[423] In more than one battle scene do we find these birds floating over the heads of the combatants (Layard, Monuments, 1st series, plates 18, 22, 26, &c). We may also refer to the curious monument from Tell-lôh, in which vultures carrying off human heads and limbs in the clouds are represented. For an engraving of it see our chapter on Chaldæan sculpture.
[424] See an article published by M. J. Halévy in the Revue archéologique, vol. xliv. p. 44, under the title: L'Immortalité de l'Âme chez les Peuples sémitiques.
[425] Place, Ninive, vol. ii. p. 184.
[426] Loftus, Travels and Researches, pp. 198, 199.
[427] Loftus especially speaks strongly upon this point (Travels, &c. p. 199). "By far the most important of these sepulchral cities is Warka, where the enormous accumulation of human remains proves that it was a peculiarly sacred spot, and that it was so esteemed for many centuries. It is difficult to convey anything like a correct notion of the piles upon piles of human relics which there utterly astound the beholder. Excepting only the triangular space between the three principal ruins, the whole remainder of the platform, the whole space between the walls, and an unknown extent of desert beyond them, are everywhere filled with the bones and sepulchres of the dead. There is probably no other site in the world which can compare with Warka in this respect; even the tombs of Ancient Thebes do not contain such an aggregate amount of mortality. From its foundation by Urukh until finally abandoned by the Parthians—a period of probably 2,500 years—Warka appears to have been a sacred burial-place!"
[428] See the curious paper of M. E. Le Blant entitled: Tables égyptiennes à Inscriptions grecques (Revue archéologique, 1874).
[429] In his sixth and seventh chapters Loftus gives a very interesting account of his visits to the sanctuaries of Nedjef and Kerbela.
[430] The work he alludes to as his Ασσυροι λογοι (i. 184).
[431] Herodotus, i. 198.
[432] See above, pp. 158-9 and fig. 49. The details that here follow are borrowed from the narrations of those who have explored the sepulchral mounds of lower Chaldæa. Perhaps the most important of these relations is that of Mr. J. E. Taylor, to which we have already referred so often (Notes on the Ruins of Mugheir, to which may be added his Notes on Abou-Sharein and Tell-el-Lahm, p. 413, in the same volume of the Journal). Cf. Loftus's eighteenth chapter (Travels, &c. p. 198) and the pages in Layard's Discoveries, from 556 to 561.