New Writing on Wall : Can Babylon Relive Its Glory Days?

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote . . . upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace. . . . And this is the writing that was written. . . . God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it. . . . Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.

From the Book of Daniel, Chapter 5

There is still handwriting on the wall of Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. Not as apocalyptic as the message that the Bible says Daniel translated for King Belshazzar, it simply proclaims to all who pass through the portals of these time-worn ruins that “Pete was here.”

Today, little remains of the grandeur that was ancient Babylon, the city of Hammurabi and Nebuchadnezzar, the site of the Hanging Gardens and the Tower of Babel and, of course, the place where the famous handwriting on the wall spoiled Belshazzar’s dinner party.

Nowadays graffiti deface what is left of the walls, where Pete and countless other tourists from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas have inscribed their inane remarks.

“I love you,” and underneath it, “I love you too,” signed “V.C.--London,” one typical inscription states.

Ancient, Modern Side by Side

In a way, it is perversely fitting. In the reconstructed Temple of Emach, graffiti in a veritable Babel of languages clutter the restored white-washed walls. Outside, among the giant mounds and gentle hillocks crisscrossed by crumbling brickwork, tiny pieces of ancient pots lie on the ground next to empty soda cans, the litter of one age mingling with that of another.

The present intrudes upon Babylon in other ways too. At the entrance to the ruins, next to a half-size model of the great Ishtar Gate, stands a 30-foot-high portrait of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, shown here as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar protecting Babylon from its past and present enemies, the Persians of neighboring Iran.

At a time when Iraq is hard pressed to continue paying for the costs of its six-year-old war with Iran, Hussein has ordered that no expense be spared to restore ancient Babylon to its former glory in time for an international music festival that is scheduled to be held here in September.

Started in 1978

The restoration project, begun in 1978 before the start of the Iran-Iraq War, was undertaken to save the remnants of the city from the destructive effects of local salt deposits, a high water table and the penchant of local villagers for quarrying the ancient but still-fine bricks for use in their own dwellings.

However, Babylon has assumed additional importance for the government since the war broke out in September, 1980. Keen on establishing a link between its current conflict with the Persians and the legendary battles of the past, the Iraqi government has speeded up the reconstruction in order to make Babylon a symbol of national pride.

In the haste, however, some Western critics suggest that Babylon is not so much being restored to its former glory as it is being turned into a three-dimensional propaganda statement.

“What they are doing is pretty tacky,” a Western diplomat in Baghdad said. “They are putting up all this cheap new brickwork on top of the old walls, and it looks quite awful.”

Iraqi officials bridle at criticism like this and say that when the reconstruction is finished, the new Babylon will look just like the old one, or at least as nearly like it as plans based on archeological digs and other information can make it.

As for doing harm to Babylon, they note dryly that European archeologists who worked the site before World War I made off with the priceless treasures that they found.

The beautifully colored glazed panels of real and mythological beasts that adorned Nebuchadnezzar’s palace and other important structures were taken away by Germans and are now in East Berlin. The French, in 1901, discovered the massive black stones, or stelae, on which Hammurabi inscribed his famous code of law in the 18th Century BC. They now repose in the Louvre.

Many Things Stolen

“Many, many things have been stolen from Babylon,” said Munir Bashir, an internationally known musician who is supervising the organization of the Babylon Music Festival.

“We have asked for these things back, but it is impossible,” he added regretfully.

Bashir, who plays the lute and the ud, a traditional Arabian stringed instrument similar to the lute, has ambitious plans for the music festival to be held in the restored amphitheater and other made-over parts of the 2,000-year-old ruins from Sept. 22 to Oct. 22.

“We will have musicians from all over the world, from Europe, Asia, Africa and Arabia. From America we will have a famous movie star--I cannot say which one yet--and we have asked for Madonna,” he said.

Why Madonna?

“Because the Iraqi young people love Madonna. My son is 17, and every day at home I am forced to listen to Madonna,” Bashir said with a grimace suggesting that his own tastes tend more towards Mozart.

Madonna in Their Hearts

“Madonna lives here with the Iraqi people,” he added, pointing to his heart. “I hope Madonna will know this fact and will come.”

U.S. officials, hoping that a still-active cultural exchange program with Iraq can keep alive relations that fell into something of a political coma after the disclosures of U.S. arms sales to Iran, are trying to recruit American talent for the festival.

However, Western diplomats express concern that the Iraqis may be in for a disappointment when it comes to getting big-name U.S. talent.

“The Iraqis want this to be a great festival, like Baalbek in the old days,” one diplomat said. “But with the war on, a lot of people are going to be afraid to come.”

Bashir dismisses these fears as unfounded, noting that Babylon, 55 miles south of Baghdad on the Euphrates River, is well away from any fighting and has never been bombed. “Babylon is completely safe,” he said.

‘Capital of Civilization’

Also, “this is not just an Iraqi festival,” he added, warming to his favorite subject. “It is a festival for the whole world, because Babylon was the capital of civilization once and has given the world so much. People from all over want to come to Babylon. All the time we have requests.”

Talent already signed up for the festival includes ballet troupes from the Soviet Union and France, opera from Italy, folk dancers from Greece, Turkey, Poland and Yugoslavia, flamenco artists from Spain and Bedouin dancers from Saudi Arabia.

“The movie stars who are our guests will each recite the laws of Hammurabi in their own languages,” Bashir said. “Everything will be like it was in ancient Babylon,” he added. “People will be given Babylonian costumes to wear and newly minted Babylonian money to spend.”

To Use Ancient Recipes

Even the food to be served will be based on 2,000-year-old recipes, he said.

The Babylon that teams of Sudanese construction workers are rebuilding on the palm-fringed banks of the Euphrates is the Babylon of Nebuchadnezzar, who reigned from 605 to 562 BC. The much older city of Hammurabi’s time, 1792 to 1750 BC, is mostly lost beneath the water table.

The city rising somewhat hurriedly from the ruins in time for the festival is also the one that got such bad reviews in the Bible as the “mother of harlots and of earth’s abominations,” a reputation that Bashir says is unfair.

“There is good and bad everywhere. So what if they did some bad things back then? What we want to do is to take the good things, the art, the culture and the civilization that Babylon gave to the world, and show them off to people,” he said.

And although he does not think of it in quite these terms, what Bashir really wants to do is to prove that the Bible was wrong. For in bringing together musicians from around the world to perform here, Bashir is attempting to grant Babylon a pardon from the biblical sentence imposed upon it in the Book of Revelations, when a “mighty” angel cast a stone into the sea and said:

So shall Babylon the great city be

thrown down with violence,

and shall be found no more:

and the sound of harpers and minstrels,

of flute players and trumpeters,

shall be heard in thee no more.