A Dweller in Mesopotamia Part 3

Ezra's Tomb is a splendid spot to look at. Mosquitoes at times makes it far from pleasant to live in. The blue-tiled dome surrounded by palms, one of which is bending down in a manner strange to such a straight-growing tree, is an oasis in a vast wilderness of nothing in particular.

The Euphrates from a scenic point of view might be described as more wooded than the Tigris. There are some delightful glimpses of waterside verdure and rush-covered sh.o.r.es. To the archaeologist and the historian Mugheir is intensely interesting, for the great mound discloses the site of the ancient Ur--Ur of the Chaldees--from which Abraham set out towards Canaan.

Up till now, upon a map of the world in Abraham's time, the good little _Shushan_ would still be at sea. She would be approaching the coast at the mouth of the river Euphrates, the Tigris flowing-out some fifty miles further east. Dockyards and busy workshops would proclaim the vicinity of this capital, the greatest of all the cities of Chaldea.

Since these prosperous days the sea has receded about 150 miles, and left Ur a nondescript heap to be disputed over by professors.

At length, when we had said good-bye to the _Shushan_ and taken to a motor-boat, we arrived at Hillah, bent on finding the house of the irrigation officer. We landed on the wrong side of the river and rashly let the boat go back. Brown maintains now that this was my idea, but as a matter of fact it was one of his attempts at a picturesque approach--for my benefit. Brown has a vivid imagination, and sees so clearly in his mind how a place _ought_ to be that he really believes it is so. In this case he pictured us approaching Hillah and looking down upon miles and miles of fruitful gardens intersected with little waterways--a sort of landscape-garden Venice. This view could only be obtained from a high cliff, and as there was no cliff in lower Mesopotamia, except in Brown's imagination, it was natural that he would be disappointed.

A sudden white fog, moreover, took away any chance of a view of any kind, and we were soon hopelessly lost. Some soldiers we met on the way told us to keep straight on and then turn to the left by some palm trees. As we soon encountered some palm trees every few yards we wondered whether they intended to be humorous. I don't think they did, however. The optimism of you-can't-possibly-miss-it type is too general.

The man who says "turn down by some trees" knows the place well, and can see certain trees in his mind's eye. He will turn when he sees the right trees, but you will probably get lost.

Needless to say, everything went wrong with our scheme of approaching the irrigation works from a picturesque angle. The dense fog thickened and shrouded the neighbourhood of the river in impenetrable mystery. We kept turning down by palm trees as directed, but to no purpose. We struck the river bank again after much wandering and kept to it, hoping the mist would clear. A man in a goufa appeared from nowhere and floated away out of sight into nowhere like a ghostly visitant from another world. The sun began to show through the fog and blue sky appeared overhead. Soon the steaming vapours dispersed, showing a view of buildings among palm trees and a bridge of boats.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Hillah.]

Here again we were held up while countless mahailas pa.s.sed through, but we succeeded in getting over at last and eventually found the house of the Wise Men, the headquarters of the irrigation officers.

Had we been amba.s.sadors on a diplomatic visit to Hillah, we could not have been more hospitably entertained or given greater facilities for getting about in a most fascinating region of the world for any one who felt the glamour of history in this once highly civilized country.

Great buildings like Ctesiphon near Baghdad or traces of the vast irrigation works of the past are full of interest, but for romance and mystery there is no piece of the world more fraught with meaning than this site of the city of Nebuchadnezzar, nearly 200 square miles in extent, and now, but for the comparatively small tract of irrigated land, a desert.

"Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen, and is become the habitation of devils."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

V

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ctesiphon.]

[Ill.u.s.tration]

BY THE WATERS OF BABYLON

The irrigation officers at Hillah were ideal hosts, not only from the commonly accepted standpoint, but from that of an artist. They let me roam about and sketch what _I_ wanted, not what _they_ wanted. They gave me every means of transport, and such suggestions as they made as to possible subjects were excellent and offered with such tact that there was no difficulty in abstaining from sketching or going on with something else.

How often does the unfortunate painter suffer from the well-meaning host, who with an admiration for his calling, which is both extremely flattering and tremendously inconvenient, tries to do him well--especially if he dabbles a little in water-colour painting himself. An organized attack on all the real or supposed picturesque bits in the neighbourhood is planned and the members of his family outdo each other in praiseworthy endeavours to help on the great cause of Art.

