8 ms·

How the restoration of ancient Babylon is drawing tourists back to Iraq

120 points by leoh 1y ago

p2detar 1y ago
The ancient history of this region is fascinating, and the politics of that time were not so different from today. I highly recommend the “Fall of Civilizations Podcast”, episode 8. High quality work. https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/10/25/episode-8-is-now-live/ https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/10/25/episode-8-...
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  Seconded. The “Fall of Civilizations” Podcast is a masterpiece.
blackbrokkoli 1y ago
I was there earlier last year, and it was none too impressive. Pretty shoddy brick walls (just straight blocks), crumbling at many places, constructed possibly along ancient foundations or maybe not, that you sort of walk through. Interesting things here and there. Couple of other tourists. Walking through Saddam's palace next to it was much more fascinating; extreme grandeur morphed into a typical lost place with graffiti and empty bottles. The nearby town Al7illa certainly offered more to actually experience, like a mini theme park with the main attraction being (artificial) rain. Anyways I genuinely wish the committed people all the best in the restoration, but I feel like the article is a tad over-enthusiastic and easily convinced.
- hermitcrab 1y ago
  This site and the nearby Saddam palace were featured in the recent Michael Palin travelogue on Iraq. https://www.themichaelpalin.com/watch/#section8 https://www.themichaelpalin.com/watch/#section8 The reconstruction looked very bare and empty in the program. But I guess it is a work in progress. BTW the Assyrian exhibits in the British museum are amazing and well worth visiting. Yes, I know, colonialism is bad and they probably shouldn't be in London. But I doubt they would be in anything like as good a state if they had been left in their original locations.
  - jajko 1y ago
    > But I doubt they would be in anything like as good a state if they had been left in their original locations. I get it, but thats problem with 'good theft', its still amoral, and well we all know history and how things actually happened. Inability to even properly acknowledge fuckups of one's ancestors leaves little room for moving further and learning hard from that, instead of some shallow blah to not stick out of the crowd.
    - grosswait 1y ago
      And an inability to acknowledge the ongoing fuckups of strangers(eg: see Taliban and ISIS destruction of archaeologically significant sites) that very well could have resulted in the same fate if they had been left in situ. None of us knows what would have actually happened, but at least standing out of the crowd earns some points.
      - CPLX 1y ago
        I do agree that this is a complex topic but it is worth noting that the looting of Iraq was done by the British both times, making the argument a little circular. Like good thing the British saved the relics from what might have happened from the aftermath of the invasion the British also engineered.
        aa-jv 1y ago
        Not to mention that both Taliban and ISIS are Western-funded and supported terrorist groups.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > thats problem with 'good theft', its still amora You may have meant immoral. But amoral puts it better. From the perspective of common heritage, it’s better at the British Museum. From the perspective of ethnonational self determination, it should be returned to its origin even if that means its destruction. I personally tend towards the latter for newer artefacts and the former for older ones. (The logic for the people living somewhere today having exclusive domain over something made millennia earlier falls apart if the present occupants may be barely more related to those forerunners than someone on another continent.)
tzury 1y ago
