to two and a half miles an hour, and varies in breadth from 450 to 500 feet.

At the town of Hillah itself, there are no ruins; the nearest commence about two miles to the north, and are found altogether upon the eastern side of the river, at no great distance from its bank. The first of these remains consists of a vast mound of earth, formed apparently by the decomposition of sun-dried bricks, channelled and furrowed by the weather, and having the surface strewed with pieces of brick, bitumen, and pottery. This mound is three thousand three hundred feet long, by two thousand four hundred feet broad, at its base, being curved at the south side into the figure of a quadrant. The height is sixty feet at the highest part. The name given to this ruin by the natives is Amran. On the northern side of this mound, a valley extends about one-third of a mile in length, covered with tufts of grass, and crossed by a line of ruins of small elevation; at the north extremity of which stands the next mound, which is a square of two thousand one hundred feet, having its southwest angle connected with the north-west angle of the mound Amran, by a ridge of considerable height, and three hundred feet broad. The building, of which this second mound is the ruin, appears to have been highly finished, for the bricks are of the finest description, and are still found in great abundance, notwithstanding the quantities that have been taken away,Hillah probably having been supplied from thence. In all the excavations which have been made here, furnace-baked bricks, laid in fine lime mortar, have been found; also, coloured tiles, and fragments of alabaster vessels.

Two hundred yards to the north of this ruin is a ravine, hollowed out by brick-searchers, about three hundred feet long, ninety wide, and one hundred and twenty deep. On one side a few yards of wall are laid bare, extremely clean and wellbuilt, and apparently the front of a building. At the southern end, an opening leads to a subterranean passage, floored and walled with large bricks, laid in bitumen, and roofed with single slabs of sand-stone, three feet thick, and from eight to twelve long. In this passage was found a colossal piece of sculpture,

* It is probable that this mode of roofing is what Strabo means, when he tells us the hanging-gardens were supported by vaulted roofs, (lib. xvi.) and which also may explain the arched passages mentioned by Diodorus. It is this which has misled Dutens, who, in his learned work, refers to the buildings at Babylon, as a proof of the antiquity of the arch.-Recherches sur le Tems le plus reculé de l'usage des Voutes, chez les anciens. Par

in black marble, representing a lion standing over a man. This is described by Major Keppel, (vol. i. p. 214,) who supposes it may have had reference to Daniel in the lion's den. The quadrangular mound we have last described, is called by the natives El Kasr, the palace.' The walls are eight feet thick, ornamented with niches, and strengthened by pilasters and buttresses, all built of fine brick, laid in lime cement of such tenacity, that they cannot be separated without breaking; hence it is, that so much of it remains perfect. One part of the wall has been split into three parts, and overthrown as if by an earthquake. Near this ruin is a heap of rubbish, like bricks in a state of decomposition, the sides of which are streaked by the different colours of its materials. At a short distance to the north-east, stands the famous tree, called by the natives Athele, and supposed to have flourished in the hanging-gardens of Babylon. It is an evergreen of the lignum vitæ species. The Kasr, and the mound on which the tree stands, are separated from the river by a narrow valley, about a hundred yards in width, along the western side of which extends an embankment, the side next the river being abrupt, and much shivered by the action of the water, which seems to have encroached here, judging from the number of burnt bricks found in its bed. This appears to us to have probably been a part of the embankment described by Herodotus.

A mile to the north of the Kasr, and nine hundred and fifty yards from the side of the river, stands the most remarkable ruin of the eastern division. It is called by the Arabs Makloube, or Mujillebé, which signifies overturned.' It was visited, in 1616, by Pietro della Vallé, who immediately pronounced it to be the Tower of Babel; an error which subsequent travellers have confirmed. Its form is oblong, being 600 feet by 540 at the base; its height at the point of greatest elevation is 141 feet. Pietro della Vallé describes it as 200 feet high, and 2600 round the base, which, if correct, shows how much a Babylonian ruin, from its nature, will decay in two centuries. This mound is a solid mass. The greatest appearance of building is on the western side; near the summit there is a low wall, built of sun-burnt bricks, laid in clay mortar of great thickness, having a layer of reeds between every layer of bricks. On the north side are vestiges of a similar wall. The south-west angle,

M. L. Dutens. 4to, 1805. There is every reason to believe that the arch was unknown to the ancients, before the time of Alexander the Great.

which is the highest point, terminates in a turret. Vast numbers of entire furnace-baked bricks are found on the summit, fourteen inches square, and three inches thick, many of which are inscribed with the unknown characters resembling arrow heads, which we have already alluded to. From the mode in which those bricks are found, it appears that the interior had been built of sun-dried bricks, and the outer surface coated with bricks burnt in the furnace. This mound,' says Major Kep pel, ' was full of large holes; we entered some of them, and found them strewed with the carcasses and skeletons of animals ' recently killed. The ordure of wild beasts was so strong, that prudence got the better of curiosity, for we had no doubt as to 'the savage nature of the inhabitants. Our guides indeed told us, that all the ruins abounded in lions and other wild beasts.' -Vol. i. p. 185.

All the faces of the Mujillebé are worn into furrows by rain, penetrating in some places to a great depth into the mound; among the rubbish on the top, is found, besides the burnt bricks above-mentioned, fragments of pottery, bitumen, vitrified brick, bits of glass, and mother-of-pearl. On the northern side, and near the top, there is an aperture leading to a passage which Mr Rich employed twelve men to clear out. They began from above, and working downwards, first laid open a hollow pier, sixty feet square, filled with earth, and lined with fine bricks laid in bitumen. In clearing this out, he found a brass spike, some earthen vessels, and a beam of date-tree wood; continuing the work downwards, they arrived at the passage, which was about ten feet high, flat at the top, and built of unburnt bricks, laid with a layer of reeds between every course, except the two lowest, which were cemented with bitumen; the whole was lined with a facing of fine burnt bricks laid in bitumen, so as completely to conceal the unburnt bricks of which the body of the building was composed. In this passage, which extended east and west, along the northern front of the Mujillebé, Mr Rich found a wooden coffin, containing a skeleton in perfect preservation; under the head was placed a round pebble, and a brass ornament was attached to the skeleton; another brass ornament, representing a bird, was fixed on the outside of the coffin. A little further on, the skeleton of a child was found.

