124 THEO. G. PINCHES, ESQ., NOTES UPON SOME OF THE 



less come at last when the wide domain of Assyriology will 

 have yielded up, as far as may be, its secrets, and the history 

 of the human race and of civilization will present there no 

 gap. 



Upon an extensive waterway, known as the Shatt-al-Hai, 

 which unites the Tigris and the Euphrates, and runs in a 

 south-south-easterly direction from Kut-al-Amara to Suk- 

 ash-Shuyukh, lies, shut in a bend in the waterway, a series 

 of hillocks or mounds of which the principal, known as 

 Telloh, marks the position of an ancient Babylonian temple 

 or royal palace, from which, from time to time, fragments of 

 sculpture, bricks, &c„ have reached the western world. It is 

 on this spot that M. Ernest de Sarzec, appointed Vice-consul 

 of France at Bassorah in 1877, had the good fortune to 

 discover some most important early Babylonian remains, 

 which, by his energy and enthusiasm, have been most 

 carefully and scientifically unearthed, under his direction, 

 for the French government, who has made them accessible 

 to scholars in a splendid publication * prepared by 

 MM. de Sarzec and Leon Heuzey, Keeper of the Oriental 

 Antiquities at the Louvre. 



This site has been long known to Assyriologists as 

 representing the ancient city >-<£& ^^ >^y <ffi (sir + pur + 

 Id + ki f) formerly read as Zirgulla, and identified with a site 

 close by, known as Zerghul. As, however, I pointed out 

 in 1883, the true reading is Lagas, of which name 

 Prof. Hommel has found the variant Lagas (with guttural 

 g). This name, with its final s, is of importance, in that it 

 implies Kassite or Cossaean influence, and is parallel to the 

 well-known ancient native name of Babylonia, namely, Kar- 

 dunias, in which the Kassite ending s occurs again. The 

 modern name, Tel-loh, has been explained as a corruption of 



the Arabic ^A\ Jj, Tell-al-Loh, "the mound of the writing- 

 tablet," — an explanation which has its probabilities. For 

 my part, however, I am inclined to regard the second 

 element, Loh, as a weakening of Lagas, with the loss of the 

 terminal syllable (compare Kar-Duni for Kar-Dunias) and 

 the weakening or loss of the guttural g. If this be the case, 



* De'couvertes en Chalde'e, par Ernest de Sarzec . . . , public par les 

 soins de Leon Heuzey . . . , sous les auspices du Ministere de l'lnstruc- 

 tion publique et des Beaux- Arts. Ernest Leroux. Folio. 



t Given by the syllabaries as Sirpurlakiku, the form used by the 

 Babvlonian scribes when dictating. 



