Immediately at the entrance to the hill Amran, the above-mentioned tramway trench cut through some buildings of later—apparently Parthian—times, which would be well worthy of being completely excavated. We have hitherto only been able, however, to widen the trench slightly to east and west. A pillared hall can be seen, a peristyle with several chambers, the walls of crude brick still standing to a considerable height in the mass of the hill (Fig. 131). The pillars consist of brick rubble laid in mud and plastered over with gypsum, a method of building which is characteristic of the later Grecian and Parthian periods. By the walls there were peculiar small mud constructions thickly covered with gypsum; flat shallow pans supported by tiny columns sharply contracted half way up their height. What they were intended for I do not know. Somewhat farther to the north there lies a Stoa built in the same way, of coupled semi-columns, of which we have excavated 23 transoms without arriving at the end. A similar series is near the Bridge Gateway. Several pillars of the peristyle of a house also came to light on the east side of the Eastern Annex. All these remains lie at about the same height of 10 metres above zero, which is about 6 metres higher than the Nebuchadnezzar pavement of Esagila. At Amran it is hardly possible to dig at this level without coming upon such pillars. A similar unmistakable introduction of Greek pillared architecture can be observed in all ruined sites which flourished at the time of the Neo-Babylonian kings, as at Nippur, where the great palace belongs to this period, but which Fisher has strangely ascribed to the Mycenaean period (_Journal of the Archaeological Institute of America_, vol. viii. 1904, No. 4, p. 403). Meanwhile it appears that the Babylonian house grouped round a courtyard was also at this period still in use by the autochthonous population, while the Greek insisted on having his pillars even in this land, the climate of which was so unpropitious to columnar art. [Illustration: FIG. 131.—Later buildings on northern slope of Amran. ]