A few were ornamented with line patterns, but there was no 
 elaborate ornamentation before the Seleucidan period. After 
 Greek influence began to be felt, we found pins ornamented 
 with female figures, some of them very pretty. We found 
 besides these ivory pins similar pins in copper, together with 
 a number of needles of the same metal. We found also 
 square-headed copper styli, for writing on clay tablets, and 
 copper pins of another sort, similar to those used by the 
 natives for putting k(jhl in their eyes, and apparently intended 
 to serve the same purpose. We found likewise pins of bone, 
 and a few combs of the same material, with others of ivory. 
 Some smaller toilet objects were made of mother of pearl, and
 
 Plate III.
 
 APPENDIX A. 383 
 
 more were ornamented with pieces of this material. The 
 most elaborate articles found were composed of copper and 
 ivory combined, the rudest were of clay. 
 
 Fig. 18 is a copper fish-hook, only a couple of which we 
 found. In length they were about .05 m. 
 
 Fig. 19. A copper bird, not unlike a tortoise in shape ; end 
 of tail and left wing broken. On the reverse it is flat, some- 
 what hollow in the centre, and was evidently intended to be 
 fastened on something. Length from head to tail, .07 m. ; 
 breadth from wing to wing, .085 m. It was found near the 
 surface on the Temple Hill to the southeast of the ziggurat, 
 and is apparently late. There was found in hill V. a copper 
 figure in human form, with two pairs of wings, and a small 
 tail curved up behind. The height of this figure was .08 m. 
 Apparently it was a demon. Judged by the strata, this demon 
 should belong to a good Babylonian period. These were the 
 only specimens which I found of metal cast in the shape of 
 figures. I have already noticed a few late pieces of ivory 
 carving ; we found also a number of figures in bone, some of 
 them jointed like modern dolls. 
 
 Fig. 20. An iron finger-ring. We found rings in copper, 
 iron, silver, and gold, the latter generally late. Some of them 
 were seal rings, the seals being in some cases cut on stones 
 set in for the purpose, and sometimes on the metal itself. The 
 work was generally rather rude. 
 
 Fig. 21. A copper bracelet of 'light and graceful work, 
 closed by a sort of tie, also of copper ; diameter, .06 m. It is 
 a much more elaborate and finished type than the ordinary 
 bracelets and anklets, shown in Figs. 10, 11, and 17. This 
 particular specimen was found near the surface on the Temple 
 Hill, and is therefore post-Babylonian ; but we found a few 
 more of similar type in somewhat earlier graves. 
 
 Fig. 22. Feather-shaped ivory pin ; length, .105 m. ; great- 
 est breadth, .023 m. These were found in great numbers in 
 graves on all the hills from the Babylonian period onward into 
 the Parthian and Sassanian. For what they were used, I do 
 not know. 
 
 Fig. 23. An iron, spade-like object ; length, .078 m. ;
 
 384 NIPPUR. 
 
 breadth, .06 m. This seems too blunt and too large for a 
 spear-head, and while far smaller than our spades, it is actu- 
 ally about the size and shape of the spades which I saw used 
 by the Arabs of to-day. I presume, therefore, that it was in 
 fact a spade. It and the similar 23a were found in hill VIII., 
 and belong approximately to the time of Ashurbanipal. These 
 were the only agricultural implements found by me, unless a 
 couple of large curved copper knives found in tombs may have 
 been sickles and not swords. 
 
 Fig. 24. A copper bucket, with handle of copper wire 
 (broken) ; height, .18 m. ; greatest circumference, .25 m. ; 
 diameter of mouth, .017 m. ; height from mouth to top of 
 handle, .097 m. This was found in a trench far back on the 
 western side of hill I., from three to four metres below the 
 surface. It was in a Babylonian coffin, at the left of the feet, 
 along with a small blue-enamelled vase. There was also in the 
 coffin a lyre-shaped copper nose-ring, wound with silver wire, 
 and a quantity of ashes, besides bones. It was clearly a coffin 
 of a good Babylonian period. 
 
 Fig. 25. A copper ladle, length, .287 m.; diameter of bowl, 
 .042 m. This and Fig. 26, which is a copper bucket, practi- 
 cally identical with 24, were found in a grave in hill V. 
 There was a tub-shaped coffin about three metres beneath the 
 surface, under a wall of unbaked brick. This had been closed 
 with palm and tamarisk wood, and cemented over with mud. 
 In the bottom of the coffin was a mat. An inkstand-like piece 
 of pottery, a small, blue vase, almost ball-shaped, with short, 
 thin neck and small opening, a copper bowl, a copper ladle 
 (Fig. 25), a copper bucket (Fig. 26), a lyre-shaped copper ear- 
 or nose-ring, one copper seal ring and a fragment of another, 
 a fragment of a bracelet of thin copper wire, a copper kohl 
 pin, and a piece of a flat ivory pin were found by the feet. 
 On the breast was a copper mirror, under which the woollen 
 cloth of a garment was preserved. Here lay also a number of 
 beads, some lapis lazuli, and others of a red color ; and an 
 oval agate seal. This burial was unmistakably Babylonian, 
 and apparently of the Cossasan period. Later, on hill V, we 
 found other graves containing similar ladles, buckets, mirrors,
 
 APPENDIX A. 385 
 
 and bowls of copper, for one of which we were able to deter- 
 mine somewhat more definitely a Cosscean date. 
 
 Plate IV. 
 
 Fig. I. A handsome copper bowl, worked within in a pat- 
 tern ; hammered ; diameter, .195 m. ; height, .0375 m. This 
 was found in a tub-shaped coffin, four metres below the sur- 
 face, in a tunnel beneath one of the western noses of hill V. 
 In the same coffin was a broken knife or dagger, a lyre-shaped 
 nose-ring, a heavy copper pin or nail, and a cone-shaped Baby- 
 lonian seal, representing a worshipper before an altar, with the 
 usual column, sun, stars, and moon. Evidently the grave was 
 Babylonian, and from the position it seems clear that it was 
 not late Babylonian. 
 
 Figs. 2 and 4 are good specimens of the ordinary large jars 
 of Babylonian workmanship. Each is about a half a metre in 
 height, of thick, light-brown clay, unglazed, the former orna- 
 mented by a double line, and the latter by four lines of bead 
 pattern. Such pottery was found in the graves, and presum- 
 ably these are fair specimens of domestic pottery. Urns simi- 
 lar in shape to this, and to Plate VII., Fig. 7, and Plate 
 VIII., Fig. 2, were used for burial purposes in the most ancient 
 periods. When intended for this purpose they were made of 
 a peculiarly heavy pottery. Such jars were from a half, to 
 three quarters of, a metre in height. 
 
 Fig. 3. A pair of silver bracelets, ornamented with a studded 
 design, rusted together ; diameter, .065 m. ; breadth of band, 
 .06 m. These were found with some beads in a tub-shaped 
 coffin, four metres below the surface, in a tunnel under one of 
 the noses of hill V. They belong to the same period as 
 Fig. I. 
 
 Fig. 5. Clay horse, with bridle ; height, .11 m. Found in a 
 late (Parthian) tomb on the Temple Hill. Similar clay horses, 
 were frequently found in Parthian graves. Sometimes they 
 had riders, and sometimes not ; sometimes they were colored,, 
 black and white or red and white, and sometimes they were 
 plain. Rarely they were covered with a blue enamel. 
 
 Fig. 6. One-handled jar, plain, unglazed, thick-walled„ 
 
 VOL. II — 25
 
 386 NIPPUR. 
 
 pointed below ; height, .22 m. ; diameter of opening, .038 m. ; 
 greatest circumference, .265 m. This type was characteristic 
 of the upper strata in the highest part of hill I., in which were 
 found Partliian, Sassanian, and Kufic coins. This particular 
 jar was sealed with bitumen. 
 
 Fig. 7. This composite piece of pottery consisted of two 
 parts : a clay tub with a drain hole at the bottom, .46 m. in 
 ■diameter, and a triple row of jars joined to one another by a 
 framework of clay, the second piece fitting into the first. This 
 ■was found close to the surface, on the top of hill I., a little to 
 the south of the site occupied by our camp the first year, in 
 the stratum of the Jewish houses. With it were a number of 
 jars, some of the same type as Fig. 6, and some without 
 handles. Some of these were empty, some were sealed with 
 "bitumen. Parthian coins were found by these. I have sup- 
 posed this to be the show-case and outfit of some Jewish 
 phlebotomist of the Parthian period. 
 
 Fig. 8. Copper vase of graceful shape, but not quite sym- 
 metrical ; height, .171 m., diam. at mouth, .05 m., diam. at 
 'broadest part of bowl, .065 m. This was found in a tub-shaped 
 ■cofifin in hill V., about 4 metres below the surface. The cofifin 
 had been broken, and mended with bitumen at the foot. With- 
 in the coffin, together with the bones, and some fragments of 
 palm wood and cloth, there was by the feet a copper ladle, and 
 by the head an inverted copper bowl, beneath which lay this 
 vase, a long-handled copper sieve, and fragments of a pair of 
 copper objects, the use of which is unknown. This vase be- 
 longs, therefore, to the same date as Figs, i and 2 of this plate, 
 and 24, 25, and 26 of the preceding. 
 
 Plate V. 
 
 Fig. r. This two-handled jar of plain, unglazed clay, about 
 .20 m. in height, is one of a large number of pieces found in a 
 couple of rooms near the mouth of the great trench, at the 
 western nose of hill V. (see plate facing page 250, in Vol. I.) 
 These rooms were stuccoed in yellow and pink, and the tops 
 of the walls were two metres below the surface. The objects 
 found there belonged to a good Babylonian period.
 
 Plate IV,
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 
 387 
 
 Figs. 2, 5, and 6 are rather small, perforated, sinker-like 
 pieces of stone, apparently intended for weights. Numbers of 
 such stones were found at various points. I also found stone 
 weights of other forms, including ducks of lapis lazuli and 
 hsematite. One or two broken pieces were inscribed with fig- 
 ures showing the weight, but almost all were uninscribed. In 
 one of the rooms on hill V., shown in the plate facing page 
 200, five metres below the surface, in a hole in a small brick 
 flooring in the corner of the room, I found fourteen cylin- 
 drical, barrel-shaped objects, chiefly of hsematite, apparently 
 weights. These belong to a period about 2000 B.C. They 
 were weighed in Constantinople by Professor Long of Robert 
 College, and his description is attached. 
 
 No. 
 
 I 
 
 Haematite 
 
 tusitorm, C 
 
 J. 172.90 
 
 2 
 
 Granite 
 
 a. 
 
 idl.^l 
 
 3 
 
 Haematite 
 
 u 
 
 83.60 
 
 4 
 
 u 
 
 <i 
 
 43-05 
 
 5 
 
 (( 
 
 (( 
 
 9-05 
 
 6 
 
 l< 
 
 spheroid, 
 
 5-IO 
 
 7 
 
 (( 
 
 fusiform. 
 
 4-47 
 
 8 
 
 (( 
 
 a 
 
 4.98 
 
 9 
 
 i(. 
 
 (t 
 
 4-73 
 
 
 ii 
 
 (( 
 
 
 10 
 
 
 
 431 
 
 II 
 
 u 
 
 u 
 
 4.00 
 
 12 
 
 <( 
 
 <( 
 
 3-98 
 
 13 
 
 <( 
 
 <( 
 
 3-37 
 
 14 
 
 (( 
 
 (( 
 
 1.80 
 
 15 
 
 (( 
 
 <( 
 
 0.75 
 
 Fig. 3 is one of three large, rude, clay jars, found near the 
 surface in one of the first trenches on hill V. This jar was 
 .24 m. in height ; diam. of opening, .045 m. ; greatest circum- 
 ference, .614 m. All three jars were full of earth, in which 
 were ashes, date kernels, and remnants of bones (apparently 
 birds' bones). In the same trench were found on the same 
 day, not far from these jars, a very ancient round tablet, bear- 
 ing the names of four prehistoric kings of Nippur ; 15 tablets 
 from the reigns of Samsu-iluna, 1900 B.C., to Cambyses,
 
 388 NIPPUR. 
 
 500 B.C. ; a number of tablet fragments ; three large clay spin- 
 dle whorls ; and a large clay triangle, such as are used to stand 
 pottery on for baking in the pottery furnaces. It was certainly 
 a confusing "find," and one characteristic of the upper strata 
 of hill V. 
 
 Figs. 4 and 11 are jeweller's furnaces. Another type, several 
 of which we found, and which was in fact the more common 
 type, had four legs. These were on the average about .09 m. 
 in height, and .08 m. square. All were of a black clay, or 
 burned black, and most of them were ornamented with rings, 
 like Fig. 4, less often with lines, like Fig. 11, triangles and 
 wedges. The latter, Fig. 11, is only a fragment, and differs in 
 shape from all the others found, being a long trough, while the 
 others are square. These were found in good Babylonian 
 strata on several of the hills. We found also a few stone 
 jewelry moulds. 
 
 Fig. 7. This jar, .18 m. in height, was found in the trench 
 shown in the plate facing page 214, .25 m. from the foot of the 
 slipper-shaped coffin near the surface, and .15 m. below the 
 surface. It belonged, therefore, to the post-Babylonian 
 period. 
 
 Figs. 8, 12, 13, 15, 18, and 20 are specimens of distaff and 
 spindle weights. The first three are baked, the last three un- 
 baked. These were found in very great numbers through all 
 strata on all hills, excepting the Temple Hill, where they ap- 
 pear only in the later strata. 
 
 Fig. 9. Flask-shaped bottle of very brown burned clay^ 
 with remnants of blue enamel. Height .105 m. ; breadth .08 
 m. ; thickness of walls of mouth .023 m. ; diam. of opening 
 .032 m. This was found on hill V., in the same place as Fig. 
 I, and belongs to a good Babylonian period. We found sev- 
 eral other pieces of this same form, but none so good as this. 
 
 Fig. 10. Clay lamp, lower part very massive, chipped here 
 and there, black-brown from fire ; length, .15 m. ; height, .072 
 m. We found several lamps of this shape, sometimes plain, 
 sometimes blue enamelled, and a few in copper, in the upper 
 strata in hills I., III., VI., and X. .'\s far as I could judge the 
 lamps of this shape were all post-Babylonian. The most elabo-
 
 Plate V,
 
 APPENDIX A. 389 
 
 Tate and the largest which we found was in the rooms of the 
 last reconstruction on the Temple Hill. This had a very thick 
 greenish-brown glaze. There were two legs below to steady it, 
 and above there was a female face of Greek type, and very 
 well executed, considering the material. It was evidently Se- 
 leucidan. We also found older lamps of a squarish shape. 
 
 Fig. 14. Clay jar, reddish-brown, two handles with round 
 holes, wedge pattern around neck, horn like excrescence on 
 neck ; in neck, two holes opposite one another for stick to pass 
 through fastening cover on jar. In the cover, corresponding 
 holes for stick to pass through ; the upper part of cover form- 
 ing a saucer. Height, .089 m. ; greatest circumference, .335 
 m. ; diam. of mouth, .08 m. This was found in hill VIII., and 
 belongs, presumably, to the Assyrian period, 650 B.C. 
 
 Figs. 16, 19, 21, and 22 are rests on which to set pottery in 
 the bake furnaces. Some were enamelled and some plain. 
 They were found everywhere in great numbers. The rests 
 used in pottery furnaces in this country to-day are strikingly 
 similar in shape. 
 
 Fig. 17. Clay sieve, shape of small jar, holes in side walls 
 almost to rim, bottom much chipped, opening irregular, hand- 
 made ; height, .036 m. ; diam. of mouth, .027 m. This was 
 found in the late strata on the Temple Hill. A similar cul- 
 lender-like piece of pottery was found later in the Cossaean 
 rooms to the southeast of the temple. Although this is itself 
 late, it reminds me by its use of holes, of the oldest piece of 
 pottery which I found. In the gate-like breach before the 
 temple, in some burned houses, 3 metres below plain level, 
 and therefore more than 5 metres below the Sargon level, I 
 found a thick clay board half a metre in length, and a little 
 more than half as broad, with a handle in the middle in front, 
 at the point where the curvature began. This board was 
 perforated with a dozen or more large holes. In the same 
 room was a pottery drain. The clay board and the drain 
 must have belonged approximately to the earliest settlement of 
 Nippur. The workmanship of the clay board was good and 
 substantial. What the use of the object was, I do not know. 
 I have not represented this in the plates, because I have no
 
 39© NIPPUR. 
 
 photograph of it, and the drawing in my note-book is almost 
 too crude to reproduce. 
 
 Plate VI. 
 
 Fig. I. Plain clay jar ; height, .^6 m. ; greatest diam., .195 
 m. ; diam. of mouth, .118 m. These jars were found most 
 commonly in connection with Babylonian burials, and in the 
 earth in them were found fish-bones, ashes, date kernels, and 
 the like. 
 
 Fig. 2. Reddish-brown clay bowl with very delicate walls ; 
 height, .088 m. ; diam. of mouth, .128 m. These delicately 
 formed, thin bowls were generally used, inverted, as covers 
 over the jars containing food in connection with Babylonian 
 burials. Occasionally, however, they were themselves used to 
 hold the food. 
 
 Fig. 3. A Babylonian drinking-cup of clay, height .112 m. ; 
 circumference, .18 m. ; diam. of mouth, .048 m. These cups 
 were found in considerable numbers in connection with Baby- 
 lonian graves, especially in hill V. Ordinarily three or four 
 were found together. 
 
 Figs. 4 and 7 are the stopper and sieve of a clay drain-pipe, 
 and have been already described in connection with Fig. 9 of 
 plate III. 
 
