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

312 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
those discovered by Loftus at Warka, 1
but generally broken,
were excavated in large number along the base of the northwest
wall of the ziggurrat.
Evidently they had fallen from
the top of the tower, and once belonged to a shrine contemporaneous
with the inscribed bricks of Ashurbanapal, the
last known restorer of the temple of Bel, near whose material
they were lying. The remains of the lowest story of
the huge building began to rise graduallv out of the midst
of the encumbering ruins. But they offered problems so
complicated in themselves and with regard to other constructions
discovered all around the ziggurrat at a much higher
level, that it was well-nigh impossible to form a satisfactory
idea of the character and extent of the temple, before the
whole neighborhood had been subjected to a critical
examination.
For very apparent reasons there were only a few
and very late tombs unearthed in
this part of the city, while
again they occurred more frequently in the lower mounds
to the southwest of the temple. Among the various antiquities
which came from the trenches of the sanctuary itself
may be mentioned especially about a dozen vase fragments
inscribed with verv archaic characters, two of them exhibiting
the name of Lugalzaggisi, an otherwise unknown king
of Erech whose precise period could then not be determined
; a well preserved brick stamp of Naram-Sin (about
3750 b. c), the first document of this half-mythical monarch
which reached the shores of Europe ; a fine marble
tablet containing a list of garments presented to the temple;
and a door-socket of the Cassite ruler Kurigalzu.
In the course of time our workmen had been gradually
increased to about 250, so that
experimental trenches could
also be cut in the extreme western and southern wings of
the ruins. A number of contract tablets of the time of the
Chaldean and Persian dynasties were excavated in
the upper
strata of the last mentioned section. The fragment of a
Comp. pp. 148, seq., above.