I went to the British Museum yesterday to see their new exhibition 'Babylon' which relates the history of this ancient city of Mesopotamia, an area situated between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in modern-day Irak (from the Greek
meso 'between'
, and potamus 'river'). It is also known as the fertile crescent because it was home to several prominent ancient civilizations (including the Sumerians, Assyrians, and Persians) who revolutionized, amongst other things, western agriculture, law, language, the written alphabet and city planning. Of all these great societies, none inspires the mind more than the rise and fall of the Babylonians and their holy city Babylon ('Gateway of the God'). It was under the ruler Nebuchadnezzar II about 2600 years ago that this city became one of the most powerful place in the western world with its pyramid-like Ziggurat 'Etemenanki'
(refered to as 'The tower of Babel' in the bible), its 'Ishtar Gate' (originally one of the Wonders of the World but later replaced by the Lighthouse at Alexandria) and, most famous of all, its Suspended Gardens. It was in the hope that I might be enlightened on these mythical gardens that I made my way to the exhibition. I knew that they had long disappear, together with most of the other wonders of the world (only the Great Pyramid at Giza still persist), but thought there might remain some ancient pieces of puzzle about them. As it turns out, there is no tangible evidence whatever about them or what they might have looked like. This in itself could be a great disappointment, but it was quite interesting to look at the various renditions painted or drawn by artists over the centuries. Some imagined them as a pyramidal garden but like others, I like to think they might have been an early form of roof top gardens.
Were they lush and exhuberant like oases or formal and contrived as some depict them?
My botanical mind wonders what plants might have been grown in the hot desertic climate of southern Irak; the date palm, the pomagranate, the olive, the cypress... my knowledge of middle eastern plants is sorely lacking. My horticulturist mind, on the other hand, wonders how such construction might might have been watered. Ancient tablets at Ninveh (another ancient city of Mesopotamia, further north where, some say, the gardens might have been instead of Babylon) mention some form of irrigation device similar to an Archimede' screw to lift water upwards.
Some archeologists allude to simpler tools like the shadouf of ancient Egypt as a possibility. I like to think that the Babylonian might have had a drip system of sorts. In a world where one can draw water from a tap, it is awe inspiring to think of a lush suspended garden in a desertic climate solely watered by hand!
If nothing remains of the Suspended Gardens, precious little remains of the ancient city of Babylon itself. The Germans salvaged what remained of the Ishtar gate and some precious fragments of clay with inscriptions in the early part of the past century but recently Saddam Hussein, followed by the American army managed to destroy what was left. Saddam, thinking himself a modern day Nebuchadnezzar began rebuilding a modern version of the city on the old ruins but his ambitions were soon cooled when the United States set up military base on the very spot of the ruins. Whilst most of us want to cling on to ancient history for our mental salvation, some think nothing of wiping it off to make way for helipads and war trenches. Incredible really.
