Conquest of Persia

by Alexander Geiger

  “That’s a complicated question, your imperial majesty, because there are a couple of walls. You previously passed through the outer wall. As you undoubtedly noticed, it’s a pretty imposing structure. It encloses a three-square-mile area on the eastern side of the Euphrates, is almost five miles long, and rises to a height of seventy-five feet. It’s more than thirty feet thick at the base and twenty feet wide at the top. As our citizens like to brag, the outer wall is wide enough at the top to permit two chariots to pass each other without slowing down.

  “The outer wall was originally intended to protect not only the city but also the plantations that served, at that time, as its breadbasket. By now, irrigated farm areas have spread far beyond the outer wall, on both sides of the river. In the meantime, numerous slums and shantytowns have sprung up within the outer wall, as you saw during our ride to the Ishtar Gate. They are a real eyesore but, unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do about it. The city is growing and the new arrivals have to live somewhere.

  “Are we ready to proceed?”

  Alexandros checked to see whether our men had occupied both fortresses. “You were going to tell us about the inner wall as well. Let’s do that before we enter this tunnel through the Southern Fortress.”

  “Certainly, your majesty. We’re about to enter Babylon proper. Please keep in mind that the city straddles the Euphrates. The Old City is on the east bank and the so-called New City is on the west bank. The Old City is slightly larger and includes the royal palace, most of the temples, and many municipal buildings. The so-called New City, which, despite its name, is more than a thousand years old, is mostly residential apartment buildings and commercial establishments. Together, the two parts make a rectangle about a mile and a half wide and a mile long. The inner walls run all the way around this inner city, or Babylon proper, as we call it.

  “There’s also a moat around the Old City. The banks of the moat are lined with fired brick and waterproofed with bitumen to make sure neither water nor enemy sappers can get through. The walls are built on top of this solid base. They’re just as tall as the outer wall, only a little more slender.”

  “I don’t see any stones. What are these walls made of?”

  “Unfortunately, your highness, both stone and timber are rare commodities in all of Babylonia, so most construction has to be done with bricks. The best, most expensive bricks are the enameled bricks you see here at the Ishtar Gate. The next best building material are the fired bricks, which are quite durable. Both the outer and inner walls were built of fired brick, with bitumen used as both mortar and sealant.

  “The cheapest, most abundant material are mud bricks, baked in the Sun, as opposed to a kiln.” Mazaios laughed. “Most of Babylon is made of mud bricks. But I digress. At the top of the inner walls, there’s a crenelated parapet that runs all the way along both the outside and inside edges of the top surface. Every two hundred feet or so, there’s a watch tower that straddles the top of the wall. So, as you can see, you could easily station tens of thousands of men on just the inner walls alone.

  “Finally, at the north and south sides of the walls, where the walls abut the river, huge iron grates completely fill the gap. Iron bars, driven into the riverbed and embedded into the opposing ends of the wall, keep anything bigger than a rat from getting through.

  “Babylon really is impregnable, unless we choose to invite people in. But today, there are no soldiers on the walls. All the inhabitants are lining the streets on the other side of this gate, ready to greet you and pay homage to you, your imperial highness,” Mazaios concluded.

  Alexandros, seeing our men in position, was ready to proceed. “Well, in that case, we shouldn’t keep them waiting.”

  *******

  It turned out the tunnel through Southern Fortress was about a hundred feet long. As we made our way through the passageway and into the city itself, Mazaios provided a brief history lesson.

  “There’s always been a Babylon,” he said. “It sits at the point where the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers make their closest approach to each other. It’s the natural crossover point for men and merchandise sailing on one and needing to get to the other.

  “As far as I know, it was part of the Akkadian Empire, perhaps two thousand years ago, although this place has been inhabited much longer than that.”

  “Almost as old as some of the pyramids in Egypt,” Alexandros whispered to me. I nodded my concurrence with Mazaios’s chronology.

  “Eventually, the Babylonians overthrew the Akkadians and installed a native ruler. This has been a recurring theme in the history of the city. They keep rebelling but can’t keep their independence for long.”

  “Perhaps we can restore their independence,” Alexandros offered.

