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

DURING 19 CENTURY: ASSYRIA AND BABYLONIA 501
for this seemingly strange circumstance can only be that
Haynes accidentally had struck an architecturally prominent
part of the wall (No. 7), a bastion well drained and ornamented
with parapets, which flanked the great northeast gate
of the city.
7. Two theories had been advanced with regard to the
extensive building remains discovered in the upper strata
of Bint el-Amir. Peters regarded them as the ruins of the
temple of Bel according to its latest reconstruction by a
Persian king living about 500 b. c, and dedicating the sacred
enclosure to a new religion (p. 329, seq.). The present
writer from the very beginning interpreted the vast structure
as an entirely new creation of an even later period,
which stood in no historical relation to the Babylonian sanctuary
beneath it. He believed that it was a fortified Parthian
palace built around the ziggurrat as a citadel on the site of
the ancient tempre (pp. 327, 364, 373, seq.). The former
was convinced that the huge enclosing walls and the two
round towers protecting them originated with Ur-Gur (about
2700 b. c.). 1 The writer declared them to form an inseparable
part of the Parthian construction built 2500 years later
than the time assigned to them by Peters.
In sketching the work of the four Philadelphia expeditions
at Nuffar, I repeatedly took occasion to indicate that
it is impossible to reconcile Peters' view with all the facts
brought to light by our various excavations. The crude
bricks characterizing the latest edifice are different from
those which we meet in the Babylonian and Persian strata.
And with but few exceptions, 2 the antiquities gathered in
its
rooms point unmistakably to the Hellenistic and Roman
periods as the real time of their construction and occupancy.
1
Comp. Peters' "Nippur," vol. ii, pp. 148, seqq., esp. pp. 157, seq.
2
Stray antiquities belonging to different periods of Babylonian history
which occur occasionally in the upper strata of all the mounds of Nuffar.
Comp. pp. 340, note 1, 366, seq., 372.