The third campaign (1893-1896) Peters delegated to Haynes, who commenced operations at Nippur in the great ridge which stretches along the southward bank of the Shatt-en-Nîl, where numerous tablets had already been unearthed. In about four months he had collected some 8000 tablets, and when the supply of these began to fail he transferred his attention to the temple mound which had been worked at before, and which he continued to explore until April 1894. With the help of Joseph A. Meyer, a young American architect, Haynes concentrated his work on the zikkurat at Nippur. Unfortunately Meyer died in December, but not until he had rendered priceless service to Haynes in his capacity as advisory architect. Haynes, unable to continue the exploration of the temple-mound without expert advice, undertook to unearth a sufficient quantity of tablets to meet Peters' demand for inscribed material. Later he pursued excavations at the Bint-el-Amir, where Peters had worked before him, cleared the zikkurat of Assur-bani-pal there and excavated the court of that building down to the water level. The excavation of the immense façade of this great erection was a work of enormous labour, hundreds of thousands of cubic feet of rubbish having to be removed before a partial clearance was effected. The excavation of the south-west court of the zikkurat of Assur-bani-pal was the most interesting part of Haynes' work on the temple of Bel. First he had to clear away the Parthian ruins superimposed upon the site, until he came to the brick pavement of Assur-bani-pal. He then came upon a pavement of the Sargonic period which extended through a considerable part of the mound as a dividing line. The rubbish which lay beneath this was about sixteen feet in depth, and had been accumulated within a period of more than three thousand years (3800-350 B.C.). The most important of the many strata of this rubbish-heap is that which lies between the pavement of King Ur-Ninib and that immediately below it. Over 600 fragments of vases, statues, and slabs were gathered here, all seemingly deliberately broken, "by somebody who lived between the reigns of Ur-Gur of Ur and Ur-Ninib of Nisin"--perhaps the leader of an Elamite raid. The famous text of Lugalzuggisi, King of Erech, with its 132 lines of writing, was found here and restored by Hilprecht from sixty-four fragments. Digging elsewhere, Haynes unearthed the oldest arch in the world at a considerable depth, drain-pipes of the date about 4500 B.C., and pre-Sargonic cellars containing large wine-or oil-jars. In one chamber twenty feet below the surface were found the business archives of a great Babylonian firm, Murashu and Sons, bankers and brokers at Nippur (_c_. 464-424 B.C.). [Illustration: Ruins of Babylon Uncovered after twelve years' labour by German archæologists, who began excavating in 1900. Copyright by Underwood and Underwood, London.] Recent Research