13. The site of this important city was long doubtful; but in 1881 one of the most skilful and indefatigable searchers, Mr. Hormuzd Rassam, a gentleman who began his career as assistant to Layard, made a discovery which set the question at rest. He was digging in a mound known to the Arabs by the name of Abu-Habba, and had made his way into the apartments of a vast structure which he knew to be a temple. From room to room he passed until he came to a smaller chamber, paved with asphalt, which he at once surmised to be the archive-room of the temple. "Heretofore," says Mr. Rassam in his report, "all Assyrian and Babylonian structures were found to be paved generally either with stone or brick, consequently this novel discovery led me to have the asphalt broken into and examined. On doing so we found, buried in a corner of the chamber, about three feet below the surface, an inscribed earthenware coffer, inside which was deposited a stone tablet...." Rassam had indeed stumbled on the archive of the famous Sun-temple, as was proved not only by the tablet, but by the numerous documents which accompanied it, and which gave the names of the builders and restorers of the temple. As to the tablet, it is the finest and best preserved work of art of the kind which has yet been found. It was deposited about the year 880 B.C. on occasion of a restoration and represents the god himself, seated on a throne, receiving the homage of worshippers, while above him the sun-disc is held suspended from heaven on two strong cords, like a gigantic lamp, by two ministering beings, who may very probably belong to the host of Igigi or spirits of heaven. The inscription, in beautifully clear and perfectly preserved characters, informs us that this is "The image of Shamash, the great lord, who dwells in the 'House of the Sun,' (_E-Babbara_) which is within the city of Sippar."[AU] (See Frontispiece.) This was a truly magnificent find, and who knows but something as unexpected and as conclusive may turn up to fix for us the exact place of the temple of Anunit, and consequently of the venerable city of Agade. As to BABYLON, it was originally placed under divine protection generally, as shown by its proper Semitic name, BAB-ILU, which means, as we have already seen, "the Gate of God," and exactly answers to the Shumiro-Accadian name of the city (KA-DINGIRRA, or KA-DIMIRRA); but later on it elected a special protector in the person of MARUDUK, the old favorite, Meridug. When Babylon became the capital of the united monarchy of Shumir and Accad, its patron divinity, under the name of BEL-MARUDUK, ("the Lord Maruduk") rose to a higher rank than he had before occupied; his temple outshone all others and became a wonder of the world for its wealth and splendor. He had another, scarcely less splendid, and founded by Hammurabi himself in Borsip. In this way religion was closely allied to politics. For in the days before