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"BIRS NIMRÛD, about 2½ hours from Hillah, is a vast ruin crowned apparently by the ruins of a tower rising to a height of 153½ ft. above the plain, and having a circumference of rather more than 2000 feet. The Birs, which was situated within the city of Borsippa, has been wrongly identified with the Tower of Babel.
And the geographers, while they give the name of Aturia or Assyria Proper to the country about the one town, call the region which surrounds the other by a distinct name, Calachene. Again, when the country is closely examined, it is found, not only that there are no signs of any continuous town over the space included within the four sites of Nimrud, Keremles.
The Nimrud palace of Saracus seems to have covered less than one-half of the space occupied by any former palace upon the mound; it had no grand facade, no magnificent gateway; the rooms, curiously misshapen, as if taste had declined with power and wealth, were mostly small and inconvenient, running in suites which opened into one another without any approaches from courts or passages, roughly paved with limestone flags, and composed of sun-dried bricks faced with limestone and plaster.
The Tower of Babel was possibly the Esagila of the inscriptions, or the E-Temenanki a tower not yet identified. Not far from Birs Nimrûd are the ruins of Hashemieh, the first residence of the Abbaside Khalifs." Brown would have none of this. Anything is anathema to Brown which destroys topographical romance.
These mounds are now known by the name of Nimrûd and are situated on the left or eastern bank of the Tigris, a short distance above the point at which it is joined by the stream of the Upper Zâb, and the great mound which still covers the remains of the ziggurat, or temple tower, can be seen from a considerable distance across the plain.
In the middle distance may be seen the metal trucks running on light rails which are employed on the work for the removal of the débris from the diggings. Dr. Andrae, Dr. Koldewey's assistant, has also completed the excavation of the temple dedicated to Nabû at Birs Nimrud.
A foot and leg brought by Mr. Layard from Nimrud must have belonged to a man a foot high; while part of a human face discovered in the same locality is said to indicate the form to which it belonged, a height of three feet. Such a size as this is, however, very unusual. It is scarcely necessary to state that the designs on the bricks are entirely destitute of chiaroscuro.
In the annals of the great Asshur-izirpal inscribed on the Nimrud monolith, that prince, while commemorating his war-like exploits, informs us that he set up his sculptures at the sources of the Tsupnat river alongside of sculptures previously set up by his ancestors Tiglath-Pileser and Tiglathi-Nin.
Of still greater significance were the examinations made by Sir Henry Rawlinson, in 1854, of the only considerable ruins of ancient Babylonia that remained above the surface, the tower of Birs Nimrud, which proved to be the famous seven-staged temple as described by Herodotus.
A curious specimen is that of a pipe or tube, honey-combed externally, which Mr. An object found at Nimrud, in close connection with several glass vessels, is of a character sufficiently similar to render its introduction in this place not inappropriate.
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