14. The singular orientation of the Chaldean Ziggurats (subsequently retained by the Assyrians),--i.e., the manner in which they are placed, turned to the cardinal points with their angles, and not with their faces, as are the Egyptian pyramids, with only one exception,--has long been a puzzle which no astronomical considerations were sufficient to solve. But quite lately, in 1883, Mr. Pinches, Geo. Smith's successor in the British Museum, found a small tablet, giving lists of signs, eclipses, etc., affecting the various countries, and containing the following short geographical notice, in illustration of the position assigned to the cardinal points: "The South is Elam, the North is Accad, the East is Suedin and Gutium, the West is Phoenicia. On the right is Accad, on the left is Elam, in front is Phoenicia, behind are Suedin and Gutium." In order to appreciate the bearing of this bit of topography on the question in hand, we must examine an ancient map, when we shall at once perceive that the direction given by the tablet to the _South_ (Elam) answers to our _South-East;_ that given to the _North_ (Accad) answers to our _North-West;_ while _West_ (Phoenicia, i.e., the coast-land of the Mediterranean, down almost to Egypt) stands for our _South-West_, and _East_ (Gutium, the highlands where the Armenian mountains join the Zagros, now Kurdish Mountains,) for our _North-East_. If we turn the map so that the Persian Gulf shall come in a perpendicular line under Babylon, we shall produce the desired effect, and then it will strike us that the Ziggurats _did_ face the cardinal points, according to Chaldean geography, _with their sides_, and that the discovery of the small tablet, as was remarked on the production of it, "settles the difficult question of the difference in orientation between the Assyrian and Egyptian monuments." It was further suggested that "the two systems of cardinal points originated no doubt from two different races, and their determination was due probably _to the geographical position of the primitive home of each race._" Now the South-West is called "the front," "and the migrations of the people _therefore_ must have been from North-East to South-West."[AZ] This beautifully tallies with the hypothesis, or conjecture, concerning the direction from which the Shumiro-Accads descended into the lowlands by the Gulf (see pp. 146-8), and, moreover, leads us to the question whether the fact of the great Ziggurat of the Seven Spheres at Borsip facing the North-East with its front may not have some connection with the holiness ascribed to that region as the original home of the race and the seat of that sacred mountain so often mentioned as "the Great Mountain of Countries" (see p. 280), doubly sacred, as the meeting-place of the gods and the place of entrance to the "Arallu" or Lower World.[BA]