a vast amount of human labor in
a very unproductive sort of industry. The Bowariyeh mound at Warka is
200 feet square, and about 100 feet high. Its cubic contents, as
originally built, can have been little, if at all, under 3,000,000 feet;
and above 30,000,000 of bricks must have been used in its construction.
Constructions of a similar character, and not very different in their
dimensions, are proved by the bricks composing them to have been raised
by the same monarch at Ur, Calneh or Nipur, and Larancha or Larsa, which
is perhaps Ellasar. It is evident, from the size and number of these
works, that their erector had the command of a vast amount of "naked
human strength," and did not scruple to employ that strength in
constructions from which no material benefit was derivable, but which
were probably designed chiefly to extend his own fame and perpetuate his
glory. We may gather from this that he was either an oppressor of his
people, like some of the Pyramid Kings in Egypt, or else a conqueror, who
thus employed the numerous captives carried off in his expeditions.
Perhaps the latter is the more probable supposition; for the builders of
the great fabrics in Babylonia and Chaldaea do not seem to have left
behind them any character of oppressiveness, such as attaches commonly to
those monarchs who have ground down their own people by servile labor.

The great buildings of Urukh appear to have been all designed for
temples. They are carefully placed with their angles facing the cardinal
points, and are dedicated to the Sun, the Moon, to Belus (Bel-Nimrod), or
to Beltis. The temple at Mugheir was built in honor of the Moon-god, Sin
or Hiuki, who was the tutelary deity of the city. The Warka temple was
dedicated to Beltis. At Calneh or Nipur, Urukh erected two temples, one
to Beltis and one to Belus. At Larsa or Ellasar the object of his
worship was the Sun-god, San or Sansi. He would thus seem to have been
no special devotee of a single god, but to have divided out his favors
very fairly among the chief personages of the Pantheon.

It has been observed that both the inscriptions of this king, and his
architecture, are of a rude and primitive type. Still in neither case do
we seem to be brought to the earliest dawn of civilization or of art.
The writing of Urukh has passed out of the first or hieroglyphic stage,
and entered the second or transition one, when pictures are no longer
attempted, but the lines or wed