215 
rewarded for my labours in Babylon. Here were discovered 
what are called the contract tablets, and as the bulk of the 
inscribed terra-cottas were found of unbaked clay, my idea 
is that both the royal mint and banking establishments of 
Babylon were established at Omran and Jimjima. 
71. The drawback experienced formerly in digging for 
antiquities at Babylon was the haphazard way of going about 
it, as the Arabs had made such a mess of the ground that it 
would puzzle the most experienced eye to know where to 
begin and where to end. However, nothing daunted, I per- 
severed, and after a week's trial we came upon signs of 
standing walls which surprised the Arabs not a little; and since 
then, I am happy to say, our workmen have been finding, almost 
daily, relics of the past. Nothing of any great magnitude, I 
am sorry to say, has been found in the ruins of Babylon which 
would interest the general public to look at like the sculptures 
obtained from Nineveh; but for all that, what we are dis- 
covering is of the utmost value to Assyrian scholars and those 
interested in ancient history, especially with that part con- 
nected with the Holy Bible. In these ruins I discovered a 
terra-cotta cylinder, which has been deciphered by Sir Henry 
Rawlinson, and found to be the official record of the taking 
of Babylon by Cyrus while Belshazzar was revelling with “ a 
thousand of his lords," and using at his impious banquet the 
golden and silver vessels which were taken by his father, 
Nebuchadnezzar, from the Temple at Jerusalem. The name 
of Belshazzar does not appear on this cylinder, because, most 
unfortunately, a part of it is broken and missing. 
72. There is no doubt that the city of Babylon was built 
on the eastern bank of the Euphrates (like the city of London 
being on the left side of the Thames) with the greater part 
of the Chaldean metropolis stretching about ten miles on both 
sides of the “ great river." 
73. Both at Babylon and Nineveh all the traces of the ex- 
ternal walls mentioned by ancient historians have disappeared, 
as it was prophetically foretold by Jeremiah,* but I think the 
separate divisions mentioned by Herodotus, with regard to 
the former metropolis, can be slightly traced ; one on the left 
side of the Euphrates and the other on the right, which takes 
in Birs Nimroud. It is quite impossible now to trace with 
any degree of accuracy the inner square on the western side 
of the Euphrates, but traces are yet visible of the square on 
the opposite side. 
* Jeremiah li. 58. 
Q 2 
