The Virginia enterprise. [volume] (Virginia, St. Louis County, Minn.) 1893-19??, 1906-09-28
THE B|TUMEN
SPRINGS OF HIT
One of the Great Products of
Ancient City of
Babylon.

Babylon.
BY EDGAR JAMES BANKS,
Field Director of the Recent Babylonian
Expedition.
On the right shore Of the Euphrares,
three days above the ruins of ancient
Babylon, is the equally ancient city
which is now called Hit but which in
ages past has possessed variety of
names. To the Egyptians it was known
as Ist; to the Greeks Is; to the
Babylonians as Ihi and to the He
brews as Ahava. The bitumen springs
which surround the town have made
II a place Of Importance since the
greatest antiquity, and again when
modern civilization reaches Mesopota-
mia. they will be source of great
revenue to the country. The pitch has
for many centuries served as mortar
for laying bricks and for smearing the
ark-like boats which ply the Tigris
and Euphrates.
The modern town Of Hit consists Of
a few hundred mud or stone huts,
nerched upon a high mound formed by
the ruins of earlier buildings About
the low plain In which the springs are
situated are sandy spots; other parts
Of it are covered with the water from
the neighboring salt springs, or with
the salt which has been evaporated
from 1t. and here and there among the
patches of sand and the white crystals
of salt. are great black spots which
mark the sites of a bitumen spring.
Two of them are but a few feet apart,
and one of them elects slowly oozing
stream of the black pitch, excepting
occasionally, especially after a rain
when a small amount of cold water
comes forth with it. The other spring
constantly sends out large stream of
steaming water, and great pieces Of
bitumen, which, choking up the open
ing, squirm and wiggle their way
through with a gurgling sound, until
finally releasing themselves, rise to the
surface.
Springs Are Numerous.
To the numerous small springs sur
rounding the town little attention is
given, for the one large spring pro-
duces a supply far in excess Of the de-
mand. This. like nearly every object
of value in Turkey, Is the property Of
the government, but the only means of
deriving revenue from 1t is to lease
it for so cents a day to anyone who
may desire it's products.
The modern use of bitumen does not
differ greatly from that of the earliest
times. While visiting the springs in
1908, a large lime kiln stood upon the
ridge which had formed about the wa
ter, and as the great chunks of btu
men came gurgling through the ORR
flee they were seized by an Arab boy
loaded into two large baskets, which
were balanced across the back of a
donkey, and carried to the kiln, where
they were used as fuel for burning
lime Thus was obtained a mortar of
ha itoh ic1 cd
duce 1t.
The bitumen, If left in it's natural
state, retains it's tar-lilxe softness, and
is of but little practical use. 1t is only
when boiled for a considerable time
that it may be employed for the var
ious purposes which it serves. In the
modern houses at Hit, when built of
stone, mud and not lime or btumen is
the mortar. The narrow streets, which
are practically the cesspools of the
town. are unpaved. Only occasionally
the flat roof Of house is covered with
layer of bitumen, to shed the rains
of winter, yet the pitch is used for var
lous less important purposes.
Is Used AS Mortar.
Every Mesopotamian Arab is provid-
ed with a club upon one end Of which
IS large knob of bitumen; frequently
1t is his only weapon. The brick ma
sons employ a small wicker basket
smeared over with bitumen for carving
the mud and mortar used in their con-
struction. Pots and various other
household utensils are of pure btu
men, and the same black pitch is the
only cement with which they repair
broken objects of all descriptions. How
ever, its principal use is in the manu-
facture of the river craft and because
Of its proximity to the springs, Hit has
always been shipbuilding town. Most
of the smaller boats are constructed of
wattled twigs, sometimes woven into
circular coracles, or canoes, or scow-
like, flat-bottom structures, and then
thickly smeared without, and some
times within, with the pitch. It is the
lncessant noise from the shipbuilding
industry, the clatter Of the large, re-
volving irrigation water wheels. the
odor of the bitumen and petroleum
wells, the smoke rising from the lime
k1ns and the furnaces. the great black
patches II bitumen, intermingling with
the pure white deposits of salt, and
the steaming salt water of the springs
which have all combined to give the
place the name the Mouth of He'll"
Was Generally Used.
In the remotest antiquity the btu
men of Hit was known throughout
Babylonia. At Bismya 1t was used as
cement LOT laying the Dr1ckS or tenn
Piles $500 B. c. OF the fragments of
marble statue which were discovered
In its ruins, the head of one had been
broken and again cemented on with
bitumen, and several clay statuettes
or household gods clay and marble
vases, and even large cisterns were
found which have been repaired with
1t. The floors in the toilets of the
houses and in one large public bath
were lined with 1t. When hardened it
was carved into the heads of animals
or turned upon a lathe into vases or
into cylinders, which were engraved
and used as SEALS Bitumen was also
employed By the jeweler and most of
the gold beads. the ear rings and
brooches of 5000 years ago, were of
thick gold leaf, shaped over a filling
of bitumen. For inlay1ng purposes
1t was also employed.
During the later centuries the btu
men of Hit was used at Ur, the birth
place Of Abraham, and the ruin is now
called by the Arabs, Mughir, a word
meaning pitch, because the large
square bricks of the temple tower are
laid In it and Birs, a tall ruin near
Babylon. which scholars are now in
tho ~