bank, and nearly opposite
its junction with the Shat-el-Hie) which are known by the name of
Mugheir, or "the bitumened." Hereon a dead flat, broken only by a few
sand-hills, are traces of a considerable town, consisting chiefly of a
series of low mounds, disposed in an oval shape, the largest diameter of
which runs from north to south, and measures somewhat more than half a
mile. The chief building is a temple, hereafter to be more particularly
described, which is a very conspicuous object even at a considerable
distance, its greatest height above the plain being about seventy feet.
It is built in a very rude fashion, of large bricks, cemented with
bitumen, whence the name by which the Arabs designate the ruins.

[Illustration: PLATE 1]

About thirty miles from Hur, in a north-westerly direction, and on the
other side of the Euphrates, from which it is distant eight or nine
miles, are the ruins of a town, called in the inscriptions Larrak, or
Larsa, in which some of the best Orientalists have recognized at once the
Biblical Ellasar, the Laranchue of Berosus, and the Larissa of
Apollodorus, where the king held his court who sent Memnon to the siege
of Troy. The identification is perhaps doubtful; but, at any rate, we
have here the remains of a second Chaldaean capital, dating from the very
earliest times. The ruins, which bear now the name of Senkereh or
Sinkara, consist of a low circular platform, about four and a half miles
in circumference, rising gradually from the level of the plain to a
central mound, the highest point of which attains an elevation of seventy
feet above the plain itself, and is distinctly visible from a distance of
fifteen miles. The material used consists of the ordinary sun-dried and
baked bricks; and the basement platforms bear the inscriptions of the
same king who appears to have been the original founder of the chief
buildings at Ur or Mugheir.

[Illustration: PLATE 2]

Fifteen miles from Larsa, in a direction a little north of west, and on
the same side of the river, are ruins considerably more extensive than
those of either Ur or Larsa, to which the natives apply the name of
Warka, which is no doubt a corruption of the original appellation. The
Erech, or Orech, of the Hebrews, which appears as Huruk in the cuneiform
geographical lists, became known to the Greeks as Orchoe; and this
appellation, probably continuing in use to the time of the Arab conquest,
was then corrupted into Urk