Saddam's Babylon

We've posted before on the hideous "reconstruction" of Babylon atop the ancient ruins (here and here). To this piece from the NY Times, as reprinted in the International Herald Tribune:

In the realm of Saddam Hussein kitsch, it is hard to compete with Babylon. The Iraqi leader found the squat, khaki-colored nubs of earth and scattered stacks of bricks left over from one of history's glorious empires somehow lacking, far too mundane to represent the 2,500-year sweep of Mesopotamian history that was to be reborn through his rule. So he ordered one of the three original palaces rebuilt.

Never mind that nobody really knows what the imposing palaces looked like. Nor did Saddam pay much heed to the fact that the archaeological world cried foul - deriding his project as Disney for a Despot - because he was violating their sacred principle of preserving rather than re-creating.

But as with many moves by Saddam, the end result garnered great populist appeal and hence he will probably have the last word on the fate of the famous ruins. . .

"I don't like it," said Lamia Gaylani, an Iraqi art historian who has returned after decades overseas to help rebuild the country's antiquities institutions. But she added that because other Iraqis "love it," she was "all for it." "It is not just about Saddam's time," she said. "Ruins in Iraq are ugly for most people. Ordinary Iraqis want something they can be impressed by like this."

Donny George, the assistant curator of the Baghdad Museum, well remembers the day Saddam came through the ruins, demanding that the palace be rebuilt in time for the first Babylon arts festival in September 1987.

Saddam did not talk much - he mostly listened - but he did ask how the curators knew when the original had been built. George showed him one of the original bricks stamped with the name of Nebuchadnezzar II and the construction date, which was around 605 B.C. The Iraqi leader instantly suggested that bricks used in the re-creation bear some similar inscription. His suggestions had a way of sticking.

"He was the president," said George, shrugging off a decision that had sent a wave of angst through the antiquities department at the time. . .

George, who was then field director of the ruins, remembers the difficulty involved in re-creating the palace, one that rivals the Louvre in Paris for size, without an iota of the original plans. Take the soaring arches that link the myriad rooms. No one really knows how high they were, or how high the original walls were, for that matter.

The arches in earlier royal courts in the region were roughly a boxy rectangle, the height of the arch around twice the width of the entryway. George decided that the Nebuchadnezzar palace would have been built on a grander scale, so he tripled the height of the archways. "It was just like his building massive palaces everywhere, it's to be remembered forever," said George. . .

Garish reminders of the excesses of Saddam's era have been brought crashing down all over Iraq. But experts touring these historic ruins recently concluded that Babylon stays. Even a folly has its place. "Nebuchadnezzar was a despot and Saddam Hussein was a despot," said Gaylani. "Would you take away what Nebuchadnezzar built? No. It's part of history, you have to accept it."

I don't recall seeing previous mention of George's role in the "reconstruction" -- rather Speer-like, really.

Posted by David on August 29, 2003 10:35 AM