Britain and the Arab Middle East

by Cooper, Lisa;

  Not until Bell's 1914 visit to Babylon does she mention one other notable feature of Nebuchadnezzar's Palace: a complex of vaulted chambers in the north-eastern corner. Koldewey apparently was available to give her a personal tour of the complex,22 and in his opinion this was the location of the Hanging Gardens, known from ancient sources as the place where Nebuchadnezzar had built a luxuriant terraced garden for the pleasure of his Median wife, who missed the mountainous, tree-covered landscape of her home (Fig. 4.6).23 The vaulted chamber complex, within which was found a well, was believed to have served as the below-ground foundations of an elaborate hydraulic system employed to convey water up to the level of the planted garden through a rotational system of buckets on waterwheels.24 As tantalizing as this reconstruction is, however, many scholars disagree about this postulated location for the Hanging Gardens, preferring to place it in the quieter, private apartments of the king in the western sector of the palace, or in the larger building known as the Western Outwork, located beside the Euphrates River.25 Even more drastically, others would like to place the gardens not in Babylon at all, but in the Assyrian city of Nineveh, where there is ample textual and physical evidence of ancient hydraulic systems for the watering of extensive palatial gardens.26

  Fig. 4.4 Bell’s 1909 photo of the Ishtar Gate from the north (seen in the centre of the photo), and surrounding brickwork. The height of the excavated gate as seen in the photo gives some sense of the great depth of the German excavations in this sector of the city.

  Fig. 4.5 Bell’s detail of some of the moulded brick reliefs of bulls and dragons on the Ishtar Gate. These bricks were unglazed, belonging to earlier phases that subsequently became the underground foundations – up to 18 metres high – of later constructions of the gate as it was raised over time. The latest manifestation of the Ishtar Gate, which now stands reconstructed in the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin, was covered with yellow and ochre-coloured glazed bricks set against a vivid blue background.

  In the centre of the ancient city, Bell was directed to a massive vertical trench, where she was able to peer down some 21 m to the level of the remains of the E-sag-il, the ‘House Whose Top Is High’.27 Here had been the massive temple complex of Babylon's patron deity, Marduk. Across from it was the E-temen-anki, the ‘Foundation Platform of Heaven and Earth’ – the ziggurat of Marduk, equated with the Tower of Babel described in the Biblical book of Genesis.28 Bell did not describe the E-temen-anki until her 1914 visit, when she was taken there by Koldewey.29 Although some investigations of the ziggurat had been made earlier, it was only in 1913 that Koldewey's assistant Wetzel supervised the principal clearance of the area and was able to discern some of its essential features.30 Of all the principal buildings of ancient Babylon, the ziggurat of Marduk had perhaps suffered the greatest destruction over the centuries. From ancient inscriptions, it may be reconstructed as a giant tower made up of multiple storeys, like a stepped pyramid, topped with a temple structure dedicated to Marduk, covered in dark blue glazed bricks.31 All that remains, however, is the base of the tower's brick core, the enclosing baked bricks having been completely quarried throughout the centuries since antiquity. Today, the once-great monument, which would have been dazzling in Nebuchadnezzar's time and unparalleled in all of Mesopotamia for its size and height, now stands as a low heap of ruins in the midst of a square pond.32

  The careful, patient investigation that Koldewey made of Babylon, along with his commitment to recording the site with detailed architectural plans, did not fail to impress Bell. She regarded Koldewey's archaeological work as among the most rigorous and up-to-date in the Near East. It was matched only by the German excavations at Assur – another site Bell would visit for the first time in 1909 – where she witnessed the same care in the recovery and meticulous documentation of the city's ancient remains, particularly its architecture. It is likely that the systematic excavation practices employed by these German teams continued to resonate with Bell in her later role as Iraq's director of antiquities and in her drafting of the country's first antiquities legislation. Using the German excavation teams at Babylon and Assur as a model of good scientific practice, in her legislation she made it a requirement that all archaeological missions have (i) equipment for making a photographic record and (ii) an experienced draughtsman, responsible for recording all of the site's ancient architecture.33

  Fig. 4.6 Artist’s view over the city of Babylon, as it would have looked in Nebuchadnezzar’s time. The view incorporated archaeological information provided by the German excavators. In the centre one can see a procession through the Ishtar Gate. Above and to the right one can see the Hanging Gardens on top of the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, while far beyond is the temple and ziggurat of Marduk.

