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The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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A 16th-century hand-coloured engraving of the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon by Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck, with the
Tower of Babel in the background.
© Commons. |
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Astratigos Village Life.... Travelers Tales.. XVIII
The Road to Babylon...
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....who seek to go to Babylon, best not follow me, for things
you see may well not be.... Anon. |
Babylon, I am given to understand, is something of a mystery. Something
where everything one sees may not actually be, if you will forgive the
pun, in the eye of the beholder. Or then again it may well have been
deliberately hidden or distorted to confuse those who seek to get
there...
Try it. Get out your Michelin Map, or your Rough Guide to Everywhere. My
own Michelin map turned out to cover only Europe - the closest I could get
from Europe to Babylon was in a straight line east of Cyprus - around 1000.84 km. 640
nautical miles. Well, that's quite close! A quick ferry ride and maybe
550 miles driving to go, easy. But a little more preparation seemed
probably a good idea as an examination of 'Rough Guide to Babylon'
didn't seem to produce very much at all. A bit more difficult than
planning the 'Long Way Down' perhaps - I wondered if they went to Babylon?
OK - off to the 'virtualtourist'
website... Four hotels! But then, hopes dashed again - three are
in America, the wrong direction altogether. I was beginning to think
that was a possible name for the venture - 'The Wrong Direction
Altogether'. A little more catchy than 'The Long Way Down'... And there
was my manna from heaven - the fourth hotel was in Babylon, Iraq. Now
that's what I meant at first. And it was near Al-Hilla, almost on top of
Ancient Babylon. What luck!!
And not many tourists seem to have been there - perfect. Only four
photographs online - one with looking like an Egyptian looking sphinx-like lion;
one like an arched door (bricked-up) in a large wall; one of a large
area of housing surrounded by a large wall and a maze (looking empty);
and one of another bricked up (very colourful) doorway between two
square pillars. It was looking somewhat unusual...
Not being easily put off I 'netted' the closest hotels. 'virtualtourist'
said that there we no hotels near Babylon. Ok then - 'things to
do'. The same four photographs appeared - without comment. But then,
eureka, a virtual tourist lives there. Inside information, a possible
scoop, just what we needed. Ahmed lives in
Babylon. He has been a 'virtualtourist' since January 18, 2011.
And there was a photograph of a young middle-aged man pushing a
supermarket trolley down a food isle complete with two young children
along for the ride. We had a 'go'.. I say had,
because Ahmed Ahmed, says the
website, hasn't come back in a (long) while. I began to wonder why...
I may consider myself an intrepid traveler, but a name on a map
alone isn't much to go on, particularly in the absence of serious
tourist attractions - or at least a hotel. I mean, I wasn't necessarily
seeking five star and 'Le cordon bleu' chefs and champagne, but we did
need a destination which existed! However, following the example
of the 'long way down' team, I wasn't going to give up so easily. Those two
lads fell off their motorbikes regularly, only to get up again and push
on almost regardless. Push on it was....
We had done (in our innocence) Michelin Europe. Google. 'Virtualtourist'
and several of the hotel booking sites. The latter offered nothing -
well several hotel Babylon's in Baghdad (Iraq) were listed by various
sites but none offered any information. All those searches. All to little effect. Nothing.
Nowhere. Nobody. Where to now was the question. Who could help find
somewhere that didn't seem to exist, or if it did was no longer open!
What had happened to the hanging gardens of Babylon - listed as one of
the seven wonders of the ancient world?
Where to I wondered. Where would I find my goal? Where else but the all
knowing wikipedia website. It is free - and that matters, as getting to
Babylon itself was starting to look expensive. The costs of finding
Babylon alone were starting to escalate. Better go there immediately -
before the oil price rises.
And here it was. An Ancient city founded in 1894 BC in
ancient Mesopopotamia, which had fallen down, which 'today
is a large mound, or
'tell', of
broken mud-brick buildings and debris in the fertile Mesopotamian plain
between the
Tigris and
Euphrates rivers'. Well that accounted for the lack of hotels
(!) and tourists, but not what happened to such a famed city which once
contained one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. I was not put
off - in fact I think that I wanted to visit this site even more. We
could take a tent, food, water and plenty of sun-cream and be there just
a couple of days after leaving Cyprus, which would be our jumping-off
point. But then another problem raised its head, that of the
Tower of Babylon.
Things at this point get somewhat confusing, It was apparent already
that my goal was Babylon, Iraq, which was now no more than a large mound
of broken mud-brick buildings without a hotel, and maybe no petrol
station. But the mere mention of the Tower of Babylon, was immediately
corrected to the Tower of Babil. Which was variously placed in Mexico
(too far in the wrong direction), America (not the same place), Ireland
(the Blarney stone?), Nepal, and several other places spread around the
face of the earth. Even the intrepid explorer David Livingstone
gets involved with his tale of Lozi (Africa is not the same place
either). Being determined, I decided that it was still - well, had been
-
in Babylon, Iraq. The rest was obviously all blarney...
