Book: A Dweller in Mesopotamia

D >> Donald Maxwell >> A Dweller in Mesopotamia




When the Turks had fled from Kurna and we were chasing them up the river
with an amazing medley of craft, like a nightmare of Henley regatta
suddenly mobilized, the _Shushan_ was in the forefront of the battle.
Led by the sloops _Espiegle_, _Clio_, and _Odin_, the Stunt Armada came
to Ezra's Tomb at twilight. The river was high and the land in between
the great bends was a maze of rushes and lagoons. Hospital hulks like
Noah's arks, little steamers, and loaded mahailas jostled each other in
their endeavours to get up against the strong stream. The hulks and the
barges were dropped at the bend shown in the sketch, facing page 46, and
the _Odin_ anchored. We had captured already some Turkish barges, and
prisoners had to be collected.

The rest pushed on. Across the bend, some two or three miles away, the
Turkish gunboat _Marmaris_ was putting on every ounce of fuel she had,
and a mass of mahailas and tugs were doing their best to escape the
Nemesis that awaited them. Then the sloops opened fire, and a desultory
cannonade was kept up as it grew darker and darker. At last it was too
dark to get any sort of aim, and firing ceased. The _Marmaris_ had been
set alight by her crew, but we captured the whole of the enemy's
flotilla.

[Illustration: EZRA'S TOMB]

Ezra's Tomb is a splendid spot to look at. Mosquitoes at times makes it
far from pleasant to live in. The blue-tiled dome surrounded by
palms, one of which is bending down in a manner strange to such a
straight-growing tree, is an oasis in a vast wilderness of nothing in
particular.

The Euphrates from a scenic point of view might be described as more
wooded than the Tigris. There are some delightful glimpses of waterside
verdure and rush-covered shores. To the archaeologist and the historian
Mugheir is intensely interesting, for the great mound discloses the site
of the ancient Ur--Ur of the Chaldees--from which Abraham set out
towards Canaan.

Up till now, upon a map of the world in Abraham's time, the good little
_Shushan_ would still be at sea. She would be approaching the coast at
the mouth of the river Euphrates, the Tigris flowing-out some fifty
miles further east. Dockyards and busy workshops would proclaim the
vicinity of this capital, the greatest of all the cities of Chaldea.

Since these prosperous days the sea has receded about 150 miles, and
left Ur a nondescript heap to be disputed over by professors.

At length, when we had said good-bye to the _Shushan_ and taken to a
motor-boat, we arrived at Hillah, bent on finding the house of the
irrigation officer. We landed on the wrong side of the river and rashly
let the boat go back. Brown maintains now that this was my idea, but as
a matter of fact it was one of his attempts at a picturesque
approach--for my benefit. Brown has a vivid imagination, and sees so
clearly in his mind how a place _ought_ to be that he really believes
it is so. In this case he pictured us approaching Hillah and looking
down upon miles and miles of fruitful gardens intersected with little
waterways--a sort of landscape-garden Venice. This view could only be
obtained from a high cliff, and as there was no cliff in lower
Mesopotamia, except in Brown's imagination, it was natural that he would
be disappointed.

A sudden white fog, moreover, took away any chance of a view of any
kind, and we were soon hopelessly lost. Some soldiers we met on the way
told us to keep straight on and then turn to the left by some palm
trees. As we soon encountered some palm trees every few yards we
wondered whether they intended to be humorous. I don't think they did,
however. The optimism of you-can't-possibly-miss-it type is too general.
The man who says "turn down by some trees" knows the place well, and can
see certain trees in his mind's eye. He will turn when he sees the right
trees, but you will probably get lost.

Needless to say, everything went wrong with our scheme of approaching
the irrigation works from a picturesque angle. The dense fog thickened
and shrouded the neighbourhood of the river in impenetrable mystery. We
kept turning down by palm trees as directed, but to no purpose. We
struck the river bank again after much wandering and kept to it, hoping
the mist would clear. A man in a goufa appeared from nowhere and floated
away out of sight into nowhere like a ghostly visitant from another
world. The sun began to show through the fog and blue sky appeared
overhead. Soon the steaming vapours dispersed, showing a view of
buildings among palm trees and a bridge of boats.

[Illustration: Hillah.]

Here again we were held up while countless mahailas passed through, but
we succeeded in getting over at last and eventually found the house of
the Wise Men, the headquarters of the irrigation officers.