There is no way to restore the most precious sites which were destroyed intentionally. Some a perfectly preserved sites. It simply gone and will never returned. Just look at the map in page 7 in the report below: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/CulturalRights/DestructionHeritage/NGOS/RASHID.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/C... What they are doing here is "rebuilding"
nickdothutton 1y ago
Their idea of preservation and repair leaves a lot to be desired IMO, although the same is true for some parts of Europe. Sadly Palmyra and so many places have been destroyed in the last decade or so.
divbzero 1y ago
Do we really want ancient buildings to be restored? I think I would prefer original ruins over modern reconstructions.
eth0up 1y ago
Screw the tourists, bring in the archeologists, maybe start by resuming excavations at Eridu. 99% of our history is buried or looted. And the one or two Assyriologists in the world need new material to study.
- tzury 1y ago
  That is so sad. Iraq, Uruk, Mesopotamia, Babylon... The birthplace of so many nations and cultures in the region. The cultural and commercial hub for centuries. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/CulturalRights/DestructionHeritage/NGOS/RASHID.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/C...
- nashashmi 1y ago
  Tourism is such a wasteful tax on society. I met an Egyptologist who had been leading tours for two years so he could feed his family but he longed to go back to Egyptology and go and study the ruins even though it didn’t pay well
  - hdgvhicv 1y ago
    You can fund a full time Egyptologist for the amount of money a turned receives in a year.
  - fundatus 1y ago
    Hate to break it to you, but every other tour guide in Egypt will tell you that they actually are an "Egyptologist". It's a common scam. Of course I don't know the situation of your specific tour guide though, they might have been genuine.
    - nashashmi 1y ago
      He could read hieroglyphics. And we asked him much more technical questions which he was able to answer. We had a second tour guide for a different area. He was not an archaeologist. But he was like one of those nerdy guys who study the subject really well and then explain it. His passion and tour guiding was very different than the first, more academic in nature.
aetherspawn 1y ago
There is a prophecy in the Bible that says Babylon will never successfully be rebuilt. Isa 13:19, 20.
- nickpsecurity 1y ago
  Unlike other religions, it said a lot of things that have come true: 1. Jerusalem would get destroyed with the temple, the Jews scattered, persecuted, then Israel recreated, big exporter of produce, many trees, survives all its enemies, and yet wouldn't be able to rebuild the temple on one piece of land. All came true and it's the only country to ever re-appear like that. 2. Revelation says they will try to build a world government with one currency. They'll financially cut off, or cancel, dissenters. The elites have been repeatedly trying to do that for decades. 3. Society itself would change. People would be godless, apathetic, focus on money/pleasure, disobedient to their parents (family disintegration), violent, etc. People would listen to whoever tickled their ears, or told them what they wanted to hear. Famous preachers would be false teachers, perform fake miracles, and do it for ego and money. 4. Revelation talks of a new Babylon that was a huge, imperialist nation (or religion) that gets most of the world under its influence, is one of the richest in history, and (strangely) exports sexual immorality to other nations. Aside from imperialisma and capitalism, the U.S. exported sexual immorality worldwide through porn industry, Hollywood movies, and funding LGBT promotion. Whatever it is, God destroys the new Babylon likely via the consequences of its own worldviews. I put more of these up here: https://gethisword.com/signsofthetimes.html https://gethisword.com/signsofthetimes.html I'll be glad if Babylon is never raised. It deserved to be destroyed for all the cruel things it did which it never repented of. Over there, they still chase the false religions and practices that tore their country to pieces. If the repent, and turn to Christ, we will see a transformation of the nation like the people of Ninevah saw in Jonah's day.
