Tues 31 [31 March 1914] Breakfasted at 6.30 with K [Koldewey] and we walked out to the diggings. They are excavating the NE corner of the qasr. We walked along the Via Sacra to the Merkes where we looked at the temple of Ishtar and the old old houses to the E. of it. So across the Sahn to the Tower of Babel. We sat on the edge of the pit, looked at it - Etiwananki[?]. The outer brick is all gone - some robbed by Alexander who piled up Hommera with it. They have found half a cylinder here and the other half in Hommera. The sundried brick core is there in part. Within it a core not yet of bricks. I call that old said K. How old? said I? 10000, 20000 years how can I tell. It is one of the oldest temples in Babylonia. It was a great square block with 3 stairs and a temple on the top, to Marduk, like the Esagila temple of Marduk below. Its great size impressed it on the imagination of the world. He thinks the ziggurat were all so - an upper temple corresponding to the temple below; the upper temple very little if at all smaller. On all there is space for the upper temple. At Ann Adad one of the temples on each of the zigurrats [sic]. No trace anywhere of winding stair. There must be a prehistoric civilization of which we know nothing. He wants some of the very old houses - they wd be best found in one of the very old tells which had not been reinhabited - Fara for instance. At Fara below all the houses they found a great depth of soil not virgin; occasional sherds or beads in it. The houses left no trace, b.... wood or tents. But the sherds and beads meant an immensely long Kultur. He thinks the uralt population was certainly Semitic. The Sumerians came onto the top of it, absorbed it and were influenced by it. So we went to Esagila. The outer lines of the temple have been found by subterranean diggings. They have left the inner cella which K wants to dig out completely. So down to the Parthian houses which he wd very much like to dig. The very long colonnade is possibly an agora. The Hanging Gardens were built by Nebuch. for a Sasan. wife to remind her of her mountains! But the gardens were not planted high up. They were low down beneath the vaulted substructures. It is still possible that they may be found in the Babil mound. So back to the house where we looked at plans, the qasr and Boghaz Keui [Bogazkale (Hattusas)]. K. sees the primitive liwan in the qasr. Many of the big rooms on the courts have wide openings. This must have been the parent of Hatra [Hadr, Al] and Ctesiphon. The Hittite liwan with its columned front is different - another type of liwan. The B. Keui plans are quite fremd. But there is something of the khilani - double faced in the big temple and the rooms tend to be latitudinal. The jutting out cella here with its involved[?] entrance and windows must be foreign. Later? Puchstein says it was all of one date. Borrowed from where? K. thinks the Syrian-Hittite idea possible. The Niffe [Nippur[?]] Parthian house he thinks quite Greek, the similarities with the big Babylon house fortuitous. Nonsense about its likeness to the Troy house. Badri Bey lunched and we talked of Hayyil [Hail]. Photographed K and then walked out again with him to the Via Sacra and so along the Tigris to Babil. Here Alexander died. The river then flowed between Babil and the qasr and returned between the qasr and Esagila. When the fever burnt in him they carried him to the palace across the river, Babil. He had been living in the qasr which had perhaps been patched up for him. Babylon was to be the capital of his empire. The generals slept that night in the baths at hand - we saw the .... heaps. Next day the fever burnt higher. They lay that night in Esagila, waiting for a vision from the god telling them how to heal him. Next morning he was dead. He was 32 said K. At 32 I had barely left school and he had conquered the world. Then came death, unfortunately and it all fell to pieces. We cfed[?] him with Napoleon and the Romans - the Romans good honest unimaginative people, Alexander the romance of the world. I said Nap. never loved. K. Yes Alex. loved - Roxana and others. He was mad in Babylon - the perpetual drunkenness, then the story of his killing his friend. Drunk night and day. I said You must be mad to conquer the world. We talked of the Acts and of the good Romans standing perplexed before Paul. Pleasant evening. My launch arrived.