So what had happened to my Tower? Back to wikipedia. Following
their story, the Tower of Babylon was destroyed by God, and no one has
since succeeded in rebuilding it. The narrative of the city of Babel is
recorded in
Genesis 11:1-9 :-
After the great flood - Everyone on earth spoke
the same language. As people migrated from the east, they settled in the
land of Shinar. People there sought to make bricks and build a city and
a tower with its top in the sky, to make a name for themselves, so that
they not be scattered over the world. God came down to look at the city
and tower, and remarked that as one people with one language, nothing
that they sought would be out of their reach. God went down and
confounded their speech, so that they could not understand each other,
and scattered them over the face of the earth, and they stopped building
the city. (And
tower). Thus the city was called
Babel.
But I don't care about that. I still want to go there - the tower has
never been successfully rebuilt, but the ruined city still stands and
there are plans afoot by the
World Monuments Fund
to conserve Babylon. The real problem seems to be that everyone is
trying to speak the same language again (English perhaps?) and I am
somewhat concerned about the height of the towers being built -
maybe I will give this one a miss!!
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In the News
Reviews...
Cavo Sidero is back....
No surprise really - the British Minoan Group seems never to have given
up their fight to establish golf courses and holiday villages in north
eastern Crete. The intended luxury complexes have been held up for a
considerable time because of environmental protests.
Given the current dire straits in which
Greece currently finds itself financially it seems likely that the Council
of State may well agree to a project which will bring in large funding and
employment, whilst addressing environmental issue at the same time....
Link to Story.
And the Israeli's too..
Plan to invest heavily
on Crete - an investment of €500
million on a 2.5 square-meter plot - luxury hotel, luxury tourism
accommodation, conference centre, spa shopping mal, theme park and casino.
The latter could be a legal problem.
However, the company, which currently operates an 18 hole golf course on
Crete, says that they will only go ahead if Greece speeds up its licensing
procedures. Once again cash-strapped Greece which needs the money
desperately, is likely to comply...
Link to Story.
But for such a small island...
Crete has more than its fair share of crime, as garbage disposal
authorities learned to their cost when thieves broke into a depot and
siphoned 600 litres of diesel fuel from their trucks!
The second such theft over a few days...
Link to Story.
Plus, bullets for a revolution!...
As a group claiming to be the 'Cretan Revolution' send bullets and
threatening letters to the finance ministry and four Cretan tax offices...
Link to Story.
But these robbers may not rest easy...
As the family of a 35-year-old intellectually handicapped man - the
victim of burglars who broke into the house on Akrotiri and threatened the
man and his mother with violence if they did not hand over cash and
valuables.
They netted
€50
and a mobile phone - plus a bounty of
€3,000
put on their heads by the family...
Link to Story.
And attackers are being sought...
After an attack on Pakistani nationals in
Ierapetra. One man was arrested and 10 others are sought...
Link to Story.
But for the war
on drugs and weapons...
It is seemingly endless, as once more police on Crete make arrests
during a 'large scale operation' on a family home and warehouse in Astipades,
Iraklio.
Four Kalasnikov assault
rifles; two pistols: 1500 round of ammuntion; and twenty barrels of hashish!...
Link to Story.
Plus, the never-ending saga...
Surrounding the topic of German war reparations for Greece from WWII. A
special team assigned by the Greek General State Accounting Office is due to
report on March 8th..
Independent Greek MP Notis Marias has claimed that, when interest is
added to an enforced loan by the Bank of Greece to Germany during WWII, then
the amount Germany owes Athens comes to 128 Bilion euros...
Link to Story.
Also never seemingly ending...
Are the many and diverse ways Greek authorities seek to collect ever
more revenues. Now authorities are hoping to raise 250 million euros from
checks on people with vehicles having no record of valid insurance. Each one
caught will bring in 250€.
Plus a 10 day loss of license if found driving whilst uninsured...
Link to Story.
As is the saga of Golden Dawn...
As the director of a public hospital in Triploli, Peloponnese, is
removed from office after allowing Golden Dawn members to check the records
of private nurses....
Link to Story.
But on the bright side...
Consumers have been able to save 250 million on supermarket special
offers...
Link to Story.
And Still David Cameron...
British Prime minister, continues to rule out the return of the
Parthenon Marbles...saying that he did not believe in 'returnism'.
I wonder if that includes stolen property 'returnism'?
But, to be fair, David Cameron did qualify his
position by saying 'The right answer is for the British Museum and other
cultural institutions to do exactly what they do, which is to link up with
other institutions around the world to make sure that the things which we
have and look after so well are properly shared with people around the
world.'...
Does that, I wonder, mean that we can all go to London to see Greek
artifacts, or perhaps we can send them back to Athens so people from London
can see them there? Or something else entirely?...
Link to Story.
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Amazon.co.uk & Selected Cretan
bookstores
Living in Crete
by Carol Palioudakis
OUT NOW IN PAPERBACK!
Price £9.50 GBP |
|
Amazon.co.uk & Selected Cretan
bookstores |
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Babylon's Future
(5min15 secs)
There is a very nice very short video about the future of the city of Babylon,
one of the world's most important
archaeological sites, here.
Link.
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