Activities of the Institute of Archaeological
Sciences
and of the Centre for the Restoration of Monuments
in Baghdad
Babylon
Project: Improvement of the Babylon
Site: Babylon
Director: Roberto Parapetti
Since the beginning of the 2nd millennium B.C., Babylon, 90 km south of Baghdad, was the main political, cultural and religious centre of central Mesopotamia. The German archaeological mission led by Robert Koldewey, between the last decade of the 19th century and World War I, precisely defined the city’s urbanistic layout and main architectural landmarks from the Neo-Babylonian age (7th – 6th century B.C.) to the advent of Islam. The double city walls, the royal palaces, the sanctuaries, including that of Marduk with its tower, evidence of the deviation of the Euphrates in Achemenid times and the theatre of the city founded by Alexander the Great were all recognized in the city of Nebuchadnezzar. The low depth of the water table did not allow the city of Hammurabi to be examined.
On the government’s recommendation, in 1979 the Antiquities Department began a major excavation and restoration project in Babylon, “Babylon Revival”, which over time increasingly assumed political connotations and lost its original, exquisitely cultural character.
From the outset, the Italian-Iraqi Institutes took part in the endeavour with a new excavation (G. Bergamini) and with projects (as yet unfulfilled) to study the site, whose aboveground remains were very poorly preserved (R. Parapetti).
The Antiquities Department, on the other hand, mainly conducted excavation and reconstructive restoration works with the purpose of creating an archaeological park.
The South Palace, the ancient city’s political and administrative centre, was built by Nebuchadnezzar, from bricks cemented with bituminous mortar, at a considerable height (as may be read on the bricks themselves) above ground level, a sort of artificial fortified Acropolis, in order to avoid the Euphrates’ devastating floods. Of the original magnificence (the throne room, for example, covered by a structure made from Lebanese cedar beams, measures 30 m x 60 m), only fragments of the courtyards’ brick floors and the pits left by the plundering of the masonry’s bricks, which reached the foundations as early as late antiquity, still remain.
Excavations have reached a depth of at least 4 m below the ancient level of each room, turning the foundation’s walls into elevated structures. The palace’s reconstruction was based on the reconstructions hypothesized by the German scholars. The Greek theatre, whose very poorly preserved cavea mush have originally been supported by an unbaked brick landfill, was adapted, with new structures, to the requirements of the shows of the “Babylon Festival” that was popular since the early 1980s. The creation of the planned archaeological park also required considerable works on a territorial level. Inside the walls, three artificial hills were built (300 m wide at the base and 30 m high) with earth dug up from the surrounding area, obviously archaeological ground. The resulting ditches became artificial lakes. Only one of the palaces that should have been built on top of the hills was actually built.
The project, apparently unfinished, was interrupted only in the spring of 2003. The site’s central area was initially occupied by a U.S. Army camp until December 2004, and then by the Polish army camp.
With UNESCO’s coordination and under the guidance of the Antiquities Department, a programme for monitoring the damage done to the site and for performing restorations is currently underway.
Specifically, one study questioned the tower foundations’ dating to Neo-Babylonian times, suggesting instead that they were built in the Palaeo-Babylonian period on the basis of the starting level of the first steps of the ramps, which are considerably lower than the average level of the river in the Neo-Babylonian period, both documented by the German surveys (Bergamini, Parapetti, 1980).
An initial project for cleaning up and improving the site included, first of all, changing the position of the Baghdad-Basra railway line and of the main North-South national road that ran along the eastern section of the inner walls. The recognition of the urban layout aimed at the characterization of the main structure through the planting of appropriate vegetation that followed their layout. Rows of palm trees were suggested along the walls, and vineyards were proposed along the moats surrounding them and along the ancient riverbed (Parapetti 1979).
A second project planned an intervention on the South Palace. The filling of the moats up to the base of the aboveground parts of the structures was suggested, in order to at least discern their floor plans, in addition to the conservation and restoration of the courtyards’ floors. The creation of rooms obtained from tunnels under the courtyards along several sections of the palace’s walls would have allowed at least the walls’ foundations to be discerned, and it would have been possible to obtain spaces for displaying informational and museum documents, along an outdoor/indoor visitors’ itinerary (Parapetti, 1981).
A third project should have intervened on the city’s most suggestive monument, Ishtar’s Gate. The monumental gate along the Processional Street connecting Marduk’s Temple to the House of Celebrations, running along the East façade of the South Palace, had to be opened once a year for the celebrations in the deity’s honour. The building, of which only the foundations have survived, has an extraordinary bas-relief decoration made from moulded bricks on its walls, depicting alternating rows of bulls and mythological creatures. This decoration in the foundation suggests that the gate’s ritual function existed even during the years in which the landfill was formed and until the level of the palace acropolis was reached. The reconstruction in Berlin’s Pergamon Museum of the gate covered with glazed bricks is the result of the recomposition of fragments found among the rubble on the site at the top of the raised level.
As the preserved top part of the gate is at the level of the processional road that went through it, the decorations could be appreciated thanks to ascending and descending stairs. The project included the reestablishment of the road’s continuity on both sides of the gate, and therefore covering and musealizing the current gap and the practicable space with a spatial structure. The project also included the present installation of a diaphragm of weel-points around the gate that could reach the dry part of the walls’ base, which up to now have never been reached in any part of the city (Parapetti, 1982).