170 



Silbury. 



And now from Asia Minor wo pass on to Asia Proper, and hero 

 I forbear to dwell on the vast mounds of unburnt brick at Babylon, 

 though the mound of Babil rises from the plain to the height of 

 140 feet, (the Northern and Southern faces at the base measuring 

 200 yards in length, while the Eastern and Western are respectively 

 182 and 136 yards) : 1 and the great mound of Mugheir, though 

 less colossal, is of no mean proportions ; being 198 feet in length, 

 and 133 feet in breadth. But I must not pause upon these, for 

 they have but slight pretensions of a sepulchral nature, 2 both being 

 generally allowed to have been erected as the platforms of temples, 

 the former crowned with the temple of Belus, the latter with that 

 of Sin. 3 Not so however the monument of Ninus raised at Nineveh 

 by Semiramis over the tomb of her husband, and which, according 

 to Rich, is an artificial mound in the form of a truncated pyramid : 

 it is 178 feet in height, 1850 feet in length, and 1147 feet in 

 breadth, very near the size of the pyramid of Cholula : this is 

 without doubt an enormous structure, though when Diodorus quotes 

 Ctesias to prove that its dimensions are 9 stadia high and 10 broad, 

 that is to say that it is of superior elevation to Mount Yesuvius, 

 and nearly equal to Mount Hecla, he is guilty of a manifestly gross 

 exaggeration. 4 



And now we pass on to the huge Tartarian mounds called 

 " Bougres," which overspread much of the desert country occupied 



1 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. ii., p. 576. 

 2 The author however of the " Lost Solar System of the Ancients discovered," 

 (a very valuable work, to which I often have occasion to refer,) speaking of the 

 mound of Belus, the " Mujelibe," says that " skeletons were found in it ; " he 

 says it is oblong, of an irregular height, and gives the dimensions as 650 feet 

 long by 450 feet broad ; and its highest elevation 141 feet, (vol. ii. 371). The 

 same author says there are many more large mounds in the neighbourhood, nearly 

 or quite as large as the Mujelibe, one measured 126 feet in height (p. 372). Again, 

 the mound of Khorsabad in Assyria is 983 feet long : the Kalah Shergat, a trian- 

 gular mound near the Tigris is 60 feet high, 909 yards in extent, with a total 

 circumference of 4685 yards. The Birs JNimroud, (or mound of Borsippa which 

 Rich says is 235 feet high,) 762 feet in circumference: the Kasr, 2100 feet: 

 and the Koyunjik at Mneveh, 2563 in circumference, &c, (vol. i., p. 156, ii., 66, 

 371—4. 



3 Rawlinson's Herodotus, vol. i., p. 615, ii., 576. 

 4 Lost Solar System of the Ancients discovered, ii., 332, 394. 



