Immediately at the entrance to the hill Amran, the above-mentioned tramway trench cut through some buildings of later—apparently Parthian—times, which would be well worthy of being completely excavated. We have hitherto only been able, however, to widen the trench slightly to east and west. A pillared hall can be seen, a peristyle with several chambers, the walls of crude brick still standing to a considerable height in the mass of the hill (Fig. 131). The pillars consist of brick rubble laid in mud and plastered over with gypsum, a method of building which is characteristic of the later Grecian and Parthian periods. By the walls there were peculiar small mud constructions thickly covered with gypsum; flat shallow pans supported by tiny columns sharply contracted half way up their height. What they were intended for I do not know.

Somewhat farther to the north there lies a Stoa built in the same way, of coupled semi-columns, of which we have excavated 23 transoms without arriving at the end. A similar series is near the Bridge Gateway. Several pillars of the peristyle of a house also came to light on the east side of the Eastern Annex. All these remains lie at about the same height of 10 metres above zero, which is about 6 metres higher than the Nebuchadnezzar pavement of Esagila. At Amran it is hardly possible to dig at this level without coming upon such pillars. A similar unmistakable introduction of Greek pillared architecture can be observed in all ruined sites which flourished at the time of the Neo-Babylonian kings, as at Nippur, where the great palace belongs to this period, but which Fisher has strangely ascribed to the Mycenaean period (Journal of the Archaeological Institute of America, vol. viii. 1904, No. 4, p. 403). Meanwhile it appears that the Babylonian house grouped round a courtyard was also at this period still in use by the autochthonous population, while the Greek insisted on having his pillars even in this land, the climate of which was so unpropitious to columnar art.

Near the railway trench to the westward of the first-mentioned house there was a large number of Graeco-Parthian burials. Pottery sarcophagi and wooden coffins, surrounded by brickwork, lie here as low as 80 centimetres above zero. Some of them are rich in small plastic deposits. There are alabaster statuettes of women with finely worked wigs of black asphalt and inlaid eyes (Fig. 132). One type is lying on the hip, and another is standing, and both occur also in hollow terra-cotta. They vary between the older fine and animated style and the later dry lifeless treatment. The ancient Babylonian forms, such, for instance, as those of the Ninmach terra-cottas (p. 277), have entirely disappeared by this time, and are superseded by Greek models. Simultaneously with these decidedly graceful pieces there occurs, sometimes in the same coffin, another style of modelling, which strikes one as rather barbaric. They are small nude female figures made from cylindrical bones flattened on one side and carved on the face. There were seven of these pieces in one grave, which differ greatly from one another in style. All alike have a coarsely formed body with disproportionately broad hips, while the head is frequently very finely worked.

Some of the alabaster and clay figures certainly wore genuine tiny garments, as is shown by the movable jointed arms. The corpse itself frequently wears a naturalistic wreath of leaves or a narrow diadem of very thin gold fastened by a band that was inserted in two holes. The face was often wrapped in pieces of thin gold-leaf.

In addition to the plain wooden coffins, others are found, though not in situ, very richly decorated. The remains of one of these lay in the western cross-cut at the peribolos, rich with the gilded bases of small pillars, the channellings of which were overlaid with glass fillets, gilded cupids, and the like, all made of gypsum and specially adapted for fitting on to wood. The sarcophagus in which the wooden coffin was placed was built of bricks, with a gable roof formed of bricks placed edgeways, and tilted up over the opening, the whole bedded in a liberal supply of gypsum mortar.

