Page:A History of Art in Chaldæa & Assyria Vol 1.djvu/58

 A HISTORY OF ART IN CHALD.F.A AM> ASSYRIA. sprinkled over the ruins of most of the southern cities. The characters of the texts stamped upon bricks recovered from build- ings erected by him, have, as all Assyriologists know, a peculiar physiognomy of their own. Ourkam is the Menes of Chaldaea, and his date is put long before that Susian conquest of which we have spoken above. The seals of Ourkam (see Fig. 3) and of his son Ilgi 1 have been found. The name of the latter occurs almost as often as that of his father among the ruins of Southern Chaldsea. The oldest cities of Lower Chaldaea date from this remote epoch, namely, Ur, now Mugheir or the bituminous^ Uroukh now Warka, Larsam (SenkercJi)> Nipour (A 7 "/^;-), Sippara, Borsip, Babylon, &c. FIG. 3. Seal of Ourkam. Ur, on the right bank of the Euphrates and near its ancient mouth, seems to have been the first capital of the country and its chief commercial centre in those early times. The premiership of Babylon as a holy city and seat of royalty cannot have been established until much later. The whole country between Hillah and Bassorah is now little removed from a desert. Here and there rise a few tents or reed huts belonging to the Montefik Arabs, a tribe of savage nomads and the terror of travellers. Europeans have succeeded in exploring that inhospitable country only under excep- tional circumstances. 2 And yet it was there, between two or three 1 This was lately found at Bagdad after long being supposed to be lost. It is now in the British Museum. 2 It was visited under the best conditions, and has been best described by W. KENNETH LOFTUS who was in it from 1849 to 1852. Attached as geologist to the English mission, commanded by Colonel, afterwards General Sir Fenwick Williams