If there were indeed a vault it would be the earliest example of such construction on so big a scale. Behind the banqueting hall are the private chambers, and behind all a narrow passage leading to an emergency exit, by means of which the king could escape to his boat on the Euphrates in the last extremity of danger. Nebuchadnezzar’s father, Nabopolassar, had built himself a smaller, but still very considerable, dwelling which occupied the western side of the mound. This Nebuchadnezzar destroyed; he filled up the walls and chambers with rubble and masonry and laid out an extension of his own palace above it. The plan both of the upper and of the lower palace has now been ascertained. Above the Babylonian walls are the remains of Greek and Parthian settlements, each of which has to be carefully planned before it can be swept away and the lower strata studied. I saw work being carried on in a mound which formed one of the most ancient parts of the city; the excavation pits had been sunk twelve or fifteen metres deep to dwelling-houses of the first Babylonian Empire. They passed through the periods of the Parthian and of the Greek, through the age of Nebuchadnezzar and that of the Assyrians, and each stratum was levelled and planned before the next could be revealed. Add to this that the most ancient walls were constructed of sun-dried brick, scarcely distinguishable from the closely-packed earth, and some idea can be obtained of the extreme difficulty of the work. The oldest Babylonian houses which have been uncovered rest themselves on rubbish-heaps and ruins, but deeper digging is impossible owing to the fact that water-level has been reached. The Euphrates channel has silted up several metres during the last six thousand years and the primæval dwellings are now below it. While we were standing at the bottom of a deep pit, a workman struck out with his pick a little heap of ornaments, a couple of copper bracelets and the beads of a necklace which had been worn by some Babylonian woman in the third millennium before Christ and were restored at last to the light of the sun. The northern part of the palace mound is as yet almost untouched. Here can be seen a sculptured block which used to lie among the earth-heaps until a French engineer built a pedestal for it and set it up above the ruins (Fig. 104). It is carved in the shape of a colossal lion standing above the body of a man who lies with arms uplifted. The man’s head is broken away and the whole group is only half finished, but the huge beast with the helpless human figure beneath his feet could not have been given an aspect more sinister. It is as though the workmen of the Great King had fashioned an image of Destiny, treading relentlessly over the generations [Illustration: FIG. 104.--BABYLON, THE LION.] [Illustration: FIG. 105.--BABYLON, ISHTAR GATE.] [Illustration: FIG. 106.--BABYLON, ISHTAR GATE.]