Chapter XIX: Babylon

The eastern gate of heaven was unbarred; Shamash, the Sun-god of Babylonia, flamed forth and stepped upon the Mount of Sunrise at the edge of the world. As he had poured the light of heaven upon the luxuriant gardens and fertile corn-lands of the Babylonians, so was he pouring it upon the same spot, now an arid and deserted wilderness. We were crossing it on our way to visit Babylon. It was pitch dark when we had left Baghdad in the procession of covered arabas which conveyed pilgrims to Kerbela and merchants to Hillah. We had been roused at 2 a.m., and had threaded our way silently through the sleeping streets by the light of a dim lantern. Huddled human forms lay about in angles and on doorsteps, and at every moment we stumbled over the outstretched limbs of a yellow dog. We crossed the Tigris in one of the round native boats, and landed within a few minutes' walk of the khan from where the arabas started. We had an araba to ourselves: an oblong wooden box on four wheels, with a light canvas top and canvas sides that could be rolled up or let down at pleasure; a narrow wooden plank, with a singularly sharp edge and an uncomfortably hard face, ran down each side, and was called a seat. We were going to sit on it for twelve hours. We were drawn by four mules harnessed abreast. Our driver had knotted the reins and hooked them on to his seat; his hands were rolled inside his cloak, and he sat huddled up on the box in the freezing air of sunrise. The mules galloped ahead at their own discretion; the araba lurched over ruts; sudden jerks shot us against one another, or threw us in the air, from whence we descended with some emphasis in the vacuum between the two sharp edges.

Now the horizon on the left blazed orange and red, and the desert sands were pink. Stunted tufts of grey-green grass tried to assert themselves in the barren soil; mounds, marking the site of ancient villages, occurred at random; walls of sand, indicating the course of old irrigating canals, broke the level plain; they could almost be taken for the work of Nature, for the hand of Time had obliterated the marks of man. Every twenty minutes the arabas came to a sudden stop to give the mules breathing time; there is a general dismounting of the passengers; the plain is suddenly dotted with bending, praying forms, groups of excited talking Arabs, isolated, contemplative, smoking individuals, fussy superior Turkish officers flicking the specks of travel off their smart uniforms; veiled women peep from behind the curtain of a closely packed conveyance; a small Arab child plants himself with outstretched legs in front of us, and sucks his thumb in complete absorption as he gazes upon us like a little wild animal. Then the whole scene dissolves itself into a sudden rush for the carriages, as of so many rabbits bolting into a warren at the sound of an alarm, and off goes the whole train at a gallop; belated loiterers hang perilously on the step of any conveyance they can catch, and try to snatch the lash of the whip with which the driver good-humouredly flicks them. Finally, we approach a collection of mud huts; we dash through them, scattering hens and children, and draw up in a long line opposite a large khan in the centre of the village. This is one of the regular halting places for caravans, and we have a short wait while the mules are being changed. A stall close by is already closely besieged by our fellow-travellers clamouring for tea, which is sold in small glasses after the Persian custom. We buy a little blue dish of thick cream from an Arab girl in a blue smock, and make a sumptuous breakfast off it and dates.

With a fresh set of mules we start off again; the party is more lively. We dash up the sides of an embankment, catch a glimpse of a silted-up canal as we waver for a moment on the top; then a fearful double lurch throws us about as the two front wheels go downwards whilst the two back ones are still going upwards. A short, sharp descent follows, then comes a level stretch; the driver boys shout and race one another, we overtake and are overtaken, we jeer and are jeered at.

And the Sun-god pursues his journey in silence and unconcern across the dome of heaven.

We pass bands of Persian pilgrims on their way to the sacred Tomb of Hosein, son of Ali and grandson of the Prophet. Many of them trudge along on foot, grasping only the stout staff which one's mind associates with pilgrims; these give a true feeling of sackcloth and ashes. Some ride mules and carry a few worldly goods in saddle-bags. There is a Pasha mounted on a fine Arab horse and followed by servants; large pack trunks on mules in his train make one doubt the existence of his hair shirts. The women sit in covered wicker cradles suspended on each side of mules; donkeys bear rude coffins strapped crossways over their backs, for the ambition of the true believer is not only to make the pilgrimage during life, but that after death his bones may rest in peace in the holy ground of Hosein's martyrdom.

At Mushayhib we halt again to get a fresh relay of mules. Here the roads branch and we part company with the rest of the party, who are going to Kerbela. We jerk along over the ridged and rutty ground. I find myself wondering whether cushions in the chariots were amongst the luxuries of wicked Babylon; and if so, whether it was part of the punishment of the fourth generation that we should be deprived of them. We come to a marshy tract with water standing in pools; the driver thrashes the mules vigorously and shouts, the animals plunge forward, and the boy bends his body to and fro with them as they plunge. We go headlong into the marsh and stick; the boy uses his whip unsparingly; the light, energetic members of our party dismount, the fat and heavy ones remain seated; we all shout in anger or encouragement, and by means of these strenuous endeavours are landed on the other side.

