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THEOPHILUS G. PINCHES^ LL.D.^ M.R.A.S., ON 



the spouse of Merodach at Babylon, namely, E-mali, which, if 

 written in the same way, means " the sublime house." 

 Hammurabi, in the introduction to his code of laws, gives the 

 name of one of the temples of Adab as being fi-para-galgala, 

 " the house of the great hght," or, perhaps better, E-ugal-gala, 

 " the great storm-temple." Unfortunately, it is a very imper- 

 fect account of the excavations at Bismya that I have had to 

 use, or I should be able to give a mucli better description of 

 the temples of this primitive site. 



Three brick-stamps were found, all of them with the words 

 " ISTaram-Sin, builder of the temple of I star," testifying to the 

 existence of a fane dedicated to the great goddess of love and 

 war at Adab. Among other still smaller objects may be 

 mentioned cylinder-seals of tlie usual Babylonian type, one of 

 them showing the so-called Gilgames and Enki-du — which 

 probably represent entirely different personages — struggling 

 with a lion and a bull respectively. This subject is very 

 common on the engraved cylinders of Babylonia. 



An interesting discovery in this site was that of an oval 

 chamber at the south corner of the temple-tower, which, in the 

 opinion of the explorers, had been formerly covered by a dome. 

 At one of its ends was a 6 -foot circular platform, with a pit 

 beneath it 4 feet deep. The pit was found to contain ashes 

 mixed with sand which had silted in to the depth of about 

 2 feet. Smoke marks upon the adjoining wall, and the 

 evidences of great heat to which the brickwork had been 

 subjected, suggested that it was a crematory. Dr. Banks' 

 description of the probable process of burning the bodies is as 

 follows : — 



" The body to be cremated was placed upon the platform ; flames 

 from a furnace in an adjoining room, passing through a flue, con- 

 sumed the bodies, and the smoke passed out through a vent above. 

 The ashes, unmixed with the ashes of the furnace, were either 

 gathered for burial in urns, or swept into the pit below. This 

 crematory, which was duplicated in a second chamber near by, 

 explains the absence of Babylonian graves " 



Eemains of dwelling-houses with ovens and drainage also 

 came to light. 



Concerning the excavations at Tel-loh it is not my intention 

 to speak at length, as I described rather fully before this 

 Institute, many years ago, certain of the finds made by the 

 French explorer, M. Ernest de Sarzec, on that site. It lies in 

 a rather inaccessible region fifteen hours north of Mugheir 

 (Ur of the Chaldees) and twelve hours east of Warka (Erech), 



