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

154 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
bricks taken from the upper building and the enclosing
temple wall, it was ascertained that, in accordance with a
reference on the cylinder brought by Rich's secretary
Bellino from Babylon, Nebuchadrezzar had devoted considerable
time and labor to the restoration of this ancient
sanctuary. It became furthermore evident that the ancient
Babylonian city buried under the ruins of Senkere was no
other than Larsam, sacred to Shamash and identical with
: 1 ). From a single brick of
the Biblical Ellasar (Gen. 14
sixteen lines, also taken from these ruins, Sir Henry Rawlinson
obtained the name of a new king, Burnaburiyash
(about 1400 b. a), one of the powerful rulers ot the Cassite
dynasty, while the lower strata of the mound furnished
ample evidence that King Ur-Gur of Ur (about 2700 b. a),
the great builder of Babylonian temples, had also been very
active at Larsam.
In addition to these very important discoveries, by which
the name of the ancient city was identified and the first
glimpses of its long history obtained, Loftus furnished
material for us to show that in later years, when the temple
was in ruins, the ground of the destroyed city of Larsam,
like the other more prominent mounds of Babylonia, was
used as a vast cemeterv. Contrary, however, to the views
of Loftus and other writers who followed him without
criticism, the numerous clay tablets, which he continually
found scattered through the upper layers partially burned,
blackened and otherwise damaged by fire, and disintegrating
from the nitrous earth composing or surrounding them, in
most cases have nothing to do with the tombs in and around
which thev occur. Belonging to the period of about 2400
to