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

DURING 19TB CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 351
plished.
But the telegraph wires between Constantinople and
Mosul being broken for almost two weeks, Haynes had left
the mounds with about fifty large cases of antiquities (half
of them containing slipper-shaped coffins and bricks), before
the news of the fortunate turn which things had taken in
Philadelphia could reach him. On June 4 he was back
again in his trenches at Nuffar. During the few intervening
weeks which he spent at Baghdad he had met a young
American, Joseph A. Meyer, a graduate student in the department
of architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, Boston, who held a travelling fellowship for
two years and was on his way from India to the Mediterranean
coast. Beginning to realize by this time that it would
be impossible for him to excavate the temple complex, with
its many complicated problems, without the constant assistance
of a trained architect, Haynes readily induced Meyer
to change his plans and to accompany him without a salary
for a year to the ruins of Nuffar.
A second time Providence itself, unwilling to see the
most renowned sanctuary of all Babylonia cut up and gradually
ruined by tunnels and perpendicular shafts, provided
the much needed specialist, who through Peters' unfortunate
recommendation had been withheld so long from the expedition.
Indeed, the young architect seemed eminently qualified
for the peculiar duties required of him. He was deeply
interested in the historical branch of his science ; he had
gathered considerable practical experience through his study
of the ancient monuments in Europe, Egypt, Turkey and
India;
he was an accurate draughtsman and enthusiastically
devoted to his subject ; and, further than this, he proved a
genial and faithful companion to
Haynes, who after his last
year's isolation from all educated men naturally longed for
a personal exchange of thoughts and the uplifting association
with a sympathetic countryman, to whom he could speak in
his own language. The influence of Meyer's active mind