"The temple at Bismya was provided with several such drains. One palace was discovered with four. A large bath resembling a modern Turkish bath and provided with bitumen floor, sloping to one corner, emptied its waste water into one. The toilets in the private houses of 6,000 years ago were almost identical with those of the modern Arab house—a small oblong hole in the floor, without a seat. Several found in Bismya were provided with vertical drains beneath. "In clearing out the drains a few of them whose openings had been exposed were filled with the drifting sand. Others were half full of the filth of long past ages. In one at the temple we removed dozens of shallow terra cotta drinking cups not unlike a large saucer in shape and size. Evidently it received the waste water of the drinking fountain and the cups had accidentally dropped within. "In the Bismya temple platform, constructed about 2750 B. C., we discovered a horizontal drain of tile, each of which was about 3 feet long and 6 inches in diameter and not unlike in shape those at present employed. It conducted the rain water from the platform to one of the vertical drains. One tile was so well constructed that for a long time it served as a chimney for our house, until my Turkish overseer suggested that its dark, smoked end project from the battlements of the house to convince the Arabs that we were well fortified; thus it served as a gun until the close of the excavations." [Illustration: The Cloaca Maxima. From an old woodcut] The first sewers of Rome were built between 800 and 735 B. C., and therefore antedate the first aqueduct by between 440 and 487 years. It is evident, therefore, that as originally planned the sewers of Rome were intended to carry off the surface water and in other ways serve to drain the site of the ancient city. Indeed, the Cloaca Maxima, which was constructed during the period of the Kings, from 735 to 510 B. C., was intended to drain the marshy hollow between the Capitoline, Palatine and Esquiline hills, and afterwards, by a process of development, became part of a combined sewage system for the city. [Illustration: The Cloaca Maxima. From a Recent Photograph] That the engineers who designed the sewerage system of Rome had a clear conception of the service expected of such drains, is evidenced by the manner in which the system was proportioned. The pipes gradually enlarged from their extremities in the buildings through all the ramifications of the system until they finally reached the outlet at a bulkhead or quay-wall in the Tiber. It is stated by early writers that so complete was this system of sewers that every street in the ancient city was drained by a branch into the Tiber. [Illustration: Egyptian Lady Having Head Sprayed, 1700 B. C.]