The first expedition, as stated, was of a preparatory character, and consequently its results cannot be estimated merely by the number of discoveries actually made. During the short two months in which the excavators continued operations, a large building characterized by enormous buttresses and two round towers was brought to light. The building—without doubt a fortress—is of comparatively late date, belonging to the Parthian period, and was built upon the ancient temple of En-lil and its staged tower. Bint-el-Amir, the mound which contained the ruins of this renowned temple, was conical in shape and covered a surface of more than eight acres.[23] A scientific examination of a mound of such gigantic proportions was in itself no light task, while the exploration of the buried temple was a work of pioneering, none of the large Babylonian temples having as yet been completely excavated. The excavation of this temple proved that the stage-tower “did not occupy the central part of the temple-court,” and though it was undoubtedly the most conspicuous feature of the temple-area, it was not actually the temple itself: the latter is to be found in a large building adjacent to the stage-tower. This building is at all events as early as the time of the Shar-Gâni-sharri and his son Narâm-Sin. The stage-tower, which probably never had more than three stages, owed its latest form to Ur-Engur, king of Ur (_circ._ 2400), though Ashur-bani-pal, King of Assyria nearly two thousand years after, had occasion to repair and restore it. The bricks of Ashur-bani-pal, which are intermingled with those of Ur-Engur, bear the stamped inscription, “To Bel, the King of the lands, his King, Ashur-bani-pal, his favourite shepherd, the powerful King, King of the four quarters of the earth, built E-kur, his beloved temple, with baked bricks.” Four feet behind the facing-wall of Ur-Engur, large bricks characteristic of Narâm-Sin’s time were discovered, while the bricks of which the innermost core of the tower was formed belong to the pre-Sargonic and early Sumerian days.[24] The extreme antiquity of the lower strata in this mound may be gauged from the fact that Haynes in descending into the pre-Sargonic period below the pavement of Narâm-Sin, penetrated through some thirty feet of ruins before he arrived at the virgin soil. _PLATE VII_ [Illustration: EXCAVATIONS IN THE TEMPLE COURT: NIPPUR (_From C. S. Fisher’s “Excavations at Nippur,” by permission_)]