  Bell's respect for Koldewey and his Babylon team may also have governed her later actions regarding the excavated materials from that site, a great deal of which had been left in the country at the onset of World War I. This included numerous crates full of glazed bricks from the city's Processional Way and Ishtar Gate, all of which had fallen into the hands of the British victors and were now seen as the property of the new Iraqi government. In the end, Bell authorized the delivery of the majority of the crates to Germany, with only the proviso that one reconstructed glazed lion be handed over to the new Iraq Museum, along with a selection of baked bricks and model reconstructions.34

  In all, Bell's visits to Babylon and her encounters with the German excavators there, particularly Koldewey, would greatly impact her own understanding of and appreciation for Mesopotamia's ancient past, and impress upon her the importance of proper methods for uncovering and documenting its valuable remains. On a personal level, Bell appears to have had a genuine affection for her German host and revelled in his spirited company at Babylon. The sadness she felt when World War I had severed her ties to Koldewey and his German team is perhaps most poignantly emphasized in a letter she wrote upon her return to Babylon in January 1918, finding its dig-house deserted:

  On my way home yesterday (I came in by motor) I stopped at Babylon, having been asked by Sir Percy to advise on what we ought to do about the preservation of antiquities. Tempi passati weigh very heavy there – not that I was thinking of Nebuchadnezzar, nor yet of Alexander, but of the warm welcome I used to find, the good company, the pleasant days spent with dear Koldewey – it's no good trying to think of him as an alien enemy; and my heart ached when I stood in the empty, dusty little room where Fattuh used to put up my camp furniture and the Germans and I held eager conversation over plans of Babylon or Ukhaidhir. – What a dreadful world of broken friendships we have created between us.35

  Ctesiphon

  Following her rewarding visit to Babylon, Bell gathered up her caravan and headed northwards in the direction of Baghdad. Before proceeding to that city, however, she crossed over the Tigris River on a guffah – a bitumen-lined reed basket – some 35 km south of Baghdad to see the remains at Ctesiphon. In her accounts, Bell gave this name to what were actually several ancient cities on the east bank of the Tigris, located opposite the Hellenistic city of Seleucia-on-the-Tigris, the latter still unexplored in Bell's time. The Parthians had established their military presence at Ctesiphon, and this site eventually became the capital of the Parthian empire, which for a time stretched from Mesopotamia to the borders of India and even threatened Rome's political power and expansion into the East.36 Parthia's enmity with Rome would result in Ctesiphon being thrice conquered by the Romans in the second century CE (by Trajan, Cassius and Septimius Severus) before it was taken over by the Persian Sasanians under their king Ardashir I (224–41 CE).37 The Sasanian kings established their winter royal residence and capital of their empire in the area just to the south of Parthian Ctesiphon, in a place called Asbanbar. Here one finds the most well-preserved and striking monuments of the Sasanians, the so-called Taq-i Kisra, the monumental palace that contained the legendary vaulted throne hall of the Sasanian king of kings.38 Under a succession of powerful kings, incl
uding Shapur I (241–72 CE) and Khosrow I (531–79 CE), Sasanian Ctesiphon enjoyed economic and political success, and the city was known across the entire Near East for its riches and splendour. During the reign of Khosrow II (591–628 CE), however, Ctesiphon experienced its ultimate defeat in the form of invading Muslim armies. Under the command of Sa‘d ibn Abi Waqqas, the Muslim armies stormed the city in 637 CE and looted the palace, leaving the king and his court to flee.39 Thereafter, the site declined in importance and was eventually abandoned.