On the horizon in front we see a black line; it is formed, we are told, by the rows of palm-trees which border the Euphrates. We are now soberly trotting towards a great mound which, rising abruptly out of the level plain, appears in the distance like a sudden thought of Nature's, tired of the monotony of her own handiwork. But as we approach, its symmetrical sides and flat table-top proclaim it to be the work of man. Our native escort tell us, in subdued tones of awe, how Marut and Harut, the fallen angels, are suspended by their heels in the centre awaiting the Day of Judgment. We leave it at some distance to the right. In front of us stretches a tract of land more desolate and naked even than that through which we have been driving; small heaps are scattered amongst a few larger mounds, and all are enveloped in a network of high-banked canals, now mostly silted up. There are marshy pools here and there, and rough tussocks of coarse grass catch the blown sand.

"And Babylon shall become heaps," said Jeremiah. It was the heaps of Babylon we were looking upon. Babylon, the "glory of nations," was laid out in front of us.

The Sun-god had reached the pinnacle of his height, and covered the spot with the brightness of heaven.

We made a detour round the edge to avoid the embankments and marshy places, and then struck to the right across the uneven ground, at a jolting foot's pace, towards a clump of palms on the banks of the river. The trees partially concealed the one stone house of the district, the home of three German professors who are superintending the work of excavation now going on. A mud wall separated it from a collection of mud huts; here live the natives employed in removing the sand which buries the architectural monuments of ancient times.

We were at the foot of one of the larger mounds; it is called the Kasr by travellers and Mujelibe (the overturned) by the Arabs, and represents the only part of Babylon which is not altogether buried. We climbed up the great square mass composed entirely of the debris of former habitations; the surface was strewn with broken bricks and tiles; in the centre stood the remains of solid blocks of masonry. Looking down into a large ravine at the further end we saw--half-blocked with rubbish--walls, courtyards, doorways, pilasters, and buttresses built of pale yellow-coloured bricks, each bearing the name of Nebuchadnezzar. Here and there architectural ornaments were built in with the walls; bits of bright-coloured enamel and pieces of broken pottery lay about. We wandered amongst the huge ruin, balancing ourselves on the edges of low remaining walls and clambering from one courtyard to another. A jackal darted from under our feet with a shrill bark; he was answered from behind distant walls by innumerable hidden companions. An owl flew out of a dark corner and perched, blinking, a little way off; a great black crow hovered uneasily overhead. The broad walls of Babylon were indeed utterly broken, and her houses were indeed full of doleful creatures. We sat down and listened to the wild beasts crying in her desolate houses; it was indeed "a dwelling-place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing without an inhabitant."

Shamash, the Sun-god, was nearing the western gate of heaven. The gate-bolts of the bright heavens were giving him greeting.

The Euphrates and its wooded banks lay between us and the horizon; above the river-line we saw a row of jet black palms in an orange setting, and below it a row of jet black palms standing on their heads in the rippled golden water. Shamash has reached the summit of the Mount of Sunset; he slowly descends; the orange changes to red, the general conflagration becomes streaked and barred; the waters of the river grow black, almost as black as the reflected palms, the streaks slowly die away. Shamash has entered into the Kirib Shame, the "innermost part of heaven, that mysterious realm beyond the heavenly ocean, where the great gods dwell apart from mankind."

"O Shamash, thou art the judge of the world,
Thou directest the decisions thereof...."

Thus prayed the dwellers of the city four thousand years ago. And with the same light with which you lit the pomp and splendour of the works of their time, you light the decay and ruin and hideous desolation of the present.

"Verily there is a God which judgeth the earth," say we, four thousand years later.

And as you smiled on those who worshipped you as the supreme God and Creator of all things, so you smile on us who look upon you, bound and fixed, with no will of your own, following the inevitable laws of Nature. Will you, four thousand years hence, light with the same light sojourners in this land, and will they wonder at our conception of your nature and function, as we wonder at the faith that your ancient worshippers had in you? Or will you, before them, have run your allotted course and consumed the whole world, whether in the fiery furnace of your wrath or in the uncontrolled madness of your broken bonds?

The next morning we visited Babel, the mound we had passed the day before. We walked for more than a mile through the palm-groves by the river. Under the shade of the trees were numerous huts made of mud, covered and enclosed with piles of fine brushwood. There were various signs of human occupations. Two cows were toiling peacefully up and down an entrenchment, drawing water in skins over a rough windlass; the skins emptied themselves into a channel, and the water wandered about in vaguely directed irrigation. On the bank beside them lolled an Arab with a long pole, who prodded the sleepy beasts in the moments when he was more awake than they were. A large mass of brushwood was moving in front of us; it looked like one of the huts endowed with a pair of very thin brown legs. As we overtook it the mass half-turned towards us, and a woman's form, doubled in two, looked small in the middle of it.

