Midway in the mound is a platform of large bricks stamped with the names of Sargon of Akkad and his son Naram-Sin (3800 B.C.); as the débris above them is 34 ft. thick, the topmost stratum being not later than the Parthian era (H. V. Hilprecht, The Babylonian Expedition, i. 2, p. 23), it is calculated that the débris underneath the pavement, 30 ft. thick, must represent a period of about 3000 years, more especially as older constructions had to be levelled before the pavement was laid.
[…] if each tribelet was linguistically quite independent, this would have made communication in the New World a matter of the utmost difficulty for the [enslaved Africans], who would have been far more dependent than otherwise on the entirely new language that had to be learned.
There are three messages which can be sent by means of the convolvulus. A white one signifies Why are you fleeing me? A pink one signifies I shall bind myself to you. A blue one signifies I shall wait for better days.
At the end of a short side-street a narrow ginnel with concrete bollards led into the surprisingly wide area in which the blocks of flats stood.