The campaign is prefaced by a violent discussion at G.H.Q. as to the best landscape within easy reach, and Millie, who has had lessons in pastelles, prevails over Mollie, who merely does pen painting. The wretched painter is then hauled triumphantly into a car surrounded by the artistic, who regard him with almost heathen veneration and feel thrilled by the fact that they, too, observe that the sky is blue and the trees are green. Arriving at the chosen scene and viewing it from the spot "from which they always take it," the unfortunate artist is stood or seated down, book in hand, complete with paintbox and water, and expected to begin. _He_ does not have any voice in the choosing of the view. It is high noon. The sun is right in front of him and everything is so hard that even Turner could make nothing of it. The worshippers at the shrine of art stand round in awed antic.i.p.ation, waiting for the masterpiece.

It is useless for him to protest that the conditions are impossible.

"After such kindness that would be a dismal thing to do." So he contrives to make some sort of a drawing which dims the l.u.s.tre of his reputation in their eyes for many years to come.

[Ill.u.s.tration: ON THE EUPHRATES, EARLY MORNING]

The major took us in his car to various points along the river and explained the means employed in irrigation. On the Euphrates there are two methods used for local irrigation apart from the system of ca.n.a.ls flowing from the river. One is the water-wheel, a curious contrivance built out on stone piers. It consists of a huge paddle-wheel with buckets like those of a dredger, that fills a trough that runs down into the fields.

The other is a water-raising device that is worked by bullocks. A large leather skin is hauled up from the river by a rope over a wheel. This rope is harnessed to a bullock which walks backwards and forwards hauling up the water-skin and letting it down again. When the full skin reaches the top it hits against a bar and pours itself out into a trough. These two systems, as can be easily imagined, are good only for the land in the immediate vicinity of the river bank, as the supply of water is necessarily not large. Above Hit the frequency of the water-wheels with their stone piers causes so much obstruction that navigation for any large boats is impossible. In one place there are seven wheels abreast.

At last we arrived at an old bridge crossing one of the ancient ca.n.a.ls, which branched off from the river in a westerly direction. I have sketched it on page 57. It is extremely interesting as an example of the resuscitation of the old waterways of Babylonia. The banks of this channel here take almost a mountainous character for so flat a country. This piling up of mounds has been caused by clearing the silt from the entrance to the intake of the ca.n.a.l.

From the vantage point of this high ground we could see a goodly prospect, and on the one side the river, here called the Hindeyeh ca.n.a.l, with its green sh.o.r.e and on the other a belt of date palms and beyond the illimitable desert. Some five or six miles away there appeared a mound surmounted by a tower, a curious object alone in the great expanse of flat land.

"What is that thing," I asked, "that looks like a ruined castle on the Rhine?"

"The Tower of Babel," replied the major, "or rather that is its popular name. It is Birs Nimrud on the map." Brown wanted to start straight away and "discover" it, but we persuaded him to a.s.sent to lunch first. The major was too busy for such an escapade, but he suggested lending us a Ford car which would do anything with the desert and which we could not break, so we returned to Hillah.

After lunch we set out on our expedition, Brown very silent and full, no doubt, of romantic projects, and arrived back again at the bridge where I made my sketch. It appears that the route was not direct as far as the car was concerned, owing to the crossing of some water channels, but that on foot we should be able to do it. I knew Brown was concocting something, and he soon let out what it was. His scheme was to send the car round to meet us at the Tower of Babel and we would walk. I think he rather liked the idea of saying "Tower of Babel" to the driver instead of "home." I consented, rather against my better judgment, for I fear Brown's enthusiasm for dramatic settings. His pathetic belief that my next picture for the R.A. would be ent.i.tled "The Tower of Silence," and that I should achieve a masterpiece in depicting the blood-red ruin at sunset across the desert was somewhat disarming. He forgot in his enthusiasm that if the sun _did_ set when we were in the required position we should be benighted on the plain without food or shelter, and not at all in the mood for painting pictures.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ancient irrigation channel near Hillah.]