 Fig. 5 represents another type of the common Babylonian 
 pottery, and was found in hill V., in connection with a grave. 
 Most of these ordinary types persevered through the Sel- 
 eucidan, Parthian, and Sassanian periods This is a plain, 
 clay jar, rounded below ; height, .08 m. ; cir., .27 m. ; diam., 
 .065 m. 
 
 Fig. 6. A large jar with very heavy walls, resting on three 
 legs, the mouth horizontal. There was a large slit in the top 
 near the mouth, and a ridge corresponding to it below and 
 within. 'I'here had been a handle of some sort, but this was 
 broken off. It was about .20 m. long. What use it served I 
 do not know. It was found in the earth in hill V., in the same 
 stratum with tub-shaped and urn-shaped Babylonian graves. 
 A somewhat similar piece of pottery was found in the Cossaean 
 rooms in front of the temple.
 
 Plate VI,
 
 APPENDIX A. 391 
 
 Fig. 8. Plain clay dish with canalized rim ; height, .045 ni. ; 
 diam., .157 m. This was found on hill V., in the upper strata. 
 It was, however, a very common form everywhere, from the 
 Babylonian time on. Sometimes they were hand-made, some- 
 times wheel-made, rarely blue-glazed, generally plain. 
 
 Fig. 9. Large, plain, clay jar ; height, .83 in. ; greatest diam., 
 .35 m. ; diam. at mouth, .108 m. This specimen w^as found 
 in connection with a Babylonian grave, and contained in the 
 earth within fish-bones and ashes. This was a common and 
 very useful form of jar, and we found them at all depths. 
 They are found all over Babylonia, and Coloman informed 
 me that some were found by the Germans when they dug a few 
 holes at Salahieh, near Deir, on the Euphrates. Occasionally 
 they are a metre in height. Some of them are spiked below, 
 like Fig. 12, some are pointed, and some round. Sometimes 
 they are bitumened within ; occasionally they have bung-holes. 
 Some were marked in black with curious characters, which 
 may have been a species of trade-mark. They were used 
 from the earliest times as jars for the storage of water, w-ine,, 
 grain, and the like ; in fact they were the tanks, wine closets, 
 and storerooms of Babylonian houses. The water firkins rep- 
 resented in the cut on page 154 are of this type. 
 
 Fig. 10 is practically identical with Fig. 6 of Plate IV. That 
 was found sealed with bitumen. In the earlier time it was more 
 customary, apparently, to seal jars with clay, and we found a. 
 number of such seals with the impressions of their owners' sig- 
 nets. We found also door and box seals of clay. In some cases, 
 a ribbon or cord had originally passed through the clay. To' 
 this day it is the custom in Irak to seal up a door in a khani 
 containing goods which the owner wishes to leave in store with 
 little pats of clay stamped with the owner's seal. The same 
 custom prevailed in ancient Babylonia, as shown by some of 
 the clay seals found by us. More rarely we found pieces of 
 bitumen stamped in the same way. 
 
 Fig. ri is a type of plain clay jar very common in the re- 
 mains of Nippur at all periods, and in all sizes from .08 m. up 
 to .30 m. and more in height. The form is much like that of 
 Fig. I, but it is ornamented by a raised rim around the neck.
 
 392 NIPPUR. 
 
 Occasionally this is varied by incised lines, hatchings, beading, 
 etc., especially by a band of wedge-shaped markings at the top 
 of the bowl. 
 
 Fig. 1 2. Another type of Babylonian cup, even more common 
 than that shown in Fig. 3, and less well made. This specimen 
 was found in a burial in hill V. Height, .118 m. ; circumfer- 
 ence, .1S7 m. ; diam. of mouth, .048 m. Often several of these 
 cups were found in one grave. Frequently they contained a 
 sediment, or remains of kernels of various grains, showing 
 that they had contained food and drink for the dead. This 
 specimen was full of small seeds and burned wood. 
 
 Plate VII. 
 
 Fig. I. Egg-shaped, two-handled vase, blue- (green) enam- 
 elled, rim somewhat broken, otherwise well preserved. Height, 
 .16 m. ; circumference, .344 m. ; diameter of mouth, .04 m. 
 This was found in a tomb of brick, the roof in the form of a 
 false arch, in a tunnel in hill VI., some four metres or more 
 below the surface. In this tomb were found the remains of 
 ten skeletons ; a copper bracelet ; two copper anklets ; a cop- 
 per pin ; a copper nose-ring ; a white limestone seal cylinder, 
 badly defaced, only a seated figure faintly visible ; ninety-three 
 beads of various stones, metal, shell, and amber (?) ; shells 
 and remnants of shells ; a piece of a copper finger-ring ; parts 
 of gold ornaments on a clasp with bluish-black stone ; a plain 
 clay dish ; an enamelled clay lamp ; this vase and the one shown 
 in Fig. 4. These contained apparently food for the dead, or 
 an offering of the same. Although this tomb was of brick, 
 yet from the depth at which it was found in hill VI., and from 
 the Babylonian seal cylinder found there, I am inclined to 
 suppose that it belonged to a good Babylonian period. 
 
 Fig. 2. Blue-glazed vase, amphora shape, bowl corrugated 
 longitudinally ; height, .18 m. ; circumference, .3875 m. This 
 was found on the first day of our excavations in the first year, 
 on hill I., near a Parthian coffin, and belongs, presumably, to 
 the Parthian period In shape it imitates Greek work, but the 
 execution is clumsy, and the neck is quite awry. This is char- 
 acteristic of the pottery of this ])eriod.
 
 I'LAIK VII.
 
 APPENDIX A. 393 
 
 Fig. 3.- Small, slender, blue-enamelled vase, two handles, 
 opening very small. Height, .0913 m. ; circumference, .164 
 m. ; diameter of mouth, .026 m. It was found in hill I., some 
 five metres below the surface, but in a stratum full of slipper- 
 shaped coffins. It belongs, I believe, to the Seleucidan period. 
 It had apparently been used in connection with a burial, and 
 was full of small seeds of a black-brown color. 
 
 Fig. 4. A two-handled vase, blue-enamelled within and with- 
 out. Height, .095 m. ; circumference, .238 m. ; diameter of 
 mouth, .028 m. Place of finding and date w-ere given under 
 Fig. I. 
 
 Fig. 5. Another type of large-bowled, blue-enamelled am- 
 phora, found in the upper strata of hill I., and belonging to 
 the Parthian period or later. 
 
 Fig. 6. Plain clay jar, good work ; height, .24 m. ; circum- 
 ference, .46 m. ; diameter of mouth, .062 m. This was found 
 in one of the trenches on the west side of hill V., in the Baby- 
 lonian stratum. It is a good specimen of the better plain 
 pottery of that period. 
 
 Fig. 7. Large clay goblet-shaped vase, with ribbon rim ; 
 height, .223 m. ; diameter of mouth, .099 m. This was found 
 in another trench in the same part of hill V. as Fig. 6, and 
 belongs to the same period. It is, however, of much inferior 
 workmanship. Jars of this same general shape, but more than 
 twice this size, and with relatively much thicker walls, were 
 used in the oldest burials found by me at Nippur, two such 
 jars, one larger than the other, being joined together at the 
 mouths {cf. Plate IV., Fig. 2). Similar burials I found at 
 Juha, opposite Anbar. 
 
 Fig. 8. Plain clay jar of rough workmanship ; height, .312 
 m. ; circumference, .595 m. ; diameter of mouth, .106 m. 
 This was a common type from the early Babylonian period 
 onward. It was in a jar of this sort that we found buried in 
 hill v., about 8 to 10 metres below the surface, tablets of the 
 Hammurabi dynasty. 
 
 Fig. 9. Large clay goblet-shaped jar of rude workmanship ; 
 height, .31 m. ; diameter at mouth, .077 m. This is another 
 early type which persisted also into later times.
 
 394 NIPPUR. 
 
 Fig. lo. A white-enamelled vase, roundly egg-shaped, 
 short neck, small opening, enamel partly chipped off. Height, 
 .119 m. ; circumference, .27S m. ; diameter of mouth, .033 m. 
 This vase was found, along with bowl and urn-shaped coffins, 
 in hill v., and belongs, apparently, to the Cossaean period. 
 The glaze is characteristic of that period. 
 
 Fig. II. Blue-enamelled clay vase ; bowl large, egg-shaped, 
 neck short, mouth very small ; height, .192 m. ; circumference, 
 ,45 m. ; diameter of mouth, .023 m. This vase was found with 
 coffins of the two jar and tub types in hill V. The shape is 
 characteristic of the best Babylonian period. 
 
 Figs. 12 and 15 are small clay jars of common types found 
 both in the Babylonian period and later. 
 
 Figs. 13 and 14 are enamelled jars, one light-yellow, the 
 other blue, both much encrusted, and with the enamel badly 
 chipped off, of types common in the Babylonian strata, from 
 1500 B.C. onward, in hill V. 
 
 Plate VIII. 
 
 Figs. I, 2, and 3 are three more types of plain clay jars from 
 hill V. Fig. 2 is .195 m. in height ; Fig. 3, .165 m., and Fig. 
 I a trifle larger. All were found in connection with Baby- 
 lonian graves, and contained date stones, burnt wood, small 
 bones, etc. 
 
 Fig. 4 is a glass vial, almost white ; height, .14 m. ; diame- 
 ter of mouth, .04 m. Several of these were found in late 
 graves, especially on hill I. The form seems to show Greek 
 influence. Another specimen is represented in Plate I. 
 
 Fig. 5. Alabaster bottle ; height, .30 m. ; circumference, 
 ,228 m. ; diameter of mouth, .02 m. This was found in a 
 Babylonian burial urn on hill VI. In the same urn was a 
 fragment of a blue-enamelled clay bottle, .18 m. in height, with 
 a circumference of .224 m., a peculiar shape for a pottery ves- 
 sel. It was decorated with a pattern in stripes and cross 
 stripes. Smaller alabaster bottles we found in connection 
 with tombs of the Babylonian period in hill V. ; and I also 
 found several fragmentary bottles of the same material in the 
 pre-Sargonic strata in the Temple Hill,
 
 Plate VIII.
 
 APPENDIX A. 395 
 
 Figs. 6, 7, and 8 are three blue-glazed pitchers. Figs. 6 
 and 8 are very large, the former .27 m., and the latter about 
 .30 m. These two were found in the very latest strata on the 
 Temple Hill, and Fig. 7 in the late strata on hill I. We \)v\x- 
 chased the exact counterpart of Fig. 6 in Hillah, full of oil or 
 butter, and they are manufactured now in that region. 
 
 Figs. 9 and 1 1 are specimens of glass bottles. Fig. 9 was 
 fluted, of dark, brownish-blue color, and originally enamelled. 
 Height, .045 m. ; circumference, .075 m. ; diameter of mouth, 
 .019 m. This was found near the surface, in the outer hill 
 line to the southeast of the temple, and is presumably late. 
 With it were found fragments of two large glass bowls, promi- 
 nently fluted on the outside. The work on all these pieces 
 was handsome. The other bottle, Fig. 11, which is much 
 larger, is of a very fragile glass, of a smoky color. The mouth 
 was broken off. This was found in connection with a late 
 grave on the surface of the Temple Hill. 
 
 Fig. 10. A specimen of the Hebrew bowls found by us in 
 such great numbers, the translation of one of which, by Pro- 
 fessor Gottheil, is given in Chapter VI. A fair specimen of 
 one of these was .08 m. in height, and .175 m. in diameter. 
 One we found of more than twice this size, and a few were 
 considerably smaller. The figures in the centre of this bowl 
 represent, I suppose, demons. Generally there is but one 
 figure, and some of these are very grotesque. In one case the 
 figure was obscene ; sometimes mystic symbols take the place 
 of figures. The writing is in ordinary black ink, not baked 
 in, I think. Sometimes the bowls are inscribed without as 
 well as within. A few were written in Arabic and Syriac, but 
 the great majority in Hebrew, the script varying from fairly 
 good square characters to a very degenerate cursive. Occa- 
 sionally there was no real inscription, but mere unintelligent 
 imitations of letters, such as are found on the similar bowls 
 used by Jews in Egypt to-day, I am told. 
 
 It will be evident, from the above descriptions and repre- 
 sentations of pottery, that the work was, on the whole, rude. 
 The best period was the period of the Cossaean kings, or 
 thereabouts. With the Seleucid conquest some good designs
 
 396 NIPPUR. 
 
 come in, but the execution is inferior. With the Parthian 
 period the decadence of the pottery manufacture is marked. 
 The best specimens of Cosssean pottery I have been unable to 
 exhibit here. I have no satisfactory photographs, and the 
 drawings in my note-book are not good enough to reproduce. 
 Some of the small ball- and egg-shaped vases found in tombs 
 of that period were very graceful, and the patterns of white 
 and yellow artistic and effective. The glaze, however, was 
 never quite satisfactorily applied in Babylonian pottery. It 
 was not burnt in, the clay beneath it was crumbly, and the 
 enamel tends to chip. Some few fragments of black and red 
 pottery I found from very early periods, but no complete 
 specimens. The coloring in these would almost bear com- 
 parison with the Greek red and black pottery, but the designs 
 were primitive, always in lines, circles, triangles, and the like, 
 never in figures. All of my specimens of fragments of this 
 pottery were lost with our collection of sherds at Baghdad.
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 WEATHER RECORD AT NIPPUR. JANUARY 21— MAY 3, 1890. 
 
 j^an, 21. Barometer at 8 a.m., 77 ; thermometer, 3° Reaumur ; 12 M., 
 bar. 77.3, ther. 12° ; 7 p.m., bar. 77.3, ther. 7°. Cloudy ; still. 
 
 Jan. 22. 7 A.M., bar. 77.3, ther. 2°. Bright; cold wind from N.W., 
 subsided after sundown. 
 
 yan. 2j. Froze during the night ; 9 a.m., bar. 77.45, ther. 7° ; 12 M., 
 bar. 77.5, ther. 11° ; 7 p.m., bar. 77.45, ther. 7°. High, cold wind from 
 southwest, subsiding considerably at sundown. 
 
 Jan. 24. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77.45, ther. 7° ; 3 P.M., bar. 77.30, ther. 12° ; 
 7 P.M., bar. 77.25 ; ther. 9^°. Day clear and bright; wind from north- 
 west, but not so fresh as on two preceding days, fell at sundown. 
 
 Jan. 2^. 8 A.M., bar. 77.20, ther. 9° ; 6.30 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 10°. Day 
 bright and warm ; wind northwest, fell at sundown. 
 
 Jan. 26. 8 A.M., bar. 77.35, ther. 9^°, wind S. 30 E. ; 12 M., bar. 
 77.30, ther. 17°, high wind S. 30 E. ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.45, ther. 12°, wind 
 S. 30 E., almost a gale; air misty or rather hazy. 
 
 Jan. 2^. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.25, ther. 8°, cold, high wind S. 30 E., sky 
 cloudy ; 12 M., bar. 76.40, ther. 12^°, wind almost a gale from west ; 12.30 
 P.M., slight shower, and wind fell suddenly ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. \\\° , 
 calm. 
 
 Jan. 28. 8 A.M., bar. 76.80, ther. lo*', wind fresh N. 70 W. ; i P.M., 
 bar. 77, ther. 12°, wind much subsided ; 5.30 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 12^., cloudy, 
 calm. 
 
 Jan. 2g. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77, ther. 8'', cloudy, calm ; 12 M., bar. 77.10, 
 ther. 18", light wind S. 10 E., cloudy-bright ; 6 P.M., bar. 77.20, ther. 12°, 
 calm, clear. 
 
 Jan. 30. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77.40, ther. 9°, bright, wind fresh N. 20 W. ; 
 2 P.M., bar. 77.50, ther. 17°, wind fresher N. 40 W. ; 8 P.M., bar. 77.40. 
 ther. 11°, wind fresh N. 40 W. 
 
 Jan.ji. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77.40, ther. 5°, strong wind N. 70 W., cold, 
 bright; 12 M., bar. 77.50, ther. 16", high wind, sandstorm ; 6 P.M., bar. 
 77.50, ther. 12^°, clear, wind light. 
 
 Feb. I. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77.50, ther. 7°, wind light northwest, bright ; 
 
 397
 
 398 NIPPUR. 
 
 12 M., bar. 77.50, ther. 17", wind fresh N.W., bright ; 6 p.m., bar. 77-50, 
 ther. 14°, wind light. 
 
 Feb. 2. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77.25, ther. S", bright, no wind ; 12 M., bar. 
 77.20, ther. 20', very light south wind ; 6 p.m., bar. 77, ther. I4^ slightly 
 cloudy, wind light from south. 
 
 Feb. J. 7.30 a.m., bar. 76.80, ther. ii% bright, wind light from S.E. ; 
 12 m., bar 76.85, ther. 21^°, bright, wind fresh from N.W. ; 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.85, ther. 16", wind light, bright. 
 
 Feb. 4. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.85, ther, 8°, wind strong N. 70 W., bright ; 
 12 M., bar. 76.85, ther. 16', wind almost a gale, and air full of sand and dust 
 like a cloud; 6 p.m., bar. 76.90, ther. iii", wind strong but subsided, 
 clear. 
 
 Feb.^. 7.30 A.m., bar. 76.90, ther. 3°, bright, wind light northwest 
 (froze in night) ; 12 m., bar. 77, ther. 16% wind fresh N. 40 W., somewhat 
 cloudy ; 6 p.m., bar. 77.10, ther. 10°, no wind, hazy. 
 
 Feb. 6. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.95, ther. 2", hazy, no wind ; 12 M., bar. 
 77.05, ther. 15^°, cloudy-bright, no wind ; 6 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 12°, cloudy- 
 bright, no wind. 
 
 Feb. 7. A few drops of rain during the night, not enough to lay dust. 
 7 A.M., bar. 77.10, ther. 8^^, cloudy, no wind ; 12 M., bar. 77, ther. 17", a 
 high wind from southeast, cloudy-bright; 6 p.m., bar. 66.95, ther. 12°, 
 wind light from east, somewhat cloudy. 
 
