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

DURING 10 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 337
orated with an eagle and a snake evidently fighting with
each other were taken from the debris around it, bearing
witness to the elaborate manner in which the
ancient Babylonians
embellished their temples. As we shall have to
say a few words about the relation of this shrine to the
ziggurrat later, when we give a summary of the principal
results of the Philadelphia expedition, we continue at present
to sketch Dr. Peters' explorations on the other mounds of
Nuffar.
To the east of our first
camp we had previously discovered
the remains of tapering brick columns, symmetrically
arranged around an open square court (VII). It was natural
to suppose that this peculiar structure belonged to a
more pretentious building with interesting
architectural features,
as the mere presence of columns indicated sufficiently.
Though the present writer had assigned it without hesitation
to the Seleucido-Parthian period (about 250 b. c), it was
desirable and necessary to excavate it completely, before the
more important Babylonian strata beneath it should be examined.
In order to execute this task, Peters began to
remove the Jewish and early Arabic houses representing
the latest traces of human settlements everywhere in the
precincts of ancient Nippur, and the numerous Parthian and
Sassanian coffins, sepulchral urns, and pottery drains immediately
below them. The former were characterized by
Kufic coins, Hebrew, Arabic, and Mandean incantation
bowls, and other articles
of domestic use, which were generally
found in low and narrow rooms made of mud-bricks.
We had frequently noticed the outlines of their walls in
the preceding year, as we walked over the hills in the
early morning, when the rapidly evaporating humidity of
the ground drew the saltpetre contained in the clay to the
surface, 1 The tombs, on the other hand, occurred in an
indescribable confusion in all possible positions and at nearly
25
1
Comp. p. 283, above.