Iraqis Awake Babylon From Its 2,000-Year Nap

Eager to reclaim the glories of its ancient past, Iraq is translating its most fabled archeological site into one of its biggest tourist attractions.

Babylon--”that great city that was clothed in fine linen and purple”--has been brought back to life after a 2,000 year nap through an ambitious $25 million development program. The work has produced feelings of pride in Iraq and criticism from some archeologists, who fear that commercialism may diminish its value to scholars.

A leading city in Mesopotamia, the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers where Western civilization was born, Babylon was briefly the capital of one of the most powerful empires in the ancient world. Even today it is a symbol both of lavish splendor and moral decadence.

Although the site of Babylon, an hour’s drive south of the Iraqi capital of Baghdad, has been known locally through history, no serious excavations were undertaken until a German expedition began digging in the late 1800s, leaving behind the exposed ruins of several palaces and temples.

In 1979 Iraq launched its own project to restore Babylon to a more visible grandeur.

The centerpiece of the reconstruction effort is the massive southern palace of Nebuchadnezzar II, Babylon’s most powerful king, who conquered Jerusalem and carried the Jews into their second captivity.

Built around five huge courtyards, the palace walls have been reconstructed to a height of between 24 and 42 feet with new bricks, many bearing the inscription “restored in the era of Saddam Hussein,” Iraq’s current president.

The reconstruction plan also calls for hotels, restaurants and other tourist facilities designed to make Babylon one of the biggest attractions in the region.

The government has offered a $1.5 million prize to anyone who can match the technology used to elevate Euphrates water to Babylon’s legendary hanging gardens, cited by the Greek historian Herodotus as one of the seven wonders of the world.

No remains of the gardens have been found, but some Babylon experts believe they may have been constructed over one wing of the southern palace.

The ambitious development scheme has concerned some archeologists, who worry about the possible crush of tourists and prefer to let imagination based on unreconstructed ruins--rather than possibly faulty designs--be the guide to what Nebuchadnezzar’s Babylon may have looked like.

“Once you turn a site like this into a major tourist attraction, it ceases to be an archeological site,” said a Western archeologist who regularly excavates in Iraq.

Iraqi officials in charge of the project insist that Babylon needs to be comprehensible to the nonspecialist for whom piles of ancient rubble would mean little.

“Before, all there was was dust and palm trees: Everyone was disappointed when they saw Babylon,” Mouayad Said, director of Iraq’s Department of Antiquities, said of the improvements made at the site.

“What we did was completely scientific work,” added Said, who said only “reasonable” designs were used for the reconstruction, new materials were kept visibly distinct from the old, and roofs, plaster, trim and windows were left out to maintain the integrity of the work.

“We are scientists, not builders,” he said.

Babylon first came into prominence nearly 4,000 years ago under a dynasty that included Hammurabi the law-giver, who made it the capital of a kingdom comprising all of southern Mesopotamia. The famous obelisk bearing Hammurabi’s code of laws was found in Iran and now sits in the Louvre in Paris.

The ruins of “old” Babylon are largely inaccessible because of high levels of groundwater. The Babylon visible to tourists is largely the work of neo-Babylonian monarchs including Nebuchadnezzar, who during his 43-year reign (605-562 BC) covered over many existing buildings to create his grand city.

“What strikes you is the gigantic scale of Nebuchadnezzar’s undertaking,” said the Western archeologist. The city at its zenith had a population of a million and covered an area of nearly eight square miles. It straddled the Euphrates and was surrounded by massive defensive walls.

Before the modern excavations were begun, what was known of ancient Babylon was gleaned from such classical writers as Herodotus, who may or may not have visited the city.

Since the digging began, fragments of hundreds of clay cuneiform tablets have been unearthed, many written by Babylonian priests and court historians. They have given a surprisingly complete picture of the layout of the Mesopotamian capital: the location of major buildings, the course of the Euphrates (which has since shifted several hundred yards west), the site of bridges, canals and temples.

In this teeming metropolis, according to the biblical account, one Hebrew captive, Daniel, was elevated to political prominence and later thrown to the lions, while three others, Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-nego were cast into the fiery furnace for refusing to worship the king’s idol.

After making Babylon his own capital 300 years later, Alexander the Great died in Nebuchadnezzar’s southern palace.

The center of the empire, Babylon in its brief heyday, which lasted until it was conquered by the Persians under Cyrus in 539 BC, was also a place where science and philosophy, mathematics and astronomy flourished.

“Babylon deserves more than the curses it has received,” said Said. “It gathered all the experience of the ancient world.”

In addition to the southern palace, the reconstruction includes a half-size replica of the great Ishtar Gate through which passed Babylon’s main ceremonial thoroughfare, Procession Way, also visible today.

Although you see unpainted bulls and dragons on remnants of the original gate, the brilliant blue enameled bricks that adorned it were carted off to Berlin’s Pergamum Museum at the time of the German excavation.

Nearby, in a shallow pool of water, lie the foundation stones of a 300-foot tower that was constructed in the 6th century BC, on what archeologists say could be the site of the legendary Tower of Babel referred to in Genesis.

The visitor can see a model based on the ground plan recovered at the site, plus dozens of artists’ conceptions of the tower “whose top may reach unto heaven,” in a small museum adjacent to the southern palace.