 Feb. S. During the night about as much rain as on the night before. 
 7 A.M., bar. 76. So, ther. 9", cloudy, no wind ; 12 M., bar. 76.60, ther. 13°. 
 A very little rain in the morning, no wind. 10 P.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 10'^, 
 showers through the afternoon, no wind. 
 
 Feb. g. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.60, ther. 8°, wind light from northwest, day 
 warm and bright ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 12°, clear, no wind. 
 
 Feb. 10. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 11°, light wind S.S.E., half-cloudy ; 
 12 M., bar. 76.80, ther. 18°, wind, S.E., half-cloudy; 6 p.m., bar. 76.80, 
 ther. 19°, wind E.S.E., light, half cloudy. 
 
 Feb. II. Rained hard in the night, with thunder, and a high wind from 
 E. to S.E. ; 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.60, ther. 13°, light rain, light wind from 
 S.S.E. ; 12 M., bar. 76.75, ther. i8^°, wind light from south, cloudy, op- 
 pressive ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.75, ther. 16^", wind light from east, cloudy. 
 
 Feb. 12. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 13°, high wind from east, cloudy, 
 and almost rainy. During night much rain, with high wind from east. 
 12 M., ther. 17°. At 2.30 p.m. a gale from S.E., thunder and lightning, a 
 violent downpour of rain. At 4 P.M., bar. 75-90, ther. 16°, calm, sultry 
 and heavy, rain ceased ; 8. 30 p.m., bar. 76, hard rain, high wind from south- 
 east. 
 
 Feb. ij. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 9°, bright, wind fresh from north- 
 west; 12 M., bar. 76.70, ther. 15", wind strong from northwest; 6 p.m., 
 bar. 76.70, ther. 12°, calm, cloudy. Rained hard during forepart of night, 
 with high wind from southeast.
 
 APPENDIX B. 399 
 
 Feb. 14. -7.30 A.M., bar. 76.90. ther. 10°, cloudy, wind fresh from west; 
 12 M., bar. 77, ther. 15°, cloudy, no wind; 6 P.M., bar. 77, ther. 13°, 
 cloudy, no wind. 
 
 Feb. ij. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.90, ther. 8°, cloudy, calm ; 12 M., ther. 13", 
 cloudy, calm; 6 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 13% cloudy, very light wind from 
 northwest. 
 
 Feb. 16. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 10', wind very light from north ; 6 
 P.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 13°, cloudy, calm. 
 
 Feb. ly. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 10°, raining. Rained also at inter- 
 vals during the night. Wind very light N.E. by N. ; 12 M., bar. 76.60, 
 ther. 14°, cloudy, wind N.E. Showers during the morning. 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.60, ther. 10°. Cloudy, rained during afternoon. 
 
 Feb. j8. 7.30 A.M., bar. 76.90, ther. 8\ wind light west of north, 
 bright sun but light mist rising from wet earth ; 12 M., bar. 77.20, ther. 
 15° ; wind light N. by W., cloudy-bright ; 6 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 12^° 
 wind light, almost calm, half-clear. 
 
 Feb. ig. 7 A.M., bar. 77.10, ther. 6°, wind light west of north, clear; 
 r P.M., bar. 77, ther. 15°, wind strong west of north, clear ; 8 p.m., bar. 77, 
 ther. io\° , wind light west of north, clear. 
 
 Feb. 20. 7 A.M., bar. 76. So, ther. 61", clear, wind fresh from N.W.; 12 M., 
 bar. 76.80, ther. 16'', clear, wind N.W., fresh ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.85, ther. 
 ii|-°, half-cloudy, showers to the south\\'est of us, calm. 
 
 Feb. 21. Showers during the night. 7 A.M., bar. 77.10, ther. 85", clear, 
 wind light from N.E. ; 12 M., bar. 76.90, ther. 14°, showery, wind light 
 from N.E. ; 6 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 10°, wind light from east, almost clear. 
 
 Feb. 22. 7 A.M., bar. 76.95, ther. 9^°, clear, wind strong S. 30 E. ; 
 12 M., bar. 76.90, ther. 17', high wind from S., haze in atmosphere caused 
 by dust and sand; 2 P.M., wind S. 30 W. falling rapidly; 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.90, ther. 14°, wind light from north, slightly hazy. 
 
 Feb. 2^. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77, ther. 7°, cloudy, fresh gusty wind from N. 
 W. ; 12.30 P.M., bar. 77.15, ther. 14°. hazy, wind fresh N.W. ; 6 p.m., 
 bar. 77, ther. 11°, hazy, calm ; 8.30 p.m., slight aurora borealis, apparent 
 point of radiation horizon south of west. 
 
 Feb. 24. 7.30 A.M., bar. 77, ther. 11°, wind light N.E., bright ; 12 M., 
 bar. 77, ther. 16°, wind N.E., light, clear; 6 p.m., bar. 76.90, ther. 16°, 
 almost calm, what wind there was from east, cloudy and rain beginning. 
 
 Feb. 2j. 7 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 11", wind light from east, raining ; 12 
 m. bar. 76.60, ther. 18", wind strong from S.E., bright. During afternoon 
 very high wind from S.E.; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. i6^°, calm, rain ; S p.m., 
 violent rain with high wind ; 11 p.m., bright and calm. 
 
 Feb. 26. 7 a.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 11°, cloudy, wind light from S.S.E. ; 
 12 M., bar. 76.50, ther. 16°, cloudy, calm ; 3 p.m., fresh wind from north ; 
 6 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 12°, clear, calm. 
 
 Feb. 2j. 7 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 5^°, clear, wind very light from south- 
 west ; 12 M., bar. 77, ther. 17", cloudy-bright, wind light from southwest; 
 6 P.M., bar. 77, ther. 19°, hazy, wind very light north of west.
 
 400 NIPPUR. 
 
 Feb. 28. 7 A.M., bar. 77.30, then 10°, wind light from S,E., clear; 12 
 M., bar. "Jl.y:)^ ther. 19°, clear, wind light from S.E. 
 
 March I. 7 A.M., bar. 77.10, ther. 10°, wind fresh from northwest, clear ; 
 12 M., bar. 77.20, ther. 22°, high wind from northwest, air full of dust ; 6 P. 
 M., bar. 77.10, ther. 16°, high wind from northwest, dust haze. 
 
 March 2. 7 A.M., bar. 77, ther. 15^ high oppressive wind from north- 
 northwest, a dust haze ; 12 M., bar. 77.10, ther. 22°, very high wind north- 
 west by west, haze of dust ; 6.30 p.m., bar. 77, ther. 13°, wind light N.W., 
 cloudy, oppressive. 
 
 March J. 7 A.M., bar. 77, ther. 15^, clear, wind strong N.N.W. ; 12 
 M., bar. 77, ther. 22^^°, wind very high N.N.W. , dust haze. Wind dropped 
 at sunset. 10 p.m., bar. 76.90, ther. 15°, clear, almost calm. 
 
 March 4. 7 A.M., bar. 76,70, ther. 13°, wind fresh N.W\, clear; 12 M.,. 
 bar. 76.70, ther, 29°, wind strong N.W., hazy; 8 P.M., bar. 76.90, ther. 
 18°, calm. 
 
 March J. 7 A.M., bar. 76.90, ther. 15°, clear, wind light N.N.W. ; 12 
 M., hazy, bar. 77, ther. 25°, wind light, N.N.W. ; 6 P.M., bar. 77, ther. 25°, 
 clear, calm. 
 
 March 6. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76. So, ther. 12°, clear, calm ; 12 M., bar. 76- 
 .80, ther. 26°, hazy, strong wind from south ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 20', 
 clear, calm. 
 
 March y. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 15°, cloudy, wind very light S.S. 
 E. ; 12 M., bar. 76.50, ther. 25", cloudy, wind very high ; 6 p.m., bar. 76- 
 .40, ther. 21°, cloudy, very high wind S.S.E. 
 
 March S. 6.15 A.M., bar. 76.35, ther. 14°, cloudy, wind fresh S.S.E. 
 High wind and a very little rain during the night, not enough to lay the dust. 
 12 M., cloudy, dust-storm, bar. 76.20, ther. 22°, wind very high from S.S.E. ; 
 4 to 7 P.M., showers with thunder and lightning; 9 P.M., bar. 76.15, ther. 
 15°, cloudy, wind light N.N.W. 
 
 March g. 7 A.M., bar. 76.10, ther. 16^, cloudy, wind S. of E. ; 12 M., 
 bar. 76.10, ther. 22°, cloudy, showers; 6 p.m., bar. 76.10, ther. 15", hard 
 rain. 
 
 Alarch 10. Rained very hard, with high wind all night. 7 a.m., bar. 
 76, ther. 14°, raining hard, strong wind from S.E. ; 12 M., bar. 76, ther. 
 12°, raining hard, wind fresh N.N.W. Rained all the afternoon, began to 
 clear about sunset with high wind from northwest. Rainbow at sunset. 
 Afterwards another sharp shower. 8 p.m., bar. 76.40, ther. 16", cloudy, no 
 wind. 
 
 March 11. Showers during the night. 7 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 9°, cloudy, 
 calm. A few drops of rain, and a few gleams of sunshine during the morn- 
 ing. 12 M., bar. 76.40, ther. 16°, cloudy, wind fresh S.S.E. In the after- 
 noon a high wind from S.S.E. ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.40, ther. ii°, cloudy, wind 
 light S.S.E. 
 
 March 12. 7 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 7°, clear, wind light E, by S. ; 12 
 M., bar. 76.50, ther. 18", clear, wind fresh S.E.; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 
 13°. cloudy, wind light S. by E.
 
 APPENDIX B. 401 
 
 March ij. ■ 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.35, tlier. 9°, clear, wind light from E. by 
 S. ; 12 M., bar. 76.40, ther. 19°, clear, wind fresh from E. ; 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.20, ther. 16°, cloudy, almost calm. 
 
 Alarch 14. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76, ther. 12°, raining hard, wind light from 
 an easterly direction ; 12 M., bar. 76, ther. 16°, rainy, wind light from east- 
 erly direction. Occasional growling of thunder. During the afternoon there 
 was a gale from the east with a tremendous downpour of rain, flooding every- 
 thing and beating right through the reed huts. 6 p.m., bar. 75.90, ther. 16°, 
 hard rain, little wind. 
 
 March /j. 6.30 a.m., bar. 76, ther. 12°, cloudy, wind fresh S.S.E. 
 Rained hard all night, level ground almost a lake, buildings half-flooded. 
 I2M., bar. 76.15, ther. 17°, cloudy, wind light from east. During the morning 
 bar. reached 76.35. At 4 P.M., gale from east and short sharp rain with 
 thunder and lightning. 6 P.M., bar. 76.10, ther. 12^, cloudy, wind light from 
 east. 
 
 March 16. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.20, ther. 12°, cloudy, wind light E. by S.; 
 12 M., bar. 76.20, ther. 14°, raining, calm ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.10, ther. 14°, 
 calm, cloudy, thunder-storm passing us on the east going from south to 
 north. 
 
 March ly. Occasional showers during the night. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.40, 
 ther. 11°, cloudy, calm. 12 m.. bar. 76.50, ther. 17°, cloudy-bright, what 
 wind there is N.W. by W. ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 14°, clear, almost calm. 
 
 March 18. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 11°, cloudy, calm ; 12 M., bar. 
 76.50, ther. 21', cloudy-bright, wind light from south ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.40, 
 ther. 14°, raining, a light shower of brief duration, preceded by a little wind, 
 very light N.W. 
 
 March ig. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 12°, clear, lightwind from S.W.; 
 12 M., bar. 76.60, ther. 20°, cloudy-bright, wind light S.E. ; 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.50, ther. 14°, cloudy, calm. During afternoon two light showers, a little 
 thunder and lightning, and a brief wind storm from N.E. 
 
 March 20. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.60, ther. 13°, cloudy, wind light S. of W. 
 At 7.30 fresh breeze, at 8 a.m. breeze died, rain-storm began. 12 M. bar. 
 76.80, ther. 16°, raining, calm. Rain stopped about i p.m. 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.60, ther. 15°, cloudy, calm. 
 
 March 21. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.60, ther. 12°, clear, wind light N. by W. ; 
 12 M., bar. 76.70, ther. 21°, cloudy-bright, wind light N. by W. ; 4 p.m., short 
 sharp rain-storm, little lightning ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.60, ther. 15°, cloudy, calm. 
 
 March 22. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.60, ther, 13°, clear, wind fresh from W. ; 
 1 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 20°, wind more fresh, clear ; 7 P.M., bar. 76.80, 
 ther. 15°, clear, calm. 
 
 March 2j. 6.30 a.m.. bar. 76.90, ther. 13°, clear, wind light from west ; 
 I P.M., ther. 20°, clear. 
 
 March 24. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76. So, ther. 13°, clear, wind light from N.W.; 
 I P.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 21°, clear, wind fresh N.W. by W. ; 8 P.M., bar. 
 76.70. ther. 13°, clear, calm.
 
 402 NIPPUR. 
 
 March 2^. 6.30 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 12", wind fresh from N.W., clear ; 
 I P.M., bar. 76,80, ther. 22°, clear, wind fresh N.W, ; 7 p.m., bar. 76.60, 
 ther. 15°, clear, calm. 
 
 March 26. 6.30 a.m., bar. 76.60, ther. 15°, clear, wind light from S.E. ; 
 1 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 22 , clear, wind strong from S.E. At 6.30 P.M. a 
 sudden wind-storm descended from N. of W. after a dull and lowering after- 
 noon. The wind, which was accompanied by clouds of dust, was strong 
 enough to carry away mats and a palm-log from the roof of one of the veran- 
 das. 10 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 14", wind strong N. by W., half-cloudy. 
 
 MarchzS. 6 a.m., bar. 76.65, ther. I2|°, half-cloudy, calm ; 3 P.M., bar. 
 76.70, ther. 18", half-cloudy, wind light N. by W. ; 11 p.m., bar. 76.85, 
 ther. 12°, clear, calm. 
 
 March 2g. 6 A.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 12', clear, wind light S.S.E. ; 2 
 p.m., bar. 76.60, ther. 21 , clear, wind fresh S.S.E. 
 
 March jo. 6 A.M., bar. 76.50, hazy, wind east and fresh. Wind fell, 
 morning sultry, latter part strong wind from W.N.W. Later, threatenings 
 ■of a storm. 
 
 March ji. 5 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. ii|°, hazy, wind fresh from N. by 
 "W. ; 1.30 P.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 20°, cloudy, calm ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.65, ther. 
 16°, calm, a few drops of rain. 
 
 April I. Rained almost all night. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 16°, raining, 
 very slight movement of air from S. by E. ; 8.30 A.M., raining violently, 
 fresh breeze from N. of E. ; 9.30 a.m., rain stopped, wind rising. About 
 10 A.M. violent rain with higli wind from easterly quarters. I P.M., bar. 
 76.40, ther. 15°, hard rain, high wind from S.E. About 2.30 p.m. rain 
 stopped, wind increasing. 6 p.m., bar. 76.10, ther. 154°, cloudy, strong 
 wind from S.E. 
 
 April 2. 5 A.M., bar. 76, ther. I4f °, cloudy, threatening, wind strong south 
 alittleeast. During the morning high wind, and several showers. 12.30P.M., 
 bar. 75.90, ther. 19°, cloudy, threatening, wind light ; 3.30 P.M., wind high 
 from north a little west, a thunder-storm passing to east and a few drops of 
 Tain fell ; 6 p.m., bar. 75.90, ther. 15", cloudy, calm. 
 
 , April J. Showers during the night. 5 A.M., bar. 76.20, ther. Ili°, clear, 
 ■wind light S. of W. ; 12.30 p.m., bar. 76.40, ther. 19^, clear, wind fresh 
 S. of W. ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.40, ther. 18°, half-clear, lightning in distance, 
 calm. 
 
 April ^. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. iii', clear, almost no wind, wiiat lit- 
 tle there is from W. ; 12.30 p.m., bar. 76. 85, ther. 23", clear, wind very 
 light from W. ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.80, ther. 18°, clear, calm. 
 
 April ^. 5 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 13°, cloudy, wind very light south a 
 little east ; 12.30 P.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 23|°,hazy, wind light ; 6 p.m., bar. 
 76.80, ther. 18°, clear, wind fresli. 
 
 April 6. Rained a little during the night. 6 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 155°, 
 cloudy, wind strong from N.W. 12.30 p.m., bar. 76.35, ther. 25°, high 
 wind from S.E. with much dust, hazy. In afternoon wind from N.W. Very
 
 APPENDIX B. 403 
 
 sultry and sickish atmosphere, dust haze. 6 P.M., half-cloudy, almost calm, 
 bar. 76.30, ther. 19°. 
 
 April 7. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 13% clear, wind N.W. fresh. At 
 noon strong wind. 6 p.m., calm, bar. 76.80, ther. 17^°. 
 
 April 8. 5 A.M., bar. 76.70, ther. 13°, wind very light N.W. by W., 
 clear ; 12.30 p.m., bar. 76.95, ther. 24°, wind light N.W. by W., clear ; 6 
 P.M., bar. 76.75, ther. 18°, cloudy, almost calm. 
 
 April g. 5 A.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 14° ; 12.30 P.M., bar. 76.80, ther. 
 23^° ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.60, ther. i8^°. Little or no wind, a few faint puffs 
 only from different directions. Slightly cloudy. 
 
 April 10. 5 A.M., bar. 76.55, ther. 14°, cloudy, wind fresh from S.E. ; 
 12.30 P.M., bar. 76.65, ther. 2i|°, a few drops of rain, wind light from S.E. 
 Hard showers through the afternoon with gusts of wind from S.E. 6 p.m., 
 bar. 76.50, ther. 17°, cloudy, wind light from S.E. 
 