  - McAlpine5892 1y ago
    > Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Matthew 24:34–35 Of course when the prediction doesn't fit, the Cirque du Soleil level mental gymnastics come out to explain how "this generation" didn't actually mean that. Meanwhile, scientists predict solar eclipses with 100% accuracy. Among many other physical phenomena. Much of that knowledge was ascertained despite religion relentlessly persecuting those seeking out answers about our universe. > Unlike other religions, it said a lot of things that have come true... I can promise you that followers of every religion have made this same claim and also have a list of "proof". They don't look at each other and go "darn, that Christianity keeps getting it right somehow!". I highly recommend checking out The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan [0]. It is a great way to improve anyone's baloney-detector kit. We all want to understand our world, but some "answers" are pure Grade-A baloney. --- [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_...
verisimi 1y ago
'Building yesteryear's history today' for tourism, like so many "historical" sites.
rippeltippel 1y ago
Sounds more like "reconstruction" than "restoration". I appreciate many original parts may be too damaged, but it risks becoming an archeological Disneyland.
- beloch 1y ago
  Reconstruction is great provided archaeologists are done with the site and at least some of the tourism revenue generated is put towards archaeology. Ancient Mesopotamia is, in my view, one of the most exciting fields out there, simply because their written records are imperishable. There's thousands of years of history, not pre-history, there. Much of it has already been discovered but, for want of money, not yet fully studied. Not yet deciphered. Not yet understood. We know the approximate locations of important cities that have yet to be found. We know roughly where they are, but they're not in easy places to access due to remoteness as well as political instability and violence. We currently only have records from other places to tell us they exist, but we could find entire libraries and hear from these ancient people in their own words. There are few other frontiers in all of archaeology that offer such potential for gaining intimate knowledge of ancient human societies. Anything that can inject a little much-needed funding into the field is welcome.
- metalman 1y ago
  It would be far more facinating to fund something like the ongoing construction of a true mideval castle in France, where they are re creating the teqcniques used by building and then testing for accuracy, and refining there methods by letting thins weather and be used in daily operations to be able to compare wearmarks and longevity to original archiological evidence, in France there work and workers have directly been used in the rebuilding of the great chapell burned down in paris a decade ago. So a full on mesoptaimian city on the banks of the Euphraties, and maybe we can find out what on earth "the things of stone" are, among other almost infuriating criptic references that leave us grasping for meaning, like a bunch of dweebs listening to the cool kids talking about getting down with the gods themselves
- closewith 1y ago
  Like Newgrange in Ireland. “Reconstructed” in the ‘60s and ‘70s based largely on the opinions of one person in a matter now considered to be mostly speculative. After 5 millennia, it now seems that “conservation” efforts have completed destroyed its original form.
burnt-resistor 1y ago
The Taliban and other theocratic totalitarian regimes should take notes.
- ripped_britches 1y ago
  57% of taliban are illiterate, so I don’t think they’ll be taking too many notes
karol 1y ago
Yeah, meanwhile what happened to Gilgamesh's tomb? What is left to see in Iraq/Uruk is less than a shadow of what was excavated.
waterbelt 1y ago
[dead]