  Mazaios didn’t know what to make of the comment. The notion of an independent Babylonia was, at that stage, an absurdity. “They’d like that very much, your divine majesty,” he finally ventured.

  Alexandros smiled. “Of course, their independence will have to be under our leadership.”

  “That goes without saying, your majesty,” Mazaios quickly agreed. “But to resume my story. At some point, maybe fifteen hundred years ago, a capable native leader named Hammurabi came into power and expanded the reach of the city over the entire area we now call Babylonia, and perhaps even beyond. He left a code of laws behind, chiseled into a large stone stele.”

  “Really? That’s something I’d like to see.”

  “Well, unfortunately, after Hammurabi died, Babylon once again lost its independence. It was overrun by various invaders, including Assyrians, Kassites, and Elamites. The Elamites dragged the stele off to their capital Sousa, so you’ll have to go there to see it.”

  “It’s our next stop.”

  “In the meantime, we do have some clay tablets with Hammurabi’s laws incised on them but only the priests can read those tablets. We can certainly ask the priests to show them to us.

  “To continue, about three hundred years ago some primitive sea people made their way here and occupied Babylon. I think they called themselves Kaldu or Kashdu or something like that. We call them Khaldaians now. They have disappeared. Or more correctly, they were absorbed by the native Babylonians, so when you talk to ordinary Babylonians now, they think they’re descended from the original inhabitants of this region, when in fact they’re just as likely to be Babylonianized Khaldaians. So really, in a way, each group took over the other. But interestingly enough, this cross-pollination yielded what was arguably the golden age of Babylon.”

  “Well, maybe the previous golden age,” interjected Hephaistion, “until the even more golden age that our new emperor is about to inaugurate, starting right now.”

  “Naturally, that goes without saying,” Mazaios readily agreed. “Anyway, these Khaldaians gave rise to a king who called himself Naboukhodonosor, after a much older Akkadian king of the same name, to whom he was totally unrelated.”

  “A lot like your former emperor Dareios,” Alexandros observed.

  Mazaios tried, and failed, to suppress a malicious little laugh. “Yes, your celestial highness, much like our former emperor Dareios.

  “This second Naboukhodonosor, however, who lived maybe three hundred years ago, was a ruthless and successful military leader who greatly enlarged the kingdom he’d inherited. His rule encompassed Egypt, the Levant, Assyria, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and of course Babylonia. He attributed his long and successful reign to the favor of the gods, especially Marduk, who’s the patron deity of Babylon. To thank the gods for past favors bestowed and to propitiate them with an eye to future endeavors, he spent lavishly on the temples and monuments of Babylon. In fact, he’s credited with building this Ishtar Gate through which we are riding right now.”

  “This is supposed to be a temple?” Kleitos asked skeptically. “Looks more like a heavily fortified gateway to me.”

  “It’s a dual-purpose facility,” Mazaios explained smoothly. “It’s a beautiful monument that serves to glorify an
d exalt the goddess, while at the same time protecting the city. To the Babylonian way of thinking, there’s no contradiction between the sacred and the practical.”

  Alexandros nodded. “I can see that.” By then, we had emerged from the imposing, vaulted, decorated corridor of the Southern Fortress and found ourselves on a broad, limestone-paved boulevard.

  “We call this the Processional Way,” Mazaios announced grandly.

  The entire wide, straight avenue was covered, as far as the eye could see, with a carpet of flowers. Set up at regular intervals on the margins of the road were silver altars, heaped with frankincense and other aromatic resins and spices. It was a visual and olfactory feast.

  Beyond the altars, lining both sides of the street ten or twelve people deep were the inhabitants of Babylon. Upon glimpsing our emergence from the Ishtar Gate, they all fell to their knees, touching the ground with their foreheads.

  At that point, our way forward was barred by the prostrate body of a balding man, his arms stretched out, palms against the pavement, legs splayed at a forty-five-degree angle, his body arrayed in beautiful, billowing, colorful, silken robes.

  “Who’s that man?” Alexandros asked.

