CHAPTER XVIII BABYLON A labyrinth of ruins, Babylon The wandering Arab never sets his tent Her evil towers, and devious drives his flock. Euphrates rolls along, Eternal nature's work. SOUTHEY. Hillah was founded by the Arabs in the eleventh century of our era and is said by some to occupy the southern part of the site of ancient Babylon. Aside from its interesting legends and traditions-many of them connected with the Tower of Babel and the famed capital of Nebuchadnezzarits chief attraction for us was the number and beauty of its date palms. Some of them were, doubtless, descendants of those noble trees which once graced the gardens and orchards of Babylon in the meridian of her splendor and which supplied her people with an important part of their nutriment. And, if Delitzsch's theory regarding the site of the Garden of Eden be true, it is reasonable to suppose that some of the stately palms that now adorn the gardens of Hillah are scions of trees that once raised their graceful fronds high above the humbler plants and shrubs of the Terrestrial Paradise. Nowhere in the world, not even in the valley of the Nile or in the fertile oases of Algeria, will one find such magnificent groves of date palms as one sees along the lower course of the Euphrates. On the west bank of the Shat-elArab, in the humid district of Pasra, there are more than sixty varieties of date palms while the number of trees is estimated to run into hundreds of millions. It is, indeed, from this region that are exported most of the dates of commerce. But these nourishing and delicately flavored fruits are not a modern staple of commerce. Way back in early Babylonian times "dates of Akkad," as they are called in cuneiform invoices of the period, were exported in exchange for gold, sheep, and oxen. With corn and flocks and herds they were among the principal sources of the country's wealth. The early Babylonian kings specially encouraged the development of date plantations and it is related of a certain governor that he considered the planting of palms as among the most notable achievements of his administration. And there was reason for attaching so much importance to the cultivation of the palm, because it is not only "the prince of the vegetable world," as Humboldt declared, but also the most useful of all known trees. For it not only supplies the oriental with one of his chief articles of diet but also furnishes him with bread and wine, meal and vinegar, sugar and fuel, matting and cordage, cages and baskets, chairs, benches, beds, and other articles of household furniture and material for the construction of the house in which he lives. So manifold, indeed, are the uses of the date palm that Strabo informs us that a Persian poem enumerates no fewer than three hundred and sixty valuable properties of the palm. We have seen how dependent the oriental is on the horse and the camel, especially the latter. But the date palm is no less essential to his well-being than the camel. What an incomparable blessing it is in his eyes is evinced by an eastern saying: "The palm is the camel and the camel the palm of the desert." And so highly does he revere it as a gift of God that he would regard the wanton injury of the palm tree as nothing less than a mortal sin. "Honor the palm," enjoins Mohammed, "for it is your maternal aunt; on the stony soil of the desert it offers you a fruitful source of sustenance." And it is to be noted that this noble tree has followed Islam in all its conquests and is now to be found in every clime which is favorable to its growth in which the followers of the Prophet have made their homes. But the high estimation in which this useful tree is universally held in the East is shown by an Arabian legend which declares that it was from the slime that surrounded a date palm that God formed the first man. It is not, then, surprising that a tree that plays so important a rôle in the life of the oriental should never be long absent from his thoughts, especially when away from the land of his fathers. For, as the Swiss when abroad longs for his native mountains, so does the Arab pine for the stately palms whose feathery and umbrageous crowns are to him synonyms of home and sweet repose. Abd-er-Rahman I, the founder of the Ommiad Caliphate of Cordova, was unable to endure in Spain the absence of the beautiful tree which had been the delight of his youth. He, accordingly, had a young palm brought from Syria and planted in the garden of his villa at Rusafah. It was to this tree, the lovely reminder of his native land, that the homesick Caliph addressed these pathetic verses: Oh, Palm, like me a stranger here, Driven from home and dispossessed But, ah! thou'rt mute, nor canst thou shed a tear. Happy to have no sentient soul! Heart-ache like mine thou canst not know; Aye, homesick tears for eastern groves By hate, almost forget my former loves. When one reads these impassioned verses, one recalls the touching lines of the poet Juvenal who, in his exile in Dyene, wrote: Mollissima corda Humano generi dare se Natura fatetur Quæ lacrymas dedit; hæc nostri pars optima sensus.1 The words of the exiled Roman seem almost a commentary on those of the homesick Arab. As we were leaving Hillah for the ruins of Babylon, our attention was arrested by a group of happy, laughter-loving children. Having always been specially interested in the children of the Near East, particularly in those of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, we stopped to learn the cause of their mirth. We found them intently engaged in various games which seemed to afford them the keenest delight. But what was our surprise to find that the favorite games of these sunburnt children in the immediate vicinity of the ruins of Babylon were just the same as the games that are so popular among the boys and girls of America. And stranger still, many of them were quite the same as I had frequently seen played by Indian children on the plateau of the Andes and in the wilds of Brazil. The boys played ball and marbles and leap-frog, while the girls were equally preoccupied with tag, cat's cradle, and hopscotch. It would be interesting to know if there was any Babylonian blood in these Hillah children-they seemed to be pure Arabs-and if the games which afforded them such exquisite pleasure were in vogue among the young folk of Babylon in the days of Paltasar and Hammurabi. I commend these subjects to those ardent folklorists who love to trace the nursery tales which so delight the child of to-day back to times primeval.2 1 Nature herself confesses to have given the tenderest hearts to the human race, as she gave them tears; this is the best part of our faculties. Satire XV, vv. 131-133. 2 According to Dr. Fries, an eminent German scholar, all games of ball are traceable back to an old light myth which was presumably Babylonian in origin: "Alles Ballspiel," he writes, ja bis herab zum Lawn-Tenis auf denselben Gedanken-den Lichtkampf-zuruckgeht." Studien zur Odyssee, Vol. I, p. 324 (Leipsic, 1910). Our first objective, after leaving Hillah, was the mound of Babil which lies in the northern part of the ruins of Babylon. Most of the land between Hillah and the ruins of the ancient world capital is desolate in the extreme. Not a single human habitation is visible. And yet we were traversing what was during thousands of years the richest and most carefully cultivated tract of land in the world and the one, too, that had the densest population. Now it is untilled and as abandoned as the Arabian desert but a few miles to the westward. The only evidence that we were actually on the site of a once great city were the fragments of pottery and inscribed bricks and the heaps of rubbish which cumbered the ground and the innumerable mounds, high and low, which covered a region many square miles in area. We saw nothing to remind us of the majestic ruins of Pæstum or Girgenti; no magnificent temples, no stately columns, or impressive pediments or friezes or entablatures. In the mounds which have not yet been changed by the pick and spade of the explorer we could note only occasional traces of brick walls but not the slightest vestige of stone or marble. No remains of temples or palaces or buildings of any kind. All the marvelous structures described by Ctesias and Herodotus had long since disappeared beneath the drifting sands of the desert. As one contemplates these mounds, beneath which lay the ruined palaces and temples and strongholds of the proud Kings of Chaldea, they have, in the words of the illustrious German explorer, Dr. Robert Koldewey, "the appearance of a mountainous country in miniature; heights, summits, ravines and tablelands are all here." " The landscape is, indeed, such as one might fancy to exist on the planetoid Ceres or Vesta. We asked an Arab who accompanied us how the potsherds and fragments of vitrified bricks which littered the ground were brought here and he promptly replied "By 3 The Excavations at Babylon, p. 15 (London, 1914). |