[Illustration:  BABYLON:  THE EXCAVATIONS AT EL KASR]

[Illustration:  Tower of Babel (Fig. 1).]

When we were well under way, I asked Brown, who is a freemason, if he was endeavouring to reach the understanding of the native by means of some mystic Eastern ritual unknown to me.  He was 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 clear, he maintained, that if he first indicated the Tower of Babel and then the Ford car, the driver would see, had he been reasonably intelligent, that he was to take the car to the tower.

The journey over the plain towards the mound and tower was not so eventful as we had expected it to be.  Beyond jumping many small watercourses or negotiating muddy patches left by the recent rain, we 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 the mysterious tower seemed to get further away, an illusion possible in flat countries.  I have often observed a similar phenomenon in Holland.  Perhaps in this case mirage had something to do with it.

A mosque or tomb became visible and then, almost suddenly, we seemed to get to close quarters with everything.  A ridge rose up from the flat land and from this point of vantage, known as the 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.  The east side of this small range is scored with miniature wadies washed out by rain, and the crowning ruin appeared (as in sketch, Fig. 1), casting a long shadow down the slope of the hill.

Leaving the high ground we skirted the foot of the mound, going southwards and seeing it from the point of view indicated in Fig. 2, and then as at Fig. 3.  A group of Arabs bargaining about coins and attempting to sell curios to two British officers, who had dismounted from their horses, made a tremendous hubbub and, as Brown noted, gave the right local colour as to the confusion of tongues.

I am ill-equipped with books of reference out here, but in one of Murray’s handbooks I have unearthed the following note—­all I can find about this place:—­

[Illustration:  The Tower of Babel.]

[Illustration:  Tower of Babel (Fig. 2).]

“BIRS NIMRUD, about 21/2 hours from Hillah, is a vast ruin crowned apparently by the ruins of a tower rising to a height of 1531/2 ft. above the plain, and having a circumference of rather more than 2000 feet.  The Birs, which was situated within the city of Borsippa, has been wrongly 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.  The Birs was destroyed by Xerxes and restored by Antiochus Soter.  The Tower of Babel was possibly the Esagila of the inscriptions, or the E-Temenanki—­a tower not yet identified.  Not far from Birs Nimrud are the ruins of Hashemieh, the first residence of the Abbaside Khalifs.”