Besides this class of burial we find still in use at this time the usual Babylonian trough coffins of terra-cotta, either with a separate cover, or tilted up over the body. The slipper sarcophagus is also naturalised in Babylon (Fig. 133), which, like many of the trough sarcophagi, has a beautiful blue glaze, which, however, easily flakes off. The necropolis in the principal court of the Southern Citadel was full of them. The shape of the slipper sarcophagus, in which the head of the corpse lay below an opening which was closed by a separate cover, appears to date back in Nippur to a very early period. It is evident that a great variety of types of burial were in use in Babylonia. The long trough sarcophagi which here in Babylon were first used in Neo-Babylonian times, and later, with the double-urn coffin and the short high pan coffin, were already common in Fara (Shuruppak), in the prehistoric period, only deeper in shape; while the double-urn coffin first appeared there with the beginning of writing (3000 B.C.). In prehistoric Surgul the body was burnt with the help of high inverted coffins. Interments in underground vaults, which are numerous in Assur, occur very rarely in Babylon, and only under Assyrian domination (?) The methods of burial and their sequence differ in every town where research has been carried on. If it appears amazing that burial by burning should have been practised in Surgul, it must be remembered that up to the present time, with the exception of the lowest levels of Fara, it is the only prehistoric site that has been explored in that part of the world. While the ethnologist and the student of western prehistoric and early culture possesses a wealth of material to illustrate the development of a few centuries, in Babylonia the prehistoric period embraces many thousands of years, and its material is confined to that derived from Surgul and Fara. From Bismaya, where, according to Banks the excavator, burnt interments were found, little has yet been gained, and nothing is known of Telloh in this connection. It also happens that the difference in time between the periods of these culture strata is very great. At Fara the upper layer belongs to the period of the beginning of writing in the fourth or fifth millennium, while the lowest strata 8 or 10 metres lower down belong perhaps to the tenth. This we can only surmise, we cannot prove it. Surgul after its time of prosperity apparently lay deserted for countless centuries, before its occupation in the time of Gudea of which the scanty remains now lie upon the surface. The interval between Nebuchadnezzar and Entemena, which is generally regarded as very long, is, in fact, remarkably short when compared with the duration of the prehistoric period in Babylonia, the length of which it is at present impossible for us to estimate. And what do we know of it? Only a few disconnected strophes from among the great, lengthy, and doubtless highly didactic epic of the development of Babylonian culture. It is therefore no wonder that there is a marked, and at present an incomprehensible difference between the various data. But it is urgently to be desired that these ancient ruins should be more widely and actively studied in order to gain the fullest possible elucidation regarding the long dawn of the development of Babylonian culture, for what I was able to gain by the excavations at these two sites was nothing but the result of a mere preliminary reconnoitre.

In the mud-brick houses under the previously mentioned Parthian building, a bead manufacturer appears to have deposited his raw material. It lay there in two baskets, of which the structure could be easily recognised, and included ancient valuables of onyx, lapis lazuli, agates, rock-crystal, and other stones. We need not here describe them in detail, some of them are of interest as samples of the temple treasure of Esagila as it once existed. A strip of lapis lazuli bored through its length like a gigantic bead, shows the figure of the god Adad with the feather crown, brandishing the lightning in his right hand (Fig. 134). With the left he is holding the reins of some fabulous creature which cowers before him, and another thunderbolt. Three shields adorned with stars hang one below another suspended by belts from his girdle. On the piece there is an Assyrian votive inscription of Esarhaddon, and a Neo-Babylonian supplementary inscription on which the object is called “treasure of the god Marduk” and “Kunukku of the god Adad of Esagila.”

Even if this were not so named there are other objects that might be recognised as having formed part of the treasure of Esagila. There is a similar bar of lapis lazuli dedicated to the god Marduk by an inscription of the King Marduk-nâdin-shum (circa 850 B.C.). The figure of Marduk is very finely carved on it (Fig. 135), with a ring and a kunukku in his left hand, and a boomerang (?) in his right. Before him lies the sirrush, the dragon of Babylon, already known to us from the reliefs on the Ishtar Gate, and which here shows both horns. On this god also three decorative shields are hanging, the lowest adorned with oxen. The garment on the upper part of the body is beset with stars and the plinth is marked with the rippled lines of water. Thus Marduk is here represented as supreme god of the heavens, the earth (sirrush), and of the water. We may picture to ourselves the golden cultus statue of Marduk, which, according to Herodotus, was enthroned in Esagila, as similar to this, but seated.

If the principal statues were of gold others consisted of a combination of stones of many colours, which we discovered in separate pieces in our find. The hair was made of separate fragments of lapis lazuli which formed curls and locks and fitted into each other. The white of the eyes was represented by the core of a shell, the iris by a conical piece of stone, which was surrounded by a thin cornet-shaped piece of lapis lazuli forming a narrow blue line round the iris. For decorating the garment and the feather crown, the numerous button-shaped discs of onyx were employed, which are frequently inscribed with dedicatory texts. They are usually fixed on to the underlay by means of an invisible hole bored in the top. Numbers of them can easily be recognised on the crown of Marduk in our illustration. We do not yet know what formed the main part of such a statue. According to his Bavian inscription, Sennacherib battered the statues to pieces, and it is quite possible that such broken-up statues may yet be found in the lowest levels of Esagila.

From a throne, and apparently from the projecting end of the chair back, comes a thick piece of rock-crystal the size of a hand, bored through with irregularly disposed holes, to which at some time other separate ornaments were attached.

All this when considered as a whole may give some idea of the exceptional splendour of such statues of the divinities.