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

DURING l'J T" CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 179
tion might have been inferred from several cuneiform passages
in which Kridu is mentioned. " The first aspect of
the mounds is that of a ruined fort, surrounded by high
walls with a keep or tower at one end," placed on an eminence
nearly in the centre of the dry bed of an inland sea.
They are half concealed in a deep vallev about fifteen miles
wide, and only towards the north open to the Euphrates.
For the greater part this depression is " covered with a
nitrous incrustation, but with here and there a few patches
of alluvium, scantily clothed with the shrubs and plants
peculiar to the desert." To the northwest and southeast
of the principal mounds are " small low mounds full of
graves, funeral vases, and urns." Faint traces of an ancient
canal, six yards broad, were discovered at no great
distance to the northwest of the ruins.
These latter, which are considerably smaller than those
of Muqayyar, " rise abruptly from the plain, and are not
encumbered with the masses of rubbish usuallv surrounding
similar places." Consisting of a platform enclosed by
a sandstone wall twenty feet high, the whole complex is
divided into two parts of nearly equal extent. As in most
of the larger Babylonian ruins so far examined, the northern
part of Abu Shahrain is occupied by a pyramidal tower of
two stages,
constructed of sun-dried brick cased with a wall
of kiln-burnt brick, and still about seventy feet high.
The summit of the first stage of this building is reached
by a staircase fifteen feet wide and seventy feet long, originally
constructed of polished marble slabs, now scattered
over the mound, and at its
all
foot flanked by two columns of
an interesting construction. An inclined road leads up to
as assumed by Peters ("Nippur," vol. ii., pp. 96 and 298, seq.) Scheil's
recent statement concerning them (Recueil, vol. xxi., p. 126) evidently
rests on Arab information. It is correct, but only confirms facts better
known from Tavlor's own accurate reports, which, however, do not seem to
have been read carefullv by Assvriologists during the last twenty-five years.