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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 181
A number of chambers, which the explorer excavated,
yielded but little. But the inscribed bricks gathered from
the temple enclosure told us the important news that the
city here buried was Eridu, sacred to the early inhabitants
of Babylonia as the seat of a famous oracle so frequently
mentioned in the inscriptions of the third pre-Christian millennium
and later. A peculiar structure partly unearthed at
the south-east section of the ruins, the precise character
of which has hitherto not been recognized, also testifies to
the great age of the place. The uninscribed bricks were
laid in bitumen, and by their curious shape (" thin at both
ends and thick in the middle, as in the margin, the under part
perfectly flat ") naturally attracted the attention of Taylor.
From what we now know about the
brick-making, it
history of Babylonian
becomes evident that Taylor had hit a pre-
Sargonic structure of about 4000 b. c, the southern gateway
of the large temple complex.
had dug about fifteen
If instead of " a few feet " he
to twenty feet on either side along the
stone wall adjoining it, he probably would have found another
similar pair of bastions, thereby obtaining the characteristic
three
divisions of a Sumerian gateway with a central
passage for beasts and chariots and two narrower side
entrances, reached by means of steps, for the people.
With regard to portable finds, Tavlor's work at Abu
Shahrain was unproductive of important results. But the
discovery and brief description of those
large ruins and of
so many inscribed bricks, through which it was possible to
restore the old Babylonian name of the city buried there,
was in itself a most valuable contribution to our knowledge
of ancient comparative geography, especially when it is
remembered that, owing to the seclusion of the spot and the
insecurity of its
neighborhood, Abu Shahrain has never been
visited again by any European or American explorer. 1
1
Taylor's reports are published in the "Journal of the Royal Asiatic
Society of Great Britain and Ireland," vol. xv. (1855), under the titles
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