The house 8 with 9 had two large rooms which opened on the great court (O), but had no direct communication with the other rooms. They thus possess the characteristics of offices open to the public from the great court, while the official could enter them by a small passage from the open court in front of his own rooms. As in all the great courts the largest buildings lay to the south, so in each of these houses the principal chamber lay on the south side of the court; and this must have been the pleasantest part of the whole house, as it lay in shadow almost all day. Owing to the peculiar climate of Babylon it is obvious that in laying out a house, only the summer and the heat would be taken into consideration. The summer lasts 8 months, from the middle of March to the middle of November, and during June, July, and August the temperature is at times abnormally high. We have observed a maximum of 49½ grades Celsius in the shade, and 66 in the sun, and the heat lasts for many hours of the day. It begins in the morning by 9 o’clock, and only at 9 o’clock in the evening does it begin to abate: the minimum heat is in the early hours of the morning after sunrise. The months of December and February correspond on the whole with our autumn and spring. The only cold weather is in January, if the sun does not shine, and sometimes there are night frosts. Frosty days can be counted on the fingers of one hand, and the unaccustomed body feels these cold days very keenly. Rain is very scanty. I believe if all the hours in the whole year in which there were more than a few drops of rain were reckoned up, they would barely amount to 7 or 8 days. The annual downfall has been registered by Buddensieg at 7 centimetres, in North Germany Herr Hellmann informs me it is 64, and in places in India 1150 centimetres. Naturally there are exceptional years. The winter of 1898 was severe and long, the thorn bushes of the desert were thickly frosted over, and the breath of a rider froze as he rode. In 1906 hundreds of palms were frozen in the neighbourhood of Babylon, and in 1911 the snow lay ankle deep all over the plain between Babylon and Bagdad for a whole week. But these are exceptions, and then people usually pretend that such a thing has not happened for 100 years. The result of this fine climate is that for the greater part of the year all business is carried on in the open air, in the courts, or at any rate with open doors. Windows do not appear to have existed. None have ever been found, and the evidence of the ground-plans bears out this presumption. The evenings and nights were spent on the flat roofs. Thus the chambers were used very much as refuges or store chambers, with the exception of the principal rooms, where in any case as a matter of business the official must have installed himself. He may, however, have often done his business in the court in front of his office.