Babylon falling: World Heritage Site

Ammar al-Taee, an Iraqi archaeologist, picked up a clay panel fallen from one of the ancient walls of Babylon. Paw prints of a dog that wandered on to the drying clay more than 2 000 years ago obscure part of the cuneiform inscription – a reminder that these ruins were once a living city. “This is the heritage of Iraq, and we need to save it,” said Al-Taee. As part of a new generation of archaeologists, Al-Taee, 29, works for the Iraqi government on a World Monuments Fund project aimed at stemming the damage to one of the world’s best known – yet least understood – archaeological sites.

After years of Iraqi effort, Babylon was inscribed two years ago as a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation World Heritage Site, recognising the exceptional universal cultural value of what was considered the most dazzling metropolis in the ancient world. But you have to use your imagination. A century ago, German archaeologists carted off the most significant parts of the city. A reconstructed Ishtar Gate using many of the original glazed tiles is a centerpiece of Berlin’s Pergamon Museum. Other pieces of Babylon’s walls were sold off to other institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

New York Times

Now, Babylon, like many of Iraq’s archaeological sites, has fallen into disrepair. The elements and damaging reconstruction have left walls crumbling, and construction and fuel pipelines threaten vast areas of the huge, largely unexcavated city. Still, Iraqis – though preoccupied with the country’s precarious security situation and pressing political and financial problems – feel a deep connection here.

I first saw Babylon in the 1990s. Then, in a country under Saddam Hussein’s iron grip, the most joyous part of visiting was seeing families free of their worries for a few hours. Past a Disneyesque recreation of the Ishtar Gate, you could choose a postcard from a rotating metal rack and post it in the metal mailbox.

Now, that mailbox is rusting and abandoned, and police guarding the site have taken over the souvenir shop. After years of conflict, although not violencefree, Iraq is safe enough for younger Iraqis who have never seen most of their own country to come to Babylon.

A visitor now to the site about 80 kilometres south of Baghdad sees a mostly reconstructed outline of a small part of the city, including the walls that once supported the Ishtar Gate.For hundreds of years until the mid-1900s, Babylon suffered the ignominy of surrounding townspeople dismantling its walls to cart away the ancient bricks for their own building projects.

The 4 000-year-old city, mentioned hundreds of times in the Bible, became the capitol of the ancient Babylonian empire and was considered the largest city in the world. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the earliest recorded laws and punishment, came from Babylon. So did advances in astronomy and other sciences.

The Babylonian empire fell in 539 BC to the Persian Empire and two centuries later to Alexander the Great, who died there. His empire collapsed and Babylon was eventually abandoned.Some of the walls, with their 2500 -year-old clay reliefs of dragons and bulls associated with the gods, still stand. But many of the bricks are crumbling, and as the water table rises, entire walls are in danger of falling. Historical preservationists estimate it would cost tens of millions of dollars simply to install a system to keep water from seeping in. But as has so often been the case for Babylon over the years, the biggest threats to the fragile site are human-made.

Hussein ordered parts of Babylon reconstructed, leading to most of the current conservation problems. The restoration installed heavier modern bricks atop the ancient ones. Cement floors trapped water while a cement roof on one ancient temple pushed down the entire structure.After a delay because of the coronavirus, the World Monuments Fund team is back, deciding how best to address the damage.Its Future of Babylon project, financed partly by the US State Department, has shored up walls in danger of falling and stabilised the iconic Lion of Babylon statue.

It is also training Iraqi conservation technicians and advising on site management. For a city that has figured so large in the world’s imagination, remarkably little is known for certain about Babylon.No archaeological evidence has uncovered the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, reputed to be one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The location of the ziggurat said to have been the Tower of Babel described in the Old Testament has also never been established.
– The New York Times

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