Herodotus, a Greek historian who traveled widely over the ancient world several centuries before the birth of Christ, has left us a description of the city of Babylon, once the largest city in the world and the capital of the Old Kingdom of Babylonia. This description represented almost all that we knew about Babylon until recent times.
“The city was built in a perfect square, one-half on each side of the river Euphrates, and the streets ran in straight lines, north to south and east to west. Two vast walls, three hundred and thirty-five feet in height and eighty-five feet broad at the top, enclosed the city; and they were, he says, fifty-six miles in circumference, so that the entire enclosed area would comprise nearly two hundred square miles! A hundred magnificent bronze gates pierced the walls; and smaller walls, each pierced by twenty-five bronze gates at the end of the streets, shut the city from the river.”
"In magnificence," Herodotus goes on, ‘there is no other city that approaches it.’ The walls and public buildings, constructed generally of sun-dried bricks - for there is little stone in the region - were faced with glazed or enameled tile of brilliant colors. The Babylonian artisans attained so high a pitch of art in enameling their clay that huge figures of bulls or lions or legendary animals stood out in relief from the bright surface. Great bronze figures of bulls and serpents guarded the gates. The houses that lined the streets were "mostly three or four stories high."
“The palaces of the rich added to the splendor; and one of the ‘seven wonders of the world’ were certain ‘hanging gardens’, which seem to have been beautiful parks of trees and flowers in the topmost of a series of super-imposed arches rising seventy-five feet above the ground, and irrigated by an ingenious apparatus which brought up water from the river.”
“The king's palace was a stupendous building, nearly half a mile in circuit. But the most impressive edifices were the great temples. That of the chief god, Marduk, rose about three hundred feet above the level of the city; and its seven stages were (at the lowest level) coated with pitch and above faced with red, blue, orange or yellow enameled tile, or faced with gold or silver, in honor of the sun (gold), the moon (silver), and the five large known planets, with which the chief Babylonian gods were associated.”
“The furniture was as magnificent as the structure was imposing. Three great courts enclosed the area round the temple, and on the west side of the inner court, opposite the vast pyramid, was the temple of the god Marduk and his wife. Here was a gold statue of the god forty feet high, with a gold table, a gold chair, and a gold altar. Outside was a stone altar on which animals were sacrificed, and an incredible quantity of incense was burned. Up the side of the seven-staged temple ran a winding stair, and at the top was the symbolical chamber of the god, with furniture of solid gold, awaiting the hour when he would descend to visit his priestess.”
“From the summit of the temple one would look for many miles over the great plain (in Babylonian, "Edin") which sustained the millions of humbler folk who in turn sustained all this splendor. But even the soil was a prodigy. The harvest was twice or thrice as bountiful as in other lands, the ears of wheat and barley growing to a phenomenal size. Rich groves of palm trees waved in the breeze all over the plain; and so expert were the food-growers that from the fruit of the palm they got "bread, wine, and honey."
From their scattered villages they looked with pride toward Babel -- it is the Greeks who made the name "Babylon" -- or "The Gate of the God. Herodotus also brings the very people before us in this enthusiastic account of Babylon in the First Book of his history. “They were clad in white linen tunics to the feet. Over this they wore a woolen tunic or robe and a white mantle. They had the full beards of the Semite, and wore their hair long; and both men and women copiously bathed themselves with perfumes. Men carried walking sticks, with fancily carved heads; and they had seals, to seal the clay envelopes of their clay letters, dangling from their girdles. Women had strings of beads on their heads.”
But how did they live? Here the historian begins to tell stories which, considering the high civilization of the Babylonians, are less easy to believe than his descriptions of the city.
“They had no physicians,” he says. “The sick man was laid in one of the public squares with which the city abounded, and every passerby was compelled to ask his symptoms or his malady. If any had had the same malady, or knew another person who had been similarly afflicted, he told the patient what to do. And if the sick man died, he was buried in honey!”
“Marriage was by purchase or auction sale. On a certain day all the maids of a place were assembled and put up to the highest bidder. No parent was permitted otherwise to dispose of his daughter; and assuredly no daughter to dispose of herself. The price was pooled and equally divided in dowries, so that the prettier girls helped to endow the less favored.”
“Every woman ‘once in her life’ must prostitute herself in ‘the court of Venus’, meaning no doubt, the court of the temple of the goddess Ishtar. There she was compelled to stand until some man threw her a coin, saying, ‘The goddess Mylitta prosper thee,’ and taking her away to his couch. The ordeal was over at once for the prettier maids of Babylon; but the plainer,” he calmly says, “had to wait three or four years in the precinct.”
