The last ruin I examined was a mound of great extent, sometimes called by the Arabs Jumjuma, from a neighbouring village of that name, and sometimes, as stated by Rich, Amran ben Ali, from a Koubbé, or small domed tomb, of a Mohammedan saint on its summit. No masonry is here seen as in the Mujelibé. All remains of buildings, if there be any still existing, are deeply buried beneath the loose nitrous earth. It is traversed by innumerable ravines, and its form and level are equally irregular. I opened trenches in various parts, but could find no traces of an edifice of any kind. Some small objects of considerable interest, were, however, discovered. Although not of the true Babylonian epoch, they are, on more than one account, highly important. The mound of Amran, as well as nearly all those in Babylonia, had been used as a place of burial for the dead long after the destruction of the great edifices whose ruins it covers. Some specimens of glass, and several terracotta figures, lamps, and jars, dug out of it, are evidently of the time of the Seleucidæ or of the Greek occupation. With these relics were five cups or bowls of earthenware, and fragments of others, covered on the inner surface with letters written in a kind of ink. Similar objects had already been found in other Babylonian ruins. Two from the collection of the late Mr. Stewart had been deposited in the British Museum, and amongst the antiquities recently purchased by the Trustees from Colonel Rawlinson are eight specimens, obtained at Baghdad, where they are sometimes offered for sale by the Arabs; but it is not known from what sites they were brought. The characters upon them are in form not unlike the Hebrew, and on some they resembled the Sabæan and Syriac. These bowls had not attracted notice, nor had the inscriptions upon them been fully examined before they were placed in the hands of Mr. Thomas Ellis, of the manuscript department in the British Museum, a gentleman of great learning and ingenuity as a Hebrew scholar. Mr. E. has succeeded, after much labor, in deciphering the inscriptions.[206]