1393.] Legends of the Sumiro-Accadians of Chaldea. — 15 
a highly archeic character. A statue of unique interest was 
found at Sirgulla;* the head is strikingly Turanian in form 
and feature and bears a turbaned cap such as may still be seen 
in Mongolia. No type can be more strikingly unlike that of 
the Semitic Assyrians who were to be in later times the rulers 
of Chaldea. This statue, and the bricks with their archeic 
inscriptions found with it, are considered to be as old as 
between 4000 and 3000 B. ©. A successor to this oldest of 
known monarchs was Ur-ea, king of Ur, whose date can be 
approximately arrived at,‘ and whose reign was over before 
the Elamite Conquest of Chaldea ; when Chedorlaomer (Kha- 
dar-Lagamar), of Genesis; chapter xiv, marched an army 
across the desert to attack the rich and populous valleys of 
Jordan, and carried off Lot, the brother of Abraham, among 
his captives. 
In the materials for holding their bricks together there was 
also progressive improvement; in the oldest buildings discov- 
ered, a sticky red clay or loam was used; then bitumen was 
substituted, which, being applied hot, adheres so strongly to 
the bricks that pieces of these are broken off when an attempt 
is made to take a fragment of the cement. Finally, in the 
latest Babylonian period, a beautiful white cement made of 
calcareous earth was used, which has never been surpassed 
for lightness and strength. 
The whole country of Chaldea was absolutely flat; no ves- 
tige of natural hillock occurred throughout its whole extent. 
But the Accadians, whose very name shows their origin as 
mountaineers, were determined to raise their most impor- 
tant buildings above the inundations, and the wild beasts and 
- noxious insects of the marshy plains. They erected artificial 
mounds of a size almost incredible. The great mound of 
Koyun-jik, which represents the palaces of Nineveh’ itself, 
covers an area of one hundred acres, and reaches an elevation 
of ninety-five feet at its highest point. To “heap up such a 
3Modern Tell-Loh. 
*Chaldea, p. 214-19. 
ough an oo city, Nineveh was built on the Chaldean plan, on a 
tell” or moun 
r 
