372 
RUINS OF BABYLON. 
finding it totally abandoned by the people who dig in search of 
them: the whole surface now appearing to the eye nothing but 
a vast irregular hill of earth, mixed with fragments of brick, 
pottery, vitrifications, mortar, bitumen, &c. ; while the foot, at 
every step, sinks into the loose dust and rubbish. On the most 
elevated spot towards its south-western brow, stands the tomb 
of Amran, now inhabited by a living, as well as a dead saint; 
a Sheah Saied (or holy disciple of the sect of Ali) having taken 
up his quarters there. The good man did not seem in the least 
alarmed by the evil demons, which he, in common with the 
Arabs about, believed to haunt all the ruins; the sacred bones 
of the kinsman of Ali were sufficient protection. Before the 
western face of the hill, extends a considerable line of flat ground, 
(N N N) bounded on its opposite side by the river’s high em¬ 
bankment. This line of ground, Mr. Rich well describes, as 
44 a winding valley, or ravine, 150 yards in breadth, the bottom 
of which is white with nitre.” And then he adds the interesting 
account of the urns he found in that great bulwark (O), to which 
I referred some pages back. 44 The whole of the embankment 
(he observes,) on the river side, is abrupt, perpendicular, and 
shivered by the action of the water: at the foot of the most 
elevated and narrowest part of it, (directly opposite to the 
western front of the Amran hill, and on the western face of 
the embankment,) cemented into the burnt brick of the wall 
of which it is composed, are a number of urns, filled with 
human bones which had not undergone the action of the 
fire.” Mr. Rich, in the MS. of his second memoir, (which he 
showed to me at Bagdad,) mentions that these urns contained 
ashes, the bones that were amongst them being only in small 
fragments. Comparing these remains with the skeletons dis¬ 
covered in the northern part of the Mujelibe, he judiciously 
