In the case of one city excavation has already enabled us to trace the gradual growth of its temple and the surrounding habitations during a considerable portion of their history. The city of Nippur stands in a peculiar relation to others in Sumer and Akkad, as being the central shrine in the two countries and the seat of Enlil, the chief of the gods. Niffer, or Nuffar, is the name by which the mounds marking its site are still known. They have been long deserted, and, like the sites of many other ancient cities in Babylonia and Assyria, no modern town or village is built upon them or in their immediate neighbourhood. The nearest small town is Sûk el-'Afej, about four miles to the south, lying on the eastern edge of the Afej marshes, which begin to the south of Niffer and stretch away to the west. The nearest large town is Dîwânîya, on the left bank of the Euphrates twenty miles to the south-west. In the summer the marshes in the neighbourhood of the mounds consist of pools of water connected by channels through the reed-beds, but in the spring, when the snows have melted in the Taurus and the mountains of Kurdistan, the flood-water converts the marshes into a vast lagoon, and all that meets the eye are isolated date-palms and a few small hamlets built on rising knolls above the water-level. Although, during the floods, Niffer is at times nearly isolated, the water never approaches within a considerable distance of the actual mounds. This is not due to any natural configuration of the soil, but to the fact that around the inner city, the site of which is marked by the mounds, there was built an outer ring of habitations at a time when the enclosed town of the earlier periods became too small to contain the growing population. The American excavations, which have been conducted on the site between the years 1889 and 1900, have shown that the earliest area of habitation was far more restricted than the mounds which cover the inner city.[1] In the plan on p. 88 it will be seen that this portion of the site is divided into two parts by the ancient bed of the Shatt en-Nîl. The contours of the mounds are indicated by dotted lines, and each of them bears a number in Roman figures. Mound III. is that which covered E-kur, the temple of Enlil, and it was around the shrine, in the shaded area upon the plan, that the original village or settlement was probably built. Here in the lowest stratum of the mound were found large beds of wood-ashes and animal bones, the remains of the earliest period of occupation. [Illustration: Early Babylonian plan of the temple of Enlil at Nippur and its enclosure, drawn upon a clay tablet dating from the first half of the second millennium B.C. The labels on the plan are translated from notes on the original.--Cf. Fisher, "Excavations at Nippur," I., pl. 1.]