Identifier: mesopotamiaassyr00fras (find matches)
Title: Mesopotamia and Assyria, from the earliest ages to the present time; with illustrations of their natural history.
Year: 1842 (1840s)
Authors: Fraser, James Baillie, 1783-1856
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : Harper
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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It was told us that they are formedinto millstones and various other articles; and, in truth,they might be supposed to have constituted some peculiarmanufactory. The Arab name implies a stony place;and the tradition regarding them is, that this was the coun-try of Lot (^Loot), and that Heaven in its wrath showeredthem down on the wicked inhabitants. Looking from thetop of the highest of these mounds, the whole region seemedcovered with others of various sizes, insomuch that therewas scarcely a quarter of the horizon without a height ofsome sort, all of which must be the remains of towns orvillages. The line of march, adopted from a camp of the ZobeidArabs where we had halted for a night, led, for twelve orfourteen miles, over a country littered with ruins, to agroup which rose in a circular space covered with bricksand potsherds. Of these, the principal objects were four Eyramidal mounds, rising abruptly to a height of forty orfty feet, and built of sun-dried brick. Two or three miles
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OTHER RUINS OF BABYLONIA AND CHALDEA. 135 distant from these was a stiil lofcier structure, consistiDg ofa tower or bastion-shaped building, about eighty leet inheight. The exterior of it was formed of sun-dried brick,like the Mujelibe, and pierced with holes ; but the interiorwas composed of furnace-baked bricks, like those of theBirs and similar edifices. The walls were plainly perceiv-ed in one part, and the external coating of sun-dried brickwas deeply furrowed by the rains. The Arabs called itZibliyeh, and gave a trivial name to each of the lessermounds. The traces of a very large canal and two orthree smaller ones, crossing from north to south near thisplace, showed that the district had been extensive and wellcultivated. These are but a very few of the relics of antiquity tliatlie scattered over this comparatively small tract, to whichmight be added many more, such as Tel Siphr, Atlah, TelMedinah, Jera Supli, Mizisthah, Jayithah, and Abu-ghu-root, proving that this land must ha

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