Lure of Babylon is powerful drawIraq, U.N. undertake project to restore city, transform it into center for cultural tourism.
Jeffrey Gettleman / New York Times
April 27, 2006
BABYLON, Iraq -- In this ancient city, it is hard to tell what are ruins and what is just ruined.
Crumbling brick buildings, some 2,500 years old, look like smashed sand castles at the beach. Famous sites, like the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens, are swallowed up by river reeds. Signs of military occupation are everywhere, including trenches, bullet casings, shiny coils of razor wire and blast walls stamped, "This side Scud protection."
Babylon, the mud-brick city with the million-dollar name, has paid the price of war. It has been ransacked, looted, torn up, paved over, neglected and roughly occupied. Archaeologists said American soldiers even used soil thick with priceless artifacts to stuff sandbags.
But Iraqi leaders and U.N. officials are not giving up. They are working assiduously to restore Babylon and turn it into a cultural center and possibly even an Iraqi theme park. No one is saying this is going to happen any time soon, but what makes the project even conceivable is that the area around Babylon is one of the safest in Iraq -- a beacon of civilization, once again, in a land of chaos.
Ancient Babylon, celebrated as a fount of law, writing and urban living, sits just outside the modern-day city of Hilla, about 60 miles south of Baghdad.
Hilla is neither haunted by Sunni insurgents nor overwhelmed by Shiite militias, and though it has a mix of Shiites and Sunnis, it has not been afflicted by the sectarian violence that has paralyzed so many other parts of Iraq. Factories are churning, Iraqi security forces are patrolling and the streets pulsate with life -- children bounding to school, crowds wading into markets, taxis gliding by.
Emad Lafta al-Bayati, Hilla's mayor, has big plans for Babylon. "I want restaurants, gift shops, long parking lots," he said. God willing, he added, maybe even a Holiday Inn.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is pumping millions of dollars into protecting and restoring Babylon and a handful of other ancient ruins in Iraq. UNESCO has even printed up a snazzy brochure, with Babylon listed as the premier destination, to hand out to wealthy donors.
"Cultural tourism could become Iraq's second-biggest industry, after oil," said Philippe Delanghe, a U.N. official helping with the project. But before Iraq becomes the next Egypt, he said wryly, "a few little things have to happen."
One of those, of course, is better security. The American military still maintains bases near Babylon, but next month, in a sign of how relatively stable the area has become, most troops will pull out and head north to Baghdad, where they are needed more.
Many Iraqis said it was about time. Occupying forces have been blamed for much of Babylon's recent demise.
Donny George, head of Iraq's board of antiquities, said Polish troops dug trenches through an ancient temple and American contractors paved over ruins to make a helicopter landing pad.
"How are we supposed to get rid of the helipad now?" George asked. "With jackhammers? Can you imagine taking a jackhammer to the remains of one of the most important cities in the history of mankind? I mean, come on, this is Babylon."
Babylon. Its name has had a magical ring since Hammurabi, the Babylonian king who ruled from 1792 to 1750 B.C. and is credited with handing down one of the first sets of codified law.
After Hammurabi, the city flourished again under King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled from around 605 to 562 B.C. and is best known for the hanging gardens he supposedly built for his wife.