  “Oh, he’s just the eunuch responsible for the treasury, your majesty. I put him in charge of decorating the Processional Way and I guess he couldn’t stop himself from attempting to claim credit by obstructing our way forward. His name is Bagophanes. Let me know if you want him punished.”

  Alexandros was incredulous. “That’s a eunuch?”

  “Yes, indeed, your majesty. Most of the administrative jobs in the palace are held by eunuchs. We find they tend to be more docile and less ambitious than intact men.”

  “But he’s bald. My teacher Aristoteles taught me that eunuchs were never bald.”

  Mazaios shrugged.

  “Maybe we should check his balls,” Kleitos suggested helpfully.

  Our entire group dissolved into laughter and Alexandros commanded the eunuch to rise. Bagophanes remained motionless, not understanding the Macedonian command. Mazaios didn’t come to his treasurer’s aid. Finally, somebody in the crowd said something and the poor man struggled to his knees, looking up fearfully, flower petals fluttering softly from his robes back to the ground.

  “He probably thinks we’re laughing at him,” Seleukos suggested.

  “Well, we are, aren’t we?” This from Hephaistion.

  Alexandros motioned for the treasurer to stand up. Bagophanes gratefully regained his feet and ran up to Boukephalas, kissing the horse on both cheeks, provoking fresh gales of laughter among us liberators.

  “I’d tell you to give him some coins,” Alexandros said to Hephaistion, “but he’s the treasurer, after all, so he’s hardly in need of our largess.” We started moving again, leaving the flustered eunuch standing in the road.

  “Please raise your gaze to your right, your highness,” Mazaios urged. “That’s one of the seven wonders of the world.”

  We were surrounded on both sides by monumental buildings. As far as I could tell, every house in the entire city was at least four stories high but the buildings on our immediate left and right were much taller than that. The specific structure to which Mazaios was pointing had a colonnade on the bottom, the roof of which was supported by massive stone arches. In fact, the support columns were almost as wide as the empty spaces between them. Not very impressive engineering, I thought. Then I looked above the arches and changed my mind.

  Above us, perhaps forty feet above street level, loomed a forest of exotic trees and flowering bushes.

  “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” Mazaios announced in what was apparently his usual theatrical fashion.

  “They’re not hanging,” Perdikkas objected. “They’re just sitting there. I thought they’d be suspended from the heavens by chains.”

  “They’ve built a luscious, flowering forest, forty feet in the air, in this climate,” Seleukos chided him. “It takes your breath away.”

  “You’ve hit upon the key aspect, sire.” Mazaios gave Seleukos a quick nod, grateful for the assist. “Hidden behind those massive arches are ingenuous machines, mostly endless chains of buckets, turned by mules, that raise a continuous supply of water to the top. And incidentally, the gardens above us are terraced, rising higher and higher, giving the impression of a mountainside. Running streams cascade down through lush meadows, irrigating all sorts of exotic plants and trees. And all that weight, an entire mountainside, with meadows, trees, and streams, must be kept up in the air. And it all has to be watertight.” He paused for a moment, as if he himself were awed by this wonder. “It wouldn’t do if all that water, which is laboriously raised all the way to the top, simply poured or seeped back to the ground. It has to be kept up there, so the trees and plants can gradually absorb it. The bottom floors, which house not only the irrigation mechanisms but also chambers for provisions, reception halls, housing for the gardeners, and numerous rooms stocked with booty brought here from various conquered peoples, are completely dry.

  “I’ll take you up there after you’ve settled in at the palace, your majesty. It’s the most peaceful spot in the world.”

  “Yes, I’d like that. But why would anybody want to build that?”

  “Well, here’s the story: Naboukhodonosor’s favorite wife, who was a princess from the highlands of Media, didn’t much like the flat, arid plains of Babylonia. So Naboukhodonosor built an artificial mountain for her, covered it with all the exotic trees and plants he could import, supplied it with babbling brooks that never ran dry, and recreated for her a small, verdant slice of her homeland.”

  “He must’ve had a lot of loot, this Naboukhodonosor,” Kleitos observed.

