An ascent is added at the inner corner of the eastern bastion (Fig. 108) which united the low-lying area between the two parallel walls with the Procession Street, and actually with the crown of the wall and the plateau of the bastion. It was a winding path, which ran round a newel wall, but whether or not it had steps we do not know. In front of the gate that faced eastward there was another defensive building with two exits. [Illustration: FIG. 110.—Stone wall of Northern Citadel with inscription. ] We have excavated the western wall at its junction with the bastion. Its farther course is marked in a deep valley which extends almost as far as the Euphrates on the west (Fig. 109). In the north, immediately in front of the bastion, without any intermediate space, there is a stone wall formed of immense blocks of limestone bound together with dove-tailed wooden clamps laid in asphalt. Four courses of this have so far been laid open above water-level (Fig. 110). In the upper courses a wall of burnt brick overlaps the stone masonry. In the third course of masonry from the top each block has an inscription chiselled out in large Old Babylonian characters (Fig. 111): “Nebuchadnezzar, etc., am I. The dûru of the palace of Babylon I have made with stones of the mountain (followed by a prayer).” With this statement we will compare that part of the great _Steinplatten_ inscription (9, 22) where it says, “Beyond the dûr of burnt brick I built a great dûr of mighty stones, the production of the great mountains, and raised its summit high as a mountain.” Thus it is clear that the previous mention of the Principal Citadel included the Northern Citadel, and in consequence the length there assigned to the wall of 490 ells covers the entire stretch from the Ishtar Gate to the north front of the northern bastion. According to our provisional measurement, this length consisted of 251 metres, which would make an ell of .512 metres. If this result does not agree exactly with that quoted above (p. 174) the reason is probably that we do not know accurately the points to which Nebuchadnezzar measured. [Illustration: FIG. 111.—Inscription on the stone wall of the Northern Citadel. ] Close to the bastion a gateway led through the western wall, which is exactly similar both in plan and construction to the gateway in the wall of the Principal Citadel. The canal that passes through the gateway must certainly have been connected with the canal in the wall of the Principal Citadel. The construction is very plain here; so far as it lies in the burnt brick wall it is covered in with corbelled tiles, and in the stone masonry with large blocks of limestone laid flat (Fig. 112).