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-tower of the famous E-Temenanki: 'the foundation stone of Heaven and Earth' (the Tower of Babylon). The enclosing wall forms almost a square, and part has been excavated, but all the buildings have suffered from brick-robbers. The remains of the actual Tower are towards the south-west corner. "Many ancient restorations were carried out here. Professor Koldeway found inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Sardanapalus and thereafter inscriptions of Babylonian Kings. Herodotus calls the group of buildings 'the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Below,' and he describes the zigurrat as a temple-tower in eight stages. The cuneiform records of Nabopolassar relate how the god Marduk commanded him 'to lay the foundation of the Tower of Babylon ... firm on the bosom of the underworld while its top should stretch heavenwards.'" The first impression of the Kasr is that of a shelled town or mined flour mill, where nothing remains but the lower walls of buildings. From a painter's point of view, the scene of this great city, about which he has pictured so much, is somewhat disappointing. There is such an absence of anything suggestive of palaces and streets. Frankly, the ruins of the cement works at Frindsbury are, pictorially, far more suggestive. I have always said that the hanging gardens of Borstal knocked spots off the hanging gardens of Babylon, and now I know it. So much for a first impression. After awhile, however, wandering amongst these hummocks and pits, with here and there a suggestion of a gateway or pavement, the glamour of it all begins to return. [Illustration: BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN] It is not to the eye that the appeal of poetry is made, but to the imagination. There is a figure of a stone lion trampling on a man, but this was unearthed and set up by a French engineer, and is not explanatory of any scheme of sculptural work. It is merely a monument. There is also a brick pillar, the bricks being uncommonly like London stock bricks, which might be part of a fallen chimney in a ruined factory. These are the only architectural signs at first visible. On descending to the passages and ways made by the base walls of buildings, lions and monsters moulded in the brickwork appear, but they are only to be seen at close quarters, and in one part of this vast wilderness of brick, and do not affect in any way the general character of the place--a place of loneliness and of utter desolation. The whole ar
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