left bank of the Hillah branch of the Euphrates, twenty miles to the south-west; but some four miles to the south of the ruins is the village of Suq el-’Afej, on the eastern edge of the ’Afej marshes, which begin to the south of Nippur and stretch away westward.  Protected by its swamps, the region contains a few primitive settlements of the wild ’Afej tribesmen, each a group of reed-huts clustering around the mud fort of its ruling sheikh.  Their chief enemies are the Shammar, who dispute with them possession of the pastures.  In summer the marshes near the mounds are merely pools of water connected by channels through the reed-beds, but in spring the flood-water converts them into a vast lagoon, and all that meets the eye are a few small hamlets built on rising knolls above the water-level.  Thus Nippur may be almost isolated during the floods, but the mounds are protected from the waters’ encroachment by an outer ring of former habitation which has slightly raised the level of the encircling area.  The ruins of the city stand from thirty to seventy feet above the plain, and in the north-eastern corner there rose, before the excavations, a conical mound, known by the Arabs as Bint el-Emir or “The Princess”.  This prominent landmark represents the temple-tower of Enlil’s famous sanctuary, and even after excavation it is still the first object that the approaching traveller sees on the horizon.  When he has climbed its summit he enjoys an uninterrupted view over desert and swamp.

The cause of Nippur’s present desolation is to be traced to the change in the bed of the Euphrates, which now lies far to the west.  But in antiquity the stream flowed through the centre of the city, along the dry bed of the Shatt en-Nil, which divides the mounds into an eastern and a western group.  The latter covers the remains of the city proper and was occupied in part by the great business-houses and bazaars.  Here more than thirty thousand contracts and accounts, dating from the fourth millennium to the fifth century B.C., were found in houses along the former river-bank.  In the eastern half of the city was Enlil’s great temple Ekur, with its temple-tower Imkharsag rising in successive stages beside it.  The huge temple-enclosure contained not only the sacrificial shrines, but also the priests’ apartments, store-chambers, and temple-magazines.  Outside its enclosing wall, to the south-west, a large triangular mound, christened “Tablet Hill” by the excavators, yielded a further supply of records.  In addition to business-documents of the First Dynasty of Babylon and of the later Assyrian, Neo-Babylonian, and Persian periods, between two and three thousand literary texts and fragments were discovered here, many of them dating from the Sumerian period.  And it is possible that some of the early literary texts that have been published were obtained in other parts of the city.