Such then were the discoveries amongst the ruins of ancient Babylon. They were far less numerous and important than I could have anticipated, nor did they tend to prove that there were remains beneath the heaps of earth and rubbish which would reward more extensive excavations. It was not even possible to trace the general plan of any one edifice; only shapeless piles of masonry, and isolated walls and piers, were brought to light – giving no clue whatever to the original form of the buildings to which they belonged. If the tradition be true that Xerxes, to punish the Babylonians and humiliate their priests, ordered them utterly to destroy their temples and other great public edifices, and that Alexander the Great employed 10,000 men in vain to clear away the rubbish from the temple of Belus alone, it is not surprising that with a small band of Arabs little progress should have been made in uncovering any part of the ancient buildings.

No sculptures or inscribed slabs, the panelling of the walls of palaces, have been discovered amongst the ruins of Babylon as in those of Nineveh. Scarcely a detached figure in stone, or a solitary tablet, has been dug out of the vast heaps of rubbish. “Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.”