  Bell was no doubt drawn to Ctesiphon by her knowledge of its rich and eventful history, and like so many travellers before her, she was eager to see the Taq-i Kisra because of what remained of its imposing architecture. The great arched vault of the palace's throne room – the iwan – bears the distinction of possessing the widest span of any pre-modern brick building in the world (Fig. 4.7).40 Made of slanting layers of brick set on edge without the use of centring beams, the parabolic vault, which tapers toward the top, stands 35 m high from the ground to its cornice and occupies a space over 42 m deep and more than 25 m wide.41 The palace also boasts an impressive façade featuring four stories of blind arches, engaged columns and entablatures.42 These parts of the monument were in a ruinous state, as attested by Bell's 1909 photographs, one of which shows the noticeable forward list of the south façade (Fig. 4.8). There was sufficient concern over the eventual collapse of this wall that in 1922, the Iraqi Department of Public Works added a reinforcing concrete base along the length of the façade.43 In 1942, a tall buttress was added to the front of one end of the façade. In the 1970s, the Iraqi Antiquities Department tried to restore parts of the Taq-i Kisra, but this work was never completed; moreover, new cracks in the structure have since been observed.44 Most recently, the site has suffered much neglect and damage as a result of the 2003 Iraq War, and in 2012, ‘a slab about two metres in length fell off’ because of damp caused by heavy rains. The Iraqi government has launched a new initiative to repair the site.45

  Back in 1909, through Bell's imaginative inclinations, all the realities of the ruin and continuing decay of the Taq-i Kisra were brushed aside, and she envisioned what the palace would have looked like in its splendid heyday during the sixth century. Her evocative image is largely based on the account of al-Tabari, a Persian historian of the late ninth to early tenth centuries:

  Fig. 4.7 Bell’s photograph of the Taq-i Kisra at Ctesiphon during her 1909 visit to that site, from the east. The northern side of the façade had collapsed in 1888, taking with it the front section of the central arch, so that by Bell’s time, only the remaining central vault and the south façade survived.

  In this hall, Chosroes held his court. It must have lain open to the rising sun, or perhaps the entrance was sheltered by a curtain which hung from the top of the vault down to the floor. The Arab historian, Tabari, gives an account of a carpet seventy cubits long and sixty cubits broad which formed part of the booty when the Mohammadans sacked the city. It was woven into the likeness of a garden; the ground was worked in gold and the paths in silver; the meadows were of emeralds and the streams of pearls; the trees, flowers and fruits of diamonds and other precious stones. Such a texture as this may have been drawn aside to reveal the Great King seated in state in his hall of audience, with the light of a thousand lamps, suspended from the roof, catching his jeweled tiara, his sword and girdle, illuminating the hangings on the walls and the robes and trappings of the army of courtiers who stood round the throne.46

  Fig. 4.8 Bell’s photograph of the exterior of the Taq-i Kisra from the south, showing the forward list of the surviving south façade, and eroded brickwork at the base. Despite various efforts to repair and restore the monument up to the present day, the Taq has continued to deteriorate at an alarming rate.

  Bell was largely interested in the Taq-i Kisra because it was a good example of surviving Sasanian palatial architecture, and she could see many points of architectural similarity between it and Ukhaidir, the desert palace she had investigated only a few weeks earlier in the spring of 1909. As described in the preceding chapter, for example, a fragmentary vaulted ceiling in one of the side chambers of the Taq-i Kisra had been set forward slightly from the face of the wall below; this sort of structure also existed at Ukhaidir (Fig. 4.9).47 Bell also took careful note of the decoration of the niched arches, engaged columns and entablatures on the building's façade, with their marked Classical style; she then made a detailed comparison with the northern façade of the inner Court of Honour at Ukhaidir, which, although a later construction, shares some of the former's features and may have derived some inspiration from it.48

  After the war, Bell continued to visit Ctesiphon frequently, given its proximity to Baghdad (where she was residing as a political officer) and the fact that its grandiose appearance never failed to make an impression on visitors. Her interest and role in the archaeology of the new Iraq also spurred her continued concern for the preservation of the Taq-i Kisra, as evidenced in one of her letters from 1921, in which she discusses with an architect (J.M. Wilson, the Director of the Department of Public Works) the prospect of putting ‘a big wad of concrete against the foundations […] which won't be pretty but ought to make the wall as safe as we can make it’.49

