In the same letter the Professor described the uncovering of one façade of a large pre-Sargonic palace—"the chief discovery," in his opinion, "of this whole campaign." "A thorough excavation of this large palace," he wrote, "will form one of the chief tasks of a future expedition, after its character, age, and extent have been successfully determined by the present one. Important art treasures of the Tello type, and literary documents, may reasonably be expected to be unearthed from the floor-level of its many chambers. It has become evident, from the large number of pre-Sargonic buildings, walls, and other antiquities discovered on both sides of the Shatt-en-Nil, that the pre-Sargonic Nippur was of by far greater extent than had been anticipated. This discovery, however, is only in strict accord with what we know from the cuneiform documents as to the important historical rôle which the temple of Bel ('the father of the gods'), as the central national sanctuary of ancient Babylonia, played at the earliest period, long before Babylon, the capital of the later empire, achieved any prominence." The work at Nippur was suspended for the season about the middle of May, 1900, and Professor Hilprecht, after his return to Philadelphia, wrote of the general fruits of the campaign, in the "Sunday School Times" of December 1: "As the task of the fourth and most recent expedition, just completed, I had mapped out, long before its organization, the following work. It was to determine the probable extent of the earliest pre-Sargonic settlement at ancient Nippur; to discover the precise form and character of the famous temple of Bêl at this earliest period; to define the exact boundaries of the city proper; if possible, to find one or more of the great city gates frequently mentioned in the inscriptions; to locate the great temple library and educational quarters of Nippur; to study the different modes of burial in use in ancient Babylonia; and to study all types and forms of pottery, with a view to finding laws for the classification and determination of the ages of vases, always excavated in large numbers at Nuffar. The work set before us has been accomplished. The task was great,—almost too great for the limited time at our disposal. … But the number of Arab workmen, busy with pickax, scraper, and basket in the trenches for ten to fourteen hours every day, gradually increased to the full force of four hundred. … In the course of time, when the nearly twenty-five thousand cuneiform texts which form one of the most conspicuous prizes of the present expedition have been fully deciphered and interpreted; when the still hidden larger mass of tablets from that great educational institution, the temple library of Calneh-Nippur, discovered at the very spot which I