Had we been ambassadors on a diplomatic visit to Hillah, we could not
have been more hospitably entertained or given greater facilities for
getting about in a most fascinating region of the world for any one who
felt the glamour of history in this once highly civilized country.

Great buildings like Ctesiphon near Baghdad or traces of the vast
irrigation works of the past are full of interest, but for romance and
mystery there is no piece of the world more fraught with meaning than
this site of the city of Nebuchadnezzar, nearly 200 square miles in
extent, and now, but for the comparatively small tract of irrigated
land, a desert.

"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of
devils."

[Illustration]




V

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON

[Illustration: Ctesiphon.]

[Illustration]




BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON

The irrigation officers at Hillah were ideal hosts, not only from the
commonly accepted standpoint, but from that of an artist. They let me
roam about and sketch what _I_ wanted, not what _they_ wanted. They gave
me every means of transport, and such suggestions as they made as to
possible subjects were excellent and offered with such tact that there
was no difficulty in abstaining from sketching or going on with
something else.

How often does the unfortunate painter suffer from the well-meaning
host, who with an admiration for his calling, which is both extremely
flattering and tremendously inconvenient, tries to do him
well--especially if he dabbles a little in water-colour painting
himself. An organized attack on all the real or supposed picturesque
bits in the neighbourhood is planned and the members of his family outdo
each other in praiseworthy endeavours to help on the great cause of Art.
The campaign is prefaced by a violent discussion at G.H.Q. as to the
best landscape within easy reach, and Millie, who has had lessons in
pastelles, prevails over Mollie, who merely does pen painting. The
wretched painter is then hauled triumphantly into a car surrounded by
the artistic, who regard him with almost heathen veneration and feel
thrilled by the fact that they, too, observe that the sky is blue and
the trees are green. Arriving at the chosen scene and viewing it from
the spot "from which they always take it," the unfortunate artist is
stood or seated down, book in hand, complete with paintbox and water,
and expected to begin. _He_ does not have any voice in the choosing of
the view. It is high noon. The sun is right in front of him and
everything is so hard that even Turner could make nothing of it. The
worshippers at the shrine of art stand round in awed anticipation,
waiting for the masterpiece.

It is useless for him to protest that the conditions are impossible.
"After such kindness that would be a dismal thing to do." So he
contrives to make some sort of a drawing which dims the lustre of his
reputation in their eyes for many years to come.

[Illustration: ON THE EUPHRATES, EARLY MORNING]

The major took us in his car to various points along the river and
explained the means employed in irrigation. On the Euphrates there are
two methods used for local irrigation apart from the system of canals
flowing from the river. One is the water-wheel, a curious contrivance
built out on stone piers. It consists of a huge paddle-wheel with
buckets like those of a dredger, that fills a trough that runs down into
the fields.

The other is a water-raising device that is worked by bullocks. A large
leather skin is hauled up from the river by a rope over a wheel. This
rope is harnessed to a bullock which walks backwards and forwards
hauling up the water-skin and letting it down again. When the full skin
reaches the top it hits against a bar and pours itself out into a
trough. These two systems, as can be easily imagined, are good only for
the land in the immediate vicinity of the river bank, as the supply of
water is necessarily not large. Above Hit the frequency of the
water-wheels with their stone piers causes so much obstruction that
navigation for any large boats is impossible. In one place there are
seven wheels abreast.

At last we arrived at an old bridge crossing one of the ancient canals,
which branched off from the river in a westerly direction. I have
sketched it on page 57. It is extremely interesting as an
example of the resuscitation of the old waterways of Babylonia. The
banks of this channel here take almost a mountainous character for so
flat a country. This piling up of mounds has been caused by clearing
the silt from the entrance to the intake of the canal.

From the vantage point of this high ground we could see a goodly
prospect, and on the one side the river, here called the Hindeyeh canal,
with its green shore and on the other a belt of date palms and beyond
the illimitable desert. Some five or six miles away there appeared a
mound surmounted by a tower, a curious object alone in the great expanse
of flat land.

"What is that thing," I asked, "that looks like a ruined castle on the
Rhine?"

"The Tower of Babel," replied the major, "or rather that is its popular
name. It is Birs Nimrud on the map." Brown wanted to start straight away
and "discover" it, but we persuaded him to assent to lunch first. The
major was too busy for such an escapade, but he suggested lending us a
Ford car which would do anything with the desert and which we could not
break, so we returned to Hillah.

