Tuesday March 9. [9 March 1909] We left camp at 6.40 and marched
4 hours to the ferry opposite Abu Kemal [Abu Kamal] where we
camped. Fattuh Selim and Hmeidy went across to get corn and
soldiers and I rode with 'Ali and a man to the hill called Ersi to
examine the towers. They turned out to be tower tombs and the whole
place is an enormous cemetary [sic]. There may have been
hundreds of towers; I saw a great number, 20 or 30, fallen into heaps
of ruin and there are 4 more or less complete from which the original
character of the buildings can be determined. Part of the hill has been
washed away by the Euphrates and much more is on the point of
falling. Now is not this A. Marcellenus's deserted city of Dura? He
saw only the towers and like Balbi concluded the site to be that of a
city. Whereas the town had been down below, probably mud built on
land which the Euphrates floods when it is very high. What then of
Xenophon's Corsoli surrounded by the river Marcote? I do not
believe that any canal of the 5th c BC can now be traced owing to the
fact that the Euphrates has altered the character of the land. The
tower tombs certainly do not belong to the 5th BC - is it possible that
the Euphrates shd have destroyed 2 cities in the low ground and
Xenophon have seen the actual ruins of the first city? The low ground
is all under cultivation at present and where the river makes a great
loop it is sown with summer crops because the water rises there. The
river has eaten both banks. It has destroyed the village of Abu Kemal
which has been rebuilt further inland, and on this side there is in mid
stream the ruins of a stone Jird which used to stand on the Mesop.
bank. Fattuh did not get back till long after dark.