AL HYMER. 
397 
formed a wall. It was distant from the mound 460 yards, in a 
direction S. 30° W. There were no remains of a ditch. This 
was the extent of our Babylonian observations to the East: and 
on proceeding back to Hillah, I took a course more to the south. 
In this direction we passed through the beds of the same canals 
we had traversed in our approach, though in different places ; 
and halted for a short time at a tomb prettily situated amongst 
some date-trees, called that of Ali Eben Hassan. In our way 
we often saw spots where traces of former habitations were 
visible ; though not so much from unevenness in the ground, as 
by the strewn fragments of ruin, and its nitrous effects. The 
tomb is rather more than five miles from Hillah, which we 
reached by sun-set; that is, about six minutes past five o’clock. 
The distance from A1 Hymer to the shores of the Euphrates, 
being close upon eight miles, puts it out of the question to 
suppose it could have ever stood within the limits of Babylon, 
or even formed any part of its great bulwarked exterior wall ; 
yet, from every internal proof, it is a structure of the Babylonian 
age. From its present name nothing can be gathered ; it having- 
no derivative to be traced in the Arabic; but whatever it may have 
been, whether a distinct town, or only some magnificent exterior 
appendage to the emporium Babylon, its two large mounds, as 
well as the conical pile itself, are highly interesting objects of 
research for the antiquary. I do not doubt that A1 Hymer, with 
its minor mounds, and all the others, great and small, east of 
the canal (long before the intrusion of that canal and its neigh¬ 
bours,) formed one place; but of what sort, we are left to con¬ 
jecture ; and I venture to think not improbably one of the 
colleges or towns, dedicated to the astronomers and soothsayers 
of Babylon. In A1 Hymer, we may find the pyramidal pile 