  Bell was also aware of the importance of Ctesiphon not only for its architectural magnificence, but for its history and the potential for such history to reinforce the identity of Iraq and empower its new king. With this in mind, Bell took King Faisal to Ctesiphon in 1921, shortly after he had been crowned, and related to him the whole story of the site's illustrious past, ending with its conquest by the Muslim armies in 637 CE.50 This was Bell's conscious attempt to impress upon the Arab king his own ties to Iraq and his legitimate place as its new protector. Bell, in her crucial political role in Iraq after the war, was certainly not above pressing an archaeological site into the service of the present and using it for political ends, as will be discussed further in this book's final chapter.

  Baghdad

  After Ctesiphon, Bell set her sights on Baghdad. She intended to rest there for a few days and to visit the British Consul-General, who had a lavish residence in the city. After crossing the Tigris River on a crowded pontoon bridge made of boats, Bell made her way to the British Residency, where she was given spacious and comfortable lodgings and enjoyed the friendly company of the Consul-General and his wife (Fig. 4.10).51

  Fig. 4.9 Bell’s photograph of the interior doorway and remains of a vault with ‘oversailing’ brickwork in the north-eastern corner of the south wing of the Taq-i Kisra at Ctesiphon. The scholar Ernst Herzfeld believed that this feature did not exist until the Islamic period. Bell’s statement in her book Amurath to Amurath (p. 153, n. 1) that Herzfeld’s opinion was erroneous further exacerbated the pair’s combative relationship.

  This would be the first of Bell's many visits to Baghdad, first in 1909, then in 1911 and 1914. Later, after the British forces moved up to Baghdad in 1917 and she became a political officer of the British government in Mesopotamia, Bell made Baghdad her principal residence and lived there until her death in 1926.

  Baghdad would always hold a significant place in Bell's life, not only because of its antiquity, but because of its central position in present-day Mesopotamian affairs. From her very first visit in 1909, Bell found herself stimulated by the reports brought to the offices of the British Consulate and eager to lend her own assistance, given her first-hand knowledge of the lands through which she had just travelled. In many ways, Bell was more valuable than others in the diplomatic service, on account of her good knowledge of Arabic and the fact that so much of her travels entailed acquisitive conversations with local peoples and discussions about their affairs, both trivial and weighty. Thus, even at a time of her life when her interests were primarily geographical and archaeological, it is possible to see the early glimmerings of her future political career.

  Bell had some knowledge of Baghdad's past, and in particular its time as the capital of
the Abbasid caliphs, ‘a period during which it had witnessed a magnificence as profuse and destruction as reckless as any others on the pages of history’.52 Historical accounts have provided detailed descriptions of this early city, which was founded by the caliph al-Mansur back in 762 CE. Designed as a perfect circle, Baghdad was conceived as the navel of the universe.53 Surrounded by high walls with four gates, the centre of the Round City featured the caliphal palace and congregational mosque, while military, commercial and residential quarters were segregated from each other and situated outside the circular enclosure.54

  Unfortunately, virtually nothing remained of the initial city by the early twentieth century. Later Islamic-period remains diverted Bell's attentions, however, and she wandered around them as an enthusiastic tourist with her camera. She visited, for example, the Bab Talisman gate, built by the caliph al-Nasir in 1221 CE (Fig. 4.11), and the Tomb of Sitt Zubayda, a striking mausoleum constructed in the twelfth century and distinguished by a nine-layered muqarnas dome, not unlike the Imam al-Dur mausoleum she would later see at the northern end of Samarra.55 She took in the elegantly ornamented minaret in the Suq al-Ghazi and walked around the old Mustansiriya.56 She was refused entry into the thirteenth-century Palace of the Caliphs in 1909 because it was being used at that time as a military arsenal, but in 1911, she was given the opportunity to wander through its vaulted corridors and to photograph its exquisitely decorated, terracotta-panelled walls and ceilings.57