At the doors of the enclosures naked children sprawled about, all with gleaming white teeth and closely shaven heads, save for the one lock of hair, with which they are to be pulled up to heaven; women with tattooed faces and dangling ornaments pounded barley in primitive stone mortars, and baked thin cakes of bread on flat stones.

Leaving the river-side we struck out to the right for half a mile across the bare, parched ground, where tufts of rough grass were trying to get a footing in the white, barren soil. We climbed up the mound, passing bands of workmen tunnelling in the sides and removing the bricks which lay about in tumbled heaps or in bits of standing walls.

From the top of Babel we could look right over the tract of land once enclosed by the walls of Babylon. The descriptions of Herodotus enable the traveller to call up some sort of idea of the scene in his time. We learn from him that the city was built in the form of a square, surrounded by walls of enormous strength; each side of the square was fourteen miles long, each side had twenty-five gates of solid brass and was defended by square towers built above the wall; twenty-five streets went straight across the city each way from gate to gate. The city was thus cut into squares. The houses, three or four stories high, faced the street and were built at a little distance apart from each other; between them were gardens and plantations. A branch of the river ran through the city; its banks were one long quay. The larger buildings stood in the centre of a square, each apparently fortified and surrounded by walls of its own. It is of these smaller walls only that any trace can be detected. From the foot of Babel, where we stood, remains of earthen ramparts could be traced for two or three miles southwards; they then turned at right angles towards the river and extended as far as its eastern bank. The mounds they enclosed were presumably the site of the more important buildings. Babel itself is supposed to represent the temple of Belus. The Mujelibe, or Kasr, lying to the south of us, is identified with the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar and the hanging gardens; further south still was a lesser mound, Amram. We knew that Birs Nimroud, the great ruin which is looked upon as the Tower of Babel, lay beyond this again, although we could not see it from where we stood.

The whole gleamed white in the strong sunshine. On our right the Euphrates rolled along, as unconcerned in his course as the Sun-god overhead. We could trace the direction of the river southwards to the horizon, marked by the palms along its banks. They made a thin, dark line across a wide, light plain--an alluvial tract which is only waiting to yield its hidden gifts on the day when Man joins hands with Nature and distributes the waters of the river. But not so the actual soil of Babylon; that soil, consisting as it does of building dust and debris, is of a nature which destroys vegetation. "The Lord of Hosts hath swept it with the besom of destruction," and it is doomed perpetually to be a "dry land, a wilderness, a land wherein no man dwelleth."

As we looked upon the great plain which stretched away all round until it carried the eye on into the sky above, we could almost believe with the ancients that the edge of the earth joined the dome of heaven and that both were supported by the waters of Apsn--the deep.

A great wave of silence rolled out of the desert and broke over us. It seemed natural to be immersed in silence; could anything else be expected from a land which had never been alive with the stir of humanity even in far-off ages, of which one might now feel the hush while listening for the echo? The desert had always been silent and would be silent for ever more--a dead, unconscious silence, with no significance save of absence of life. But when we looked at the site of Babylon stretched just beneath us, we became vividly conscious of a real, living silence; we were listening to the "hum of mighty workings"; voices of souls long since dead, the dust of whose bodies lay at our feet, were "wakening the slumbering ages." Had not Nebuchadnezzar entered into the House of the Dead in the great cavern Araltu, the Land of No Return? The dead had been stirred up, even the chief ones of earth, to greet him as he entered hell: "Art thou also become weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee, ..." and they looked at him narrowly, saying, "Is this the man that made the earth to tremble?"

And yet still for us "the wind uttered" and "the spirit heard" his vainglorious cry: "Is not this the great Babylon that I have built for the house of the kingdom by the might of my power and for the honour of my majesty?"

The silent answer to it lay at our feet. And, listening, we heard the solemn warnings of Daniel, the sorrowful forebodings of Jeremiah, and, above all, the ironical voice of Isaiah:--

"Let them stand up and save thee,
Mappers of heavens, Planet observers, Tellers of new moons,
From what must befall thee."

As we listened again we heard the noise "like as of a great people; a tumultuous noise of the kingdoms of nations gathered together....

"A sound of battle is in the land and of great destruction....

"A sound of a cry cometh from Babylon and great destruction from the land of the Chaldeans....

"One post ran to meet another post, and one messenger to meet another to shew the king of Babylon that his city is taken."

Then we heard a sound of much feasting and revelling; we heard a solemn hush when there came forth fingers of a man's hand and wrote upon the wall. Even as we listened to the hush it seemed to grow into the great hush of ages, and we remembered that we stood alone in the living silence of these great dead, surrounded by the dead silence of an uninhabited land.

Overhead the Sun-god silently vaunted his eternal existence; at our feet the Euphrates rolled fresh waters of oblivion from an eternal source to an eternal sea.