The Story of Asphalt

Extract

A pamphlet published by Warren Brothers Company which tells the story of the past eighty years' development of a very old industry, has been presented to the Society by Mr. George C. Warren. Although the use of asphalt for paving purposes is generally thought of as a nineteenth-century invention, it is, as a matter of fact, older than Nebuchadnezzar. An inscription on a brick found on “Procession Street,” which led from the palace to the North wall, states that Nebuchadnezzar's father, Nabopolassar, King of Babylon, “had made a road glistening with asphalt and burnt bricks,” and that he, “Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, he who made Esaglia and Ezida glorious, placed above the bitumen and burnt bricks, a mighty superstructure of shining dust, made them strong within with bitumen and burnt bricks as a high-lying road.”