Note 22 — Chapter II

Some traces of walls still remain near the village of Sinjar (see Fig. 3, 4), and Weissbach has attempted to use them for a reconstruction of the city plan. As a result he makes the western portion of the city considerably smaller than that on the eastern bank, his north-west wall meeting the Euphrates opposite the Ḳaṣr, and being continued by the elaborate fortification-walls to the north of the Southern Citadel; cf. "Das Stadtbild von Babylon," in "Der alte Orient," V., Heft 4. This represents quite a possible arrangement. We shall see that these remains of western walls may possibly date from a still earlier period, and may also have defended the western extension of the earlier city-area (see below, p. 35). But even so they may have remained the only fortifications on the western bank; for the tendency to expansion would have been more marked to the east where the main citadel offered increased possibilities of defence. The fact that Nebuchadnezzar's northern citadel should also have been built on the left bank points in the same direction. But the question can only be settled definitely when the traces of these western walls have been examined by excavation and their relationship to the eastern fortifications determined.