us receptacles for human dust
that we have described are heaped vertically one upon another, so that with
the passage of time they have formed huge mounds covering vast spaces and
rising conspicuously above the plain (see Fig. 167, letter c). Loftus tells
us that at Warka he dug trenches between thirty and forty feet deep without
reaching the lowest stratum of sepulchres. There was no apparent order in
their arrangement. Sometimes brick divisions were found for a certain
length, as if used to separate the tombs of one family from those of
another. A layer of fine dust, spread evenly by the winds from the desert,
separated the coffins. Terra-cotta cones inscribed with prayers had been
thrown into the interstices. Sometimes, as at Mugheir, the mound thus
formed is surmounted by a paved platform upon which open the drains that
traverse the mass.[445] In most cases these mounds have been turned over in
all their upper parts by the Arabs. It is probable that in ancient days
each of these huge cemeteries had priests and superintendents told off to
watch over them, to assign his place to each new comer, and to levy fees
like those paid in our day to the mollahs attached to the Mosques of Nedjef
and Kerbela. They guarded the integrity of the mound, and when it had
reached the regulation height, caused it to be paved and finally closed.

In none of these cemeteries has any tomb been discovered that by its size,
richness, or isolation, proclaimed itself the burial place of royalty, and
yet the sovereigns of Mesopotamia must have had something analogous to the
vast and magnificent sepulchres of the Egyptian kings. Their tombs must at
least have been larger and more splendid than those of private individuals.
In the case of Susiana we know that it was so through an inscription of
Assurbanipal. The Assyrian king gives a narrative of his campaign. He tells
us how his soldiers penetrated into the sacred forests and set fire to
them, and then to show more clearly with how stern a vengeance he had
visited the revolted Elamites, he added: "The tombs both of their ancient
and their modern kings, of those kings who did not fear Assur and Istar, my
lords, and had troubled the kings, my fathers, I threw them down, I
demolished them, I let in the light of the sun upon them, then I carried
away their corpses into Assyria. I left their shades without sepulture and
deprived them of the offerings of those who owed them libations."[446]

If the Ela