 April II. Rained during night. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 16°, cloudy, 
 wind fresh from S.E. 12.30 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 22|°, cloudy, calm, thun- 
 der ; I P.M., violent rain with high wind from N.W., a deluge less than half 
 an hour ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 16°, cloudy, wind very light from N.W. 
 
 April 12. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 15", cloudy, wind half-fresh from 
 northwest. 12.30 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 23°, hazy, wind light from N.W. ; 
 6 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 19", clear, wind very light from north. 
 
 April ij. 6 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 16°, clear, wind fresh from N.W. ; 12 
 M., ther. 24° ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.60, ther. ig", calm, hazy. 
 
 April 14. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. i6\ hazy, wind very light from S. ; 
 3 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 25°, hazy; 6 P.M., bar. 76.45, ther. 21°, cloudy, 
 calm. 
 
 April IJ. 5 A.M., bar. 76.20, ther. 14", clear, calm ; ir A.M., ther. 27°. 
 Wind, when it blew during the day, from S.E. Not clear, half-cloudy, 
 hazy, and very sultry. 
 
 April lb. Rained a very little during the night. 5 A.M., bar. 75.75, 
 ther. 17^, cloudy, threatening, wind fresh from S.E. ; 12 M., bar. 75.90, 
 ther. 24^°, hazy, wind very light from S.E. During earlier part of morning 
 several showers. 6 p.m., bar. 76, ther. 19°, violent rain-storm with thunder 
 and lightning, and high wind from S.E. 
 
 April ly. 5 a.m., bar. 76, ther. 14°, half-cloudy, wind fresh from N.W. 
 Wind died in morning. 12 M., bar. 76.50, ther. 21°, violent rain, thunder 
 and lightning, wind N.E. Violent storms through afternoon. 6 P.M., bar. 
 76, ther. 16% clearing, wind fresh from N.E. 
 
 April 18. 5 A.M., bar. 75.80, ther. 13°, wind fresh and cool from north ; 
 12.30 P.M., bar. 75.90, ther. 22^% wind light from north ; 6 p.m., bar. 
 75.90, ther. 17I', wind light from north. 
 
 April ig. 5 A.M., bar. 76, ther. 13^, clear, calm; i P.M., bar. 76.10, 
 ther. 25°, wind fresh from S. by E. ; 3 p.m., short dust-storm from north ; 
 6 p.m., bar. 76, ther. 18% clear, calm ; 8 P.M., rain with high wind from 
 S. by E. Showers and much wind during night.
 
 404 NIPPUR. 
 
 April 20. 5.30 A.M., bar. 76.30, ther. 15', showery, high wind S. by 
 E. ; 1 P.M., bar. 76.15, ther. 21°, hazy, almost a gale from E. by S. ; 5.30 
 P.M., storm with thunder and lightning; 6 P.M., raining, bar. 76, ther. 
 19^, gale continues. 
 
 April 21. 5 A.M., bar. 76.30, ther. 13°, clear, fresh wind from W. of 
 N. ; 12 M., bar. 76.40, ther. 26°, clear, fresh wind from W. of N. 
 
 April 22. 5 A.M., bar. 76.35, ther. 14°, wind light northwest, clear ; 
 12 M., bar. 76.35, ther. 26', clear, light wind from N.W. ; 6 P.M., bar. 
 76.40, ther. 14^, clear, almost calm. 
 
 April 2j. 5.30 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 16", clear, calm ; 12 M., bar. 
 76.50, ther. 27% clear, wind light from S.E. ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 19°, 
 clear, wind light from S.E. 
 
 April 24. 5 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 17°, half-cloudy, calm ; 12 M., bar. 
 76.40, ther. 25°, hazy, high wind from -S.E. Dust and flies overwhelm- 
 ing. 6 P.M., bar. 76.45, ther. 22°, cloudy, wind light from N.W. A very 
 few drops of rain in the afternoon. 
 
 April 2^. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 18% half-cloudy, wind strong from 
 N.W. A few drops of rain in the night. 6 p.m., bar. 76.30, ther. 20°, high 
 wind from N.W., cloudy, a few drops of rain. 
 
 April 2b. 4.30 a.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 15°, cloudy, calm; 12 M., bar. 
 76.45, ther. 26°, hazy, wind light from E.S.E. 
 
 April 2^. In evening of 26th, thunder-storm ; hard showers all night ; at 
 daylight very high wind from N.E. ; 8 A.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 15", raining, 
 little wind ; i P.M., bar. 76.40, ther. 16°, cloudy, threatening, wind fresh 
 from N.W. Showers through the morning. 
 
 April 28. 5 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 15", clear, calm ; 12 M., bar. 76.60, 
 ther. 22°, a few light clouds, wind fresh from N.W. by N. ; 6 P.M., bar, 
 76.50, ther. 18°, hazy, calm. 
 
 April 2g. 4.30 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 14°, clear, calm; 12 M., bar 
 76.55, ther. 24", clear, wind fresh from E. by N. ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.55, ther 
 15°, violent thunder- and lightning-storm from N.W. 
 
 April JO. 4.30 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 12°, clear, wind fresh from N.W. 
 12 M., bar. 76.70, ther. 18", clear, high wind from N.W. ; 8.30 p.m., bar 
 76.70, ther. i6^°, clear, light wind from N.W. 
 
 iMay J. 4.30 A.M., bar. 76.75, ther. 13°, clear, light wind from NlW. 
 12 m., bar. 77, ther. 25"", high wind from N. W., clear ; 6 P.M., bar. 76.80 
 ther. 20', clear, almost calm. 
 
 May 2. 4.30 A.M., bar. 76.90, ther. 15^", clear, calm ; 12 m., bar. 77 
 ther, 26^°, clear, wind very light N.W. ; 6 p.m., bar. 76.50, ther. 21° 
 clear, calm or almost so. 
 
 May J. 4.30 A.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 17^, clear, calm ; 12 M., bar. 76.50, 
 ther. 30'', clear, wind light from S. Half an hour later wind shifted to 
 N.W. 6 P.M., bar. 76.50, ther. 22'', clear, wind very light from N.W.
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Abbas, Arab workman, i. 251 ; ac- 
 cused of theft, 277 ; hears thieves, 
 279 ; sent to Berdi, 280 ; surrep- 
 titious digging, ii. 52, 53 ; family 
 of, 54 ; excavates coffin, 99 ; on 
 southern trip, 102, 283 ; piety, 
 330 ; secures boat, 335 ; wife of, 
 
 339 
 Abbasside caliphs, rebuild Rakka, 
 
 i. 106 ; prosperity of period, 128, 
 
 155 ; founder of, 17S ; rule of, ii. 
 
 264 
 Abdan, Arab guide, i. 264, 265, 
 
 267, ii. 269, 282, 327, 329 
 Abd-ul-Ahad, brother of Daoud 
 
 Thoma, i. 319 
 Abraham, date of migration, ii. 
 
 256 ; fatherland of, 266 
 Abrizan, Armenian Feast, ii. 36 
 Abu-Adham, ruin mound, ii. 191, 
 
 279, 285 
 Abu Habba, i. 206, 314 ; excava- 
 
 vations at, 319, 353, ii. 50, 78, 
 
 109 ; tablet from, 249 
 Abu Hareire, i. 100 
 Abu Ishak, Liber Climatum, i. 315 
 Abu Jarun, ii. 55 
 Abu Jasim, ii. 96 
 Abu Jowan, i. 258, 275, 326, ii. 95, 
 
 98 
 Abu Kemal, i. 135, 138, 364, ii. 40 
 Abu-'lfeda, Balis, i. 94 ; Deir, 116 ; 
 
 Anbar, 177 
 Abu Nahud, i. 123, 368 
 Abu Nejm, i. 213, ii. 57 
 Abu Shahrein, ancient Eridu, i. 346, 
 
 ii. 96, 299, 300 
 Abu Shema, i. 319 
 Abud-el-Hamud, Affech chief, i. 
 
 281, 285 ; disclaims burning of 
 
 camp, 286 ; visits from, ii. 69, 79 ; 
 leave taking, 102 
 
 Adadnadin, inscription of, i. 343, 
 ii. 292 
 
 Adar, Tel-el, i. 166 
 
 Affech Arabs, country, i. 229; origin, 
 231 ; conditions, 231 ; war with 
 Turks, 232 ; divisions, 233 ; irri- 
 tation of, 253 ; villages, 262 ; 
 trouble with zaptiehs, 276 ; come 
 to our assistance, 280 ; war songs, 
 325 ; suffer from cholera, ii. 6, 
 61 ; relations to Shammar, 83 ; 
 war against, 328 
 
 Aftimus, Dr. Selim, physician to 
 expedition, ii. 15, 17, 18, 23, 35, 
 42, 46, 51 ; illness, 73, 77 ; re- 
 covery, 341 
 
 Agamna, i. 142 
 
 Ahalu Arabs, ii. 28 
 
 Ahava, i. 163 
 
 Ahmed Tewfik Pasha, acting gov- 
 ernor of Baghdad, ii. 48 
 
 Ainsworth, Barbalissus, i. 93 ; 
 Sheikh Hasan, 94 ; Mahariz, loi ; 
 Rakka, 106; Halebieh, 109, 114; 
 brick ruins, 115 ; naphtha springs, 
 116; Deir, 116; Circesium, 125; 
 Rehaba, 127; animal life, 134; 
 hurricane, 13S ; caravan routes, 
 141 ; el-Kaim, 142 ; Anah, 148 ; 
 Ramadieh, 168 
 
 Aker, i. 175 
 
 Akerkuf, i. 1S8, 209, 354 
 
 Aleppo, character of, i. 76 ; antiqui- 
 ties, 77 ; history, 77 ; money, 79 ; 
 citadel, 85 ; button, 196 ; hail- 
 storm, 291 
 
 Alexander the Great, crosses Eu- 
 phrates at Tiphsah, i. 98 ; builds 
 Nikephorium, 106 ; kingdom of, 
 ii. 262 ; builds canal, 314, 335 
 
 405
 
 4o6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Alexandretta, goods sent to, i. ii ; 
 arrival at, 69 ; road from, 71 ; 
 American interests at, ii. 13 
 
 Ali, Caliph, battle with Moawia, 
 i. loi ; tomb of, ii. 316, 317 ; 
 mosque, 322 ; city, 326 
 
 Alliance Israelite, ii. 346 
 
 'Alus, i, 157-159; 3i2, 314. 359 
 
 'Alusa, goddess, i. 159, 316 
 
 Alusharshid, vases of, ii. 136, 137, 
 159, 161, 239, 251 
 
 American Oriental Society, expedi- 
 tion proposed by, i. i ; committee 
 appointed from, 3 
 
 Amman, ii. 358, 364 
 
 Ammianus Marcellinus, i. 124, 159, 
 164, 178, 314 
 
 Amram, i. 210, 211, 321, ii. 53 
 
 Amraphel, ii. 201, 256 
 
 Anah, i. 144, 152, 158, 159; iden- 
 tity with Charmande, 168 ; nar- 
 rowness of street, 290, 311 ; visited 
 by Ward, 361 
 
 Anath, goddess, i. 159 
 
 Anazeh Arabs, i. 119, 290; camps 
 of, ii. 33 ; demand blackmail, 34 ; 
 ambush, 36 ; caravans, 43 ; black- 
 mailed by, 345 
 
 Anbar, site chosen, i. 31 ; applica- 
 tion refused, 32 ; position, 171 ; 
 Jewish school, 172 ; remains of, 
 173 ; history, 177, 181 ; second 
 \'isit, 290; situation, 315 ; visited 
 by Ward, 355 _ 
 
 Antar, towers of, i, 330; ii. 97 
 
 Antiquities, Turkish law of, i. 5 ; 
 policy of British Museum, 13 ; 
 purchase in London, 15 ; Con- 
 stantinople, 46 ; forgeries in 
 Aleppo, 77; in Deir, 117; in 
 Baghdad, 193; at Babil, 210; at 
 Hillali, 221 ; purchase of, 297 ; 
 at Samawa, 349 ; Mersin, ii. 11 ; 
 Ladakieh, 13 ; Damascus, 20 ; 
 Palmyra, 32 ; Hit, 42 ; from Nip- 
 pur, 99, 103 ; Baghdad, 336 ; 
 Palmyra, 348 ; in Smyrna, 361 ; 
 Constantinople, 362 ; gift of, 369 
 
 Antoninus Pius, milestones of, i. 
 
 374 
 Anu, ii. 129, 247 
 Arabian Nights, ii. 113, 203 
 Arakka, i. 103, 371, ii. 32, 33 
 Aram Naharaim, i. 77 
 Aram Zol)ah, i. 77 
 Archaeological Institute of America, 
 
 assumes Wolfe expedition, i. 2 ; 
 
 committee appointed from, 3 ; 
 
 writes to State Department, 8 
 Ardeshir, i. 155, 158, 201 
 Aretas, inscriptions of, ii. 358 
 Arioch. See Eriaku. 
 Armenians, types of, i. 81 ; condi- 
 tions of, ii. 9, 362, 365, 367 
 Arrian, on Pallakopas canal, i. 313 ; 
 
 tombs of Assyrian Kings, ii. 230, 
 
 288 
 Artaxerxes I., ii. 262 
 Artaxerxes, founder of .Sassanian 
 
 empire, i. 155, 201 
 Artin, Armenian servant, i. 81, 92, 
 
 31S, ii. 14, 16, 37, 90, 102, 322, 
 
 343, 353 
 
 Asheir, Tel, i. 365 
 
 Ashurbanipal, bas reliefs of, i. 136 ; 
 inscriptions, ii. 33 ; library, 107 ; 
 restores E-kur, 126 ; identifica- 
 tion, 151 ; ziggurat of, 152 ; 
 bricks, 157 ; reconstruction by, 
 162 ; structures destroyed, 168 ; 
 tablet of, 206 ; inscriptions, 252, 
 255 ; restores ziggurat, 261 ; tab- 
 let of, 381 
 
 Ashur-etil-ilani, tablets of, ii. 207, 
 262 
 
 Assyrians, conquer Babylon, ii. 261 
 
 Assyrium Stagnum, ii. 315, 324 
 
 Aurelian conquers Zenobia, i. 114 
 
 Auzara, i. 159, 317 
 
 Azarian, i. 45 
 
 B 
 
 Babel, Tower of, i. 216 
 
 Babil, i. 20S ; hanging gardens, 
 212 ; digging at, 320, ii. 53 
 
 Babylon, i. 208, 212, ii. 53 ; ziggu- 
 rat at, 120 ; excavations in, 336 
 
 Babylonian Exploration Fund, or- 
 ganized, i. 8 
 
 Baghdad, consulate proposed, i. 3 ; 
 established, 10 ; provisions shipped 
 to, II ; founded by Mansur, 178 ; 
 first sight of, 188 ; arrival at, 
 190; ancient Baghdadu, 194; 
 modern city, 195 ; date mark, 
 196 ; cholera in, ii. 6 ; conflict 
 between Jews and Moslems, 41 ; 
 ravages of cholera, 47 ; burials in, 
 113, 203 ; loss of collections, 238 ; 
 capital of Abbassides, 264 ; the 
 glorious city, 265 ; heat in, 332 ;
 
 INDEX. 
 
 407 
 
 persecution of Christians, 343 ; 
 schools, 346 
 
 Baghdadieh, i. 15S 
 
 Balis. See Barbalissus. 
 
 Barbalissus, i. gi, 93, g4 
 
 Bedawee. See Dervishes. 
 
 Bedry Bey, Turkish Commissioner, 
 visit dervishes with, i. 6i ; infor- 
 mation from, 177; meeting with, 
 190, 192 ; espionage, 193 ; fall 
 from horse, 201 ; reputation, 204, 
 206, 208, 211-213, 221, 222 ; 
 strained relations, 223 ; secures 
 entertainment, 226 ; stops at Sukh- 
 el-Affech, 229; hut of, 235; 
 fright, 236 ; telegrams, 237, 248 ; 
 visits Tarfa, 251 ; irritates Arabs, 
 253; orders out zaptiehs, 257; 
 officiousness, 260 ; trip to Tello, 
 261 ; 265, 269, 271, 274; excites 
 jealousy, 276 ; arrests Abbas, 278 ; 
 forbids present to Mekota, 283 ; 
 afraid of Mekota, 2S5 ; telegraphs 
 government, 286 ; reproved by 
 Wall, 287 ; extortion by, ii. 3, 6 ; 
 assistance from, 7 ; bad reputa- 
 tion, 59 ; ingenuity, 369 
 
 Bedur Arabs, ii. 301, 328 
 
 Behahtha, el-, Arabs, i. 233 ; 
 threaten war, 238 ; war, 249 ; de- 
 feat of, 251 ; exclusion of, ii. 71 ; 
 visits to, 72 ; chief of, 328 
 
 Beirout, arrival at, ii. 13 ; schools 
 and colleges, 16 ; custom house, 
 
 351 
 Bektashee. See Dervishes. 
 Bel, worshipped at Nippur, ii. 104, 
 107 ; ziggurat of, 115 ; temple, 
 119; worship, 129; shrine, 130; 
 votives to, 132, 159, 163, 165 ; 
 archives of temple, 1S9 ; gifts to, 
 239 ; chief god, 249 ; rivalry of 
 Marduk, 257 ; worshipped by 
 Kossaeans, 259 ; sack of temple, 
 260 ; figures of, 376 ; votive tab- 
 lets of, 380 
 Bel Marduk, ii. 257 
 Bel-Merodach, i. 212 ; temple of, 
 
 ii. 116, 120 
 Belikh, river, i. 106, 125, 310 
 Bellis, ii. 130; figures of, 376, 379 
 Bene Rechab Arabs, i. 268, 328, ii. 
 
