Page:Buried cities and Bible countries (1891).djvu/359

 certain elevations and hillocks of strange and varied shapes, which dot the plain in every direction; some are high and conical or pyramidal in form, others are quite extensive and rather flat on the summit, others again long and low, and all curiously unconnected with each other or with any ridge of hills. This is doubly striking in Lower Mesopotamia or Babylonia, proverbial for its excessive flatness. The few permanent villages, composed of mud-huts or plaited reed-cabins, are generally built on these eminences; but others are used as burying-grounds, and a mosque, the Mohammedan house of prayer, sometimes rises on one or the other. The substance of these mounds being rather soft and yielding, their sides are still furrowed in many places with ravines, worn by the rushing streams of rain-water. The rubbish washed away lies scattered on the plain, and is seen to contain fragments of bricks and pottery, sometimes inscribed with arrow-headed characters; in the ravines themselves are laid bare whole sides of walls of brickwork and pieces of sculptured stone."

The Arabs never thought of exploring these curious heaps. Their law forbids them to represent the human form either in painting or sculpture, lest it should lead the ignorant into idolatry. They are superstitious, and look on relics of ancient statuary with suspicion amounting to fear, and connect them with magic and witchcraft. It is therefore with awe not devoid of horror that they tell travellers of underground passages in the mounds, haunted not only by wild beasts, but by evil spirits, strange figures having been dimly perceived in the crevices. Better instructed foreigners have long ago assumed that within these mounds must be entombed whatever ruins and relics may be preserved of the great cities of yore.

The first European whose love of learning was strong enough to make him disregard difficulty and expense, and use the pick-axe upon these mounds, was an Englishman named Rich. This was in 1820: but Mr Rich was not