After lunch we set out on our expedition, Brown very silent and full, no
doubt, of romantic projects, and arrived back again at the bridge where
I made my sketch. It appears that the route was not direct as far as the
car was concerned, owing to the crossing of some water channels, but
that on foot we should be able to do it. I knew Brown was concocting
something, and he soon let out what it was. His scheme was to send the
car round to meet us at the Tower of Babel and we would walk. I think he
rather liked the idea of saying "Tower of Babel" to the driver instead
of "home." I consented, rather against my better judgment, for I fear
Brown's enthusiasm for dramatic settings. His pathetic belief that my
next picture for the R.A. would be entitled "The Tower of Silence," and
that I should achieve a masterpiece in depicting the blood-red ruin at
sunset across the desert was somewhat disarming. He forgot in his
enthusiasm that if the sun _did_ set when we were in the required
position we should be benighted on the plain without food or shelter,
and not at all in the mood for painting pictures.

[Illustration: Ancient irrigation channel near Hillah.]

Practical difficulties still existed, inasmuch as we were for a long
time unable to explain to the native driver that he was to meet us at
Birs Nimrud, and feared, if we were not very explicit, he would return
to Hillah and we might never be heard of again. Brown's pantomimic
attempts at direction were obscure even to me, and I am sure the driver
thought he had gone out of his mind. They consisted in his stooping down
with his hand on the ground, then rising slowly, turning round and
round, his hand describing a spiral curve, till it shot up straight over
his head. Then he pointed to the car. There was evidently some implied
connection between the spiral curve and the car. How long this would
have gone on I do not know had I not tried the words "Birs Nimrud." The
driver understood this and I think we made it clear that whatever
happened he was to be at Birs Nimrud and wait for us. So we started off
on foot.

[Illustration: BABYLON: THE EXCAVATIONS AT EL KASR]

[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 1).]

When we were well under way, I asked Brown, who is a freemason, if he
was endeavouring to reach the understanding of the native by means of
some mystic Eastern ritual unknown to me. He was quite scornful of my
want of intelligence and explained that his movements were intended to
describe the tower that had been built from earth to reach up into
heaven. It was perfectly clear, he maintained, that if he first
indicated the Tower of Babel and then the Ford car, the driver would
see, had he been reasonably intelligent, that he was to take the car to
the tower.

The journey over the plain towards the mound and tower was not so
eventful as we had expected it to be. Beyond jumping many small
watercourses or negotiating muddy patches left by the recent rain, we
found no difficulty in keeping a straight course. A herd of camels
trotted away as we approached and we started up a fox. Otherwise we came
across no sign of life. As we advanced mile upon mile the mysterious
tower seemed to get further away, an illusion possible in flat
countries. I have often observed a similar phenomenon in Holland.
Perhaps in this case mirage had something to do with it.

A mosque or tomb became visible and then, almost suddenly, we seemed to
get to close quarters with everything. A ridge rose up from the flat
land and from this point of vantage, known as the tomb of Abraham, we
could look across a level zone a few hundred yards wide to the long,
irregular hummock about a hundred feet high, although in this setting it
looked a great deal more. The east side of this small range is scored
with miniature wadies washed out by rain, and the crowning ruin appeared
(as in sketch, Fig. 1), casting a long shadow down the slope of the
hill.

Leaving the high ground we skirted the foot of the mound, going
southwards and seeing it from the point of view indicated in Fig. 2, and
then as at Fig. 3. A group of Arabs bargaining about coins and
attempting to sell curios to two British officers, who had dismounted
from their horses, made a tremendous hubbub and, as Brown noted, gave
the right local colour as to the confusion of tongues.

I am ill-equipped with books of reference out here, but in one of
Murray's handbooks I have unearthed the following note--all I can find
about this place:--

[Illustration: The Tower of Babel.]

[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 2).]

"BIRS NIMRUD, about 21/2 hours from Hillah, is a vast ruin
crowned apparently by the ruins of a tower rising to a height of 1531/2
ft. above the plain, and having a circumference of rather more than 2000
feet. The Birs, which was situated within the city of Borsippa, has been
wrongly identified with the Tower of Babel. It is the temple of Nebo,
called the 'Temple of the seven spheres of Heaven and Earth,' and was a
sort of pyramid built in seven stages, the stairs being ornamented with
the planetary colours, and on the seventh was an ark or tabernacle. The
Birs was destroyed by Xerxes and restored by Antiochus Soter. The Tower
of Babel was possibly the Esagila of the inscriptions, or the
E-Temenanki--a tower not yet identified. Not far from Birs Nimrud are
the ruins of Hashemieh, the first residence of the Abbaside Khalifs."

