About halfway through writing this post, it became clear to me that I had too much to say on Babylon to condense it into one entry. As a result, I hope you’ll enjoy this first of two installments of my day at Babylon. Tomorrow, I’ll be posting Part 2, as well as an extensive photo essay and more of the city’s ancient history.

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At about 6:30 in the morning on Thursday, my eyes sprung open. It was Babylon day. In truth, I hadn’t slept much that night because I was too excited to get the rest I needed. 8 months on the trail had led to a one-day shot at one of the ancient world’s most magnificent cities, a city that Alexander the Great conquered and eventually died in.

As is usual for me in situations like these, I had been too preoccupied with the logistics of the trip (and there were a lot of logistics) to really allow myself to get worried about the security situation. A man has only so much he can worry about.

As we rolled through the start and stop traffic of Baghdad, therefore, I found myself checking and rechecking all of my documents, equipment, and contact phone numbers. It was all business at that point, with none of the emotional impact of the day hitting me.

The Iraqi capital gradually gave way to old industrial yards and fields of scrap metal, towns nestled in and around them. Heading south down the Baghdad-Basra highway, suburban Baghdad turned into the classic Iraqi landscape I had long envisioned: semi-arid countryside, littered with date palms, farm fields, and small villages.

At about 10:30, 50 miles south of Baghdad, we arrived at Babylon. Getting out of the car, I was greeted by Abou Zayed, my tour guide for the day. Even though I had done as much advance work as possible, I remained concerned that authorities on-site would try to prevent my visit. I had worried for nothing, though, because after a brief stop-in at the site’s main office, I was given the blessing of the interim director and sent on my way.

The first thing to understand about the site is that much of what you see today was rebuilt by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, a fact that drives modern-day archaeologists up the wall. According to them, Saddam did not adhere to the conventions of restoration, instead hurrying to recapture the glory of ancient Babylon without regard for the original ruins.

Saddam’s method had at least two drawbacks, from what I gather. The first was aesthetic. Much of Babylon looks like a modern reconstruction, with little effort spent recapturing the spirit of the ancient city. Seeing steel beams protruding from a supposedly ancient site does take away from the authenticity. Second, Saddam did his reconstructions on top of the original walls, meaning that many pieces of the original site are no longer visible and the modern brick walls are putting tremendous pressure on the original ruins.

With that in mind, my first stop was at the amphitheater built by Alexander the Great. It was an imposing semi-circular structure, complete with an ancient courtyard for the actors and musicians in the back. Abou Zayed is from the city of Hillah, just a few kilometers from Babylon. As a result, he visited the ruins as a child, meaning he was able to recall what they looked like before Saddam’s reconstruction. According to Abou Zayed, the amphitheater used to be a mound of bricks, still vaguely resembling its ancient past. Saddam, though, made the site into a modern performance space, with numbers etched into the seats and a massive viewing booth erected for the President himself.

From the amphitheater, we proceeded to the ancient city center, passing abandoned restaurants built by Saddam. At the heart of Babylon lies a handful of palaces and temples. As I walked from one to the next, the exercise became familiar: we’d go wall by wall, and Abou Zayed would explain to me which portions were original and which were Saddam’s reconstruction. The trick, I quickly learned, was to look for the black bitumen in between the bricks. That meant they were original. If there was concrete instead of bitumen, that meant the bricks were modern. Often, there would be four or five rows of ancient bricks at ground level with Saddam’s hulking reconstruction piled stories high on top.

The magnitude of reaching Babylon finally hit me when we made it to the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way that ran along it. According to Abou Zayed, Alexander the Great would have entered the city from near the tower of Babel and followed the Processional Way through the Ishtar Gate to one of the city’s temples. Lining the tall walls of the gate were carved lions, original pieces of the ancient city. Much of this area was excavated, though not reconstructed by Saddam. It was stunning to stand in the midst of the city’s original grandeur.

Next, we made our way to a museum that had been constructed on site. Much of the museum was filled with models of Babylon and photographs of the site.

The goose bumps moment came as I entered the third room of the museum. In front of me was a portion of wall from the Ishtar Gate. This segment of wall was painted in a vibrant blue with a lion in the middle and flowers along the edges. Suddenly, all the effort I had spent imagining what Babylon would have looked like became unnecessary. There, not faded by time nor destroyed by a dictator, was one sliver of ancient Babylon as it would have been. As I raised my camera to snap a photo, though, the realities of modern Iraq reasserted themselves as the power cut off and the room plunged into darkness. I could still make out the shape of the lion in front of me, but the colors had disappeared with the power. So I switched my imagination back on and headed back out into ancient Babylon.

Tags: Alexander the Great, Babylon, Hillah, Ishtar Gate, Saddam Hussein, Tower of Babel