At the foot of the Mujillebé, and about seventy yards distant, are traces on the north and west sides, of a low mound of earth, which probably formed an enclosure round the whole. From the south-east angle of the Mujillebé, a mound extends in a circular direction, and joins the mound Amran at its south-east angle, the diameter of the sweep being two miles and a half. It

is extremely probable that this mound is the fortified enclosure, described by Herodotus as encircling the great palace. There are no ruins of any importance to the north of the Mujillebé. A few low mounds are observed occurring at intervals on each side of the road from Bagdad to Hillah, but they are too insignificant to attract notice; from their situation, they are more likely to have been burying-places outside the city, than buildings within its walls.

It is impossible, we think, to doubt that the ruins we have described, upon the eastern bank of the Euphrates, are the remains of Babylonian buildings of very considerable importance.

They are all,' says Mr Rich, of one character, and must be received altogether as a part of Babylon, or wholly rejected without reserve; and I must here state what seems to me to be the best evidence for their antiquity, independent of their appearance, dimensions, and correspondence with the descriptions of the ancients. The burnt bricks, of which the ruins are principally composed, and which have inscriptions on them in the cuneiform character only found in Babylon and Persepolis, are all invariably placed in a similar manner, namely, with their faces or written sides downwards. This argues some design in placing them, though what that might have been, it is now impossible to say. It, however, proves sufficiently that the buildings must have been erected when the bricks were made, and the very ancient and peculiar form of characters on them in use. When these bricks are found in more modern constructions, as in Bagdad and Hillah, they are of course placed indifferently, without regard to the writing upon them. In the greatest depth in the excavations at the Kasr, at the subterraneous passage, or canal, I myself found small pieces of baked clay, covered with cuneiform writing, and sometimes with figures indisputably Babylonian. Had the ruins been more recent than is here presumed, these inscriptions would not have been found in this order and manner, and we should in all probability have found others in the character or language then in use. Thus had the town been Mahometan or Christian, we might reasonably expect to meet with fragments of Coufic or Stranghelo. There is another equally remarkable circumstance in these ruins, and which is almost conclusive with respect to their antiquity. In the very heart of the mound, called the Kasr, and also in the ruins on the banks of the river, which have been crumbled or shivered by the action of the water, I saw earthen urns filled with ashes, with some small fragments of bone in them; and in the northern face of the Mujillebé, I discovered a gallery filled with skeletons, enclosed in wooden coffins. Of the high antiquity of the sepulchral urns no one will for an instant doubt; and that of the skeletons is sufficiently ascertained, both from the mode of burial, which has never been practised in this country since the introduction of Islam, and still more by a curious brass ornament which I found in one of the coffins. These discoveries are of the most interesting nature; and though it is certainly difficult to reconcile them with any theory of these ruins, yet in themselves they sufficiently establish their antiquity. The two separate modes of burial, too, are highly worthy of attention. There is, I believe, no reason to suppose; VOL. XLVIII. NO. 95.

that the Babylonians burned their dead; the old Persians we know never did. It is not impossible, that the difference may indicate the several usages of the Babylonians and Greeks, and that the urns may contain the ashes of the soldiers of Alexander and of his successors.'-2d Memoir, pp. 27-29.

It appears to us, that the circumstance of the coffins, although of itself insufficient to fix the building with the character of a Babylonian sepulchre, is quite sufficient to stamp it as of a date antecedent to the Greeks and Mahometans. The Jews, from the earliest accounts we have of them, had graves both in the town and country-the general custom being to inter the dead outside the city, Gen. xxiii. 3—13. They seem also to have embalmed their dead, and put them in coffins ;-thus Joseph's body was embalmed, and put into a coffin in Egypt, and was brought away by the Israelites when they quitted that country, and buried in Shechem, in ground bought by Jacob, Gen. 1. 25., Joshua, xxiv. 32; and although we have no direct proof that the Babylonians used a similar mode of interment, yet the form of the building, the materials of which it was constructed, the manner of construction, and the situations in which the coffins were found,-to all appearance originally intended as a receptacle for them,-strongly favour the idea, that the Mujillebé was a Babylonian structure, and that it was a mausoleum, rather than a temple of worship. As to the other ruins, it is most probable that the Kasr and adjacent mounds are the remains of the royal Palace with its hanging gardens-enclosed within the circular mound, which formed the outer wall of the palace mentioned by Herodotus, and described more in detail by Diodorus. The extreme fineness of the brick work, remarked by all modern travellers who have visited the Kasr, the painted tiles, and the general character and position of the ruins, render this so probable, that we can have no hesitation in agreeing with Mr Rich,-especially in the absence of any other ruin of importance, that the remains in question represent the whole of the royal precincts, the fortified enclosure, the buildings of various kinds connected with the palace, and the hanging gardens.

Before we take leave of the eastern bank of the Euphrates, we may advert to some considerable remains which are found at distances of two and three miles and upwards from the river. Mr Rich has said nothing of these, or, where he mentions them, treats them all as remains of canals. Mr Buckingham, however, traversed the plain in several directions on the eastern side, and had opportunities of observing the character of these remains more closely; and he is of opinion that these ruins-having the appearance of long mounds which cross the plain, some from north to south, others from east to west-are not the beds of canals,