22(3 
Euphrates, and as my Sippara is not on the "bank of that river, 
and there is no sign of any important ruin on its western side, 
I consider that Nahr-malka was meant by the word “Nahr,” 
as it divides Aboo-habba from Dair, which I believe to be the 
site of the Sippara of the moon-god.* 
In the course of last year we discovered, off and on, espe- 
cially in one room, between forty and fifty thousand inscribed 
clay tablets ; but, unfortunately, they were not baked, as they 
generally are found in Assyria ; and the clay of which they 
were made was so coarse that as soon as they were exposed 
to the air they crumbled to pieces. We found that the only 
way to preserve them was to have them baked, which we did 
with success. Fortunately, the most important documents 
were inscribed on terra-cotta cylinders, of which were found 
a great number of different sizes and shapes. 
The style of the architecture of Aboo-habba is quite dif- 
ferent from that found in Babylonia or Assyria ; and from 
all I could make out, it seems to me that Sippara of the sun- 
god was divided into two distinct buildings, one for religious 
purposes, and the other as a place of habitation for priests 
and royalty. Each block of building was surrounded by a 
breastwork, faced in some places with kiln-burnt bricks to 
make the building more secure. Both the temple and its 
environs must have been inhabited by two distinct peoples, 
because the height of the original rooms was twenty-five feet ; 
but the later occupants of the place seem to have had the 
rooms filled up with debris as far as the middle, and then had 
them paved, making it appear as if the latter was the original 
height. It was in this manner that I found the room in which 
was discovered the asphalt pavement. 
The mound on which the buildings of Aboo-habba are 
erected is about 1,300 feet long by 400 feet wide, containing, 
according to my reckoning, at least 300 chambers and halls. 
Of these I have only been able to excavate about 130, as our 
explorations have been put a stop to by the Turkish Govern- 
ment refusing to grant us another firman for the continuation 
of our researches in Assyria and Babylonia. 
I believe when Cyrus the younger marched through Mah- 
moodia with the Grecian auxiliaries, about four hundred years 
before the Christian era, to combat his brother, the great 
King Artaxerxes, Sippara could not have been in existence, 
because Xenophon does not make any mention of it in his 
“ Anabasis ; ” It is very unlikely that such an important city 
could have been unnoticed, especially as the troops must have 
* Nahr means in Semitic languages both river and canal. 
