A Dweller in Mesopotamia / Being the Adventures of an Official Artist in the Garden of Eden

sip

ATERS OF

am about and sketch what I wanted, not what they wanted. They gave me every means of transport, and such suggestions as they made as to possib

e of Art. The campaign is prefaced by a violent discussion at G.H.Q. as to the best landscape within easy reach, and Millie, who has had lessons in pastelles, prevails over Mollie, who merely does pen painting. The wretched painter is then hauled triumphantly into a car surrounded by the artistic, who regard him with almost heathen veneration and feel thrilled by the fact that they, too, observe that the sky is blue and the trees are green. Arriving at the chos

ndness that would be a dismal thing to do." So he contrives to make some sort of a

HRATES, EA

methods used for local irrigation apart from the system of canals flowing from the river. One is the water-wheel, a curious contrivance built

d letting it down again. When the full skin reaches the top it hits against a bar and pours itself out into a trough. These two systems, as can be easily imagined, are good only for the land in the immediate vicinity of the river bank,

page 57. It is extremely interesting as an example of the resuscitation of the old waterways of Babylonia. The banks of this channel here take almost a

Hindeyeh canal, with its green shore and on the other a belt of date palms and beyond the illimitable desert. Some five

ked, "that looks like a ru

straight away and "discover" it, but we persuaded him to assent to lunch first. The major was too busy for such an escapade, but

and he soon let out what it was. His scheme was to send the car round to meet us at the Tower of Babel and we would walk. I think he rather liked the idea of saying "Tower of Babel" to the driver instead of "home." I consented, rather against my better judgment, for I fear Brown's enthusiasm for dramatic settings. His pathetic belief that my next picture for the R.

ation channel

scure even to me, and I am sure the driver thought he had gone out of his mind. They consisted in his stooping down with his hand on the ground, then rising slowly, turning round and round, his hand describing a spiral curve, till it shot up straight over his head. Then he pointed to the car. There was ev

E EXCAVATIO

Babel (

s quite scornful of my want of intelligence and explained that his movements were intended to describe the tower that had been built from earth to reach up into heaven. It was perfectly c

e found no difficulty in keeping a straight course. A herd of camels trotted away as we approached and we started up a fox. Otherwise we came across no sign of life. As we advanced mile upon mile th

e tomb of Abraham, we could look across a level zone a few hundred yards wide to the long, irregular hummock about a hundred feet high, although in this setting it looked a great deal more.

, and then as at Fig. 3. A group of Arabs bargaining about coins and attempting to sell curios to two British officers, who had dis

but in one of Murray's handbooks I have unearthed

of B

Babel (

gly identified with the Tower of Babel. It is the temple of Nebo, called the 'Temple of the seven spheres of Heaven and Earth,' and was a sort of pyramid built in seven stages, the stairs being ornamented with the planetary colours, and on the seventh was an ark or tabernacle.

summit of Mount Ararat as the resting-place of the ark. It is quite exciting, he maintains, to picture the ark stuck on the perilous ice-peaks of a glacier, with Noah and his family endeavouring to get the elepha

YPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED S

far and unrivalled by any equally picturesque claimant. It looked the part s

Babel (

he Tower of Babel, but that it was the site of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, with evident signs, from a fragme

had washed down the side of a small mound, and found obvious signs of some great conflagration. Brown says

bout five miles came upon the scene of the great excavations, which, although the city is said to have extended over an area of some 200 square miles, is ge

(605-562 b.c.), who rebuilt the city and made it very splendid, and it is to this period of his reign that the greater part of the ruins of the great city belong. The mound Babil is thought to be the palace of Nebuc

S UNDE

to the south about 700 yards away. Some of the stones of this road are in their original places, and there are pieces of brick pavement, each bearing cuneiform characters. If you take up a brick and l

l Way with blocks of shadu stone for the procession of

bricks are still taken for any building operations that occur within easy access of these well-nigh inexhaustible supplies. In one place, the Temple of Nin-Ma

ook published in Baghdad, 1918, "History and Antiquities of Mesopotamia":-"A hundred yards north of the north slope of Amram is the ancient zigurrat or temple-tower of the famous E-Temenanki: 'the foundation stone of Heaven an

us calls the group of buildings 'the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Below,' and he describes the zigurrat as a temple-tower in eight stages. The cuneiform records of Nabopola

ity, about which he has pictured so much, is somewhat disappointing. There is such an absence of anything suggestive of palaces and streets. Frankly, the ruins of the cement works at Frindsbury

s and pits, with here and there a suggestion of a gate

GREAT IS FAL

the appeal of poetry is ma

y of any scheme of sculptural work. It is merely a monument. There is also a brick pillar, the bricks being uncommonly like London

the general character of the place-a place of loneliness and of utter desolation. The whole area is like a small range of hills, down the slopes of which are steep descents to clefts sometimes filled with reeds and rushes and stagnant pools of water. The

lory of kingdoms, the

om generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch

their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and

hall cry in their desolate houses, an