Between the palace and the fortification walls there was an open strip in which a wide canal, originally 13 metres broad, which led from the Euphrates, flowed from here almost to the eastern wall. Smaller conduits, 1.2 metres wide, roofed over with tilted bricks, branched off from it through the massive foundations of the Principal Citadel to supply it with water. They were connected with the palace level by quadrangular well shafts. The embankment of the canal in front of the palace and of the northern fortification wall, projecting from their foundations, formed a rampart 2 metres broad, and at this level we have fixed our zero, which serves as the starting-point for the level of the entire city and its buildings. The water-level of Nebuchadnezzar’s time was at about this height, for here the projecting courses of the coverings of the smaller conduits begin, and the pavement in the door of the northern wall is only some 1.5 metres higher than our zero. It is obvious that the great canal was open above. It was later replaced by a smaller one only 1.8 metres wide, which runs beside its southern bank wall and was certainly covered in. At this later period a broad road 9.5 metres wide led between the palace and the north wall, which consisted of three brick courses laid in asphalt. Upon it were Parthian houses and brick graves. We cut into them with our trench at the mound “Atele” (_n_ 8). On this hill, which rises to 18 metres above zero, stood in Oppert’s time a nebek tree; the Arabs believed that this had grown out of a tent stake that Ali had driven in here. From a shoot of this tree the solitary nebek sprang that still flourishes in the long low region of the Northern Citadel. For a time I held the opinion that this canal was the Libil-ḫigalla, because bricks with the Aramaic stamp “Libilḫi” were found here. Later on, however, similar bricks were found on other parts of the Kasr, which rendered my earlier reasons fallacious.