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TechnoratiUNESCO: US Seriously Damaged Historic Babylon
BAGHDAD - U.S. troops and contractors in Iraq inflicted serious damage on Babylon, driving heavy machinery over sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops and digging trenches through one of the world's greatest archaeological sites, experts for UNESCO said Thursday.
![[In this photo taken Wednesday, June 24, 2009, Gina Haney from the World Monuments Fund makes notes during a visit to the archaeological site of Babylon about 80 kilometers, 50 miles, south of Baghdad, Iraq. UNESCO, the U.N. cultural agency vowed to make Babylon a World Heritage site and prevent vandalism in future wars. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)]](http://www.commondreams.org/files/article_images/babylon-2.jpg "babylon-2.jpg")
"The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on this internationally known archaeological site," said a report which the U.N. cultural agency presented in Paris.
UNESCO officials stressed that the damage didn't begin with the U.S. military nor fully end after it left. Archaeologists took away some of Babylon's finest treasures in the 19th century, Saddam Hussein embellished the site with his own structures, and looters returned when the Americans handed the site back to the Iraqis 21 months after the March 2003 invasion.
Now Babylon is the object of turf war between newly empowered Iraqi officials. At the national level, Iraq's state antiquities office, focused on conservation, is up against officials of the province surrounding Babylon who want to attract tourists. They have already provoked concern by leveling a section of the site to create a picnic area.
UNESCO aims to make the 4,000-year-old city fit for the coveted title of World Heritage site, and will work to enforce international conventions on the protection of historic sites "so that what happened to Babylon can't ever happen again," said Francoise Riviere, the agency's undersecretary general for culture.
Archaeologist John Curtis of the British Museum, who inspected the site just after U.S. troops left, said it was too soon to assess the cost of restoring and fully protecting the site.
Several initiatives to save Babylon have been announced in recent years, but have made little headway. Now, with the decline of violence in Iraq, hopes are pinned on a two-year, $700,000 project financed by the U.S. State Department to develop a program aimed at balancing tourism and archaeology at Babylon.
The Future of Babylon Project is a partnership of the World Monuments Fund, a New York-based nonprofit organization, and Iraq's State Board of Antiquities and Heritage.
A WMF team of experts toured the site last month and came away surprised at the extent of conservation problems to be tackled - some of them cases of good intentions gone bad, such as preserving walls with thick plaster.
"On some walls, the plaster was too thick and fell off, pulling down part of the wall with it," Gina Haney, a WMF expert on the tour, said in Baghdad.
Much of the damage to the site, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of Baghdad, is man-made.
European archaeologists carted away the Ishtar Gate, the city's symbol, now in Berlin's Pergamon museum. The Louvre in Paris got the giant stone slab on which King Hammurabi's 4,000-year-old code of law was written.
Saddam turned the ruins into a theme park, paving walkways, building restaurants and a palace on an artificial hill, and even inscribing his name on some buildings.
Allen said the 2003 war bought the restoration project some time because it prevented premature, ill-supervised development of the site. But looters rampaged through Babylon after the U.S.-led invasion, and U.S. forces stuffed sandbags with dirt that contained ancient pottery and brick fragments, the UNESCO assessment said.
It said U.S. forces and the contractors they employed, mainly KBR, then a Halliburton subsidiary, "caused major damage to the city by digging, cutting, scraping, and leveling."
The U.S. military did not immediately respond to requests for comment, but in the past it has said looting would have been worse had its troops not been there.
The report said steel stakes were driven into ancient walls, which included fragments with inscriptions from the time of King Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled 2 1/2 millennia ago and is credited with building the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
A helicopter pad, roads and parking lots were built, and heavy vehicles devastated ancient brick roads, the report said. The symbolic dragon-snakes adorning many of the structures have been partly smashed.
Today there's no trace of the legendary Hanging Gardens. But no large-scale exploration has been done at Babylon in nearly a century, and according to the UNESCO report, archaeologists believe "much remains buried beneath the earth and there is still a great deal to discover."
23 Comments so far
Show AllDeep breath, all. The Ishtar Gate that was "damaged" by U.S. Forces is a modern replica of the orginal gate and was constructed by Saddam Hussein. The original gate is safe and sound in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin (parts of it also in Detroit, Gothenburg Sweden, Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago Rhode Island, Boston, and New Haven.)
Archaeologists in the future will also have to avoid disturbing the sacred spent DU rounds....
Anybody remember what happened to Dresden....?
I have seen the Ishtar Gate at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin... it was still East Berlin when I saw it. Magnificent structure.
I wonder how it managed to escape being bombed during WW11.
There is also the famous altar from Pergamon (Bergama Turkey) at the musuem, as well as an impressive facade from Ephesus.
Although these stupendous edifices were removed from their homeland, maybe it's for the better since the rogues who carry on warfare (in the name of security for their homeland) have no compunction about destruction.
