The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1919-07-10
EXCAVATIONS OF BABYLON.
Much of Mighty City of the Past Now
Exposed to View.

Il visited the place in September,
1917" Edmund Gambler writes of
Babylon in THE Long Road of Bagh-
dad "The excavations lie on the
left bank of the Statt-el-Hilleh, the
westerly of the two channels of the
Euphrates which bifurcates at Hin
dieh. 1t is fifty-six miles from Bagh-
dad. The old nursery rhyme that
gives the distance to Babylon as
threescore miles and ten is only out
bare four leagues, and one can get
there between breakfast and lunch,
if not by candlelight.'
Twenty years ago when I visited
the site the ground was barely
scratched by the professional excava-
tor, though the robbers Of bricks had
been busy quarrying there for CEN
turies. Modern Hilleh owes much to
the kilns of Nubuchadnezzar, and the
unstable Turkish barrage at Hindieh
was built of Babylonian debris. The
excavations were begun by the Ger
man archeaologists in March, 1899,
and from two hundred to two hund-
red and fifty workmen were employed
daily, winter and summer, until the
war put an end to the work. The
house of the mission stands on the
banks of the Euphrates, and contains
a museum which we have placed un-
der an Arab guard. A concise sum-
mary of the work has been compiled
by Professor Holloway in The Ex-
cavations of Babylon With the help
Of this volume with it's illustrations
and plans we are able to identify the
main sites. The greater part of the
city which the Germans have brought
to light belongs to the comparatively
modern period of Nebuchadnezzar
(561-504 B. CO.; but there are traces
in the ruins left by the first Baby
lonion kings (circa $500 B. CO. and
successive strata reveal the streets
and houses built by succeeding dynas-
ties of the Assyrian, Neo-Babylon-
ian, Persian and Graeco-Parthian pc
RODS. Also there were relics that
prove a prehistoric Babylon, but it
is impossible to carry excavations
down to this depth owing to the rise
in the water level"
"It is only a few hundred yards
from the Germans house to the Kasr,
or Acropolis, the center of the city,
and the most renowned of the three
great eminences of Babylon. 1t is
here that the eXcavators have been
most active. They follow the line of
the Ksar roadway, a broad street
which leads to the Ishtar Gate, made
by Nebuchadnezzar as professional
road for the great god Marduk, to
whose temple of Esagila it leads. The
instructed visitor. For the rest,
there is the vista of dead brick walls
with no windows or steps and few
doors. It is hard to tell if one is
standing on the roof or the floor of
Babylon. The roofs of one period
became the foundation of the next,
yet out of this confusion the archae-
ologists have reconstructed the an
cient city. They have discovered
what they are convinced is Belshaz-
zar's banqueting chamber and the
vaulted roofs which, they argue with
much erudite reasoning, supported
the hanging gardens. In a general
way, in spite of the superimposed
strata of the hungry generations that
have trodden one another down, the
Identification of sites of Babylon is
easier than in most buried cities. And
this is due to the inscription on the
bricks and fiagstones. For the kings
of Babylonia were providentially
vain. They left their stamp every
where in no uncertain traces. Sarda-
napalus invoked enmity on the head
of whosoever should destroy the rec
''There is little else that is decora-
tive to catch the uninitiative eye at
Babylon. The silver and gold and
precious stones with which Sardana-
palus filled the temple of Esagila are
forgotten. The images have been
removed, the double doors Of cedar
wood overlaid with copper, the bulls
of bronze, the cedar roofs, the thresh-
holds and hinges Of brass. There is
the famous headless lion standing
over it's human prey, raised high
above the roof-tops since my last
visit owing to the delving all round.
It and the brick reliefs of the bulls
and dragons on the Gate of 1shtar