  “That he did; that he did. Keep in mind he controlled at least half of what’s now the Persian Empire – the more populous, prosperous half, I might add. Plus, all the caravans from the East to the West and back again had to pass through his territory and pay customs duties to his officials. But most importantly, he conquered all the greatest and riches cities of his time, bringing home huge amounts of treasure and an endless supply of slave labor. It took more than money to build these edifices.”

  We were riding along the Processional Way while he was talking. The wall of prostrate people continued to line both sides of the road.

  “How many people live in Babylon?” Seleukos asked.

  “Perhaps as many as two hundred thousand,” Mazaios said. “It’s the most populous city in the world.”

  At that moment, a small boy, no more than eight, broke away from his mother, stood up, and ran into the road in front of us, waving and shouting excitedly. A mortified silence fell over the crowd. Everyone held their breaths, awaiting the swift, inevitable, merciless punishment that was sure to befall the impudent youngster. The only person moving was the small child, who continued to hop up and down and wave his hand.

  Mazaios finally broke the silence. “I’m terribly sorry, your divine majesty. I’ll see to it he’s promptly put to death. Does your majesty have any particular method of execution in mind?”

  Alexandros stared at him. “What are you talking about? He’s a kid.”

  “This kind of serious breach of protocol can’t be tolerated, your majesty. Unless he’s promptly and publicly punished, who knows what the next person might decide to do. It could lead to a complete breakdown of order and authority.”

  Alexandros rode up to the boy, leaned over and lifted him high in the air, depositing him on Boukephalas’s withers. The youngster was delighted, waving excitedly to his mother, who was too frightened to look up. “I think I’ll punish him by making him one of my pages. Have someone notify the parents and secure their permission.”

  We moved on, leaving Mazaios temporarily at a loss for words. On our left, we were passing fortified barracks, temples, and large apartment houses. On the right, beyond a tall wall, we suddenly glimpsed a huge, phallus-shaped, dun-colored, dilapidated pillar of fired brick, thrusting into the sky. We
had to crane our necks to see its top, some three hundred feet above us.

  “What’s that?” Alexandros asked.

  Mazaios, recovering his power of speech, launched into another expostulation. “That’s Etemenanki, the famous ziggurat of Babylon. The tallest man-made structure in the world.” He was beaming with pride.

  Alexandros seemed doubtful. “I don’t know. It seems taller than the Pyramid of Khufu but maybe that’s because we’re standing much closer to it. We only saw the great pyramids from a barge as we sailed by on the Nile, so they didn’t seem quite as tall. What do you think, Ptolemaios?”

  “The great pyramids are indeed taller, sire,” I said. “But you’re right that this ziggurat gives a more overwhelming impression of height because of our proximity to it.”

  “So there you have it,” Mazaios jumped in triumphantly. “Would you like to take a closer look?”

  All of us riding with Alexandros smiled. Asking our leader whether he wanted to take a closer look at a famous sight was like asking a randy sailor whether he would like a free shot at a hetaira. “Of course. Let’s go in.”

  Mazaios led us to a large opening in the wall just ahead. When we reached it, we could see there’d once been an ornamental pair of huge doors separating the Processional Way from a broad promenade that led to the ziggurat. Now, evidently as a result of neglect, the doors had fallen down and only a few broken scraps of wood remained by the side of the road.

  We left our horses with the cavalry squadrons which had accompanied us up to that point. Hephaistion instructed the commanders to hold their position on the Processional Way and to maintain their vigilance, notwithstanding the Babylonians’ fawning welcome. “Their allegiance seems quite flexible. Let’s keep an eye on them.”

  Negotiating our way through the debris blocking the opening in the wall, we found ourselves on an ancient, stately concourse, now filled with potholes. Our progress proved particularly treacherous because, instead watching our step, kept looking skyward, to a sight that was simultaneously breathtaking, awe-inspiring, and a little dispiriting. Enough remained of the towering monument to give an inkling of its former grandeur. It was constructed of seven cubes (really seven right frusta, because their sides tapered slightly inward), placed on top of each other, each cube smaller than the one below. Atop the highest, smallest cube, way up in the sky, sat a squat temple, looking small at such a remove. And on the side of the frusta facing the promenade was flight after flight of a vertiginous staircase leading all the way to the summit.