Brown would have none of this. Anything is anathema to Brown which
destroys topographical romance. He is a fierce enemy to "higher
criticism," which does away with the whale in the book of Jonah or the
snow-clad summit of Mount Ararat as the resting-place of the ark. It is
quite exciting, he maintains, to picture the ark stuck on the perilous
ice-peaks of a glacier, with Noah and his family endeavouring to get the
elephants and giraffes safely down a ravine like the Mer de Glace to the
more temperate regions of the plains below. How much better than
thinking of it stuck fast on some wretched mound by the Euphrates, 30
feet high.

[Illustration: AN OLD WORLD CRAFT, A TYPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED SINCE THE
DAYS OF SINBAD]

[Illustration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 3).]

Here was a find, too good to be lost, a high tower on a mound visible
from afar and unrivalled by any equally picturesque claimant. It looked
the part splendidly, so the Tower of Babel it should be as far as Brown
was concerned.

As a matter of fact, Brown "let himself go" with historical speculations
and discovered not only that this was the Tower of Babel, but that it
was the site of Nebuchadnezzar's fiery furnace, with evident signs, from
a fragment of calcined brick, which he bore away in triumph, that it had
been heated seven times hotter on some occasion.

We climbed about the ruin, unearthed several coins, which seemed quite
plentiful in one place where the rain had washed down the side of a
small mound, and found obvious signs of some great conflagration. Brown
says that, as no one has got any better explanation of this fire than
he has, he will stick to his furnace theory.

The native driver turned up all right with the car and took us back to
Hillah. From there we crossed the river by the bridge of boats and at a
distance of about five miles came upon the scene of the great
excavations, which, although the city is said to have extended over an
area of some 200 square miles, is generally known as the site of
Babylon. It was in 1899, that the German archaeologist, Dr. Koldeway,
began excavations on a large scale and with systematic care.

Although Babylon was a site occupied by some city in prehistoric times,
as stone and flint implements denote, the earliest _houses_ of
which there are any traces belong to about 2000 B.C. It was
Nebuchadnezzar, however (605--562 B.C.), who rebuilt the city
and made it very splendid, and it is to this period of his reign that
the greater part of the ruins of the great city belong. The mound Babil
is thought to be the palace of Nebuchadnezzar II. An inscription reads:
"On the brick wall towards the north my heart inspired me to build a
palace for the protecting of Babylon. I built there a palace, like the
palace of Babylon, of brick and bitumen."

[Illustration: BELLAMS UNDER SAIL]

The principal excavations are in the Kasr, at one time a vast block of
buildings where are still the traces of a great and broad street used as
a processional road to the temple of E-Sagila, which lies to the south
about 700 yards away. Some of the stones of this road are in their
original places, and there are pieces of brick pavement, each bearing
cuneiform characters. If you take up a brick and look at it casually,
you might think that it had "Jones & Co." or the "Sittingbourne Brick
Co." stamped upon it and it does not look at all old. It is rather
startling to be told that the letters read:--

"I am Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon; I paved the Babel Way with blocks
of _shadu_ stone for the procession of the great lord Marduk. O Marduk,
Lord, grant long life."

These mounds of the Kasr have suffered by successive generations of
brick getters. Half Hillah is said to be built out of bricks from the
ruins of Babylon, and bricks are still taken for any building operations
that occur within easy access of these well-nigh inexhaustible supplies.
In one place, the Temple of Nin-Makh, the Great Mistress, there are to
be found an immense number of little clay images, thought to be votive
offerings made by women to the great Mother Goddess.

In the Mound of Amram, according to Major R. Campbell Thompson, are
traces of the E-Temenanki referred to in Murray's handbook as not yet
identified. [My Murray's handbook is 15 years old.] He writes, in a most
useful little book published in Baghdad, 1918, "History and Antiquities
of Mesopotamia":--"A hundred yards north of the north slope of Amram is
the ancient _zigurrat_ or temple-tower of the famous E-Temenanki: 'the
foundation stone of Heaven and Earth' (the Tower of Babylon). The
enclosing wall forms almost a square, and part has been excavated, but
all the buildings have suffered from brick-robbers. The remains of the
actual Tower are towards the south-west corner.

