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

184 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
the debris in the hole, seized and held up in triumph a
fine cylinder of baked clay, in as perfect a condition as
when it was deposited in the artificial cavity above twentyfour
centuries ago. The workmen were perfectly bewildered.
it
Thev could be heard whispering to each other that
was sihr, or 'magic,' while the greybeard of the party significantly
observed to his companion that the compass,
which, as I have mentioned, I had just before been using,
and had accidentally placed immediately above the cylinder,
was certainly ' a wonderful instrument "
.'
Soon afterwards an exact duplicate of the cylinder was
discovered near the eastern corner of the same stage, while
a search for the remaining cvlinders at the northern and
western corners proved fruitless, because the greater portion
of the wall at these angles had been already broken away.
But from the debris which had rolled down from the upper
stages, Rawlinson gathered two more fragments of a third
cylinder with the same inscriptions, and a small fragment
of a much larger new cylinder. All these documents are
commemorative records of the time of Nebuchadrezzar,
by whom they were placed there after his restoration
of the old tower of Borsippa, called E-ur-imin-an-ki, i. e.,
"Temple of the Seven Directions (Spheres) of Heaven
and Earth," while the last-mentioned fragment " in some
detail contains a notice of Nebuchadrezzar's expedition to
the Mediterranean and his conquest of the kings of the
West."
In entire accordance with the peculiar Babylonian name
of the tower which formed the most conspicuous part of the
temple Ezida, dedicated to Nebo, son of Merodach, were
Rawlinson's remarkable findings in the trenches. There
could not be any doubt that the six or seven stages of the
huge temple tower still
to be recognized had been differently
colored, and that " the color black for the first stage,
1
red
1
The bricks of this stage are the only ones laid in bitumen, and the face