Altars of different sizes were placed in the open air in the vicinity of this lower shrine, on which were sacrificed different classes of victims, gold being used occasionally as the material of the altar.
The general appearance of a Babylonian temple, or at any rate of its chief feature, the tower or _ziggurat_, will be best gathered from a more particular description of a single building of the kind; and the building which it will be most convenient to take for that purpose is that remarkable edifice which strikes moderns with more admiration than any other now existing in the country, and which has also been more completely and more carefully examined than any other Babylonian ruins--the Birs-i-Nimrud, or ancient temple of Nebo at Borsippa.

The plan of this tower has been almost completely made out from data still existing on the spot; and a restoration of the original building may be given with a near approach to certainty.

[PLATE XV., Fig.

1.] [Illustration: PLATE XV.] Upon a platform of crude brick, raised a few feet above the level of the alluvial plain, was built the first or basement stage of the great edifice, an exact square, 272 feet each way, and and probably twenty-six feet in perpendicular height.

On this was erected a second stage of exactly the same height, but a square of only 230 feet; which however was not placed exactly in the middle of the first, but further from its northeastern than its south-western edge, twelve feet only from the one and thirty feet from the other.