Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 31, 2025
It was in vain that, at Mugheir, trenches and shafts were cut through the flanks of the ruin, not a sign of any apartment or void of the most elementary kind was found. This Mugheir temple rises hardly more than fifty feet above the level of the plain.
This prince is known to us especially as the builder of the great public cemeteries which now form the most conspicuous objects among the ruins of Mugheir, and the construction of which is so remarkable. Ismi-dagon and his son must have occupied the Chaldaean throne during most of the latter half of the nineteenth century before our era-from about B.C. 1850 to B.C. 1800.
A conjecture offered by Loftus is the most inviting. He reminds us that although cemeteries are entirely absent from Assyria, Chaldæa is full of them. Between Niffer and Mugheir each mound is a necropolis. The Assyrians knew that Chaldæa was the birthplace of their race and they looked upon it as a sacred territory.
On that side the cubical blocks of which it was composed were so placed as to leave much wider steps than on the north-west. The temple therefore had a true façade, in front of which propylæa, like the one introduced in our restoration from the ruins at Mugheir, were placed. The difference consists in the fact that here the stages are square on plan.
According to Arrian, Alexander, on his way back from Lake Pallacopas, passed close to the tomb of one of the ancient kings, "They say," adds the historian, "that most of the former kings of Assyria were buried among the lakes and swamps." Map of the ruins of Mugheir; from Taylor.
Traces of this chapel have been found at Mugheir, and the wealth of its decoration is attested by many pieces of evidence. At Abou-Sharein also there are vestiges of a small and richly ornamented sanctuary crowning the second stage of a ruin whose aspect now bears a distinct resemblance to that of the temple at Mugheir.
But by the inscriptions on the tablets or bricks, found at Mugheir and Warka, we know for a certainty that, in the archaic writings, they formed their characters of straight lines of uniform thickness; and inclosed their sentences in squares or parallelograms, as did the founders of the ruined cities of Yucatan.
PLACE, Ninive et l'Assyrie, vol. i. p. 236; LAYARD, Nineveh, vol. ii. p. 261. LOFTUS, Warka, its Ruins, &c. p. 10. PLACE, Ninive, vol. i. pp. 29 and 248. BOTTA, Monument de Ninive, vol. v. p. 58. See also TAYLOR on "Mugheir," &c. At Birs-Nimroud these conduits are about nine inches high and between five and six wide.
Now both at Warka and at Mugheir one corner of a building is always turned towards the true north. The same arrangement is to be found in the palace excavated by M. de Sarzec at Tello. Most of the Assyrian architects did likewise. Its circumvallation incloses an almost exact square, the diagonals of which point to the north, south, east and west respectively.
There is every reason to believe that further excavations at Mugheir will bring to light the names of older kings, and the presumption is in favor of regarding the southern states, or at least some of them, earlier than any in the north.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking