Babylon: A Wonder of the Ancient World

hello I'm Jonah Roos curator in charge of the department of ancient near-eastern art here at the Metropolitan and it is my distinct pleasure to welcome you today to the Armen Brunswick distinguished lectures in archaeology of the Raymond and Beverly Sackler foundation these lectures held every three years were founded by Raymond and Beverly Sackler great benefactors of the Metropolitan Museum and dedicated supporters of the department of ancient near-eastern art and I speak not only of the grand projects that bear their names such as the Raymond and Beverly sackler Gallery of Assyrian art but also the lesser-known displays of support such as the Raymond and Beverly Sackler long-term loan fund which has enabled us to bring such great works of art from the Near East and Central Asia as for instance sinisa raita which you might know about and there are also many other expressions of their commitment one most memorable event being the support that they offered us for the Raymond and Beverly Sackler symposium beyond Babylon our trade and diplomacy in the second millennium BC that was a highlight of the program for our last major exhibition and I'm happy to mention that the publication of those papers is underway and will come out next year of course there are so many other ways that the Sackler have enriched the work of our department and today I'm very happy to have the opportunity to publicly thank them for this the Sackler z' established this lecture series the Sackler --za stablished this lecture series to honor and now memorialize their friend of 50 years Armen Brunswick Armand Brunswick's talents in the arts particularly as a fashion designer led him to achieve great success in the textile industry and these qualities also led to a fascination with art history and archaeology how interested he would have been to learn more about the wonders of Babylon from John Curtis our speaker today when I spoke to Raymond in Beverly Sackler and proposed the idea to have John Curtis speak and to dedicate this lecture also to the memory of Donnie George a great hero in the struggle to preserve Iraqi antiquities they could not have been more enthusiastic John Curtis has written the recently written a moving and also comprehensive obituary for Donnie George in the recent volume of the journal Iraq but here I would just like to say a few words about this extraordinary man whose quest to recover the stolen heritage of Iraq and protect what survived is seared into our memory Donnie George Akana was born into a family of Assyrian Christians whose roots in Mesopotamia reached back into ancient times he began his career at the Iraq museum in 1976 after receiving a bachelor's degree from the University of Baghdad where he also eventually got his PhD he became field director for the restoration of Babylon in 1966 and seven and conducted archaeological investigations of the east wall of Nineveh in 1988 and rescue excavations in the following year a professor at Baghdad University and the College of Babylon he became director a general of research and studies at the Iraq State Board of Antiquities and heritage and eventually its chairman in 2003 Donnie George was also appointed to Durr General of the Iraq museum but three years later he was forced to leave his homeland and found refuge along with his family at the State University of New York at Stony Brook where he became a visiting professor in the Department of Anthropology we were proud to call him a friend a friend of our department and he was an active member of our visiting committee we thought that this lecture would be a fitting tribute both to Donny's memory and to Armin Brunswick we could not have a better speaker for John Curtis has been one of the most active people dedicated to the preserving the heritage of ancient Iraq and was a friend to Donnie and the had the fortune also to meet Armen Brunswick John Curtis has been affiliated with the British Museum since 1971 after completing his doctorate on Laight assyrian metalwork at the institute of archaeology university of london and then spending two years in baghdad as a fellow of the british school of archaeology in iraq he was appointed keeper of Western Asiatic antiquities in 1989 and since October 2011 has become keeper for specialist projects he dr. Curtis is chiefly interested in Mesopotamia Iran in the caucuses in the iron age of the first millennium BC and he is the author or editor of 17 books and more than a hundred articles on these subjects he has an active archaeologist who between 1983 and 1989 directed excavations on behalf of the British Museum at eight different sites in Iraq including the Assyrian cities of Nimrod and Bala WA after he became Keeper he supervised the installation of six new ancient near-eastern galleries of the British Museum five of them sponsored by Raymond and Beverly Sackler he curated the traveling exhibition art an empire treasures from Assyria in the British Museum that had been sent to many different venues around the world after its inaugural right here at the Metropolitan Museum in 1995 in 2005 and 6 he organized the special exhibition forgotten Empire the world of ancient Persia at the British Museum and then arranged for the display of the famous Cyrus cylinder in Tehran since 2003 dr. Curtis has been much involved in efforts to try and safeguard Iraqi cultural heritage he is a member of UNESCO international Iraq Committee and it's babylon Committee and UNESCO has published in full his report on damage to Babylon prepared in December 2004 to celebrate his accomplishments John Curtis was elected a fellow of the British Academy in 2003 and a warder awarded the Order of the British Empire in 2006 just a few of his numerous accolades we had the pleasure of hearing John Curtis lecture to us during the arm in Brunswick lecture of 1993 on excavating in Mesopotamia from Alexander to kul Agha Khan and now after 18 years far too long we have found the perfect opportunity to invite entice him to join us once again to tell us about Babylon a wonder of the ancient world please welcome our dear colleague John Curtis thank you very much indeed Joan for those very kind words well first of all I like of course to thank Joan aru's and Raymond and Beverly Sackler for inviting me to give this lecture it's a great pleasure to be here again in New York and an honor to be giving this lecture dedicated to Armand Brunswick who sadly passed away in 1996 but I did have the privilege of meeting him in 1993 when as you heard I gave another lecture in this series well my subject this evening is Babylon but before launching into the lecture I'd like to pay tribute to Raymond and Beverly Sackler who've done so much to promote interest in the ancient narrate in many different parts of the world particularly as far as I'm concerned in the British Museum where they sponsored a Sackler wing of galleries dedicated to the ancient Near East and Egypt and an annual scholarship the lecture is also as you heard in honor of my good friend dr. Denis George on the left who did so much to promote the cultural heritage of Iraq and he's actually pictured here at Babylon in 2003 Babylon is one of the most famous sites in the ancient world perhaps even the most famous it's situated in southern Iraq a southern Mesopotamia or Iraq as it now is just on Death just down there on the banks of the river Euphrates now in Mesopotamia is the home to three great civilizations Sumer in the south Babylonia in the middle and Assyria in the north and Babylon was the most important city in Babylonia and for several thousand years with an important political capital as well as being a flourishing center of culture and civilization these are views of the site as it appears today amongst the achievements of Babylonian civilization our great works of literature such as the epic of gilgamesh huge advances in mathematics which gave the world the sexagesimal system which is why hours and minutes are divided into sixtieths detailed astronomical observations and a surprising understanding of medical conditions which led sometimes to their successful treatment there was even a rudimentary understanding of geography and topography as witness the Babylonian map of the world on a cuneiform clay tablet which puts Babylon at the heart of the universe babylon continues to intrigue small wonder then that in recent years there be no fewer than four major exhibitions about babylon one in the louvre in paris one in the Pergamon museum in berlin one in the British Museum and a fourth here in the Metropolitan Museum in 2009 although the Metropolitan Museum brilliantly curated by Jonah ruse was more wide-ranging than the others exploring Babylonian civilization well beyond the narrow confines of Babylonia the first question we need to address is why Babylon is so famous in the Western world there are really two reasons for this firstly there are extensive references to Babylon in the Bible and secondly there are the many descriptions of Babylon in the classical authors to deal first with the references in the Bible these are uniformly negative this is almost because in five nine seven BC the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and deposed the Jewish King Jehoiakim ten years later in 587 BC there was a rebellion after which Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city in the temple and deported many of the inhabitants of Jerusalem to Babylon intriguingly the accuracy of the biblical account of these events has been corroborated by a recent discovery in the British Museum an Austrian scholar named Marco Leo sir has read on one of the many cuneiform tablets clay tablets in the British Museum collection the name of one of the officials who according to The Book of Jeremiah accompanied Nebuchadnezzar to Babylon so that's a rare and very interesting example of an independent source giving some corroboration to the biblical account so it's the Babylonian captivity then that led to the jaundiced view of Babylon in the Bible the best-known lament of the deported Jews is of course to be found in Psalm 137 and I'm sure you're all familiar with the words by the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept when we remembered Zion and it continues if I forget you O Jerusalem may my right hand forget it's skill the psalm then predicts the destruction of Babylon as do the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah according to Isaiah Babylon will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah she will never be inhabited or lived in through all the generations no Arab will pitch his tent there no Shepherd will rest his flock so but desert creatures will lie there Jeremiah also prophesied that Babylon would be destroyed and laid waste saying the Lord has stirred up the king of the Medes because his purpose his purpose is to destroy Babylon Babylon will be a heap of ruin a haunt of jackals an object of horror and scorn a place where no one lives we also read in the Book of Daniel about the terrible fate that overtakes Nebuchadnezzar here in the Book of Daniel confused with nabonidus the babblin King nabonidus for failing to praise and exalt and glorify the king of heaven and it says he was driven away from people and ate grass like cattle his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until his hair grew like the feathers of an eagle his nails like the claws of a bird this was the description that inspired William Blake to produce his famous image of Nebuchadnezzar on the screen now like Isaiah and Jeremiah Daniel also predicted the destruction of Babylon during a banquet hosted by King Belshazzar the son of Nebuchadnezzar the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the wall nobody could understand the writing except Daniel who read many men ate a hill parson which he interpreted to mean that Bell chávez Kingdom was to be divided and given to the Medes and the Persians and interestingly my colleague herbing Finkel has recently suggested that this all really ought to be read Mina Mina shekel who pass him the and Mina's and shekels are different types of coins and the meaning would be that you go from a large one to a small one and you divide it up and you eventually come to nothing in Revelation the apocalyptic book of the 1st century AD we read of Babylon the Great the mother of prostitutes and the abominations of the earth so arose the legend of the of Babylon on the association with Babylon of everything in the world that was most wicked well so much for the biblical accounts the fullest account Babylon in the classical authors is by the Greek author Herodotus the popularly known as the father of history he describes the topography of the city there in great detail he says that it was Square and that the city wall was wide enough for a four-horse chariot to turn on within the walls there was the royal palace a shrine where there is a great golden image of zeus presumably the temple of Marduk and the sacred enclosure of Zeus in the center of the enclosure this is still the account of Herodotus was a solid tower with seven receding stages or towers above it giving in all an ape stepped pyramid in the last hour there was a great shrine containing a couch and a golden table and this shrine was inhabited by just one native woman now this building we know to have been a ziggurat a stage temple Tower familiar from other sites in Mesopotamia and Iran however the ziggurat at Babylon no longer exists over many centuries people have removed the mud bricks from which it was built that was for their own local to build their houses in the Babylon area and beyond so that now the ziggurat is only represented by a depression in the ground this is an aerial photograph of the ziggurat site and you can see that just about everything has been taken away but we are incidentally familiar with the bricks from which it was built there inspired with the with the name of Nebuchadnezzar and they must have been made in there millions and then are very common in museum collections our private collections and so on Herodotus is description of the ziggurat at Babylon combined with biblical references to the Tower of Babel inspired generations of European painters to represent this structure the most famous depiction is by the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the elder who in 1536 painted a Tower of Babel looking rather like the Colosseum at Rome another painting by an artist of the Flemish school again puts the tower in a thoroughly European setting well now thanks to detailed descriptions of the a term and Anki ziggurat contained on two cuneiform tablets which give precise measurements and other information it's possible to attempt to reconstruction which is probably quite close to the original there have been several reconstructions but I particularly like this one which was produced for professor Donald Wiseman's book on Nebuchadnezzar and I think it does give a particularly good impression of what the babylon ziggurat would have looked like come originally oddly Herodotus makes no mention at all of the Hanging Gardens for which Babylon is so famous the earliest known description of them comes from the Greek historian tercios who was positioned to the Persian king artaxerxes ii the original works of Tassie us are now lost but they are preserved in other later authors such as Diodorus of Sicily he describes how a Babylonian king presumably Nebuchadnezzar built the gardens for a homesick Persian concubine to remind her of the mountains on sometimes lush vegetation of her homeland the gardens were terraced rising to a considerable height and there was apparently an ingenious system of irrigation in which water was raised from the river euphrates to the top of the gardens and then cascaded down the terraces there's been much speculation about how this system worked and the general consensus is that the water was raised by means of an Archimedes screw unfortunately it's quite unclear where about the Hanging Gardens were at Babylon and there is now no trace of them however they must have been very impressive because they were regarded by later Greek authors as one of the seven wonders of the world together with the Great Pyramid at Giza the statue of zeus at olympia the temple of artemis at ephesus the mausoleum of Halicarnassus the colossus of rhodes and the lighthouse at Alexandria we come now to the real Babylon and is really rediscovery in modern times the first person to explore the ruins in a scientific manner was Claudius James Roach who was the East India Company's resident in Baghdad he visited the site in 1811 and 1818 and was able to make a quite accurate plan of the ruins rich was a brilliant orientalist who died from cholera in Shiraz in Iran when he was just 34 years old his extensive collection of manuscripts antiquities and coins was purchased by the British Museum and it was the British Museum which made itself responsible for much of the excavation at Babylon during the 19th century the work of hormuz rasam seen here between 1879 and 1882 was a glorified hunt for tablets but Rossum did as we shall see find some very important pieces Grasim had originally been henry lay odds assistant and new mood and ninive II he was a native of Mosul in northern Iraq and was born into a Christian family there well most of what we know about Babylon derives from the work of the German archaeologist Robert Cordova who worked at the site all the year round braving sauvat summer temperatures of more than 50 degrees centigrade for 18 years from 1899 until 1917 he'd previously worked in Sicily and during his time in Babylon the Germans lived in an expedition house on the site shown here in a watercolor by another brilliant German archaeologist water Andre who went on to dig up a Shah and the work was finally only brought to a halt by the First World War before that cold away had traced the lines of the walls and the position of the gates and showed that there was an inner town and an outer town and he excavated a number of temples dedicated to deities including Ishtar nin Maha Nabu he excavated the so-called Summer Palace and the southern Palace of Nebuchadnezzar which is what you can see now on the screen after a certain amount of restoration in the 1990s this is a glazed brick panel from the throne room of Nebuchadnezzar's palace now in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin showing Lions at the bottom palm trees in the middle and lotus flower designs around the edge but colder Bay's main achievement was the excavation of ishtar gate at the beginning of the processional way seen here in this reconstruction painting the gate had mostly collapsed in ancient times so what cold away actually found in the upper levels were thousands of fragments of glazed brick these were taken to Berlin and painstakingly put together so that the Ishtar Gate could be reconstructed in the Pergamon museum this is a view as it appears now in the Museum of Berlin and all the figures shown in the glazed bricks on this gate there are bulls and lions as well as dragon or more shushu figures of which I'll show you a picture later the gate also went below the ancient ground level to a great depth similarly decorated with bull lion and dragon figures but here the figures were made of plain molded bricks that were unclosed well what do we know of the early history of Babylon the first certain mention of the city is in the reign of the Akkadian King shark illusory in about 2300 BC but from an archaeological point of view nothing is known of Babylon in time until the time of the neo-babylonian kings in the sixth century BC this is because the water table at Babylon is very high owing to the proximity of the river Euphrates and it's proved impossible to excavate the early levels at the site because they are in effect under water but we know that in the 1500 years before the neo-babylonian period Babylon was a preeminent center of great importance so if it was possible to excavate the early levels undoubtedly on important things would be found for example Babylon was the capital or city of king Hammurabi who reigned from 1792 to 1750 BC famed for his law code this famous stealer now in the Louvre museum in Paris was actually found at Sousa in Iran where it was taken in antiquity from a Center in Babylonia possibly even from Babylon itself and this dealer lists about 250 laws mostly following the eye for an eye tooth for a tooth pattern another object of similar date that is around 1750 BC is a large terracotta plot known as the queen of the night and this shows a naked goddess with wings and talons for feet who is flanked by owls who's a goddess of the underworld perhaps Ishtar or more likely Ereshkigal and although unproven ansed this is the sort of thing that would have been familiar to inhabitants of Babylon well we fast forward now to the neo-babylonian period which may be reckoned to start in 612 BC in that year a Babylonian army joined joined forces with the Medes of Iran to attack and destroy the powerful state of Assyria in the north part of Mesopotamia the main Assyrian cities are like Nimrod an enemy were sacked and burnt and the Babylonians took over the western part of the Assyrian Empire while the Medes took over the eastern part this meant that the Babylonians were now not only in charge of southern Mesopotamia but also in theory of the whole of the ancient Near East extending to the Mediterranean coast this brought them into contact with ancient Israel as we have seen and there was also a lengthy siege of Tyre in Phoenicia now in Lebanon Nebuchadnezzar even waged war against faraway Egypt apart from his military activities Nebuchadnezzar also embarked on a massive building program at Babylon which we briefed and briefly described unfortunately for the Babylonians the successes of Nebuchadnezzar entirely lacked his dynamism and vision and the neo-babylonian dynasty held held power for less than a hundred years the last of the neo-babylonian Kings nabonidus was not of the same caliber as Nebuchadnezzar he seems to have a lien ated the Babylonians by elevating the moon God's into a higher position the national god of babylon Marduk and he spent a long part of his reign in Tamar in Arabia and his incompetence may have been an element in the disaster that was about to overtake the Babylonians but there were probably other economic political and social factors at play however that may be the Achaemenid King Cyrus the Great who had recently proclaimed himself king over the United Medes and Persians entered Babylon apparently without a struggle in 539 BC and captured not just a city but effectively the neo-babylonian empire and his conquest of Babylon is described in a document known as the Cyrus cylinder now in the British Museum that sometimes called the first bill of human rights because it Austin's ibly differs from contemporary documents in first in two ways first it says that the statues of gods belonging to defeated peoples that had been brought to babylon could be returned to the temples from which they'd been seized which is taken to mean that cyrus was allowing freedom of religious expression secondly the document says that deported peoples could return to their homelands although the Jews are not mentioned by name it is thought to be at this time that the deportees returned to Babel to Jerusalem and started work on building the second temple this would explain why cyrus is so well regarded in the bible in the books of Isaiah and Ezekiel a recent discovery in the British Museum of to fragments of cuneiform tablet with parts of the same texts as the cyrus cylinder shows that the document was not unique and may have been widely promulgated this is one fragment on the on the left and this is the front and back of the second fragment the tablet fragments with the cyrus cylinder were actually exhibited in the National Museum in Tehran between September 2010 and April 2011 in an effort to maintain dialogue with Iranian colleagues on a cultural level other objects from Babylon dating from the Persian period are fragments of a stealer of Darius the great and glazed brick from his palace then in due course Babylon was captured by Alexander in 331 BC he built a theater in Babylon and shortly afterwards died there after the Hellenistic period Babylon continued to be occupied in two paths the end times but thereafter occupation effectively ceased thus fulfilling the biblical prophecies as we've seen in the course of the German excavation was directed by cold away much was discovered about the topography of ancient Babylon however the remains of mud brick buildings are notoriously difficult to preserve and once they're exposed to the elements they rapidly deteriorate the disintegrating mud brick buildings plus the trenches and spoil tips that are a feature of all major excavations combined to present a site that was difficult to interpret and visually unappealing and this is reflected in these early views of the ruins there were it is true some redeeming features the foundations of the ishtar gate with anglaise molded bricks were still visible and the Lion of Babylon was a well-known and popular attraction to visitors to the site the Hanging Gardens of Babylon continued to figure largely in the public imagination all of these features combined with the fame and notoriety of ancient Babylon were enough to ensure that after the state of iraq came into existence in 1920 Babylon became one of the iconic symbols of the new state thus the line of Mabul on they were shown on various iraqi stamps from 1941 onwards in an effort to improve the quality of the visitor experience of babylon in the 1960s this half-size replica of the above-ground part of the Ishtar Gate was built but in spite of these welcome innovations of the site itself babylon still remained a disappointment for most visitors it wasn't surprising then that saddam hussein attempted to turn babylon into a symbol in keeping with his nationalistic nationalistic ambitions for the republic of Iraq accordingly the archaeological restoration of babylon project started in 1978 and even the iraq-iran war which began in september 1980 was not allowed to interfere with or hold up the plans with the reconstruction which continued unabated can as early as 1982 a set of seven coins was issued to memorizing the restoration project and bearing images of Babylon and these show the Ishtar Gate the Lion of Babylon the steelier Hammurabi and a reconstruction of the Babylonian ziggurat hand-in-hand with the restoration project was a large amount of excavation work undertaken by Iraqi archaeologists and this restoration project was on a vast scale and included the involved the creation of three artificial lakes on the site see some of the here on down there and the formation of three gigantic artificial mounds this is one of the lakes on the site and these are aerial views showing the mounds and the lakes and the reconstructed Palace of Nebuchadnezzar on top of one of the mounds overlooking the site a palace was built for Saddam himself it was sumptuously decorated witness this painted ceiling and also in the course of the restoration project the southern palace of nebuchadnezzar with five large courtyards in about a hundred and fifty a two hundred and fifty rooms was largely rebuilt and the main entrance to the palace was restored to a height of thirty meters and many of the walls rebuilt to a height of about twenty meters and for this reconstruction new bricks were laid on top of bricks surviving from the original scope structure many of the original bricks have been stamped with inscriptions in Babylonian cuneiform of Nebuchadnezzar and Saddam continued this ancient practice by having many of the new bricks stamped with his own inscription in Arabic reading in translation in the area era of Saddam protector of Iraq who rebuilt the royal palace there was further restoration work on other buildings and the line of Babylon was given pride of place in open ground adjacent to the southern Palace well the first phase of this reconstruction project was mostly finished in time for the first Babylon International Festival in 1987 which was a lavish event lasting for a month and in the promotional literature issued by the festival could be she said arm was compared with great figures from Babylonian history like Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar and you can see here a picture of a medal was issued showing the profile his profile portrait overlapping that of Nebuchadnezzar and after that festivals were held nearly every year up until 2002 sometimes accompanied by an archaeological conference and as late as 2001 this 25 dinar banknote was issued showing on the reverse the Ishtar Gate on the Lion of Babylon well clearly much of the rest so-called restoration work undertaken at Babylon during the time of Saddam Hussein went far beyond what is normally acceptable and it's been roundly condemned by conservation groups I think we can say that in the time of Saddam the treatment of Babylon was cavalier to say the least but unfortunately it was not treated with very much greater respect by coalition troops after 2003 to start with there were few problems with just the gift shop being looted and burnt out during the war problems begun on in September 2003 when Babylon became camp alpha for the multinational division central south and you can see on this slide some of the military installations here next to the restored palace of Nebuchadnezzar here are some more views of the military activity at the site so from September onwards the camp escalated rapidly so that at its greatest extent he covered 150 hectares in size and was home to 2,000 troops and this camp was established right in the heart of ancient Babylon as you can see here straddling the north part of the inner city and including many of the famous landmarks of ancient Babylon like the Ishtar Gate and the Lion of Babylon the palace of Nebuchadnezzar and so on this is actually one of the military map showing the extent of the camp well during the summer of 2004 as news spread about the scale of the military activity at Babylon was growing unease amongst the international community an increasing number of complaints on the World Wide Web and foremost amongst those drawing attention to the damage at Babylon was Professor Zainab Bahrani of the University of Columbia here in New York consequently at the end of December 2004 the coalition authorities took the decision to close down the camp and hand control of Babylon back to the Iraqi side and in preparation for this handover polish archaeologists working with the Polish forces who were then stationed in Camp Camp alpha preferred prepared a lengthy document which is a thorough survey describing the condition of the site and the surviving and restored monuments it's an extremely useful piece of work an important source of reference but what the report doesn't do is detail the damage caused between March 2003 and December 2004 consequently I was asked by the then Iraqi Ministry of Culture to attend the handover ceremony in December 2004 and prepare an independent report on damage caused during the military occupation and what you can see here is the people who were assembled there for that for that inspection and I would like to take this opportunity so that on this occasion and every other occasion that I've been in Iraq American troops have been unfailingly helpful and uncooperative well during the course of this inspection we were shown 11 trenches dug by the military often through previously undisturbed archaeological deposits and the longest of these you can see on the left was about a hundred and seventy meters long and it was just beyond the line of barbed wire marking the southern boundary of the camp quite close to the site of the ancient cigarette 8em Ananke and the purpose of the ditch was apparently defensive to present to prevent vehicles from driving right up to the wire and thrown up on the sides of the trench were piles of earth containing at least one pottery vessel bones and fragments of brick with inscriptions of nebuchadnezzar then there were about 14 cuttings areas where topsoil had been removed by a shovel sometimes to a depth of 6 meters and this is one of the largest of those areas the next problem was the so-called fuel farm an area where there had been gigantic tanks of fuel and it was here of course that military vehicles came to refuel and inevitably there was considerable spillage with the result that the fuel will have worked its way down into the ground contaminating the archaeological deposits beneath before the war some of the areas of the site have been flattened in covered with gravel including an area for helicopters land to land but during the excavator the construction of the camp the helipad was greatly enlarged and there was an increase in the amount of flattened area elsewhere to provide basis for the temporary structures needed for the military camp then in many places around the camp but particularly in the vicinity of the gates there were still in December 2004 large numbers of Hesco containers these are large wire mesh cages lined with fabric which are filled with earth they serve the same purpose as sandbags but a much bigger and the earth in many of these Hesco containers is mixed with pot sherds bones and even fragments of inscribed brick showing that the earth came from either undisturbed or redeposited archaeological context another problem related to the driving of heavy military vehicles around the site and in many places wheel marks and signs of surface damage were visible but it's not usually clear how much damage this might have caused to the fragile archaeological deposits beneath but in one instance it was obvious this was in the north part of the famous processional way which you can see on the right where original paving slabs had been broken by military vehicles driven being driven along the street arguably the most serious damage of all though occurred in the Ishtar Gate by December 2004 nine of the dragon figures had been damaged probably by a souvenir hunter trying to remove molded bricks um as as mementos I'd like to say though that the news is not all bad and indeed there are grounds for optimism for example it had been reported that there were more than 100 foxholes or firing positions that had been dug by Iraqi soldiers in the run-up to the coalition advance but during a UNESCO visit in February 2008 I was able to establish with certainty that there were actually only nine of these firing holes at the same time we visited the so called summer palace of Nebuchadnezzar and found the mound to be in good condition with no signs of looting or damage during or after the war another encouraging development is that in recognition of the importance of the site the US State Department has made generous grants to the World Monuments fund to draw up in collaboration with the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and heritage a management and conservation plan for Babylon this is an ambitious project that is being able eed erected by dr. Jeff Allen and I'd like to thank him for very kindly supplying me with a variety of images from which I've selected a few to give you some idea of the range of the work in a very responsible fashion the World Monuments fund has recognized that before remedial work or excavation work can be undertaken the priority at Babylon is to produce a site management plan and as part of this various surveys need to be undertaken this for example is a proposed traffic and circulation plan and this is a plan showing land ownership in and around the site as you might imagine this is a very complicated matter but it's absolutely essential to establish who owns what at Babylon before the work can proceed smoothly another study is of biodiversity and so on when all this is very time-consuming but very essential work particularly if the application to make Babylon a World Heritage Site is to be successful the World Monuments fund has also started to do conservation work on some of the ancient buildings which have been reconstructed in modern times and in nearly all cases there's a lot of evidence of deterioration resulting from neglect and lack of maintenance which some which in some cases goes back even as far as 1980 this is my photograph of the Ishtar temple in 2008 and you can see that this very bad crack in the wall and this is conservation work being undertaken by the World Monuments fund these are very welcome initiatives but the scale of the problem shouldn't be underestimated in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar for example restored in the time of Saddam there's a problem with rising damp that is going to tax the ingenuity of the world's very best civil engineers and you can see on the right hand side how the pavement has buckled because of under underfloor water I want to finish though on a positive note as we've seen the history of Babylon is long and complex and the city has gone through many changes of fortune above all though we must remember that it was regarded by the ancients as one of the seven wonders of world or at least the Hanging Gardens were still today it has the capacity to fascinate and it's one of the most remarkable sites in the ancient world let us hope that it will soon be inscribed on the list of world heritage sites and I have no doubt that in due course it will become one of the most visited sites in the Middle East thank you very much for your attention

Channel: The Met

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Keywords: Met, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Metropolitan Museum, Babylon, Ancient Near Eastern Art

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Length: 53min 0sec (3180 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 15 2012

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For further reading check out the book From under the Dust of Ages. It covers ancient art, religion, and topics of historical mathematical and scientific advancements that the Babylonians achieved.