120 points by leoh 1y ago

The ancient history of this region is fascinating, and the politics of that time were not so different from today. I highly recommend the “Fall of Civilizations Podcast”, episode 8. High quality work. https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/10/25/episode-8-is-now-live/ https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/10/25/episode-8-...

hermitcrab 1y ago
Seconded. The “Fall of Civilizations” Podcast is a masterpiece.

blackbrokkoli 1y ago

I was there earlier last year, and it was none too impressive. Pretty shoddy brick walls (just straight blocks), crumbling at many places, constructed possibly along ancient foundations or maybe not, that you sort of walk through. Interesting things here and there. Couple of other tourists. Walking through Saddam's palace next to it was much more fascinating; extreme grandeur morphed into a typical lost place with graffiti and empty bottles. The nearby town Al7illa certainly offered more to actually experience, like a mini theme park with the main attraction being (artificial) rain. Anyways I genuinely wish the committed people all the best in the restoration, but I feel like the article is a tad over-enthusiastic and easily convinced.

hermitcrab 1y ago
This site and the nearby Saddam palace were featured in the recent Michael Palin travelogue on Iraq. https://www.themichaelpalin.com/watch/#section8 https://www.themichaelpalin.com/watch/#section8 The reconstruction looked very bare and empty in the program. But I guess it is a work in progress. BTW the Assyrian exhibits in the British museum are amazing and well worth visiting. Yes, I know, colonialism is bad and they probably shouldn't be in London. But I doubt they would be in anything like as good a state if they had been left in their original locations.
- jajko 1y ago
  > But I doubt they would be in anything like as good a state if they had been left in their original locations. I get it, but thats problem with 'good theft', its still amoral, and well we all know history and how things actually happened. Inability to even properly acknowledge fuckups of one's ancestors leaves little room for moving further and learning hard from that, instead of some shallow blah to not stick out of the crowd.
  - grosswait 1y ago
    And an inability to acknowledge the ongoing fuckups of strangers(eg: see Taliban and ISIS destruction of archaeologically significant sites) that very well could have resulted in the same fate if they had been left in situ. None of us knows what would have actually happened, but at least standing out of the crowd earns some points.
    - CPLX 1y ago
      I do agree that this is a complex topic but it is worth noting that the looting of Iraq was done by the British both times, making the argument a little circular. Like good thing the British saved the relics from what might have happened from the aftermath of the invasion the British also engineered.
      - aa-jv 1y ago
        Not to mention that both Taliban and ISIS are Western-funded and supported terrorist groups.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > thats problem with 'good theft', its still amora You may have meant immoral. But amoral puts it better. From the perspective of common heritage, it’s better at the British Museum. From the perspective of ethnonational self determination, it should be returned to its origin even if that means its destruction. I personally tend towards the latter for newer artefacts and the former for older ones. (The logic for the people living somewhere today having exclusive domain over something made millennia earlier falls apart if the present occupants may be barely more related to those forerunners than someone on another continent.)

tzury 1y ago

There is no way to restore the most precious sites which were destroyed intentionally. Some a perfectly preserved sites. It simply gone and will never returned. Just look at the map in page 7 in the report below: https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/CulturalRights/DestructionHeritage/NGOS/RASHID.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/C... What they are doing here is "rebuilding"

nickdothutton 1y ago

Their idea of preservation and repair leaves a lot to be desired IMO, although the same is true for some parts of Europe. Sadly Palmyra and so many places have been destroyed in the last decade or so.

divbzero 1y ago

Do we really want ancient buildings to be restored? I think I would prefer original ruins over modern reconstructions.

eth0up 1y ago

Screw the tourists, bring in the archeologists, maybe start by resuming excavations at Eridu. 99% of our history is buried or looted. And the one or two Assyriologists in the world need new material to study.

tzury 1y ago
That is so sad. Iraq, Uruk, Mesopotamia, Babylon... The birthplace of so many nations and cultures in the region. The cultural and commercial hub for centuries. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/CulturalRights/DestructionHeritage/NGOS/RASHID.pdf https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Issues/C...
nashashmi 1y ago
Tourism is such a wasteful tax on society. I met an Egyptologist who had been leading tours for two years so he could feed his family but he longed to go back to Egyptology and go and study the ruins even though it didn’t pay well
- hdgvhicv 1y ago
  You can fund a full time Egyptologist for the amount of money a turned receives in a year.
- fundatus 1y ago
  Hate to break it to you, but every other tour guide in Egypt will tell you that they actually are an "Egyptologist". It's a common scam. Of course I don't know the situation of your specific tour guide though, they might have been genuine.
  - nashashmi 1y ago
    He could read hieroglyphics. And we asked him much more technical questions which he was able to answer. We had a second tour guide for a different area. He was not an archaeologist. But he was like one of those nerdy guys who study the subject really well and then explain it. His passion and tour guiding was very different than the first, more academic in nature.

aetherspawn 1y ago

There is a prophecy in the Bible that says Babylon will never successfully be rebuilt. Isa 13:19, 20.