"Many ancient restorations were carried out here. Professor Koldeway
found inscriptions of Esarhaddon and Sardanapalus and thereafter
inscriptions of Babylonian Kings. Herodotus calls the group of buildings
'the brazen-doored sanctuary of Zeus Below,' and he describes the
zigurrat as a temple-tower in eight stages. The cuneiform records of
Nabopolassar relate how the god Marduk commanded him 'to lay the
foundation of the Tower of Babylon ... firm on the bosom of the
underworld while its top should stretch heavenwards.'"

The first impression of the Kasr is that of a shelled town or mined
flour mill, where nothing remains but the lower walls of buildings. From
a painter's point of view, the scene of this great city, about which he
has pictured so much, is somewhat disappointing. There is such an
absence of anything suggestive of palaces and streets. Frankly, the
ruins of the cement works at Frindsbury are, pictorially, far more
suggestive. I have always said that the hanging gardens of Borstal
knocked spots off the hanging gardens of Babylon, and now I know it. So
much for a first impression.

After awhile, however, wandering amongst these hummocks and pits, with
here and there a suggestion of a gateway or pavement, the glamour of it
all begins to return.

[Illustration: BABYLON THE GREAT IS FALLEN, IS FALLEN]

It is not to the eye that the appeal of poetry is made, but to the
imagination.

There is a figure of a stone lion trampling on a man, but this was
unearthed and set up by a French engineer, and is not explanatory of any
scheme of sculptural work. It is merely a monument. There is also a
brick pillar, the bricks being uncommonly like London stock bricks,
which might be part of a fallen chimney in a ruined factory. These are
the only architectural signs at first visible.

On descending to the passages and ways made by the base walls of
buildings, lions and monsters moulded in the brickwork appear, but they
are only to be seen at close quarters, and in one part of this vast
wilderness of brick, and do not affect in any way the general character
of the place--a place of loneliness and of utter desolation. The whole
area is like a small range of hills, down the slopes of which are steep
descents to clefts sometimes filled with reeds and rushes and stagnant
pools of water. The site of the world-renowned hanging gardens is now
marked by a series of nondescript lumps. The great temple of Marduk is a
dusty heap of brick rubbish, and the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar appears as
a mean slag heap looking down upon a land desolate and empty.

This is Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees.

"It shall never be inhabited, neither shall it be dwelt in from
generation to generation; neither shall the Arabian pitch tent there;
neither shall the shepherds make their fold there.

"But wild beasts of the desert shall lie there; and their houses shall
be full of doleful creatures; and owls shall dwell there and satyrs
shall dance there.

"And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses,
and dragons in their pleasant palaces."

[Illustration]




VI

ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919

[Illustration: GOUFAS ON THE TIGRIS]

[Illustration]



ARABIAN NIGHTS IN 1919


Somewhere in Mesopotamia, in the desert country that lies between the
Euphrates at Felujeh and the Tigris, and in the neighbourhood of a
walled-in group of buildings known as Khan Nuqtah, in the month of
February of this year, and on a singularly miserable and rainy
afternoon, there might have been seen a dark object moving very slowly
across the uninteresting field of vision. At a distance it would not
have been very easy to make out the nature of the thing, and a newcomer
to the scene, with no local knowledge of circumstantial evidence to
guide him, would have hesitated between a buffalo or a hippopotamus and
finally given a vote in favour of it being some slime-crawling saurian
that we come across in pictures of antediluvian natural history.

A closer view, however, would have made clear to him that it was no
animal, but some species of tank, coated and covered with mud,
accompanied by three similarly encased attendants, probably human
beings, staggering and skidding about in its immediate vicinity. From
time to time, one of these three would mount on the head or fore-part of
this object, with the effect of causing it to slide and plunge forward
for a few yards to stick again and again, snorting and panting and
unable apparently to make any further progress.

A detective, equipped with a certain amount of motor knowledge, might
have been able to discern that the mud-encrusted monster was a Ford car.
A tailor, whose technical training would help him to penetrate the
disguise of thick slime, might have been able to recognize by the cut of
their clothes that the first of the three figures was an R.A.F. driver
and the other two were naval officers. As a matter of fact one of these
forlorn representatives of our boasted sea-power was Brown, and the
other one, although I think he would have hesitated to swear to his
identity at the time, was the unfortunate writer of these chronicles.

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