THE MUJELIBE. 
345 
conceivable. From its lower extremity being so deeply buried 
in dust and rubbish, I could not inspect it to any depth. The 
whole surface of this irregular, cliff-topped ruin, is covered with 
the remnants of its former superstructure, but I was unable to 
get even one brick entire, to bring away. A stamp of seven 
lines, however, seemed traceable on most of the fractured pieces 
I took up to examine. * 
This huge mass stands totally unconnected with any other 
whatever, if we may except the remains of protecting lines of 
wall or embankment, which, at certain distances, surround it 
on three of its sides, that is, to the east, north, and west. The 
western line now terminates near a couple of small modern 
canals ; but there can hardly be a doubt that it originally ex¬ 
tended to the shore of the Euphrates, whence the Mujelibe is 
distant little more than half a mile. * 
On looking at the drawing, which represents the different 
faces of the building as it now stands, sufficient remains to the 
eye, to ascertain that it never could have been intended to rise 
thence in a pyramidal succession of towers. Had one such a 
stage ever surmounted it, we should have found a slight eleva¬ 
tion at least, towards the middle of the summit; but instead of 
that essential feature, it sinks there in a deep hollow. There 
is also another reason against its having any pretension to the 
* This is the pile mentioned by Mr. Macdonald Kinnier, by the name of 
Haroot and Maroot, in his Geographical Memoir of Persia, where he observes, 
44 the Arabs give it that name; for they believe, that near the foot of the pyramid 
there still exists, though invisible to mankind, a well, in which those two wicked 
angels were condemned by the Almighty to be suspended by the heels until the end 
of the world, as a punishment for their vanity and presumption.” Mr. M. Kinnier 
visited Babylon 1808, and we cannot but be struck with the coincidence between all 
these legends, however varied, and the absolute great fact of the scene. 
VOL. II. 
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