“Babylonian women shrink from the affront to which their religion and their priest expose them, but, once a woman has accepted the coin and discharged her debt, no gift, however great, will prevail with her. When a husband and wife have had intercourse at night, they must sit on either side of a burning censer until dawn, and they must then purify themselves by washing before they are allowed to touch anything.”
“Have you read this Ken?” I asked, handing him the transcript.
“Yeah, but I’m not sure how much to believe. The physical description of the city is probably pretty accurate, but I’m not sure how much credence to give the part about women offering themselves up for prostitution. Most scholars don’t believe he even spoke the language so how did he get this information? It didn’t come from the ‘Khammurabi Code’ which is the law they lived by. The code specifically prohibits prostitution. Here, let me show you,” Ken said, as he googled up a copy of the code on the internet.
129. If the wife of a man is found lying with another male, they shall be bound and thrown into the water [the Euphrates]; unless the husband lets the wife live, and the king lets his servant live.
130. If a man has forced the wife of another man, who has not known the male [a child wife] and who still resides in the house of her father, and has lain within her breasts, and he is found, that man shall be slain.
“These passages don’t specifically refute what Herodotus claimed, but it does cast some doubts,” I agreed.
“Yes, but unfortunately, Babylon’s reputation for lust and vice is traced in large part to Herodotus’ claim of rampant prostitution,” Ken continued.
“Well, I’m not sure this is where their reputation originated. It may have played some part, but Babylon was also known as the center of idol worship and source of rebellion against God. That might have had something to do with it,” I argued. “Either way, Babylon must have been quite a city in its time. What led to its destruction?”
“It never was destroyed. Contrary to what Jeremiah prophesized, it just sort of withered away and gradually decayed. The city fell into disuse after Nebuchadnezzar's empire was overrun by the Persian King, Cyrus the Great, in 539 BC. In 312 BC a new city was built 50 miles to the north on the Tigris River and the inhabitants of Babylon were forcibly moved to the new city, now called Baghdad. By 115 BC, Babylon was barely inhabited. Walls collapsed and temples disintegrated, and 750 years after Jeremiah’s Biblical prophecy that the great city would be destroyed, ‘Babylon the Great’ ceased to exist.”
Another indignity was that over time, the Euphrates River, one of the four rivers in Genesis that flowed through the Garden of Eden, changed course and now flows nine miles to the east of the 2,100 acre site of the ruins of Babylon. I decided this unfortuna
te act of nature must be rectified if Babylon was to be restored to its former glory.
It was a bold plan and would require the cooperation of a diverse set of Iraqi people, who traditionally seldom could agree on anything. Their agreement was fundamental to my plan. I called a two-day meeting of politicians, religious leaders, engineers, archeologists and contractors.
“Babylon was known in biblical times as the city on the Euphrates. Tell me how we can reroute the Euphrates back to its original riverbed,” I challenged the 40 people attending the conference.
“There have been villages built all along the new river. What would happen to them?”
“Hillah has a population of over 50,000,” another man added. “It can’t be done. Their economy depends upon the river.”
“Tell me, were these villages built using the stones and bricks taken from Babylon? Isn’t this contrary to the prophecy?” I asked, appealing to the religious leaders.
“Yes, but it would be a tremendous hardship on our city,” the mayor of Hillah pointed out. “We depend upon the river for shipping and transportation.”
“Any ideas?” I asked, scanning the room. Marco and I had a plan, but we wanted it to be an Iraqi’s idea. There was a lot of muttering, but no suggestions until a young engineer volunteered an idea.
“Why don’t we build canals?” he asked. “We could reroute the main flow of the river back to the original course and set up a series of locks and sluices to feed water to existing villages and cities.”
“It could be done,” another engineer chimed in. “We could deepen the old river bed and the new Euphrates will lower the water table in the surrounding region.”
“That will make it easier to excavate under the Old Babylon ruins,” an archeologist proclaimed excitedly. “The high water table has always caused problems.”
“Okay, this is encouraging,” I interrupted, sensing the excitement in the room. “Let’s break up into smaller groups and work out the details.”
Ken distributed a proposed map of the new River Euphrates. “Gentlemen, this is just a suggestion so feel free to make modifications.”
“Just so we have an agreement in place before we adjourn tomorrow,” I added.
