CHIEFLY FROM NIPPUK. 



231 



this pavement are identical with the mass of crude bricks forming the body of the 

 ziggurrat, while in size and general appearance they closely resemble the burned bricks 

 which bear the name of Ur-Gur. The natural inference would be that Ur-Gur him- 

 self erected this large terrace to serve as a solid foundation for his lofty temple. Yet so 

 long as the inside of the massive ruins has not been thoroughly explored, there remains 

 a slight possibility that the body of the ziggurrat and the pavement existed before 

 Ur-Gur, and that this king only repaired and restored an older building, using in the 

 manufacture of his bricks the mould of his predecessor. On the basis of the present 

 almost convincing evidence, however, I favor the former view and, with Haynes, doubt 

 very much whether before Ur-Gur's time a ziggurrat existed in ancient Nippur. 1 



The base of Ur-Gur's ziggurrat formed a right-angled parallelogram nearly 59 m. 

 long and 39 m. wide. 2 Its two longest sides faced 1SJ.-W. and S.-E. respectively, 3 and 

 the four corners pointed approximately to the four cardinal points. 4 Three of the 

 stages have been traced and exposed (cf. PI. XXX). It is scarcely possible that 

 formerly other stages existed above. 5 The lowest story was c. 6| m. high, while the 

 second (receding a little over 4 m. from the edge of the former) and the third are so 



'The ancient name of the temple, Ekar, in use even at Sargon's time, proves nothing against this theory. On the 

 basis of Taylor's, Loftus's and his own excavations, Haynes inclines to the view that Ur-Gur was the first builder of 

 ziggurrats in Babylonia. As these two English excavators however did not examine the strata below Ur-Gur's ter- 

 races, it will be wiser to suspend our judgment for the present, although the absence of a ziggurrat in Tello favors 

 Haynes's view. 



2 In size practically identical with Ur-Gur's structure in Muqayyar (ratio of 3 : 2). Cf. Loftus, I. c, p. 139. 



3 The longest sides of the ziggurrat in Ur faced N. E. and S. W. respectively. Cf. Loftus, I. c, p. 128. 



4 "The N. corner is 12° E. of N." (Peters in 1'he American Journal of Archaeology, X, p. 18). The Babylonian 

 orientation was influenced by the course of the Euphrates and Tigris, as the Egyptian by the trend of the Nile valley 

 (Hagen in Beitrage zur Assyriologie II, p. 216, note). The Assyrian word for "North," ish(l)tanu, means "No. 

 1." From this fact, in connection with the observation that in the Babylonian contract literature, etc., in most cases 

 the upper smaller side (or front) of a field faces N., it follows that the Babylonians -looked towards N. in determining 

 the four cardinal points, and accordingly could not very well designate " West" by a word which means originally 

 "back side " (Delitzsch, Assyrisches Hin,d>oorterbueh, p. 44f, and Schrader in Sitzungsberichte der Konigl. Premsisch. 

 Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1894, p. 1301) like the Hebrews, who faced E. Besides, it is grammatically scarcely 

 correct to derive mix, a Babylonian loan-word in the Talmud, from a supposed Babylonian aha(u)rru instead of 

 avurru, [for this very reason I read the bird mentioned in II R. 37, 12 e. f., not a-ha,v-sh>i-nu (Delitzsch, I. c, p. 45) but 

 <z-mur-s7jtt-reK=:SUtjmx (cf. Halevy in Reoue Semitiquelll, p. 91)]. Consequently the only possible reading is am(v)urru, 

 "West," as proposed by Delattre, in view of mdtaA-mu ri and <tiuA-mu-ur-ra in the Tell el-Amarna tablets (cf. also a 

 Babylonian (sic !) village or town A-mu-ur-ri-i k 't- in Meissner, Beitrage zum, Altbabylonischen Privatrecht, No. 42, 1 and 

 21). Independently a similar result was reached by Hommel in ZeiUchrift der Deutschen Morgenlandischen Oesellschaft 

 XLIX, p. 524, note 3. 



5 No trace of a fourth story could be discovered, and the accumulation of debris on the top of Bint-el-Amir is not 

 large enough to warrant the assumption of more than three stages. In Ur Loftus discovered but two distinct stages 

 Q. c, p. 128). 



