The northernmost consists of brick rubble, and extends from the cross wall near the Ishtar Gate right over the ancient fosse wall, apparently to the moat wall of Imgur-Bel. In front of it lay a building of which several parallel lines of wall still remain. In these are cavities, due to the insertion of upright bricks, where the beams of an upper storey rested; the lower storey, of which the flooring still exists, has the very moderate height of about 1.5 metres. Corresponding cavities for beams are hewn out in the wall of brick rubble, as well as some isolated niches, which may well have served to afford more space in these narrow chambers. The two mud-brick walls are of course later than the Nabopolassar walls that lie below them, but older than Nebuchadnezzar’s Ishtar Gate. Where the southern thicker wall abuts on the wing of the gate, there was a space one metre wide, enclosed on the north side only by a slight mud wall. Here also it is obvious that the mud wall was cut off for the purpose of building the Ishtar Gate. At the time when the latter was built the two walls were repaired and raised, and the narrower wall was turned slightly northward in order to secure a flush fitting to the wing of the gate erected there. The southern wall, which is 6 metres thick and has a scarcely perceptible batter, has a curtain length of 15.3 metres, with large towers placed across it and smaller ones placed lengthways in regular alternation (see Fig. 81). At the west it ends with a specially large tower. In the second mesopyrgion from the west there is a door, of which the earliest embrasure consists of unstamped burnt bricks measuring from 32 × 32 to 31 × 31 centimetres. The pavement is only 2 metres above zero. At a later period the jamb also was faced with burnt brick with Nebuchadnezzar’s stamps, and the pavement was raised to 2.65 metres, and later again to 4.5 above zero. At this later period the part of the Southern Citadel which is opposite our door did not yet exist, and the threshold rested on a sharply sloped supporting wall which lies immediately in front of the Southern Citadel. It is built of mud brick, and on the inside every second course was laid with broken brick. It is possible that this supporting wall was made in order to safeguard the path while these portions of the Citadel were built. At a later period the embrasure was strengthened and the pavement was raised to 5.5 metres above zero. It is a double layer, the lower one of broken brick and the upper one of Nebuchadnezzar’s paving tiles, 51 centimetres square, and completely covered the interval to the Southern Citadel. In the pavement and in holes made for the purpose in the mud walls there were interments in brick coffins, with gable-shaped covers formed of bricks placed edgeways, which are very characteristic of the culture of Greece and its allies. It is the latest important style of pavement lying here, and we can scarcely err if we assign it to the