Two days later they approved the plan with only minor modifications. Ken and I celebrated with a cocktail. “Jim, it looks like the $500,000 we spent on the engineering study last month was worth it.”
“Well, it’s a lot more productive than asking a 40-man committee to come up with a solution. These conferences never are productive unless you know in advance what you want.”
“Yep, this way they rubber stamp the plan and walk away taking credit for the idea.”
“Salud!”
Rerouting the Euphrates to its old river bed allowed us to finalize plans and begin working on designing and building the city infrastructure. We divided the project into two pieces - restoration of old Babylon and building the new city. Building a new city from scratch was a daunting challenge. It had been done once before. I sent a team of politicians and engineers to Brazil which years ago carved Brazilia out of the Amazon jungle. It took twenty years, but today the city has a population of three million people and is a thriving metropolis. We didn’t have twenty years and were looking for shortcuts.
“Where do we start - what comes first?” I asked the engineers.
“We need everything,” was the answer I got from the Germans; “sewage and water treatment centers, electrical grids, communication networks – everything.”
“That’s just for starters,” the French engineer added. “Once we lay the pipes and wire below ground we need to start on roads and transportation routes. We will ship as much equipment and supplies along the river, but we need paved highways to get us 26 miles to the Tigris River which connects to Baghdad and the outside world.”
“Why not just truck everything to Baghdad?” I asked.
“Security, or lack thereof,” was the unanimous answer.
“All right, that’s settled. What’s next?”
“Has everyone seen the plans for dividing up the work?” Marco asked. “Does everyone understand their responsibilities and the need to stay on schedule?”
One by one the project managers nodded as I looked around the room. “Okay, let’s get started. Your contracts will be signed this week.”
“One more thing before we adjourn,” I said. “Can we get started on old Babylon while we complete the infrastructure for the new city?” I knew this was a sensitive topic and had intentionally waited for the right moment to raise the question. The old city needed a new infrastructure, but this presented a huge problem to the archeologists. If it was their decision, all work on the 2,100 acre site of the old city would be postponed indefinitely while they dug around for old pottery.
“You know our position on this,” Jawad Kamal Hashemi, the representative from Iraq’s ministry of culture stated.
“Jawad, we need to compromise on this,” I interrupted. “Restoration of the old city is the key to making this a successful project and getting world wide support. Tell us how we can help each other here. It’s not as if the site hasn’t been plundered already. What the Germans didn’t take before World War I, the French and British took later.”
“I know. It’s embarrassing to know that the Ishtar Gate and 118 of the 120 golden lions that lined Babylon’s Procession Street are in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin along with countless other artifacts.”
“And what you don’t find there you can see in the Louvre or the British Museum,” I added sympathetically. “That doesn’t leave much, does it?” It was a touching moment as tears come to the eyes of several Iraqis in the room.
“No, it doesn’t,” he answered softly.
“Jawad, what if I promise to get these treasures returned to Babylon?”
“You can do that?” he asked, sitting upright in his chair.
“Yes I can, but I need you to work with me on this. We need to make some progress and show the Germans and French we are serious about restoring Babylon to its former glory.”
“There is a way that might allow you to build the new city and still allow us to excavate later when the water table is lowered. It’s more expensive to build this way,” he pointed out, looking at me for confirmation. I nodded my assent.
“We will want archeologists to monitor the work,” he added.
“Agreed, as long as they don’t slow us up every time we see an old brick,” I replied. “Most of the old Nebuchadnezzar-stamped bricks are gone anyway,” I said, referring to the widespread practice of using the bricks from old Babylon to build new structures in Hillah and other cities.
“Agreed, but may I make one more suggestion?” Jawad asked.
“Don’t push it,” I replied with a smile.
“We should start by getting rid of most of the restoration work that Sadamm Hussein did. It looks more like a Disneyland attraction.” This brought a laugh from most of us in the room, but also nods of support.
“I agree with you, Jawad, except for the palace on the hill. I think we can do something with that. I also want to repair the damages done by the Gulf War troops including the concrete helipad and the graffiti.” I knew this was a sore point with the Iraqis.
“Excellent,” Jawad stated with a broad grin, still thinking about how he could take credit when the Ishtar Gate and other national treasurers were returned to Iraq.
“We will start tomorrow tearing down the brick walls that Sadam built.”
“How are you planning on getting the Germans, French and British to return the artifacts?” Ken asked me later. “They have said no for thirty years.”
“No problem,” I said with a grin. “I delegated the job to Matthew.”
Chapter 13 - Eurobasket