is easy to imagine the results. It is in part to this disgusting custom that the great mortality in the caravans is to be attributed, one fifth of which leave their bones in the desert in _healthy_ seasons. However that may be, the gigantic proportions of the Chaldean burying-grounds struck even the ancient Greek travellers with astonishment, and some of them positively asserted that the Assyrian kings used to be buried in Chaldea. If the kings, why not the nobler and wealthier of their subjects? The transport down the rivers presented no difficulties. Still, as already remarked, all this is mere conjecture. [Illustration: 29.--FRAGMENT OF ENAMELLED BRICK. (Perrot and Chipiez.)] 22. Among the Chaldeans cities ERECH (now WARKA) was considered from very old times one of the holiest. It had many extremely ancient temples and a college of learned priests, and around it gradually formed an immense "city of the dead" or Necropolis. The English explorer, Loftus, in 1854-5, specially turned his attention to it and his account is astounding. First of all, he was struck by the majestic desolation of the place. Warka and a few other mounds are raised on a slightly elevated tract of the desert, above the level of the yearly inundations, and accessible only from November to March, as all the rest of the time the surrounding plain is either a lake or a swamp. "The desolation and solitude of Warka," says Loftus, "are even more striking than the scene which is presented at Babylon itself. There is no life for miles around. No river glides in grandeur at the base of its mounds; no green date groves flourish near its ruins. The jackal and the hyaena appear to shun the dull aspect of its tombs. The king of birds never hovers over the deserted waste. A blade of grass or an insect finds no existence there. The shrivelled lichen alone, clinging to the weathered surface of the broken brick, seems to glory in its universal dominion over those barren walls. Of all the desolate pictures I have ever seen that of Warka incomparably surpasses all." Surely in this case it cannot be said that appearances are deceitful; for all that space, and much more, is a cemetery, and what a cemetery! "It is difficult," again says Loftus, "to convey anything like a correct idea of the piles upon piles of human remains which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only the triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder of the platform, the whole space between the walls and an unknown extent of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world which can compare with Warka in this respect." It must be added that the coffins do not simply lie one next to the other, but in layers, down to a depth of 30-60 feet. Different epochs show different modes of burial, among which the following four are the most remarkable. [Illustration: 30.--RAM'S HEAD IN ALABASTER. (British Museum.)]