 289, 32S 
 Bene Temim Arabs, i. 268, ii. 286 
 Benjamin of Tudela, i. 93, loi, 125, 
 147, 179 
 
 Bent, Theodore, article in Contempo- 
 rary jReview, i. 38 ; in Mashona- 
 land, ii. 158 
 
 Berdi, Affech chief, i. 230 ; builds 
 us huts, 235 ; war dances, 237, 
 238 ; arrangement with, 244, 246 ; 
 gift to, 247; victory of, 251; 
 murders brothers, 253 ; threatens 
 us, 254 ; offers to kill Bedry, 261 ; 
 gives feast, 275 ; visit from, 277 ; 
 comes to our assistance, 280 ; 
 shame of, 285 ; murdered, ii. 15 
 
 Bethlehem, ii. 354 
 
 Beylan Pass, i. 72 
 
 Bibeiashu, ii. 144 
 
 Bint-el-Amir, i. 245, 249, ii. 106,. 
 115. 152 
 
 Birejik, i. 91, 310 
 
 Birs Nimrud. See Borsippa. 
 
 Bismya, i. 265 ; visit to, 274 ; visited 
 by Ward, 328, 330 ; second visit, 
 ii. 271 
 
 Bitumen, springs at Hit, i. 160 ; use 
 on boats, 162 ; as tribute, 163 ; as 
 mortar, 209 ; springs, 358 ; pave- 
 ment of, ii. 162 ; seals, 1S3, 391 
 
 Blau, Dr., i. 348, ii. 308 
 
 Blockey, T. S., letters to, i. 11, 
 170; financial correspondent, 191, 
 192 
 
 Blunt, Wilfred S. , and Lady Anne, 
 i. 12, 119 ; friend of, ii. 348 
 
 Bond, chief librarian of British 
 Museum, i. 13 
 
 Borsippa, antiquities from, i. 15 ; 
 site chosen, 31 ; applied for, 32 ; 
 appearance, 213 ; excavations, 
 214 ; antiquities, 221 ; visited by 
 Ward, 321 ; site abandoned, ii. 
 4 ; workmen from, 71 ; ziggurat,, 
 116 
 
 Boundary stones, ii. 379 
 
 Bowen, Henry C, i. i 
 
 Bowman, military physician, i. 204,, 
 351, ii. 45. 51., 73. 
 
 Brousa, burials in, ii. 1 13 
 
 Budge, gives assistance, i. 12 ; pro- 
 posed expedition, 14 ; in Constan- 
 tinople, 37 
 
 Bur-Sin, of Isin, bricks of. ii. 165, 
 
 254 
 Bur-Sin, of Ur, shrine of, ii. 130,. 
 131, 146-148 ; inscribed vase,. 
 160 ; bricks, 165 ; door-socket, 
 238, 239 ; work on temple, 254 ;, 
 door-socket, 376
 
 4o8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Burials, at Juha, i. 171, 179; in 
 oriental cities, ii. 113 ; on Temple 
 Hill, 153 ; Camp Hill, 186, 200 ; 
 on Hill XII, 213; in jars, 216; 
 objects with, 219 ; notes on, 220 
 ff. ; at Zerghul and el-Hibba, 
 230^. ; at Nippur, 234. ; at Umm- 
 el-Ajarib, 287 ; at Erech, 304 ; in 
 Irak, 325 ; objects with, 381, 
 
 384 #• 
 Burnaburiash, mortar of, i. 15, 221 ; 
 
 letter of, ii. 135 ; inscriptions, 
 
 144 
 Buseira, i. 123. See Circesium. 
 
 C 
 
 Cadwalader, John, i. 10 
 
 Calneh, ii. 107 
 
 Cambyses, tablets of, i. 251, ii. 
 19S, 236, 387 
 
 Camel rider of clay, ii. 373 
 
 Camp Hill, excavations in, I. 245 ; 
 ii. 78, 112, 144, 172, 194; coffins 
 on. 215 ; burials in, 224, 227 ; 
 Kossaean archives, 259, 261 ; 
 further excavations advocated, 
 371 ; pottery from, 386 ; lamps, 
 388 ; pitchers, 395 
 
 Canals, i. 185, iS7,_ 313, 315 ; a 
 centre of, ii. 98 ; importance of, 
 306 
 
 Cappadocia, antiquities from, i. 15 ; 
 tablets, 46, 297, ii. 135 
 
 Carchemish; i. 36 ; ancient Hittite 
 capital, 91 ; confused with Cir- 
 cesium, 125 
 
 Cassite. See Kossaean. 
 
 Cernik, Studien Expedition, i. 316 
 
 Cesnola, statue found by, ii. 303 
 
 Chanuga, i. 112 
 
 Charmande, i. 46, 168 
 
 Chedorlaomer, ii. 256 
 
 Chesney, Aleppo citadel, i. 85 ; Bar- 
 balissus, 93 ; Sheikh Hasan, 94 ; 
 Tiphsah, 97 ; Mahariz, loi ; Soo- 
 reah, 104 ; Rakka, 106 ; Euphra- 
 tes gorge, 108 ; Halebieh, 109 ; 
 brick ruins, 115 ; mud wall, 123 ; 
 Circesium, 125 ; wild asses, 136 ; 
 local names, 137 ; loss of steamer, 
 138 ; Phfenix, 140 ; map of, 315 
 
 Chicken, clay rattle in form of, ii. 
 377 
 
 China, cobalt from, ii. 134 
 
 Chirfan, i. 326. See Chirzfun. 
 
 Chirzfun, ii. 96 
 
 Chisroes, takes Sura, i. 103 ; palace 
 of, 198 
 
 Cholera, epidemic of, ii, 6 ; cordons, 
 40 ; endemic on Euphrates, 45 ; 
 ravages of. 47 ; among Afifech, 
 61 ; ascribed to me, 79 ; origin 
 of, 295 ; exemption from, 324 ; 
 another outbreak of, 360 
 
 Cholle, i. 103, ii. 33 
 
 Chronicles, i. 127 
 
 Circesium, i. 124, 311, 314 
 
 Clark, C. H., i . 4 ; member of 
 executive committee, 8 ; subscrip- 
 tion, 296 
 
 Clark, E. W., meeting with, i. 3 ; 
 proposes an expedition, 4 ; treas- 
 urer of fund, 8 ; purchases antiqui- 
 ties, 16 ; letter to, 242 ; subscrip- 
 tion, 296 ; advocates continuance, 
 ii. 5 ; another expedition, 371 
 
 Clarke, Dr. J. T., director of exca- 
 vations at Assos, i. 2 ; helpful in 
 London, 12 
 
 Cleveland, President, writes letter, 
 
 Coffee, method of preparing, i. 252, 
 
 324 
 
 Coffins, at Juha, i. 179 ; Parthian, 
 241 ; slipper-shaped, 245, 248 ; at 
 Umm-el Ajarib, 335 ; at Tello, 
 339; at Zerghul, 341 ; blue glazed, 
 ii. 98, 112, 144 ; on Temple Hill, 
 153; Camp Hill, 173, 195; Tem- 
 ple Hill, 196 ; tub-shaped, 198 ; 
 on Tablet Hill, 203 ; Persian Per- 
 iod, 204 ; Babylonian Period, 206 ; 
 on Hill VIII, 207; Sassanian, 214; 
 slipper-shaped, 215 ; date of, 216 ; 
 tub-shaped, 217; whale-back, 218; 
 objects in, 219; notes on, 120 ff.\ 
 origin of, 232 ; development, 234; 
 at Erech, 304 ; clay, 325 ; objects 
 from, 382 _^. 
 
 Coldewey. See Koldewey. 
 
 Coloman, D'Emey, map of, ii. 91 ; 
 pranks, 92; information from, 391 
 
 Columns, court of, ii. 172 ff.\ at 
 Tello, 190 ; at Abu Adham, 191 ; 
 date of, 192 ; a hall of columns, 
 286 
 
 Comagene, i. 30, gr 
 
 Cone villages, i. 82 
 
 Constantinople, arrival at, i. 2r ; 
 life in, 44; antiquities, 45; sur- 
 roundings, 46 ; insecurity, 47 ;
 
 INDEX. 
 
 409 
 
 dogs, 47,- 49 ; tramcars, 49 ; garri- 
 son, 54; selamlik, 54; dervishes, 
 55 ; oddities, 63 ; porters, 64; fire 
 department, 65 ; bekjees, 66 ; 
 mosques, etc., 66 ; climate, 66 
 
 Cossaean. See Kossaean. 
 
 Ctesiphon, i, 189, 197, ii. 263 
 
 Cunaxa, i. 1S6 
 
 Cutha, i. 352 
 
 Cylinders, of Nebuchadrezzar, i. 15; 
 Cyrus, 211 ; Nebuchadrezzar, 214, 
 217, 221, 320; at Babylon, ii. 53; 
 in jeweller's shop, 77 ; in corners, 
 116; seal, 133, 210; in graves, 
 219, 222, 233 ; from Erech, 305 
 
 Cyrus, cylinder, i. 211; tablets, 251, 
 ii. 197 ; kingdom of, 262 
 
 D 
 
 Dabausa, i. 115 
 
 Daghara, canal, i. 22S, 329, ii. 62 
 
 Damascus, arrival at, ii. 17 ; people 
 of, 18; governor, 2i ; departure 
 from, 22 
 
 Daoud, Thoma, i. 193, 212, 319, 
 321-323, ii. 269, 346 
 
 Daradax, i. 84 
 
 Darius, tablets of, ii. 198 
 
 Dausara, i. loi 
 
 Deir, Babylonian site, i. 207 ; exca- 
 vations in, ii. 346 
 
 Deir-el-Hafr, i. 85, 114 
 
 Deir-ez-Zor, i. 116, 121, 122, 152, 
 368, ii. 346 _ 
 
 Deir Mahariz, i. loi 
 
 Delehem, i. 246, 263, 265, 330, ii. 
 269 
 
 Delitzsch, Prof. Friedrich, i. 18 ; on 
 origin of cuneiform character, ii. 
 242 
 
 Derehem, i. 330 
 
 Dervishes, Bektashee, i. 55; Rufa'ee, 
 or howling, 55 ; Mevlewee, or 
 dancing, 59 ; Bedawee, or howl- 
 ing, 61 ; doctrines of, 62 
 
 De Sarzec, French explorer, i. 33, 
 193 ; camp of, 268 ; breakfast 
 with, 270 ; discoveries of, 337, 
 ii. 109, 130, 146, 190, 192, 248, 
 273, 287, 291, 292 
 
 Dhafir, edh, Arabs, i. 267, ii. 276, 
 299, 300 
 
 Dhahar, Tel, i. 329, 330 
 
 Dheleyha Arabs, i. 22S, ii. 70 
 
 Diacira, i. 164 
 
 Dibse, Kal'at, i. 96 
 
 Digby, Lady, ii. 28 
 
 Diocletian, changes border, i. 103, 
 124, 125 ; milestone of, 372 ; in- 
 scribed column, ii. 13 ; milliaria, 
 28 ; ruins at Palmyra, 31 ; mile- 
 stone, 32 
 
 Diwanieh, i. 225, 227, 286, ii. 60 
 
 Diyala, river, i. 197 
 
 Dogs, figures of, ii. 374, 377 
 
 Domeir, ii. 23 
 
 Door-sockets, ii. 238^., 376 
 
 Dozy, Israeliten zu Mekka, ii. 158 
 
 Drehem, ii. 95, 98 
 
 Druses, war with, ii. 359 
 
 Dungi, inscriptions of, ii. 133, 253, 
 255, 291, 292 
 
 Dura, i. 138, 311 
 
 Dur-Kurigalzu, i. 1S9 
 
 Ea, ii. 129, 299 
 
 Ede, Tel, visit to, ii. 278 
 
 Eden, Garden of, i. 208, 351, ii. 
 
 107. 339 
 
 Edingiranagin, stele of vultures, ii. 
 248 
 
 E-kur, temple of Bel, ii. 123, 127, 
 163, 165 ; history of, ib?> ff., 250, 
 252, 257, 258, 261, 262 
 
 Elamites, invasions of, ii. 133, 250, 
 251 ; conquest by, 254 ; driven 
 out, 256 ; sack Erech, 257 ; an- 
 other invasion, 259 
 
 Elephant, clay, ii. 377 
 
 En-lil, Bel of Nippur, ii. 129, 169 ; 
 chief god, 247, 249, 250; rivalry 
 of Marduk, 257 ; primacy re- 
 stored, 259 ; votive tablet to, 380 
 
 En-sag-ana, ii. 249 
 
 Entemena, ii. 252 
 
 Erech, destroyed by Persians, i. 
 313 ; city of Ishtar, ii. 104 ; li- 
 brary, loS ; kings of, 160, 165, 
 170 ; columns at, 192 ; phallic 
 symbols, 236 ; early importance, 
 246 ; empire of, 247 ; antiquity 
 of, 249; struggle against Elamites, 
 255 ; sacked by Elamites, 257 ; 
 rivalry with Nippur, 260 ; visit 
 to, 302; burials in, 325 
 
 Erek. See Arakka. 
 
 Eriaku, king of Larsam, ii. 256 
 
 Eridu, ii. 104, 165 ; antiquity of.
 
 4IO 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 246, 249 ; situation, 298 ; date of 
 founding, 299 
 
 Erman, Dr., i. 17 
 
 Esagila, i. 217, 219, ii. 257 
 
 Esarhaddon, bricks of, ii. 165 ; 
 restores E-kur, 261 ; inscribed 
 bricks, 375 
 
 Euphrates, first sight of, i. 87 ; an- 
 cient highway, 88 ; present condi- 
 tion, 89 ; exploration of, 90 ; lions 
 and pigs, 102 ; fellaheen, 102 ; 
 gorge, 108 ; population, 118, 121 ; 
 valley by Rehaba, 130 ; animal 
 life, 134; water wheels, 135, 141; 
 post offices, 145 ; farm houses, 
 153; caves, 158; islands, 158; 
 floods, 158; locusts, 169; bridges, 
 172 ; pottery, 174 ; sport on, 182 ; 
 agriculture, 182 ; volume, 183 ; 
 channel, 213 ; low water, 224 ; 
 geography of, 310; floods, 360; 
 cholera endemic, ii. 45 ; change 
 of bed, 53, 335 ; locusts in, 345 
 
 Europus, i. 138, 311 
 
 Evil Merodach, tablets of, ii. 198, 
 378 
 
 Exodus, i. 163 
 
 Ezekiel, ii. 330 
 
 Ezida, i. 217 
 
 Ezra, i. 163 
 
 F 
 
 Fara, i. 330, 332 
 
 Faris, Shammar Sheikh, i. 290 
 
 Fehemi, i. 153, 360, ii. 345. 
 
 Ferhan Pasha, Shammar Sheikh, i. 
 119, 230 
 
 Ferwa, ii. 191, 192, 279, 285 
 
 Field, Perez Hastings, architect of 
 expedition, i. g, 12, 16, 35, 36, 
 76, 83, 87, 93, 95, 100, 115, 125, 
 142, 191, 197, 220 ; makes plan, 
 235, 237 ; danger to, 241 ; ar- 
 ranges trenches, 246 ; good health, 
 256; 257, 261 ; resignation, 288; 
 measurements, ii. 106 ; plans, 175, 
 176, 189, 193, 194 ; measure- 
 ments, 207 
 
 Frazier, W. W., interested in expe- 
 dition, i. 3, 4 ; member of execu- 
 tive committee, S ; subscription, 
 296 ; advocates continuance, ii. 5 
 
 G 
 
 Gal)bula, i. 291 
 Galutha, i. 180 
 
 Gargiulo, A. A., legation drago- 
 man, i. 22, 31, 33, 39-42 
 
 Gaza, ii. 356 
 
 Genesis, i. 127,216, ii. 201, 256 
 
 Gerasa, ii. 358 
 
 Geroda, ii. 24 
 
 Gilgamesh, epic of ii., 108, 130, 238, 
 256, 303 
 
 Gimil-Sin, tablets of, ii. 185 ; seal 
 of, 209 ; period of, 210 ; door- 
 socket, 239 ; kingdom of, 254 ; 
 inscriptions, 280, 296 ; restores 
 temple of Sin, 298 
 
 Glass, ii. 134, 143, 160, 219, 354, 
 
 373, 395 
 Gordian, tumulus of, i. 130, 314 
 Gottheil, Prof. R. J. H., ii. 182,. 
 
 395 _ _ 
 
 Graham, missionary, i. 76 
 Gudea, ii. 192, 253, 273, 291 
 
 H 
 
 Habash, el, i. 107 
 
 Haditha, i. 153, 158, 312, 359, ii.. 
 
 43 
 
 Hagop Pasha, privy purse, i. 40 
 
 Halebieh, i. 108 ; identified with 
 Zenobia, 113 ; story of, 114 
 
 Hamdy Bey, director of Imperial 
 Museum, i. 23, 24 ; first interview 
 with, 25 ; history, 26 ff. ; second 
 .- interview, 31 ; visits Munif, 33 ; 
 attacked by Bent, 38 ; farewell 
 interview, 42 ; cordiality of, ii. 
 3, 6, 8 ; coffin for, 98 ; excava- 
 tions of, 230 ; reception by, 363 ;■ 
 protection of antiquities, 364 ; 
 keeps his promise, 369 
 
 Hammam, el, Babylonian ruin, 
 mound, i. 272 ; visited by Ward, 
 329 ; statue from, ii. 192 ; visit 
 to, 273 
 
 Hammam, el, wrongly identified 
 with Tiphsah, i. 97 ; station of, 
 102 ; identified with Sura, 103 
 
 Hamme, el, i. 108, 112, 114, 311 
 
 Hammurabi, cone of, i. 15 ; tablets, 
 275, 276 ; identification with Am- 
 raphel, ii. 201 ; period, 212 ; Am- 
 rajihel, 256 
 
 Hamud-el-Bendir, Sa'adun chief, i. 
 271 ; hospitality of, 273 ; inhospi- 
 tality, ii. 273 
 
 Ilamud-el-Berjud, Affech cliief, res, 
 idence of, i. 262 ; assistance- 
 
 !
 
