Fig. 9.—A djird, opposite Kweiresh.
Fig. 10.—Arab at work on a canal, in the neighbourhood of Babylon.
Fig. 11.—The hooked plough in Babylon.
The entire method of irrigation, particularly that of the djird, bears a distinctly ancient character, it cannot have changed much since the time of Nebuchadnezzar; neither can the fashion in which the people divide their land by low embankments into rectangles and then lay them under water by alternately piercing and closing up the trenches (Fig. [10]); the primitive hooked plough (Fig. [11]) and the trampling in of corn by animals must be equally ancient. All these seem to carry one back many thousands of years.
At the bend of the Euphrates, between Babil and Kasr, lie the ruins of the former village of Kweiresh, whose population migrated elsewhere a hundred years ago. The walls of mud brick still overtop the heaps of debris.
Fig. 12.—Doorway of the Expedition House in Kweiresh.