Do you suppose in the centuries that come our monuments will meet a fate similar to the ancient ones? what goes around comes around, sooner or later...
it seems to me that vendetta and hatred are the primary reasons for destroying iraqs ancient history. no civilization exits today(except may be the egypyian's)could ever match that of iraq. so one could visualize that some of the people, especially jews, who admidtedly suffered at the hands of kings nabuchadnezzar and hammurabi of babylon, would have a chance to do so that their mentor and protector occupied that wounded defensless country, to extract vengence from the sons and daughters of the babylonians. it not only started by looting the antequities from iraqi museums but physically destroying the structures of iraq's
old civilization. and in time, may be the world forgets that sumar and babylon ever existed, especially if some smart alex under the ecouragement of the imperialist powers would rewrite history in the western encyclopedias.
as we talk about the destruction of ancient babylon and its present continuation = irag - under the heels of the USA neoconservative war regime in partnership with israel - let us also remind ourselves that the jews "survived" through the centuries largely because at the times when they were most in danger thousands of years ago - it was the ancient persians that invited them to safety in Persia - what is TODAY IRAN. and who's next in the crosshairs of the USA and ISRAEL?.......what is the continuation of ancient Persia.
it seems that if any societies are genocidal - it was not the persians nor the babylonians or iranians or iraqis -
it is the Americans and Israelis.
"i wanted to see the world, visit ancient cultures, and destroy them" (or something like that)-full metal jacket.
capitalism turns the entire world into one big rubbish heap.
but imperialists since day one have been doing this kind of stuff. they either destroy the monuments, "reconsecrate" them to their own religion, or hack them to pieces & cart them off for their own collections.
in the words of rumsfeld, shit happens. indeed it does rumsfeld, an expert in shit happening.
The article fails to mention that one of the US's many bases in Iraq was built right next to a very ancient ziggurat, and that the constant rumble of tanks and armored vehicles, combined with the landing and takeoff of planes, is doing untold damage to the monument. In my opinion, such destruction of Iraqi culture is intentional. Like the sack and pillage of the archaeological museum in Baghdad, or the complete erasure of indigenous landmarks and records in Israel/Palestine. I believe the proper term for such deliberate eradication of ancient identity, when coupled with mass murder, is genocide.
I lived in Baghdad in 1980 and, yes, I visited Babylon. It was exquisite and totally deserted (no pun intended). We were, literally, the only ones there.
Is anyone surprised that the US Army has destroyed it? That is what they do, right?
BTW, the Hanging Gardens were live plants; a miracle in the desert. Of course, there'd be "no trace" of them now!
It is just a matter of time before Babylon will become Branson on the Tigris.
Those responsible for this are WAR CRIMINALS.
APPARENTLY OBAMA WISHES TO DESTROY IRAN IN THE SAME FASHION TO PLEASE ISRAEL.
The US doesn't give a damn about any stinkin "world heritage site" - especially if the un-american UN is involved. WE are the world!
When the UNESCO desigated Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, as a world heritage site, the signs were torn down and a number of people wrote their politicians to insist that the world heritage site designation be removed. They didn't want that one-world-government in any part of Kentucky.
(I'm not kidding about this - fortunately, they failed, and Mammoth Cave remains a world heritage site)
Some time ago, the destruction of the site of Babylon was made public, and at that time, if I recall correctly, a US Army colonel was in charge of the army engineers who were bulldozing part of the site. When interviewed about the destruction, he stated that he was a "Christian," and such heathen monuments should be destroyed. Does anyone remember who this freak was, and when this desecration happened? It was fairly early in Bush's Holy War on Culture and Civilization.
This makes me think of the Taliban destroying Buddhist statues in the north of Afghanistan. So really, Christian-fundamentists and Muslim-fundamentalists have much more in common with each other than either have with respectable religious global citizens.
A new generation of USans schooled in ignorance/contempt.
Just like Napoleon using the Sphinx as target practice.
The Taliban blowing up the Buddhas at Bamian
Don't worry - Haliburton will redo the whole place
Babylon - a cost plus no-bid project
"Just like Napoleon using the Sphinx as target practice."
Stonehenge was used by English troops for similar.
Was the reason for the destruction ignorance or a "scorched
earth" policy? The U.S military and Nazi soldiers acquire more common ground (no pun) every day. I remember how the Germans destroyed almost all of the bridges--excepting the Pontevecchio-- after crossing the Arno at Florence during WWII.
What is not all that surprising who the contractor was: KBR.
"Today there's no trace of the legendary Hanging Gardens. "
otherwise bush woulda had saddam hung there.
Or maybe he would have clear cut them.
Does all of this destruction fall under the US Government's definition (also euphemism)of "collateral damage" ?
collateral=descended from a common ancestor.
think on that.
peace will be.