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have been the side of a battering-ram. Nevertheless, I still 
maintain that, if it was not a leaf of a gate, it could have 
never been used for either of the above purposes. The 
most striking fact connected with it is the inscription on 
the ledge, which Assyrian scholars read as a dedication by- 
Nebuchadnezzar to his god for his restoration to health, which 
shows that it could not have been intended to be walked upon, 
as it was dedicated for a sacred object. Moreover, when I 
examined it before it was removed, I found that it was not 
built into the original Babylonian doorway, but must have been 
placed there by less civilised occupiers of the palace, who had 
the passages narrowed, and fitted this object in the threshold 
between the stone pavement of the passage and the steps 
leading downwards towards the tower or temple. On passing 
out of this entrance towards the tower on which the temple of 
Belus was supposed to have been erected, we could not see 
any sign of building ; but the whole mass afterwards excavated 
consisted of debris belonging to au ancient structure, evidently 
wilfully destroyed by a formidable enemy. To make myself 
sure, I had a large ditch excavated between the palace and 
the tower so as to be certain that we had got to the end of the 
building; and as I could not afford to dig the whole remaining 
space, I penetrated as far as the foundations by means of 
tunnelling — a distance of about eighty feet. I desisted from 
going any further from fear of accident, because, the nearer we 
approached the tower, the more it became dangerous to go on 
with the excavations, on account of the quantity of loose 
broken bricks that were mixed up with the earth. 
About five hundred yards to the north-east of Birs Nimroud 
there is another large mound called Ibraheem -el- Klialeel, 
where the Arabs of that country believe Nimroud tried to 
throw Abraham into the fiery furnace. There I also carried 
on extensive explorations, and found a large collection of 
inscribed clay tablets ; but these were found in the outskirts 
of the mound, and not in the building I discovered in it. 
This made me think that the debris in which they were found was 
thrown away from an old building which had been in existence 
before the new structure I discovered was erected, because I 
found on the western side of the mound, below the sanctum 
of Ibraheem-el-Khaleel, quite anew building, which could not 
have been inhabited, resembling very much the building I 
discovered in Tel-Ibraheem, or the supposed site of Cuthah. 
It might have been erected when Alexander the Great was 
trying to remove the rubbish from the temple of Belus, and it 
was abandoned when that great monarch met with his death. 
The vitrified portion of the Tower of Belus has ever been a 
