(soft piano music)
- [Voiceover] I'm here in the offices
of the World Monuments Fund
and we're gonna talk about
the ancient site of Babylon.
That so many of us have heard of
from the Bible, we've heard of the story of the
Tower of Babel which may have come from
a ziggurat in ancient Babylon.
But what is it like to visit Babylon today?
- [Voiceover] It's great to talk about Babylon
'cause it's one of my favorite places.
We've learned a lot in the seven years that
World Monuments Fund has been working on the site.
Babylon conjures up these great images
of the ancient world, and many achievements,
and famous people.
But it actually is a very humble-looking site.
People are often shocked that it's mud-brick,
that it's simple construction technologies
and except for the raised brick animal figures
that are very famous,
the rest of it doesn't look the way we expect.
- [Voiceover] We read about Hammurabi
and his building campaign
and his Code of Laws, and then later,
during the period that we call Neo-Babylonia,
when Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the walls
and made luxurious palaces
and how it was this center for learning
and the arts.
And the site of one of the Seven Wonders
of the ancient world,
the Hanging Gardens of Babylon
and an imperial capital.
- [Voiceover] I think it's beautiful in so many ways.
It's a long, particularly beautiful bend
of the Euprates, lined with palm trees
and certain times of the year,
very green and lush.
Other times of the year, sandstorms,
but I think that's what made it
a desirable settlement and antiquity
that you could grow things very easily
and it was clearly along a trade route.
- [Voiceover] And we know that the site
has been occupied for thousands of years.
People still live adjacent to the ruins today.
- [Voiceover] One of the great surprises
of the site is we think
that these sites are abandoned.
Because we look at the ruins
and we don't see people living right there,
but in fact, less than a 30 minute walk away
from the most famous parts of the site
are agricultural communities
and thriving modern settlements.
Before the invasion in the early 2000's,
this was the most visited site in all of Iraq.
And virtually every Iraqi, at some point,
during either his or her schooling
or in their adult life, came to Babylon.
And so it's a site that people really loved
and even today, where there is not
international tourism,
Iraqis still come to the site.
And a lot of them come just to take a walk
along the river or picnic.
So it's great to see people using the site
even amidst the chaos we have today.
- [Voiceover] Part of the work
of the World Monuments Fund
is to, when things settle down politically,
to make this a place that people can come visit.
And to make it a place that's sustainable
for tourism, while still protecting the site.
and making future archaeological excavations possible.
- [Voiceover] We were invited by the
Iraq State Board of Antiquities and Heritage
in 2007 to work with them
to do several things.
One was to create a site management plan.
One was to do condition surveys,
and the final element,
which is what we're doing today,
is to develop conservation plans
that we're implementing on site.
And very much with an idea
that international tourism
will return to Iraq before too long.
And one of the things we're working on right now
is developing tourism paths.
And in the meantime, we work very intensively
with a group of
State Board Antiquity employees at Babylon.
Archaeologists, engineers, architects, conservators,
and then our international experts
come and go as needed on the site.
- [Voiceover] So the site was excavated
in the early 20th century,
very late 19th century by Robert Koldewey.
Much of what he excavated,
ended up in museums around the world
including most famously,
the amazingly beautiful enormous Ishtar Gate
which is in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin.
But quite a bit still remains on the site.
- [Voiceover] There are dozens of buildings
that were excavated that are still
visible on the site.
And even the Ishtar Gate,
in fact, its predecessor is still there on the site.
So what was taken away to Berlin
was a top layer.
And then it turns out that there are
two more layers of the Gate.
So they just kept building on top.
So you were asking me about
what it's like to visit the site today
and I think one of the great surprises
is even though mud-brick
is a very humble material,
the monumentality of the site
is in the scale.
So you look at these walls
and they are meters and meters thick
and they are 20 feet high.
- [Voiceover] Talking a minute ago about
the rebuilding that happened
several times in antiquity,
but there's recent rebuilding by
Saddam Hussein who saw himself
as a heir to Nebchadnezzar,
the sixth century ruler of Babylon.
And then there have been restoration efforts
that have gone on in the 20th century
since the discovery of the location of Babylon.
- [Voiceover] Well I think Babylon has a
history like many sites in Europe and the Middle East.
It was excavated at the end of the 19th century,
spilling into the early 20th century.
Then because of World War I,
excavation activity stopped.
Then between the wars
it resumed a little bit again.
And then there was quite a bit
of activity in the 50's and 60's.
Then, in the 1970's and 80's was when
there were a lot of reconstructions
and a lot of restoration efforts on the site.
One of the things that you can see
if you look at before and after images,
so there's the palace, which we can see
what it looked like in the 1920's and 30's.
And then you see in the 1980's that
what were ragged footprints of buildings
have now all been made very uniform.
And so that's a little bit of a concern
to understand exactly
how the reconstruction was undertaken.
- [Voiceover] So some concern that
the restorations that happened
and the rebuilding that happened
under Hussein, were not undertaken
with the kind of scientific archaeology
that would be ideal in the 21st century.
- [Voiceover] It's not just Babylon
that suffers from this.
There's a taste that ebbs and flows
about how we look at archaeological sites.
So at one end of the pendulum is
very heavy reconstruction so that we
understand what we're looking at
and the other end of the pendulum is
do nothing and leave it in a pure state.
I think here we don't necessarily know enough
about how the decisions were made
and it does appear to have been made
more for political than scientific reasons.
- [Voiceover] To get a real sense of
that imperial city and it's scale
and what it meant in the ancient eras,
we'd have to go.
- [Voiceover] I hope that we all have that chance.
I think what will happen if you do get to go,
is not just that sense of grandeur and scale
about the ancient world,
but I think what you'll find fascinating
is the world we see today at Babylon.
That it's not a static museum experience.
It's the birds that fly overhead,
it's the dates we might find on the ground,
it's the honey we might buy from local residents,
and it's wandering around the site
and imagining both the ancient world
and maybe thinking about
where we're going to go and relax
later in the day sitting by the river,
enjoying a beautiful vista that I think people
have enjoyed for 5,000 years.
(upbeat piano music)