 INDEX. 
 
 411 
 
 280 ; innocence of, 285 ; prevents 
 illicit digging, ii. 52 ; chosen 
 guardian, 65 ; arrangements with, 
 70; war with Daghara, 84; guarded 
 by, go ; excuses, 96 ; complicity 
 with es Sa'id, 100 ; leave taking, 
 102 
 
 Hamza, el, Arabs, i. 233 ; danger of 
 war, 238 ; war, 249 ; victory of, 
 251 ; villages of, 262 
 
 Harakla, i. 104 
 
 Harire, Tel, i. 365 
 
 Harper, Dr. F. R., assyriologist of 
 expedition, i. 9, 11, 15, 35, 36, 
 76, 77, 115, 117, 125, 142, 153, 
 179, 191, 222, 235, 241 ; reports 
 on tablets, 250; has fever, 256; 
 257, 258, 261, 275, 285 ; resigna- 
 tion, 288 ; starts for America, 289 ; 
 trip to coast, 293 
 
 Harun-er-Rashid, residence in Rak- 
 ka, i. 106 ; city of, 195, ii. 340 
 
 Hassan, tomb of, ii. 331 
 
 Haupt, Prof. Paul, plan of an ex- 
 pedition, i. 8 
 
 Hauran, ii. 359 
 
 Haynes, J. H., proposed as pho- 
 tographer, i. 4 ; appointed consul 
 at Baghdad, 10 ; fails to meet in 
 London, 12 ; word from, 17 ; 
 arrives in Constantinople, 31 ; 
 wrecked on Samos, 35 ; work 
 assigned, 36 ; failure of photo- 
 graphs, 37 ; at Alexandretta, 69 ; 
 71, 76, 80, 85 ; visits Resafa, 
 105 ; photographs of Halebieh, 
 113 ; 125, 197, 206 ; finds conduits 
 of ziggurat, 218 ; 223, 229 ; 
 chooses camp site, 234 ; hut for, 
 235 ; experience of, 236 ; illness, 
 254 ; leaves for Hillah, 256 ; pur- 
 chases for, 259 ; offers reward for 
 killing thief, 279 ; loss of money, 
 284 ; proposes to resign, 288 ; 
 exequatur as consul, 289 ; mem- 
 ber of Wolfe Expedition, 318, 
 322, 324, 327, 339, 342-344, 353, 
 366, 372 ; failure to report, ii. 3 ; 
 information from, 7 ; photographic 
 outfit, 14 ; willing to return to 
 Nippur, 15 ; procures supplies, 
 47 ; 49 ; at Nippur, 62, 64, 68 ; 
 health, 77, 78 ; love charms, 80 ; 
 department of, 85 ; garden, 88 ; 
 89 ; departure, loi ; expedition 
 of, 123 ; discovers altar, 125 ; 
 
 early inscriptions, 137 ; late 
 houses, 155 ; pavements, 157, 159 ; 
 explores ziggurat, 161 ; beneath 
 ziggurat, 166; earliest finds, 167; 
 indebtedness to, 169 ; abandons 
 Hill I, 179; finds in X, 185; in 
 I, 188 ; III, 195 ; finds quays, 
 208; finds in X,2ii; excavates 
 wall, 212 ; earliest inscriptions, 
 244 ; finds statue, 253 ; 340 ; fu- 
 ture plans, 342, 343, 364, 369 ; 
 expedition of , 370^. ; photograph 
 by, 373 ; finds bricks of Sargon, 
 374 ; votive tablet, 380 
 
 Heil, el, i. 107 
 
 Heliaramia, outpost of Zenobia, ii. 
 
 25 
 
 Heracles, i. 104 
 
 Heracles, bed of, i. 46 ; relation to 
 Gilgamesh, ii. 303 
 
 Herodotus, on Is, i. 162 ; temple of 
 Bel-Merodach, ii. 116, 120 
 
 Heuzey, M. Leon, director of 
 Louvre Museum, i. 14, 16 
 
 Hibbah, el, Babylonian grave 
 mound, i. 17 ; visited by Ward, 
 340 ; burials at, ii. 230 ff. ; pot- 
 tery wells, 235 ; phallic symbols, 
 
 237 
 Hill I. 5^'^ Camp Hill. 
 Hill II, excavations in, i. 245 ; ii. 
 
 195 
 
 Hill III. See Temple Hill. 
 
 Hill IV, excavations in, i. 245 ; ii. 
 196 
 
 Hill V. See Tablet Hill. 
 
 Hill VI, excavations in, ii. 204; 
 tombs on, 216 ; further excava- 
 tion advocated, 372 ; lamps from, 
 388 ; pottery, 392 
 
 Hill VII, error in cast, ii. 193; ex- 
 cavations in, 206 ; further excava- 
 tion advocated, 372 
 
 Hill VIII, excavations in, ii. 206 ; 
 coffins on, 2i8 ; Assyrian build- 
 ings, 261 ; tablets, 262 ; spades, 
 384 ; pottery from, 389 
 
 Hill IX, excavations in, ii. 207 ; 
 coffins in, 219 ; archives in, 259^ 
 261 
 
 Hill X, tablets from, ii. 78, 180, 
 203 ; excavations in, 208 ; burned 
 houses, 257 ; tablets from, 261, 
 371 ; clay figures from, 376, 379 ; 
 lamps from, 388 
 
 Hill XI, excavations in, ii. 212
 
 412 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Hill XII, excavations in, ii. 213 
 
 Hillah, i. 172, 212, 222, 287, ii. 
 54; workmen from, 71, 7S, 86, 
 88 ; conditions in, 155, 185, 201, 
 203 
 
 Hilprecht, Professor H. V., secre- 
 tary of Fund, i. 8 ; assyriologist 
 of expedition, i. 9 ; wrecked on 
 Samos, 35 ; mission to Nahr-el- 
 Kelb, 36 ; 71, 74, 76, 77, 108, 
 115, 120; falls into Euphrates, 
 122 ; 129, 188, 209, 211, 220 ; pur- 
 chases antiquities, 222, 223, 235 ; 
 condition of, 256, 261 ; 284 ; 
 opinion on Nippur, 288 ; declines 
 to remain at Baghdad, 289 ; ill- 
 ness, 290 ; trip to coast, 292 ; 
 purchase of antiquities, 297 ; 
 translation by, ii. 137 ; Old Baby- 
 lonian Inscriptions, 147, 151, 161, 
 169; indebtedness to, 171 ; Old 
 Babylonian Inscriptions, 242 ; 
 land of Kengi, 246 ; inscription 
 of Lugal-zaggisi, 247 ; differ from 
 257 ; translation by, 280, 366 ; 
 work in Constantinople, 363, 369, 
 370 ; Old Babylonian Inscriptions, 
 379. 380 
 
 Hindieh canal, i. 213, 313, ii. 326, 
 
 335 
 
 Hira,_ii. 264, 315, 318, 319, 321 
 
 Hit, i. 159 ; bitumen springs, 160 ; 
 shipyard, 161 ; antiquities, 162 ; 
 references to, 163, 311, 312, 314 ; 
 visited by Ward, 357 ; third visit, 
 ii. 42 ; freedom from cholera, 45 
 
 Holy of Holies, ii. 169 
 
 Holy Place, ii. 125, 169 
 
 Horse, clay, ii. 377, 385 
 
 Humann, German explorer, i. 33, 37 
 
 Husein, commemoration of death, 
 i. 50 ; visit of Ward, 351 ; rever- 
 ence for, ii. 317 ; visit to mosque, 
 330 ; tomb of, 331 
 
 Huzreh, Tel-el, i. 322 
 
 Ibrahim Khalil. See Borsippa. 
 
 Ibrahim, Tel, i. 352 
 
 Ihidakira, i. 163 
 
 Imam Beshed, i. 143 
 
 Imam Jasim, i. 224, 226, ii. 55, 
 
 229, 325 
 Imam Musa, i. 188, 201, ii. 333, 
 
 339 
 
 Ine-Sin, ii. 254, 376 
 
 Irade, granted, i. 39 ; translation 
 of, 301 
 
 Irak, ii. 266; climate of, 310; 
 burials in, 325 ; persistence of 
 custom, 326 ; heat of, 332 ; na- 
 tives, 337 ; customs, 391 
 
 Trsi, i. 137, 311, 316 
 
 Is, i. 162 
 
 Ishme-Dagan, ii. 146, 165, 239, 254, 
 272, 298 
 
 Ishtar, ii. 104, 130, 160 ; figurines 
 of, 196, 197 ; phallic symbols, 
 237 ; temple, 257 ; worship, 303 ; 
 idol, 374 
 
 Isidorus of Charax, i. 112, 146, 163 ; 
 stations of, 310 
 
 Isin, ii. 125, 146, 157, 165, 239; 
 antiquity of, 246 ; hegemony, 
 253 ; site, 272, 298 _ 
 
 Iskanderieh, khan of, i. 353 
 
 Izdubar. See Gilgamesh. 
 
 J 
 
 Jaber, Kal' at, i. loi 
 
 Jabr Abu 'Atish, i. 108 
 
 Jabrieh, i. 138, 173, 364 
 
 Jachin and Boaz, ii. 158 
 
 Jaubert, description of Resafa, i. 
 
 105 
 Jebbul, i. 291 
 Jebel Siman, i. 74 
 Jebrin, i. 81, 291 
 Jebur Arabs, i. 224, ii. 55 
 Jedeyda, i. 291 
 Jemeyle, i. 152 
 Jerabus. See Carchemish. 
 Jerash, ii., 358, 364 
 Jeremiah, Book of (XXXII. to ff.), 
 
 i. 16 ; ii. (XLVI. 2), 91 ; (XXXII. 
 
 lo/-.), 198 
 Jerud, ii. 24 
 Jeweller's, shop, ii. 77, 132, 144, 
 
 168, 237, 255, 373, 378, 381 ; 
 
 furnaces, 388 
 Jewish incantation bowls, i. 241, 
 
 245, 251, 277, ii. 114, 117, 153. 
 
 182, 184, 187, 194, 208, 212, 395 
 Jews, at Anah, i. 150; at Anbar, 
 
 172, 177-, at Pombeditha, 179; 
 
 in Babylonia, 180 ; at Seleucia, 
 
 200 ; Hillah, 222 ; Anah, 362 ; 
 
 Damascus, ii. 19; Baghdad, 41; 
 
 Nippur, 185, 186 ; along the Eu- 
 phrates, 263 ; wool merchants,
 
 INDEX. 
 
 413 
 
 305 ; credit of, 329 ; residence of 
 forbidden,' 331 ; schools of, 347 
 
 Jibba, i. 157-159. 3i2, 314, 359 
 
 Jimjimeh, i. 210, 211, 221, 223, 245, 
 321, ii. 52; workmen from, 71, 
 78, 86, 88, no; visit to, 336 
 
 Jird, i. 135 
 
 Jokha, visit to, i. 271 ; character of, 
 272 ; visited by Ward, 333 ; re- 
 ported to Hamdy, ii. 4 ; statue 
 from, 190 ; door-socket, 191 ; sit- 
 uation, 192 ; second visit to, 279 
 
 Jonah, ii. 327 
 
 Joshua, tomb of, i. 46, 289, ii. 41 
 
 Juha, i. 171, 179, ii, 218 
 
 Julian, expedition of, i. 106, 138, 
 146, 147, 153, 155, 159, 164, 176- 
 178, 189, 314 _ 
 
 Justinian, rebuilds Sura, i. 104 ; 
 Zenobia, 113 ; ruins of, at Pal- 
 myra, ii. 31 
 
 K 
 
 Kabakib, station and well, i. 369, 
 ii- 38, 347 
 
 Kadashman Turgu, inscriptions of, 
 ii. 77 ; repairs ziggurat, 126 ; in- 
 scription, 132 ; reconstructs zig- 
 gurat, 162, 189 
 
 Kaim, el, i. 136, 138, 141, 363 
 
 Kal' at Feluja, i. 169, 172, 173, 175, 
 290 
 
 Kalah Sherghat, i. 119, ii. 82, 116 
 
 Kallinikus, i. 103, 106 
 
 Kan Kalessi. See Salahieh 
 
 Karun, river, ii. 245 
 
 Kasr el-Hair, ancient Heliaramia, 
 ii. 25 
 
 Kasr-Rehaba, ii. 333 
 
 Kassabe, i. 108 
 
 Kathim, el, i. 201 
 
 Kefil, ii. 330 
 
 Kengi, land of, ii. 246, 250 
 
 Kerbela, sacred city, i. 318 ; visited 
 by Ward, 351 ; exemption from 
 cholera, ii. 324 ; ancient practices, 
 326 ; visit to, 330 ; history of, 331 
 
 Kework, Hajji, Armenian servant, 
 i. 81, ii. 14, 16, 36, 37, 90, 343, 
 352, 353. 360 
 
 Khabaza, dealer in antiquities, i. 
 16, 297, ii. 50 
 
 Khabor, river, i. 123 ; border of 
 empire, 124 
 
 Khalil Bey, Kaimakam of Diwanieh, 
 i. 225 ; visit from, 257 ; removed 
 
 to Samawa, ii. 302 ; guests of, 
 ^307 
 
 Khammurabi. See Hammurabi. 
 
 Khans, i. 205, 318, ii. 329, 332, 
 391 
 
 Khudhr, el, visited by Ward, i. 349 ; 
 sacred grove, ii. 312 
 
 Kiamil Pasha, Grand Vizier, i. 22, 
 23, 33. 34, 39-42, 302, ii. 7 ; de- 
 position of, 368 
 
 Kiepert, Prof. Heinrich, meeting 
 with, i. 17; map of, 133, 136, 142, 
 157 : Ruinen Felder, 174 ; map, 
 291, ii. 23, 25, 39, 96 
 
 King, Pendleton, Secretary of Le- 
 gation, i. 18, 19, 22 
 
 Kings, Book of (i, XVHI. 26), i. 
 57; (I, IV. 24), 96; (2, XIX. 12), 
 105 ; (2, XVII. 6), 123 ; (2, XVII. 
 31), 206; (i, VI. ij, ii. 139; (2, 
 XXIII. 8), 147 
 
 Kish, land of, ii. 136, 137, 170, 247- 
 251 
 
 Kishatu. See Kish. 
 
 Koldewey, German explorer, i. 17 ; 
 report of, ii. 230 ff. ; pottery 
 wells, 235 
 
 Kosssean, dynasty, ii. 77, 114 ; treas- 
 ury, 144; constructions, 156; 
 records, 185, 188 ; constructions, 
 196 ; period, 210, 212 ; pottery, 219; 
 graves, 221, 225 ; door-sockets, 
 239 ; stone objects, 240; conquest, 
 259 ; overthrow, 260 ; structure 
 of, 377 ; metal objects, 384 ; pot- 
 tery, 394, 395 
 
 Koubeitha, i. 159 
 
 Kreni, Tel, i. 208, 320 
 
 Kubba, i. 106 
 
 Kubbe, brotherhood money, i. 130 
 
 Kudur-Lagomar, ii. 256 
 
 Kudur-Nankhundi, ii. 255 
 
 Kufa, ii. 264, 315, 324; visit to, 326 
 
 Kufas, i. 195, ii. 340 
 
 Kufic coins, ii. 114, 153, 183, 186, 
 187, 315 
 
 Kumukh, i. 91 
 
 Kurietain, ii. 25, 349 
 
 Kurigalzu, bricks of, i. 189: door- 
 socket, 275 ; inscribed objects, ii. 
 77 ; repairs ziggurat, 125 ; in- 
 scribed tablet, 133 ; door-socket, 
 156 ; bricks of, 165 ; great builder, 
 189 ; tablet of, 255 ; rebuilds zig- 
 gurat, 259 ; votive object, 260 ; 
 restores Temple of Sin, 298
 
 414 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Ladakieh, ii. 13 
 
 Lagash, Kings of, ii. 160, 170 ; an- 
 tiquity of, 246; art in, 24S, 251, 
 253 ; remains of, 291 
 
 Land of the Bow, ii. 247 
 
 Lapis Lazuli, ii. 134, 143, 195, 210, 
 240, 373; 381, 387 
 
 Lamaka, ii. 13 
 
 Larsa, bricks from, ii. 107 ; an- 
 tiquity of, 246 ; supremacy, 254 ; 
 site, 305 
 
 Layard, Sir Austen Henry, i. 136 ; 
 on Ctesiphon, 199 ; at Nippur, 
 233, 23S, 247, ii. 56 ; on Ziblieh, 
 96 ; work of, 104, 107 
 
 Lazarus, ii. 13 
 
 Locusts, plague of, i. 169, 361, 362, 
 ii. 268, 284, 345, 347, 349 
 
 Loftus, on Ziblieh, ii. 96 ; work of, 
 104, 107, 190, 192, 214, 228, 273, 
 280, 289, 300, 304, 322 
 
 Long, Professor A. L., correspon- 
 dence with, i. 4 ; member of ad- 
 visory committee, 6 ; in London, 
 12 ; purchases antiquities, 15 ; 
 description of weights, 387 
 
 Lugal-kigub-nidudu, ii. 147, 160, 
 171, 239, 242, 248, 257, 374, 376 
 
 Lugal-zaggisi, ii. 171, 239, 242-244 ; 
 kingdom of, 247 
 
 M 
 
 McClure, editor of Philadelphia 
 
 Times, i. 10 
 Macepracta, i. 315 
 Madain, i. 195, 200 
 Madeba, ii. 357, 358 
 Magic, stories of, ii. 56 ; use of, 68, 
 
 80, 268 
 Magnesite from Euboea, ii. 134, 
 
 143, 2ro, 220, 378 
 Mahawil, khan and canal, i. 20S, 
 
 320, ii. 52 
 Mahmudieh, i. 205, 31S, ii. 339 
 Mambri, i. 113, 133 
 Mamun, Caliph, builds Rehaba, i. 
 
