Explorations in Bible lands during the 19th century - H. V. Hilprecht

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 145
ish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyaena appear to
shun the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never
hovers over the deserted waste. A blade of grass or an
insect finds no existence there. The shrivelled lichen alone,
clinging to the withered surface of the broken brick, seems
to glory in its universal dominion upon these barren walls."
No wonder that of all the deserted pictures which Loftus
ever beheld, that of Warka incomparably surpassed them all.
The ruins represent an enormous accumulation of long
stretched mounds within " an irregular circle, nearly six
miles in circumference, defined by the traces ot an earthen
rampart, in some places fifty feet high." As at Nuffar, a
wide depression, the bed of some ancient canal, divides this
elevated platform of debris into two unequal parts, varying
Tell Buwerive at Warka
in height from twenty to fifty feet, above which still larger
mounds rise. The principal and doubtless earliest edifices
are found in the southwest section, and to this Lottus very
naturallv directed his attention. Most conspicuous among
them is a pyramidal mound, about a hundred feet high,
called by the Arabs Buwerive, i. e., " reed matting," because
at certain intervals reed mats are placed between the layers