Practical difficulties still existed, inasmuch as we were for a long time unable to explain to the native driver that he was to meet us at Birs Nimrud, and feared, if we were not very explicit, he would return to Hillah and we might never be heard of again. Brown's pantomimic attempts at direction were obscure even to me, and I am sure the driver thought he had gone out of his mind. They consisted in his stooping down with his hand on the ground, then rising slowly, turning round and round, his hand describing a spiral curve, till it shot up straight over his head. Then he pointed to the car. There was evidently some implied connection between the spiral curve and the car. How long this would have gone on I do not know had I not tried the words "Birs Nimrud." The driver understood this and I think we made it clear that whatever happened he was to be at Birs Nimrud and wait for us. So we started off on foot.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BABYLON: THE EXCAVATIONS AT EL KASR]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 1).]

When we were well under way, I asked Brown, who is a freemason, if he was endeavouring to reach the understanding of the native by means of some mystic Eastern ritual unknown to me. He was quite scornful of my want of intelligence and explained that his movements were intended to describe the tower that had been built from earth to reach up into heaven. It was perfectly clear, he maintained, that if he first indicated the Tower of Babel and then the Ford car, the driver would see, had he been reasonably intelligent, that he was to take the car to the tower.

The journey over the plain towards the mound and tower was not so eventful as we had expected it to be. Beyond jumping many small watercourses or negotiating muddy patches left by the recent rain, we found no difficulty in keeping a straight course. A herd of camels trotted away as we approached and we started up a fox. Otherwise we came across no sign of life. As we advanced mile upon mile the mysterious tower seemed to get further away, an illusion possible in flat countries. I have often observed a similar phenomenon in Holland.

Perhaps in this case mirage had something to do with it.

A mosque or tomb became visible and then, almost suddenly, we seemed to get to close quarters with everything. A ridge rose up from the flat land and from this point of vantage, known as the tomb of Abraham, we could look across a level zone a few hundred yards wide to the long, irregular hummock about a hundred feet high, although in this setting it looked a great deal more. The east side of this small range is scored with miniature wadies washed out by rain, and the crowning ruin appeared (as in sketch, Fig. 1), casting a long shadow down the slope of the hill.

Leaving the high ground we skirted the foot of the mound, going southwards and seeing it from the point of view indicated in Fig. 2, and then as at Fig. 3. A group of Arabs bargaining about coins and attempting to sell curios to two British officers, who had dismounted from their horses, made a tremendous hubbub and, as Brown noted, gave the right local colour as to the confusion of tongues.

I am ill-equipped with books of reference out here, but in one of Murray's handbooks I have unearthed the following note--all I can find about this place:--

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Tower of Babel.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 2).]

"BIRS NIMRuD, about 2 hours from Hillah, is a vast ruin crowned apparently by the ruins of a tower rising to a height of 153 ft. above the plain, and having a circ.u.mference of rather more than 2000 feet. The Birs, which was situated within the city of Borsippa, has been wrongly identified with the Tower of Babel. It is the temple of Nebo, called the 'Temple of the seven spheres of Heaven and Earth,' and was a sort of pyramid built in seven stages, the stairs being ornamented with the planetary colours, and on the seventh was an ark or tabernacle. The Birs was destroyed by Xerxes and restored by Antiochus Soter. The Tower of Babel was possibly the Esagila of the inscriptions, or the E-Temenanki--a tower not yet identified. Not far from Birs Nimrud are the ruins of Hashemieh, the first residence of the Abbaside Khalifs."

Brown would have none of this. Anything is anathema to Brown which destroys topographical romance. He is a fierce enemy to "higher criticism," which does away with the whale in the book of Jonah or the snow-clad summit of Mount Ararat as the resting-place of the ark. It is quite exciting, he maintains, to picture the ark stuck on the perilous ice-peaks of a glacier, with Noah and his family endeavouring to get the elephants and giraffes safely down a ravine like the Mer de Glace to the more temperate regions of the plains below. How much better than thinking of it stuck fast on some wretched mound by the Euphrates, 30 feet high.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN OLD WORLD CRAFT, A TYPE OF BOAT UNCHANGED SINCE THE DAYS OF SINBAD]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Tower of Babel (Fig. 3).]

Here was a find, too good to be lost, a high tower on a mound visible from afar and unrivalled by any equally picturesque claimant. It looked the part splendidly, so the Tower of Babel it should be as far as Brown was concerned.