 127 ; mosque of, 144 
 Mansur, founds Baghdad, i. 17S, 
 
 195, 200 
 Maogamalcha, i. 1S9, 315, 316 
 Mar, ii. 278 
 Marcus Aurelius, takes Seleucia, i. 
 
 201 ; name on milestones, 374 
 
 Marduk, Bel of Babylon, ii. 257, 
 259 ; worshipped in Jokha, 280 
 
 Maska, river, i. 137 
 
 Mavroyeni Bey, Turkish minister, i. 
 298 
 
 Medain, ii. 305 
 
 Medical practice, i. 244, 246, 249, 
 265, ii. 80, 270 
 
 Medkuk, i. 135, 366 
 
 Mekota, acting Sheikh of Affech, i. 
 229 ; gift to, 236 ; visit from, 
 237 ; great chief, 238 ; annoyance 
 from, 246 ; jealousy, 247 ; fails to 
 settle dispute, 251 ; begging, 257, 
 276, 282, 283 ; comes to our as- 
 sistance, 260 ; treachery, 284, 
 286 ; death, ii. 6 ; guilt denied, 
 79 ; acknowledged. So ; tomb 
 of, 324 
 
 Melkart, figure of, ii. 303 
 
 Melville, Lieutenant, i. 11 
 
 Merriam, Professor, ii. 32 
 
 Mersin, ii. ir 
 
 Mesheytta, ii. 357 
 
 Meshgur, captain of guards, ii. 84 
 
 Meskene, i. 91 
 
 Mevlewee. See Dervishes. 
 
 Meyadin, i. 125, 128, 367 
 
 Meyer, Ludvvig, member of German 
 expedition, i. 17 
 
 Midhat Pasha, governor of Bagh- 
 dad, i. 27 ; career, 90 ; castle 
 built by, 144 ; runs steamboats, 
 154 ; tears down wall of Baghdad, 
 201 ; conquers Affech, 232, 266, 
 ii. 328 
 
 Mijwel, husband of Lady Digby, 
 ii. 28 
 
 Moawia, victory over Ali, i. loi ; 
 over Husein, ii. 331 
 
 Mohammed, son of Haji Tarfa, i. 
 230, ii. 79, 80, 269 
 
 Mohammed-er-Reshid, contract 
 with, ii. 17 ; postal service of, 24; 
 among the Anazeh, 33 ; delays, 
 38 ; proposes change of route, 
 40; tent wrecked, 44 ; story by, 45 
 
 Mohammed-er-Reshid, ruler of the 
 Nejd, ii. 333 
 
 Mohammed Salih, appointed com- 
 missioner, ii. 49 ; fear of light- 
 ni'ig- 75 i credulity of, 92 
 
 Montefich Arabs, allies of Turks 
 against Affech, i. 232, 268 ; chas- 
 tised by Turks, 269 ; history of, 
 ii. 328
 
 INDEX. 
 
 415 
 
 Moritz, Dr.-Bernhard, communicates 
 report, i. 17 ; ancient Palmyrene, 
 gg ; Nechele, 107 ; Chaniu;a, 112 ; 
 Deir, 116 ; Phaliga, 123 ; Rehaba, 
 127; observations at Zerghul and 
 el-Hibbah, ii. 230^. 
 Mughair, preempted by Haupt, i. 
 8; visited by Ward, 345 ; to be 
 substituted for Birs Nimroud, ii. 
 4, 8 ; situation, 267 ; identifica- 
 tion, 2g6 ; visit to, 2g7 
 Munif Pasha, Minister of Public In- 
 struction, i. 23, 31-34, 42, ig3, 
 302, ii. 4, 7, 353 ; deposition of, 
 368 
 Muret, cast of Nippur, ii. 193 
 Musa Bey, outrages of, ii. 8 
 Musical instruments, ii. 376 
 Musseyib, bridge at, i. 172, 351 
 Mustafa Assim Pasha, wall of Bagh- 
 dad, i. 202, 234, 282 ; removal, 
 ii. 41, 341, 344 
 Mustafa, head servant, i. 81, 123, 
 179. 237, 31S, 340, 344-346, ii. 
 85, lOI 
 Muthif, i. 330, ii. 102 
 
 N 
 
 Nabataean, inscription, ii. 358 
 
 Nabonidus, king of Babylon, tab- 
 lets of, i. 251 ; inscription of, ii. 
 138; tablets of, 198, 236; re- 
 stores temple of Sin, 298 
 
 Nabopolassar, tablet of, 1. 15 ; brick, 
 2og ; tablet, 215, 221; conquers 
 Nippur, ii. 262 
 
 Nahab, es-Sa'id Sheikh, i. 246, 248, 
 324, ii. 80, 82 
 
 Nahia, i. 142, 363 
 
 Nahr Isa, i, 170, 315, 316 
 
 Nahr Malcha, i. 170, 181, 312, 314, 
 
 315 
 Nahr Sarsar, i. 315, 316 
 Nahr Sura, i. 315, 316 
 Nahtum, i. 123 
 Naouras, i. 141, 154 
 Naram Sin, brick stamp of, i. 276, 
 
 ii. 123, date, 139; bricks, I5g ; 
 
 stratum, 167 ; brick stamp, 205 ; 
 
 wall, 212 ; rebuilds E-Kur, 252 
 Naqib, conflict with Wall, ii. 42 
 Nasr Pasha, ii. 296, 329 
 Nasrieh, i. 337, 343 ; cholera at, ii. 
 
 6 ; visit to, 296 
 Nebo, temple of, i. 215 
 
 Nebuchadrezzar I., ii. 260 
 
 Nebuchadrezzar II., cylinder of, i. 
 15; defeats Pharaoh Necho, gi ; 
 quays, 162 ; canal, 166 ; builds 
 Persabora, 177, 178; deports Jews, 
 180; builds Baghdadu, 194; 
 bricks of, 195, igg, 209 ; tree of, 
 210; cylinders, 214, 217, 221; 
 bricks, 222 ; canal, 313 ; barrels of, 
 320; quays, ii. 53; temple, 116, 
 120 ; kingdom of, 262 ; canal, 314, 
 
 327, 335 
 
 Nechele, i. 107 
 
 Nehardea, i. 180, 312, 314 
 
 Nejd, ii. 333, 359 
 
 Nejef, exemption from cholera, ii. 
 45 ; water-coolers, 181 ; burials at, 
 22g ; visit to, 322 ; ancient prac- 
 tices, 326 ; wealth, 330 ; walls, 
 332 
 
 Nezala, ii. 25 
 
 Niffer. See Nippur. 
 
 Nikephorium, i. 106, 310 
 
 Nimitti Bel, wall of Nippur, ii. 
 212, 372 
 
 Nimrod, ii. 304 
 
 Nin-lil, ii. 248 
 
 Ninib, ii. 129, 132 
 
 Nippur, site chosen, i. 31 ; applied 
 for, 32 ; first sight of, 22S ; ar- 
 rival at, 230; situation, 231, 234; 
 unfavorable opinions of, 247, 288 ; 
 plaster reproduction of, 297 ; vis- 
 ited by Ward, 326, 330 ; surrep- 
 titious digging at, ii. 52 ; legends 
 of, 56 ; rich in inscriptions, 77 ; 
 size of excavations, 82 ; results 
 from, 103 : seat of Bel, 104 ; situ- 
 ation, 105 ; finds at, 140 ; archi- 
 tecture, 177, 179 ; cast of, 193 ; 
 wall of, 212; burials at, 234; 
 phallic symbols, 236 ; stone ob- 
 jects, 240 ; history of, 245 ff. 
 
 Nirab, stele discovered at, i. 82 
 
 Nisin. See Isin. 
 
 Noorian, D. Z., proposed as inter- 
 preter, i, 4; engaged, 10; smug- 
 gles rifles, 70 ; meets us at Alex- 
 andretta, 71 ; 76, 83 ; flogs mule- 
 teers, 87 ; 93, 115, 117, 135, 168, 
 181, igo, ig7, 212, 213; engages 
 workmen, 221, 223 ; 235 ; advice, 
 236 ; courage, 23g ; visits Berdi, 
 244 ; 246, 247 ; threatened by 
 Arabs, 248 ; calls on Tarfa, 252 ; 
 threatened by Berdi, 254 ; 257 ;
 
 4i6 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 buys gazelle, 277 ; calls for death 
 of thief, 279 ; changes mind, 2S1; 
 2S2, 287 ; will not return to Nip- 
 pur, 283 ; remains at Baghdad, 
 289 ; member of \Yolfe Expedi- 
 tion, 318, 322, 326, 32S, 331, 335, 
 337, 340, 342, 344, 351, 353, 357, 
 359, 364, 368 ; willing to return 
 to Nippur, ii. 15 ; 47-49, 52, 55- 
 57, 66-68 ; leave of absence, 73 ; 
 77, 79, Si, 82, 86, 8g, 90, 92 ; effi- 
 cient work, 94 ; 96, loi ; credit to, 
 112 ; 267, 270, 271, 273, 275, 276, 
 296, 301, 309, 310; visits mosque 
 of AH, 322 ; mosque of Husein, 
 330 ; 334, 339 ; 342 ; returns to 
 America, 343 
 
 Nosairieh, doctrines of, ii. 12 
 
 Nowawis, ii. 96, 299, 300 
 
 Nufar. See Nippur. 
 
 Nuzku, ii. 129, 132 
 
 O 
 
 Oelrichs & Co., letters from, i. 11 
 Ohemir, Tel, i. 323 
 Oriza, i. 103 
 
 Pacoria, i. 178, 314 
 
 Palestine, trip through, ii. 253 ff. 
 
 Pallakopas canal, i. 313 
 
 Palmyra, i. 103; outpost of, 113; 
 busts from, 297 ; visited by Ward, 
 372 ; visited by me, ii. 29, 348 
 
 Pantaleon, tomb of, i. 46 
 
 Parthian, tombs, ii. 112, 144, 173, 
 186 ; coins, 187 ; coffins, 196, 
 200, 204, 219 ; clay horses, 226 ; 
 coffins, 227 ; empire of, 263 ; 
 graves, 385 ; pottery, 396 
 
 Pears, Edwin, i. 45 
 
 Pebble Hills, i. 175, 207 
 
 Pepper, Provost, meeting at house 
 of i. 5 ; president of Fund, 8 ; 
 subscription, 296 ; asks for resig- 
 nation, ii. 4 ; cable to, 60 ; ar- 
 ranges new expedition, 370, 371 
 
 Persabora, i. 177, 181, 315 
 
 Persian Passion Play, i. 50 
 
 Pethor, i. 94 
 
 Petrie, \V. Flinders, ii. 135 
 
 Phaliga, i. 123, 311 
 
 Phallic symbols, ii. 133, 197, 236^., 
 292, 378, 379 
 
 Phoenix, i. 140 
 
 Pinches, T. G. , proposed as assyri- 
 ologist, i. 4 ; renders assistance, 
 12 ; translation by, ii. 249 
 
 Pi thru, i. 94 
 
 Pliny, on Seleucia, i. 200 ; Natural 
 History, 312 
 
 Poche, consular agent, i. 78 
 
 Pognon, Henri, French Consul, i. 
 192, 194, ii. 51, 280 
 
 Pombeditha, i. 179, iSi 
 
 Pompeiopolis, ii. 1 1 
 
 Post, Dr. Geo. E., i. 36, ii. 15 
 
 Pottery, of Euphrates Valley, i. 
 174 ; at Nippur, 241 ; at Ziblieh, 
 324 ; at Bismya, 328 ; Seleucid, 
 ii. 118 ; before Temple, 145 ; 
 w^ater jars, 154; Greek, 156; 
 water jars, 161 ; drain well, 166 ; 
 in tombs, 173 ; homogeneity of, 
 185 ; curious set of, 1S7 ; on 
 Camp Hill, 195; on Hill IV., 
 196 ; on Hill V., 197, 203 ; on 
 Hill A^III., 207 ; figurines, 210 ; 
 Kosssean, 219 ; in graves, 221 ff.; 
 Kosssean, 225 ; drains, 235, 382 ; 
 from graves, 385 ff.\ notes on, 
 
 3^1 ff. 
 Prince, John Dyneley, attache of ex- 
 pedition, i. 10, II, 16, 17, 19, 20, 
 21, 31, 43, 67, 71, 74, 76, 108, 
 115, 120, 129 ; resignation, 204 ; 
 gives money for antiquities, 223 ; 
 gun of, 283 ; gift of antiquities, 
 
 297 . 
 Procopius, Kal'at Jaber, i. loi ; 
 
 Sura, 104; Chanuga, 112; Ze- 
 
 nobia, 113 ; Mambri, 133 
 Psalms, Book of, CXX, CXXXIV, 
 
 1, 180 
 Ptolemy, geographer, i. 124 ; Alus» 
 
 159 ; Hit, 163 ; geography, 313 
 Pylte, i. 168 
 
 R 
 
 Rakka, i. 103, 106 
 
 Ramadhan, fast of, i. 290, ii. 268, 
 
 275, 366 
 Ramadieh, i. 166, 170, 356 
 Ramman-shum-usur, bricks of, ii. 
 
 165 
 Rassam, Hormuzd, i. 193, 206, 214, 
 
 319-322, ii. 107, 109, 239, 249 
 Rawa, i. 144 
 Rawlinson, Sir Henry, meeting
 
 INDEX. 
 
 417 
 
 with, i. 13 ; letter from, 178 ; 
 
 discoveries at Birs Nimrud, 214, 
 
 217 ; on Ziblieh, ii. 96 ; Nippur, 
 
 104, 106, 107 
 Rawlinson, note to Herodotus, i. 
 
 163 
 Rehaba, i. 125, 127, I2g, 367, ii. 32 
 Rehoboth of the River, i. 127 
 Resafa, i. 103, 105, ii. 39 
 Reseph, i. 105 
 Ri'a, kinsman of Mekota, i. 286, 
 
 ii. 65 
 Rich, i. 163, 210 
 Rufa'ee. See Dervishes. 
 Rufe'ya Arabs, ii. 82, 328 
 Russian protection, ii. 362 
 
 S 
 
 Sa'adi, canal of Nebuchadrezzar, i. 
 166, 313, ii. 327 
 
 Sa'adun Arabs, i. 26S ; encampment 
 of, 271, ii. 270, 281 ; history, 
 328 
 
 Sabakhah, Lake, i. 291 
 
 Sabghat, i. 107 
 
 Sachau, Prof. Eduard, Tiphsah, i. 
 96 ; Harakla, 104 ; Resafa, 105 ; 
 Rakka, 106 ; Jabr Abu 'Atish, 
 108 ; Zelebi, 112 ; Tabus, 115 ; 
 Circesium, 124 ; Rehaba, 126 ; 
 Ishara, 130 
 
 Safi, Tel, ii. 273 
 
 Sa'id, es, Arabs, i. 234, 246 ; killing 
 of, 279 ; threatened attack, 2S0 ; 
 war dance of, 2S6 ; claims of, ii. 
 67 ; exclusion of, 71 ; allies of 
 Affech, 83 ; dealings with, 99 ; 
 blood feud, 102 
 
 Saklawieh, canal, i. 170, 315, 316 
 
 Saklawieh, town, i. 169, 173, 315, 
 ii. 45 
 
 Salahieh, i. 131, 366, ii. 391 
 
 Salih Pasha, i. 289, 290, 292, ii. 10 
 
 Samawa, l^ridge at, i. 172 ; situation, 
 348 ; oil at, ii. 43 ; visit to, 302, 
 307 ff- 
 
 Samosata, i. 91 
 
 Samsu-Iluna, king of Babylon, lab- 
 lets of, i. 250, ii. 197, 198, 387 
 
 Samuel, Book of (2, X 15^.). i- 77 
 
 Sargon, of Akkade, ii. 108 ; bricks 
 of, 123 ; history, 137 ; level, 149, 
 150, 157; door-sockets, 159; 
 level, 160, 166, 167, 170 ; door- 
 socket, 238, 239 ; writing in time 
 
 of, 241, 243 ; date of, 244, 24S : 
 importance, 251 ; inscribed brick 
 stamp, 374 ; door-socket, 379 
 
 Sassanian, coins, i. 178 ; tombs, ii. 
 112, 174, 1S6, 187, 196, 200, 204, 
 214 ; head-dress, 214, 215 ; bur- 
 ials, 219, 227, 228 ; empire of, 263 
 
 Sayce, Professor A. H., meeting 
 with, i. 12 ; letter from, 15 ; on 
 swine, ii. 131 ; on Ur, 252 
 
 Schrader, Prof. Eberhard, i. 17 
 
 Sefeira, i. 355, ii. 46 
 
 Se'id Ahmed, overseer, i. 255, ii. 
 86, 93, 267, 274 
 
 Seleucia, i. 200, 312, ii. 263 
 
 Seleucidan, pottery, ii. 118; coffins, 
 227 ; glass, 373 ; ornaments, 3S3 ; 
 lamp, 389 ; vase, 394 ; pottery, 
 
 395 
 Senkareh, ii. 305 
 Sennacherib, expedition against 
 
 Chaldeans, i. 98, ii. 319 
 Sennadieh, i. 185 
 Sennieh, i. 177, 186, ii. 318, 319 
 Sepharvaim, i. 174, 206 
 Sephe, i. loi 
 Septimius Severus, i. 374, ii. 13, 
 
 32,358 
 Shahin, Affech Sheikh, ii. 67, 84, 
 
 102 
 Shamash, ii. 251, 305 
 Shamir, brother of Tarfa, i. 262 ; 
 
 present to, 283 ; death of, ii. 6 
 Shammar Arabs, i. 119, 231, 290; 
 
 prisoners from, ii. 35 ; danger 
 
 from, 82 
 Shaoul, Jew of Hillah, ii. 54, 88, 
 
 313, 322, 329, 334 
 Shatra, i. 335, 343 ; houses of, ii. 
 
