The manner in which the agricultural implements employed in early Babylonia have survived to the present day is well illustrated by their form of plough, which closely resembles that still in use in parts of Syria. We have no representation of the plough of the First Babylonian Dynasty, but this was doubtless the same as that of the Kassite period, of which a very interesting representation has recently been recovered. On a tablet found at Nippur and dated in the fourth year of Nazi-Maruttash, are several impressions of a cylinder-seal engraved with a representation of three men ploughing.[16] The plough is drawn by two humped bulls, or zebu, who are being driven by one of the men, while another holds the two handles of the plough and guides it. The third man has a bag of seed-corn slung over his shoulders and is in the act of feeding seed with his right hand into a tube or grain-drill, down which it passed into the furrow made by the plough. At the top of the tube is a bowl, with a hole in the bottom opening on to the tube, which acted as a funnel and enabled the sower to drop the seed in without scattering it. This is the earliest representation of the Babylonian plough that we possess, and its value is increased by the fact that the plough is seen in operation. The same seed-drill occurs in three later representations. One of these also dates from the Kassite period, being found upon a boundary-stone of the period of Meli-Shipak II.,[17] on which it is sculptured as the sacred symbol of Geshtinna, the goddess of the plough.[18] The other two are of the Assyrian period, one being represented in enamelled brick on the walls of the palace at Khorsabad,[19] the other being carved among the symbols on the Black Stone of Esarhaddon, on which he gives an account of his restoration of Babylon.[20] Similar ploughs, with grain-drills of precisely the same structure, are still used in Syria at the present time.[21] Before ploughing and sowing his land the Babylonian farmer prepared it for irrigation by dividing it up into a number of small squares or oblong patches, each separated from the others by a low bank of earth. Some of the banks, that ran lengthways through the field, were made into small channels, the ends of which were connected with his main irrigation-stream. No gates nor sluices were employed, and, when he wished to water one of his fields, he simply broke away the bank opposite one of his small channels and let the water flow into it. When it reached the part of his land he wished to water, he blocked the channel with a little earth and broke down its bank so that the water flowed over one of the small squares and soaked it. [Illustration; A MODERN GUFA Photo by Messrs. Underwood & Underwood.]