FIG. 238.—Steps to roof in village of Kweiresh. ] The original pavement of the house has twice undergone restoration (Fig. 237). Between the layers of brick, most of which bear Nebuchadnezzar stamps, only a little earth is laid. No one was buried in the house while it was occupied; the 21 graves that occur on the site are all of the period when the building lay in ruins. This is shown by the way in which the walls and pavement were cut through, and by the fact that the pavements were not repaired in any way after the burials had taken place. The graves are chiefly of brick, as they are exclusively of the Parthian period. It is quite possible that the house was built during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar; no difficulty is involved by the occurrence of the bricks bearing his stamp, as it does not force us to infer any complete destruction of one of Nebuchadnezzar’s buildings. The bricks may very well be older material offered for sale by the king on the occasion of one of his rebuildings. It is impossible to say how late into Persian or Greek times the house existed; a poorer house was built on its ruins after the heap of rubbish had reached a height of about 2 metres. Before the main house was built the site must long have remained unoccupied. Under the pavement lay 4 metres of rubbish above the floor of an earlier house. Three metres deeper again there were tablets of the time of Kadashmanturgu, Kadashmanbel, and Kurigalzu; and again, 2 to 3 metres deeper, were some of Samsuiluna, Ammiditana, and Samsuditana. The mud-brick walls were plastered with mud, and over this was a wash of white gypsum mortar. [Illustration: FIG. 239.—North-east corner of the Great House in Merkes. ] Not one of the chambers showed any traces from which we could infer the existence of a stairway to an upper storey. If there were steps, which we cannot doubt, they were certainly of wood, something like the simple stairways to the roof that are used at the present time by the people of Kweiresh (Fig. 238).