nickpsecurity 1y ago
Unlike other religions, it said a lot of things that have come true: 1. Jerusalem would get destroyed with the temple, the Jews scattered, persecuted, then Israel recreated, big exporter of produce, many trees, survives all its enemies, and yet wouldn't be able to rebuild the temple on one piece of land. All came true and it's the only country to ever re-appear like that. 2. Revelation says they will try to build a world government with one currency. They'll financially cut off, or cancel, dissenters. The elites have been repeatedly trying to do that for decades. 3. Society itself would change. People would be godless, apathetic, focus on money/pleasure, disobedient to their parents (family disintegration), violent, etc. People would listen to whoever tickled their ears, or told them what they wanted to hear. Famous preachers would be false teachers, perform fake miracles, and do it for ego and money. 4. Revelation talks of a new Babylon that was a huge, imperialist nation (or religion) that gets most of the world under its influence, is one of the richest in history, and (strangely) exports sexual immorality to other nations. Aside from imperialisma and capitalism, the U.S. exported sexual immorality worldwide through porn industry, Hollywood movies, and funding LGBT promotion. Whatever it is, God destroys the new Babylon likely via the consequences of its own worldviews. I put more of these up here: https://gethisword.com/signsofthetimes.html https://gethisword.com/signsofthetimes.html I'll be glad if Babylon is never raised. It deserved to be destroyed for all the cruel things it did which it never repented of. Over there, they still chase the false religions and practices that tore their country to pieces. If the repent, and turn to Christ, we will see a transformation of the nation like the people of Ninevah saw in Jonah's day.
- McAlpine5892 1y ago
  > Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. Matthew 24:34–35 Of course when the prediction doesn't fit, the Cirque du Soleil level mental gymnastics come out to explain how "this generation" didn't actually mean that. Meanwhile, scientists predict solar eclipses with 100% accuracy. Among many other physical phenomena. Much of that knowledge was ascertained despite religion relentlessly persecuting those seeking out answers about our universe. > Unlike other religions, it said a lot of things that have come true... I can promise you that followers of every religion have made this same claim and also have a list of "proof". They don't look at each other and go "darn, that Christianity keeps getting it right somehow!". I highly recommend checking out The Demon-Haunted World by Carl Sagan [0]. It is a great way to improve anyone's baloney-detector kit. We all want to understand our world, but some "answers" are pure Grade-A baloney. --- [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_World https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17349.The_Demon_Haunted_...

verisimi 1y ago

'Building yesteryear's history today' for tourism, like so many "historical" sites.

rippeltippel 1y ago

Sounds more like "reconstruction" than "restoration". I appreciate many original parts may be too damaged, but it risks becoming an archeological Disneyland.

beloch 1y ago
Reconstruction is great provided archaeologists are done with the site and at least some of the tourism revenue generated is put towards archaeology. Ancient Mesopotamia is, in my view, one of the most exciting fields out there, simply because their written records are imperishable. There's thousands of years of history, not pre-history, there. Much of it has already been discovered but, for want of money, not yet fully studied. Not yet deciphered. Not yet understood. We know the approximate locations of important cities that have yet to be found. We know roughly where they are, but they're not in easy places to access due to remoteness as well as political instability and violence. We currently only have records from other places to tell us they exist, but we could find entire libraries and hear from these ancient people in their own words. There are few other frontiers in all of archaeology that offer such potential for gaining intimate knowledge of ancient human societies. Anything that can inject a little much-needed funding into the field is welcome.
metalman 1y ago
It would be far more facinating to fund something like the ongoing construction of a true mideval castle in France, where they are re creating the teqcniques used by building and then testing for accuracy, and refining there methods by letting thins weather and be used in daily operations to be able to compare wearmarks and longevity to original archiological evidence, in France there work and workers have directly been used in the rebuilding of the great chapell burned down in paris a decade ago. So a full on mesoptaimian city on the banks of the Euphraties, and maybe we can find out what on earth "the things of stone" are, among other almost infuriating criptic references that leave us grasping for meaning, like a bunch of dweebs listening to the cool kids talking about getting down with the gods themselves
closewith 1y ago
Like Newgrange in Ireland. “Reconstructed” in the ‘60s and ‘70s based largely on the opinions of one person in a matter now considered to be mostly speculative. After 5 millennia, it now seems that “conservation” efforts have completed destroyed its original form.

burnt-resistor 1y ago

The Taliban and other theocratic totalitarian regimes should take notes.

ripped_britches 1y ago
57% of taliban are illiterate, so I don’t think they’ll be taking too many notes

karol 1y ago

Yeah, meanwhile what happened to Gilgamesh's tomb? What is left to see in Iraq/Uruk is less than a shadow of what was excavated.

waterbelt 1y ago

[dead]