After a walk of three hours, on a bearing due W. N. W., we gained the summit of an elevated mound, supporting a ponderous mass of ruin, which is called by the Arabs Tull Akerkouf, vulgarly Agergoaf, and by the Turks Nemroud Tepessy, both which appellations signify the Mound of Nemroud, or Nimrod, not the Tower of Nemroud, as it has been translated. Our path was partially strewed with loose pieces of burnt and unburnt brick and tile. At times we saw a dead camel, from which we scared several hungry hawks, that were feasting on the offensive carcase.

At the seventh mile we crossed the dry bed of a canal of great magnitude, supposed by some to be the river Narraga of Pliny, near which, he says, was a city called Hipparenum.* This canal is said to be the remains of the canal of Isa, and is supposed to connect the Tigris

*

"Sunt etiamnum in Mesopotamiâ oppida : Hipparenum, Chaldæorum doctrinâ clarum, et hoc, sicut Babylonia, juxta fluvium Narragam, qui dedit civitati nomen, Muros Hip.. parenorum Persæ diruêre.”—Plin. lib. vi. cap. 26.

with the river Euphrates, at a point where these. rivers approach each other; but in following its course I found that it discharges itself into the Tigris four miles below Bagdad: a circumstance that refutes its identity with the canal of Isa. This channel ran North and South. Hence, until we arrived in the vicinity of the ruins, we passed small parties of Arabs, who were employed in tending their flocks and herds. Not far from one of these encampments I found a bronze figure, apparently of an European, in the costume of the middle ages.

Bronze figure found near Akerkouf.

The ruins of a city are here very apparent, extensive undulating mounds stretching towards the South and East; while to the North and West they are comparatively small, and extend only a short distance from their giantlike neighbours. This ruin sweeps irregularly upwards, and its form appears to have been originally square, for the bricks are placed so as to favour this opinion; it does not, however, exactly face the cardinal points, as some former travellers assert. It is entirely composed of sun-dried bricks, made of clay mixed with chopped straw, each measuring a square of nine inches by four in thickness. At every seventh course of bricks, a layer of reeds is placed between the horizontal courses of the brickwork, without any apparent cement. These layers are very regular from top to bottom; but

*.

Mr. Rich is mistaken, when he says that the layers of reed are between every fifth or sixth layer of bricks, and that the number is not regulated. He has likewise made the circumference of the ruin one hundred feet less than it really is.-Memoir on the Ruins of Babylon, p. 41.

TULL AKERKOUF.

105

the bricks composing this colossal mass are of uncommon beauty, when we consider the material of which they are composed. This structure certainly has been the habitation of some important personage; nay, I almost fancy I beheld the residence of a rich and powerful sovereign.*

The ruin is, without doubt, solid, and is pierced with small holes, which appear to have been designed for the purpose of admitting a free current of air; but some imagine they held the scaffolding when the workmen were employed in its erection. Large wooden beams are passed through, apparently to strengthen the huge fabric of brickwork. On the Northeastern face, nearly in the centre, is an aperture, somewhat resembling a Gothic window; for what purpose it was intended, it is now impos

"Cependant on ne peut pas bien decider aujourd'hui à quel dessein cet edifice a été élevé. Peut-être étoit-ce le terrein sur lequel un des premières Califes de Bagdad, ou même un des Rois de Perse qui residoit à al Modaien, avoit une maison de campagne, pour prendre un air fraix et froid, sur la hauteur."-M. Niebuhr, Voyage en Arabie, ii.tome p. 248. 4to.

sible to determine. Tavernier relates, that "a little way from Bagdad, there is the foundation of a city, which may seem to have been a large league in compass. There are some of the walls yet standing, made of burnt brick, ten feet square, and three thick."* Tavernier, no doubt, alludes to these ruins; he conceived it to be the remains of some tower, built by one

* Tavernier, vol. ii. c. v.