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

DURING 19th CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 365
enough to treat it with special reverence and to examine
it with the greatest care. In consequence of his strange
procedure he could not help destroying essential details
of all the different strata which later were missing, and
at the same time to report other discoveries inaccurately and
incoherently. It became, therefore, exceedingly difficult,
and in many cases impossible, for me to determine and to
arrange the defective results of all these perpendicular cuttings,
with their eight to ten different strata, in a satisfactory
manner, the more so as they often had been obtained at
long intervals, and as a rule were unaccompanied by even
the poorest kind of sketch or ground plan, while the portable
antiquities had never been numbered to allow of their
identification with certainty afterwards.
In spite of the plainly un-Babylonian character of the
large crude bricks which constitute the bulk of the latest
fortified walls around the ziggurrat, Haynes regarded
them
with Peters as the work of Ur-Gur, differing, however,
from him in one important point, by declaring at least a
large
part of the southeast enclosing wall as the work " of
the first rebuilder of the ziggurrat in cruciform style [about
600 b. c.]." He removed a number of rooms in the east
corner of this settlement, and as Meyer fortunately was
on the ground a few months later, we have a well executed
plan of these chambers in addition to a few sketches and a
general description of their principal features and contents
by Haynes. The two explorers came to the interesting
conclusion, confirmed
later by my inspection of the few remains
of their trenches, that three different periods are clearly
to be distinguished with regard to their occupancy. They
also make us acquainted with
the exact dimensions of these
rooms and their mutual relation to each other, with the
average thickness and height of their ruined walls, with certain
important details of their doors, with their drainage and ventilation
and several fireplaces discovered in them.
Apart from