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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 413
of the Shatt en-Nil. Hence it follows that " the river Chebar
in the land of the Chaldeans " was the greatest canal of
Babylonia proper, "the great canal " par excellence, which
branched off from the Euphrates somewhere above Babylon
and ran through almost the whole interior of the country
from north to south.
It was the great artery which brought
life and fertility to the otherwise barren alluvial plain enclosed
by the Euphrates and the Tigris and turned the
whole interior into one luxuriant garden. The nar Kabari
had the same significance for Nippur, the most ancient and
renowned city of the country, as the Euphrates for Sippara
and Babvlon, or the Nile for Egypt, and therefore was
called most appropriately "the Euphrates of Nippur" by
the Sumerians, " the great canal" by the Semitic Babylonians,
and the " river Nile " bv the Arabic population of
later times. In some parts of Southern Babylonia the bed
of the canal was wider than that of the present Euphrates
below Hilla, while its average depth at Nippur measured
from fifteen to twenty feet.
Wherever Haynes drove his tunnels into the real Babylonian
strata of the long ridge on the west bank ot the Shatt
en-Nil, he came upon extensive remains of mud buildings,
broken tablets, scattered weights and seal cylinders. My
Oblong Weight in Hematite
Fifteen
(shekels)
examination of all the portable antiquities excavated there
led in every case to the same result, that this long-stretched
mound represents the business quarter of ancient Nippur,