e entrances. The area
described by these cities was often very large, but the population
in them was distributed very unequally; the temples in the different
quarters formed centres around which were clustered the dwellings of the
inhabitants, sometimes densely packed, and elsewhere thinly scattered.
The largest and richest of these temples was usually reserved for the
principal deity, whose edifices were being continually decorated by
the ruling princes, and the extent of whose ruins still attracts the
traveller. The walls, constructed and repaired with bricks stamped
with the names of lords of the locality, contain in themselves alone an
almost complete history. Did Urbau, we may ask, found the ziggurat of
Nannar in Uru? We meet with his bricks at the base of the most ancient
portions of the building, and we moreover learn, from cylinders
unearthed not far from it, that "for Nannar, the powerful bull of Anu,
the son of Bel, his King, Urbau, the brave hero, King of Uru, had built
E-Timila, his favourite temple." The bricks of his son Dungi are found
mixed with his own, while here and there other bricks belonging to
subsequent kings, with cylinders, cones, and minor objects, strewn
between the courses, mark restorations at various later periods. What
is true of one Chaldaean city is equally true of all of them, and the
dynasties of Uruk and of Lagash, like those of Uru, can be reconstructed
from the revelations of their brickwork. The lords of heaven promised
to the lords of the earth, as a reward of their piety, both glory and
wealth in this life, and an eternal fame after death: they have, indeed,
kept their word. The majority of the earliest Chaldaean heroes would be
unknown to us, were it not for the witness of the ruined sanctuaries
which they built, and that which they did in the service of their
heavenly patrons has alone preserved their names from oblivion. Their
most extravagant devotion, however, cost them less money and effort than
that of the Pharaohs their contemporaries. While the latter had to
bring from a distance, even from the remotest parts of the desert, the
different kinds of stone which they considered worthy to form part of
the decoration of the houses of their gods, the Chaldaean kings gathered
up outside their very doors the principal material for their buildings:
should they require any other accessories, they could obtain, at
the worst, hard stone for their statues and thresholds in Magan and
M