Submitted by coldrum --
The most immediate threat to preserving the ruins of Babylon is water soaking the ground and undermining what is left in present-day Iraq of a great city from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II. It is also one of the oldest threats. The king himself faced water problems 2,600 years ago. Neglect, reckless reconstruction and wartime looting have also taken their toll in recent times, but archaeologists and experts in the preservation of cultural relics say nothing substantial should be done to correct that until the water problem is brought under control.
A current study, "Future of Babylon" project, documents the damage from water mainly associated with the Euphrates River and irrigation systems nearby. The ground is saturated. Bricks are crumbling, temples collapsing.
Leaders of the international project, said that any plan for reclaiming Babylon as an attraction and a place for archaeological research must include water control as “the highest priority.” The study, aimed at developing a master plan for the ancient city, was begun last year by the World Monuments Fund and Iraq’s State Board of Antiquities and Heritage. A $700,000 grant from the US Dept of State is financing the initial study and preliminary management plan.
Consider the depredations Babylon has suffered in recent history. German archaeologists who made the first careful study of the site recognized the despoiling inroads of irrigation waters drawn from a tributary of the Euphrates.
The first German investigators, led by Robert Koldewey, reported finding extensive water damage to mud-brick structures and the intrusion of agricultural fields and villages within boundaries of the original city. People had already carted off bricks and stones, leaving almost nothing of the Ziggurat, known from the historian Herodotus and the Bible as the Tower of Babel. The Germans hauled off the elaborate Ishtar Gate to a museum in Berlin.
Then, in the 1970s and ’80s, President Saddam Hussein of Iraq, casting himself as heir to Nebuchadnezzar’s greatness, had his own imposing palace built at Babylon along the lines of his royal predecessor’s. He even adopted the king’s practice of stamping his own name on the bricks for the reconstruction. Archaeologists were aghast. The new palace and a few other restorations, they say, are hardly authentic, and yet they dominate the site.
Elizabeth C. Stone, an archaeologist at Stony Brook University in New York who is familiar with Babylon, said she supported efforts to reopen the site to tourists, especially Iraqis themselves. “It’s near Baghdad and is the one site where you used to see Iraqis going to get a sense of their past,” she said.
Further damage was incurred during the Iraq war, started in 2003. Looting was prevalent there and at other archaeological sites. The US military occupied Babylon for several years, protecting it from plundering but leaving other scars. About one square kilometer of surface soil, some of it with artifacts, “got removed one way or another,” Dr. Stone said.
“The military certainly did not do the place any good,” said Lisa Ackerman, executive vice president of the monuments fund. “They moved a lot of dirt around, but that damage is largely fixable.”
The site was returned to Iraqi control more than a year ago. Ms. Ackerman and Mr. Allen said the project had already surveyed the remains, building by building, and started the restoration of two museums.
For more, see http://www.nytimes.com.
Something is not right. This message is just to keep things from messing up down the road