Part 4 (1/2)

As a matter of fact, Brown ”let himself go” with historical speculations and discovered not only that this was the Tower of Babel, but that it was the site of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, with evident signs, from a fragment of calcined brick, which he bore away in triumph, that it had been heated seven times hotter on some occasion.

We climbed about the ruin, unearthed several coins, which seemed quite plentiful in one place where the rain had washed down the side of a small mound, and found obvious signs of some great conflagration. Brown says that, as no one has got any better explanation of this fire than he has, he will stick to his furnace theory.

The native driver turned up all right with the car and took us back to Hillah. From there we crossed the river by the bridge of boats and at a distance of about five miles came upon the scene of the great excavations, which, although the city is said to have extended over an area of some 200 square miles, is generally known as the site of Babylon. It was in 1899, that the German archaeologist, Dr. Koldeway, began excavations on a large scale and with systematic care.

Although Babylon was a site occupied by some city in prehistoric times, as stone and flint implements denote, the earliest _houses_ of which there are any traces belong to about 2000 B.C. It was Nebuchadnezzar, however (605--562 B.C.), who rebuilt the city and made it very splendid, and it is to this period of his reign that the greater part of the ruins of the great city belong. The mound Babil is thought to be the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. An inscription reads: ”On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace, like the palace of Babylon, of brick and bitumen.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: BELLAMS UNDER SAIL]

The princ.i.p.al excavations are in the Kasr, at one time a vast block of buildings where are still the traces of a great and broad street used as a processional road to the temple of E-Sagila, which lies to the south about 700 yards away. Some of the stones of this road are in their original places, and there are pieces of brick pavement, each bearing cuneiform characters. If you take up a brick and look at it casually, you might think that it had ”Jones & Co.” or the ”Sittingbourne Brick Co.” stamped upon it and it does not look at all old. It is rather startling to be told that the letters read:--

”I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon; I paved the Babel Way with blocks of _shadu_ stone for the procession of the great lord Marduk. O Marduk, Lord, grant long life.”

These mounds of the Kasr have suffered by successive generations of brick getters. Half Hillah is said to be built out of bricks from the ruins of Babylon, and bricks are still taken for any building operations that occur within easy access of these well-nigh inexhaustible supplies.

In one place, the Temple of Nin-Makh, the Great Mistress, there are to be found an immense number of little clay images, thought to be votive offerings made by women to the great Mother G.o.ddess.

In the Mound of Amram, according to Major R. Campbell Thompson, are traces of the E-Temenanki referred to in Murray's handbook as not yet identified. [My Murray's handbook is 15 years old.] He writes, in a most useful little book published in Baghdad, 1918, ”History and Antiquities of Mesopotamia”:--”A hundred yards north of the north slope of Amram is the ancient _zigurrat_ or temple-tower of the famous E-Temenanki: 'the foundation stone of Heaven and Earth' (the Tower of Babylon). The enclosing wall forms almost a square, and part has been excavated, but all the buildings have suffered from brick-robbers. The remains of the actual Tower are towards the south-west corner.

”Many ancient restorations were carried out here. Professor Koldeway found inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Sardanapalus and thereafter inscriptions of Babylonian Kings. Herodotus calls the group of buildings 'the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Below,' and he describes the zigurrat as a temple-tower in eight stages. The cuneiform records of Nabopola.s.sar relate how the G.o.d Marduk commanded him 'to lay the foundation of the Tower of Babylon ... firm on the bosom of the underworld while its top should stretch heavenwards.'”

The first impression of the Kasr is that of a sh.e.l.led town or mined flour mill, where nothing remains but the lower walls of buildings. From a painter's point of view, the scene of this great city, about which he has pictured so much, is somewhat disappointing. There is such an absence of anything suggestive of palaces and streets. Frankly, the ruins of the cement works at Frindsbury are, pictorially, far more suggestive. I have always said that the hanging gardens of Borstal knocked spots off the hanging gardens of Babylon, and now I know it. So much for a first impression.

After awhile, however, wandering amongst these hummocks and pits, with here and there a suggestion of a gateway or pavement, the glamour of it all begins to return.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN]

It is not to the eye that the appeal of poetry is made, but to the imagination.

There is a figure of a stone lion trampling on a man, but this was unearthed and set up by a French engineer, and is not explanatory of any scheme of sculptural work. It is merely a monument. There is also a brick pillar, the bricks being uncommonly like London stock bricks, which might be part of a fallen chimney in a ruined factory. These are the only architectural signs at first visible.

On descending to the pa.s.sages and ways made by the base walls of buildings, lions and monsters moulded in the brickwork appear, but they are only to be seen at close quarters, and in one part of this vast wilderness of brick, and do not affect in any way the general character of the place--a place of loneliness and of utter desolation. The whole area is like a small range of hills, down the slopes of which are steep descents to clefts sometimes filled with reeds and rushes and stagnant pools of water. The site of the world-renowned hanging gardens is now marked by a series of nondescript lumps. The great temple of Marduk is a dusty heap of brick rubbish, and the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar appears as a mean slag heap looking down upon a land desolate and empty.

This is Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees.

”It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there; neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

”But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there and satyrs shall dance there.

”And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

VI

ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919

[Ill.u.s.tration: GOUFAS ON THE TIGRIS]