The Savannah morning news., 1903-07-05
TEMPLES UNEARTHED
IN MES0P0TAMIA.
Prof HiIprecht's Work at Nippur
Declared Highly Successful.

mighty SuCSESNAuAs
Correspondence London Times.
Although Prof. Hilprecht has been
actually on the site of Nippur for
comparatively short time only, the sci
entific success of the Mesopotamian
expedition which the University of
Pennsylvania supports there is due al
most entirely to his work. His inter
probation of the tablets and other an
tiquities obtained from the mounds has
rendered ineligible the results of the
diggers of the field; his services at the
Imperial Museum in Constantiuople
have gained great favor for the Ameri-
can expedition; and finally his study
of the architectural problems presented
at the mounds themselves, during his
presence at the close of the latest cam
paign, has served to put this side of
the work upon a sound footing. 1t is
no eXaggeration to say that previous
to his arrival at Nippur nobody really
knew exactly what results in this
branch of the excavations had been
attained, and no proper survey of many
of the important buildings eXcavated
had been made. He was able to de-
termine the age and characteristics of
all the structures discovered, and, con.
sequently, the outlook for the work in
the future is more hopeful than it has
ever been.
Already sufficient work has been done
upon the great Temple of Bel to show
that previous conceptions of Baby
lonian temple will have to be modi-
fled considerably; and important light
has been thrown upon the different pc
RODS of building-from pre-Sargonic
times to early Arabic days-represent-
ed in the Nippur mounds.
One of the most interesting struc-
lures, and one which has been most
most thoroughly excavated, is small
Parthian palace, which lay on the
southwest side of the Shaft EMIL, the
old canal which divided the ancient
city into two nearly equal portions.
DR.. Peters, the director of the first two
excavations, partly cleared this build
ing; and Mr.. Haynes, his successor,
made a more thorough examination
of it, but it remained for Hilprecht to
complete the work and determine the
age and other particulars of the Struc-
ture. Peters believed that the build
ing was "erected somewhere between
1850 and 1850 b. c." Hilprecht has
shown conclusively that it was built
a thousand years later
Structure of the Palace.
Roughly speaking, the palace is
square on plan, each side being about
40 feet long. In it's construction large
az inch by u inch by 71a inch) UNI
baked bricks were mostly used, but In
some portions baked bricks had
place. The walls varied in thickness
from feet in the partition walls to 8
feet inches in the exterior ones. Elk
ternally the building was remarkably
plain; the surfaces of three of the
walls were broken by shallow buttress-
es, but the fourth, which faced the
canal, was quite bare. There was but
one entrance, which was placed nearly
in the center of the northwest facade.
This doorway showed evidence of con-
siderable skill and some taste on the
part of it's builders. 1t was construct
ed in baked brick and succeed with
white plaster. On either side stood a
pedestal, rising from an ornamental
base and decorated with small pedi-
ments. The junction of the crude brick
with the baked was concealed by plas-
ter holdings, and faint traces of flut-
ing were visible on the pedestals.
Internally, the building was divided
into two parts, one of which served for
the mems quarters and public apart
ments, the other for the servants
quarters and the domestic portion of
the househrtH corresponding to the
harem buildings of the present day BY
an ingenious arrangement of lobbies
and narrow passages, the "harem"
apartments and servants rooms were
completely cut off from the rest of the
building. They comprised a kitchen,
several store chambers, a bathroom
which was provided with a bitumen-
covered pavement sloping toward a
drain in its center-and sleeping apart