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

DUBING 19TB CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 429
whereupon the former returned to
Philadelphia in the hope
of joining the party at Nuffar in the course of the following
year, as soon as the organization of the University Museum
should have been completed. Mr. Haynes, with his
wife and the two architects, proceeded to Marseilles, whence
they sailed to Baghdad by way of Port Said, Aden, and
Basra, arriving in the city of Harun ar-Raschid on December
1 8 in the same year.
The sub-committee created in 1895 (comp. pp. 358, seq.),
and consisting of Messrs. E. W. Clark, John Sparhawk, Jr.,
and the Scientific
Director, acted again as an advisory board
to those in the field. The plan which I had outlined as a basis
for the work of the fourth campaign was, if possible, to determine
the following points : 1. The precise character of the
temple of Bel at the principal periods of its long history,
and especially before the time of King Ur-Gur (about 2700
b. c), whom Haynes regarded as the probable monarch who
at Nippur had introduced the stage-tower, the most important
part of all the large Babylonian temples. 1 2. The general
dimensions of pre-Sargonic Nippur ;
that is, to ascertain
whether outside of the temple of Bel and the ashes and
potsherds, etc., previously disclosed by Haynes' tunnels
and shafts in the ridge to the west of the Shatt en-Nil, trails
could be found which would allow us to draw more positive
conclusions with regard to the size and nature of the earliest
settlements. 3. The length and the course of the city walls,
so far as they were not discernible above ground, and the
location of one or more of the three or four large city gates
of Nippur, so frequently mentioned in the later Babylonian
inscriptions which had been unearthed by the first three
expeditions. 4. The exact position, extent, and character
of the temple library, which, since my first ride over the
mounds of Nuffar, I had consistently declared was buried in
Comp. Hilprecht, "The Bab. Exp. of the U. of Pa.," series A, vol.
i, part 2, p. 17.