 185, 201, 293 ; life in, 294 
 Shatt-Ateshan, i. 34S, ii. 312 
 Shatt-el-Hai, canal, i. 26S. 270, ii. 
 
 2S8 
 Shatt-el-Kahr, i. 329, 330, 332, ii. 
 
 273 
 Shatt-en-Nil, canal, i. 234 ; search 
 
 for bed of, 257, 258 ; at Jokha, 
 
 273 ; at Bismya, 274 ; at Nippur, 
 
 326 ; at Dhahar, 329 ; behind 
 
 Jidr, 329 ; at Ziblieh, ii. 97 ; at 
 
 Nippur, 106, 131, 145 ; cities on, 
 
 192 ; excavations in, 20S, 372 
 Sheikh Hasan, i. 94 
 Shells, i. 267, ii. 233 
 Shemtob, Joseph, antiquity dealer, 
 
 i. 15, 215, 221, 297
 
 4i8 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Shenafieh, ii. 314 
 
 Sliiite Mussulmans, i. 253, 265 ; 
 bigotry of, ii. 70 ; temporary mar- 
 riages, 316 ; compared with Sunni, 
 317 ; exclusiveness, 327 ; hatred 
 of Turks, 333 , 
 
 Sidon sarcophagi, i. 30, ii. 90, 230, 
 
 354, 363 
 Siffin, i. loi 
 Sifr, Tel, ii. 305 
 Sikkin, i. loi 
 Siloah, inscription, ii. 364 
 Sin, Moon god, ii. 104 ; temple of, 
 
 163, 298 _ 
 Sinai, diorite from, ii. 23S, 248 ; 
 
 meaning of, 254, 29S 
 Sindea, i. 1S6 
 Sippara, i. 174, 206, 312, 314, 319, 
 
 ii. 109, 138 
 Sirpurla. See Lagash. 
 Sirri Pasha, governor of Baghdad, 
 
 ii. 341 
 
 Sleib Arabs, ii. 51 
 
 Smith, George, ii. 107, 109 
 
 Smyrna, antiquities in, ii. 362, 363 
 
 Soli, ii. II 
 
 Steindorff, i. 17 
 
 Sterrett, Dr. J. R- S., aide to Dr. 
 Ward, i. 2, 31S, 351, 353, 355, 
 357, 364, 566, 372, ii. 32 
 
 Stone, objects of, ii. 239^. 
 
 Straus, Hon. Oscar, minister at 
 Constantinople, i. 7 ; meeting 
 with, 13 ; plan suggested, 22 ; 
 returns to post, 38 ; dines with 
 Sultan, 39 ; conference with, 41 
 
 Sughub, es-Sa'id Sheikh, i. 2S1, ii. 
 62, 64, 65, 99 
 
 Sukhne, i. 370, ii. 33, 39, 347 
 
 Sullabeh. See Sleib. 
 
 Sunni Mussulmans, compared with 
 Shiites, ii. 317 
 
 Sura, i. 103, 1 13 
 
 Sura, near Baghdad, i. 180 
 
 Sur-al-IIumor, i. 115 
 
 Surghul. See Zerghul. 
 
 Suripjjak, ii. 299 
 
 Swine, sacredness of, ii. 131 
 
 Tablets, Tel-el-Amarna, i. 16 ; 
 Cappadocian, 46 ; from Babylon, 
 210 ; first find at Nippur, 246, 
 250, 275, 276 ; forged, ii. 50 ; 
 cache of, 78 ; number found. 
 
 103 ; Assyrian, 107 ; from Abu 
 Habbah, 109 ; on Camp Hill, 
 114; Tablet Hill, 118; of lapis 
 lazuli, 132 ; very ancient, 137, 
 139; contents of, 140; in Tem- 
 ple, 159; most ancient, 166, 167, 
 170 ; from Hill X, 185 ; Cossaean, 
 18S ; on Hill I, 195 ; Hill V, 197; 
 use by Jews, 198 ; by Romans, 
 199 ; strata of, 200 ; earlier than 
 Abraham, 201 ; how found, 202 ; 
 on Hill VI, 206; Hill IX, 208; 
 on Hill X, 209 ff. ; in graves, 
 219 ; late Babylonian, 236 ; date 
 of earliest, 244 ; from Abu Habba, 
 249 ; of kings of Ur, 254 ; of 
 Kurigalzu, 255 ; with Aramaean 
 dockets, 261 ; cessation of, 263 ; 
 from Bismya, 272 ; from Jokha, 
 2S0 ; how found, 2S3, 285 ; from 
 Umm-el-Ajarib, 287 ; with bas- 
 reliefs, 375-377 ; use of, 381 
 
 Tablet Hill, i. 248 ; city of the 
 living, 256 ; find of tablets, 275, 
 ii 1 18 ; excavations on, 197; cof- 
 fin, 216; burials in, "2.20 ff., 224 
 ff. ; tablets from, 261, 377 ; vari- 
 ous objects, 378 ; metal objects. 
 381, 384-3S6 ; weights, 3S7 ; pot- 
 tery, 390-392/". 
 
 Tabnit, sarcophagus of, ii. 354 
 
 Tabus, i. 1 15 
 
 Tadmor. Sec Palmyra. 
 
 Tahir, Kaimakam, makes false re- 
 port, ii. 59 
 
 Talbot, Major, British Resident, i. 
 191 ; courtesy of, 202 
 
 Talmud, i. 163 
 
 Tarfa, Hajji, war with Turks, i. 
 27 ; sheikh of Affech, 225 ; son 
 of, 229 ; conquered by I'urks, 
 232 ; diplomacy, 233 ; representa- 
 tive of, 236 ; called back by war, 
 249, 251 ; call on, 252 ; drives 
 away mudir, 253 ; snubbed by, 
 254 ; life threatened, 262 ; at 
 Umm el-Baghour, ii. 60; guaran- 
 tee of, 70 ; relations with, 79 ; 
 mutliif of, 102 ; visit to, 268 ; 
 farm of, 31S ; history, 327 
 
 Tayibeh, ii. 39 
 
 Taylor, excavations of, ii. 104, 105, 
 296, 300 
 
 Telbeis, i. 153 
 
 Tel-el-Amarna tablets, i. 16, ii. 
 135, 259
 
 INDEX. 
 
 419 
 
 Tello, first visit, i. 261 ; digging at, 
 269, 337, 33S ; visited by Ward, 
 337-339. 342 ; statues from, ii. 
 
 130, 146 ; columns, 190 ; statuary, 
 192 ; phallic symbols, 236 ; ancient 
 inscriptions, 242, 24S ; second 
 visit, 291 
 
 Temples, Babylonian, wealth of, 
 ii. 115 ; of Yahweh, 125 ; of Bel, 
 
 131, i\i ff. ; Phcenician, 15S ; at 
 Ur, 163 ; comparison of, 169 
 
 Temple Hill, first excavations in, i. 
 245 ; orientation, 246 ; tomb on, 
 247 ; perplexity about, 249 ; 
 trench on, 251; perplexing con- 
 structions, 258, 260 ; find of door- 
 socket, 275 ; archaic tablets on, 
 276 ; finds on, ii. 77 ; explorations 
 in, 115, 118, 141 ff., 195 ; tombs 
 on, 216 ; burials in, 226, 228 ; fur- 
 ther excavation advocated, 372 ; 
 glass from, 373 ; brick stamp, 
 374 ; tablets, 375, 377 ; various 
 objects, 378 ; votive tablet, 380 ; 
 metal objects, 381, 383 ; lamps, 
 388 ; oldest pottery, 389 ; late 
 pottery, 395 ; glass, 395 
 
 Terif, i. 115 
 
 Thapsacus. See Tiphsah. 
 
 Thilutha, i. 153 
 
 Thishobar, i. 179 
 
 Tiphsah, identification of, i. 96 ; 
 history, 98 ; former incorrect 
 identification, 104 ; called Am- 
 phipolis, 313 
 
 Tiridata, i. 178, 314 
 
 Tombs, at Zenobia, i. 109 ; of 
 Joshua, 289 ; at Palmyra, 373 ; of 
 Lazarus, ii. 13 ; Parthian or Sas- 
 sanian, 112, 173; on Hill VI, 
 204; of bricks, 216; at Nejef, 
 324 ; of Ezekiel, 330 ; on Hill 
 VI, 392 
 
 Toy, Professor C. H., i. i 
 
 Trum, Tel, ii. 315 
 
 Tubne, i. 115 
 
 Turbah, ii. 42 
 
 Turki Bey, i. 119, ii. 44 
 
 Turkish, money, i. 78 ; dinner, 220 ; 
 method of business, 225 ; hospi- 
 tality, 225 ; superstitions, 227 ; 
 salaries, 251, 252 ; taxes, 264, 274 ; 
 law on excavations, 303 ; taxes, 
 332 ; officers, 336 ; doctor, 356 ; 
 outrages, ii. 9 ; control of Bedouin, 
 37; excavations, 50; taxes, 51, 
 
 55 ; protection useless, 65 ; rule in 
 Irak, 265, 307 ; jail, 309 ; use of 
 liquor. 333 ; exactions, 334 : treat- 
 ment of converts, 344 ; customs 
 authorities, 351 ; war with Druses, 
 359 ; administration, 361, 365, 
 367 
 Tuweyhis, i. 275 
 
 U 
 
 Umm-el-Ajarib, i. 268, 272 ; visited 
 by Ward, 333, 335 ; by de Sarzec, 
 337 ; statuary from, ii. 192 ; ne- 
 cropolis, 230 ; visit to, 286 
 
 Umm-el-Baghour, ii. 57 
 
 Umm-er-Rua, ii. 57 
 
 Umm-er-Rus, ii. 45 
 
 University of Pennsylvania, accepts 
 expedition, i. 5 ; applies for fir- 
 man, 7, 298 ; expedition under 
 Haynes, ii. 123 ; door-socket 
 property of, 191 ; museum of, 
 193 ; door-socket of, 280 ; phy- 
 sician from, 346 ; to send assyri- 
 ologist to Constantinople, 369 
 
 Ur, ii. 104; bricks from, 107 ; cyl- 
 inders, 116 ; temple at, 163 ; 
 rulers of, 165 ; early importance 
 of, 246 ; kingdom of, 248 ; omis- 
 sion of, 249 ; hegemony of, 252 ; 
 situation. 267 ; excavations at. 
 296 ; importance of, 298 ; date of 
 founding, 299 
 
 Ur-Bau, ii. 291, 292 
 
 Ur-Gur, king of Ur, inscription of, 
 i. 241 ; builds temple, ii. 107 ; 
 bricks of, 112 ; constructions, 124 ; 
 pavement, 125 ; walls, 147 ; cause- 
 way, 148; ziggurat, 150; charac- 
 teristic bricks, 151 ; terrace, 159, 
 161 ; conduits, 162 ; bricks, 165 ; 
 stratum, 166, 167 ; ziggurat, 170 ; 
 inscribed bricks, 173 ; city wall, 
 212 ; great builder, 252 ; door- 
 sockets, 269, 297 ; builds temple 
 of Sin, 298 
 
 Ur-nina, ii. 24S 
 
 Ur-Ninib, pavement of, ii. 125, 157 ; 
 bricks, 165, 254, 375 
 
 Uzanesopolis, i. 159, 311, 317 
 
 V 
 
 Van Millingen, Professor, meml;er 
 of advisory committee, i. 6, iS, 
 22-25, 31
 
 420 
 
 IXDEX. 
 
 w 
 
 Ward, W. Hayes, director of Wolfe 
 Expedition, i. 2 ; return of, 3 ; ad- 
 dress by, 5 ; on Anbar, 174, 176 ; 
 Delehem, 263 ; Bismya, 275 ; 
 diary of, 31^ ff. 
 
 Warka, visited by Ward, i. 349 ; 
 cofifin from, ii. gS. See Erecli. 
 
 Washburn, President of Robert Col- 
 lege, member of advisory com- 
 mittee, i. 6, 22 
 
 Wasit, i. 195, ii. 264 
 
 Waier wheels, i. 135, 141, 154, 320 
 
 Weather, record of, ii. 397 ./f. 
 
 Weights, Greek, ii. loS ; found at 
 Nippur, 3S7 ; distafif and spindle, 
 3S8 
 
 Williams, Dr. Talcott, member of 
 executive committee, i. S ; secre- 
 tary of Fund, 9 ; advocates an- 
 other expedition, ii. 370 
 
 Wolfe, Catherine Lorillard, equips 
 Expedition, i. 2 
 
 Wolfe Expedition, i. 2 ; return of, 
 3 ; report of, 318^. 
 
 Writing, art of, ii. 241 ff. 
 
 X 
 
 Xenophon, Daradax, i. 84 ; Thap- 
 sacus, 97 ; Charax, 124 ; descrip- 
 tion of country, 125 ; wild asses, 
 136 ; parasangs, 137 ; Charmande, 
 146, 16S ; account of Euphrates, 
 310 
 
 Xerxes, vase of, i. 15, 221 ; con- 
 structions of time of, ii. 197, 
 204 ; tablets, 236 
 
 Yahweh, temple of, ii. 125, 129, 
 130, 158, 169 ; incantation by, 
 1S3 ; proposed indentification with 
 Ea, 299 
 
 Yaya Bey, Mutessarif of llillah, i. 
 
 225 ; iiromises redress, 287 ; ab- 
 sence in marshes, ii. 55 ; corrup- 
 tion of, 57, 70, 80 
 
 Yizdeshur, i. 155, 158 
 
 Yokha. See Jokha. 
 
 Zaitha, i. 130, 314 
 
 Zaptiehs, i. 78, 81, 108 ; stations of, 
 142 ; pay, 166, 16S, 187, 222 ; 
 sent to Nippur, 251 ; irritate 
 Arabs, 253 ; trouble with Affech, 
 276 ; kill an Arab, 279 ; feeling 
 of Arabs toward, 281 ; danger of, 
 282 ; relation to bedouin, ii. 36 ; 
 levy blackmail, 66 ; condition of, 
 308 ; barracks, 345 
 
 Zeitha. St\- Zaitha. 
 
 Zelebieh, i. 112, 114, 311 
 
 Zenjirli, i. 33, 36, 37 
 
 Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra, builds 
 town of Zenobia, 113 ; capture 
 of, 114 ; inscribed stone of, ii. 25 ; 
 outpost of, 27 ; ruins of, 31 
 
 Zenobia. See Halebieh. 
 
 Zerghul, Babylonian grave mound, 
 1. 17 ; visited by Ward, 341 ; bur- 
 ials at, ii. 230 ff. ; pottery wells, 
 235 ; phallic symbols, 237 
 
 Ziblieh, visited by Ward, i. 324 ; 
 by other explorers, ii. 96 ; visit 
 to, 97 
 
 Ziggurat. supposed, i. 212 ; at Bor- 
 sippa, 214, 217 ; nature of, ii. 
 115; orientation, I20 ; purpose, 
 121 ; method of construction, 123, 
 124, 126, 141, 150 ; of Ashurban- 
 ipal, 152 ; of Ur-Gur, 161; drain- 
 age of, 162 ; reconstructions, 162 
 ff. ; exploration of, 170 ; where 
 found, 252 ; of Ur, 297 ; Erech, 
 304 ; further exploration of, 371 
 
 Zobeide, tomb of, i. 195 
 
 Zosimus, i. 164, 178 
 
 Zubaii. i. 123 
 
 Zune, el, i. 224, ii. 55 
 
 ■<^.
 
 
 ^lOSANGEl 
 
 h)^ 
 
 AIFY 
 
 University of California 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 
 
 t\n\ \) X - 
 
 ^lOSANCEl 
 
 ''Aa3AlNfl-3 
 
 5^HIBRAR^ 
 
 01 
 
 m 
 
 %JI1V3- 
 ,OF-CALIF0 
 
 PSD 23'! 
 
 <'/smmi\\^ 
 
 'OUillVJJU' 
 
 'N'CElfx^ ^.OFCAIIFO;?^ 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 iJi ig 
 
 x^OFCAllFO/?^ 
 
 ^•J713DNVS01^ '^mn. 
 
 M-Mms/A 
 
 'Jr 
 
 \$ 
 
 ;ij:;i.v jI. 
 
 mmmo^ 
 
 ^•S!rtFIJNIVER% 
 
 :?- 
 
 A>rVOSANCFlfj> 
 
 <^H!BRARY6>^^ 
 
 ,OFCAUF0;?^ ^^WEUNIVER% ^^vlOSANnE[fr^^ ^^OF-CAIIF'
 
 '%a3AINlNl\^^^ 
 
 58 00484 3370 
 
 'W. 
 
 Vs 
 
 UC SOUTHERN RtGIONAL > 
 
 AA 000 o 
 
 
 ^A.v.., 
 
 ^VlOS-ANCElfXy. .-#-l'BR. 
 
 m\^ 
 
 1^ 
 
 ,v>;WSANCEl% ^OFCAllFOMfc., ^^.OFCAIIFO^:(> 
 
 m\ 
 
 Vf. 
 
 ..zux>xyKT{Y0^ 
 
 -<-\',p.iiui\/Frfr>, v.in^.\i.irr[ 
 
 'VAa3AINa-3\\V'^ 
 
 <-iiF.iik'ivrDr/ 
 
 .4^