Here and there on the street, and also below the procession pavement, are Babylonian graves. The adults are in large jars, the children in shallow elliptical bowls of pottery. We have observed no traces of monuments above ground, nor could we expect to find any in such a position on the street, nor yet in the other usual places of burial—the streets and squares of the city, on the fortification walls, and in the ruins of fallen houses. IX THE TEMPLE OF NINMACH Passing out of the Ishtar Gate, we find ourselves on a high open space before the east front of the Southern Citadel, where stood its great portal. Like the street and the palace itself, it is raised to the same level as the rest of the Citadel by means of artificial piling up of materials in several distinct stages. In the north-east corner stands the temple of Ninmach, “the great mother” (Fig. 38). Its entrance façade faces the north, immediately opposite one wing of the Ishtar Gate, to which it is joined by a short wall containing a doorway. At the south-east corner a mud brick wall begins, which also has a gate, and which probably was intended to form the boundary of the temple square, but of which only a short piece now remains. In this manner the secular area was entirely excluded from the sacred precincts. Immediately in front of the temple entrance was a small altar of mud brick surrounded by an area of kiln brick, the edge of which was defined by tilted bricks fixed edgeways in the ground. The temple, like all others hitherto found by us, is composed of mud brick, but we must not judge of its original appearance by the present condition of the ruins; its walls were covered with a white plaster that gave it the appearance of marble. The designs employed in laying out this temple were borrowed from military architecture. Towers in close proximity to each other are placed on the walls and especially beside the gateways. None of their upper portions now exist, but we believe we have sufficient evidence to prove that, like those of fortifications, they were crowned with the usual stepped battlements. In addition, these sacred buildings possessed a very characteristic form of decoration which is absent in fortresses and other secular buildings. This consists of vertical grooves carried from top to bottom of the walls, either rectangular in section or stepped, as here in the temple of Ninmach. In other temples, as at Borsippa or the earliest Esagila, in place of the grooves there are semicircular fillets. Cornices, friezes, and the like, as well as columns or entablatures, are entirely absent in Babylonia. [Illustration: FIG. 38.—Ground-plan and section of Ninmach Temple. ] [Illustration: FIG. 39.—Bronze ferrule of doorpost, Emach. ]