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

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398 EXPLORATIONS IN BIBLE LANDS
fifteen feet below Naram-Sin's pavement, or ten feet below
the base of the curb, which it probably antedates by a century
or two. We may safely assign it, therefore, to the
end of the fifth pre-Christian millennium. It presented a
number of interesting peculiarities. Being 1 feet i inch
high (inside measurement), and having a span of i foot 8
inches and a rise of i foot i inch, it was constructed of well
baked plano-convex bricks laid
on the principle of radiating
voussoirs. These bricks measured 12 by 6 by iy 2 inches,
were light yellow in color, and bore certain marks on their
upper or convex surface, which had been made either by
pressing the thumb and index finger deeply into the clay
the middle of the brick, or bv drawing one or more fingers
lengthwise over it. Primitive as they doubtless are, they
do not (as Haynes inferred) " represent the earliest type
of bricks found at Nippur or elsewhere in Babylonia," —
which are rather smaller and sometimes a little thicker,
though for a considerable while both kinds were used alongside
each other and often in the same building. 1 The curve
of the arch was effected " by wedge-shaped joints of the
simple clay mortar used to cement the bricks." " On the
top of its crown was a crushed terra-cotta pipe about 3 or
2}4 inches in diameter," the meaning of which Haynes declares
unknown. I cannot help thinking that it served a
purpose similar to the holes provided at regular intervals
in our modern casing walls of terraces, etc. ; in other words,
that the pipe was intended to give exit to the rain water
in
1
Thus, e. g., in a drain discovered by the fourth expedition in the east section
of the temple court at the lowest level of any of the baked brick constructions
hitherto excavated at NufFar. It contained bricks of the size I 2 by 5 7/fc
by 2^ inches, and others measuring only 8^ by 4^3 by 2 inches, while at
the foundation of the northeast city gate of Nippur the two kinds of bricks
marked two pre-Sargonic periods succeeding each other precisely as in the
two lowest buildings of Mound B at Tello (comp. p. 241, above). Comp.
also p. 251, above. He who built the drain in part doubtless used older
material.