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

DURING 19TH CENTURY : ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 387
and extended completely around the four walls of the room.
A discovery made in connection with the next pavement below
proved that it had served as a shelf for the safe keeping
of treasures, sacrificial gifts, and documents. A 1
construction
of baked bricks, which we notice in the illustration facing
p. 377 (No. 3), seems also to have been built first by one
of the kings of the dynasty of Ur, possibly by Ur-Gur
himself.
But as Haynes did not extend his excavations of
the third campaign to the northeast section of the court,
we leave it for the present out of consideration.
A word must be said about Peters' and Haynes' socalled
" platform of Ur-Gur," which was covered with the
layer of debris containing the precious vase fragments and
the door-sockets of Sargon I. Some portions were made
of crude bricks, but by far the greater part of it consisted
of large lumps of kneaded clay, which " in a moist condition,
had been laid up en masse in two thick layers," each
one about four feet thick.
This " platform," however, did
not constitute a large terrace, raised to support the ziggurrat
itself, and consequently did not run through the
whole mound, as I formerly assumed in accordance with
the erroneous views of my predecessors ; but, like all the
pavements lying above it, it was only an especially thick
pavement laid by Ur-Gur as a solid floor for his open court
around the stage-tower, and naturally also bore the weight
of his additions to the latter. As soon as Haynes commenced
to remove it, he made an interesting discovery,
which illustrates the great
antiquity of a custom previously
observed in connection with the Parthian fortress (comp. pp.
366, seqq.). At different places between its layers of clay he
found a number of valuable antiquities. These evidently
had been taken from the rubbish below at the time when
Ur-Gur levelled the court, to be placed as talismans in
the new foundation.
Among the objects thus obtained, we
1
Comp. pp. 247, seqq., above.