Xerxes and the Tower of Babel A

44 Xerxes and the Tower of Babel A. R. George The French excavations at Susa, led by Introduction Jacques de Morgan at the turn of the nine- Among the great sites of ancient Persia the teenth century, uncovered the citadel, pal- best known to visitors to Iran are certainly aces and temples of Achaemenid and Elamite Persepolis and Pasargadae in the province of kings. On the citadel (today often termed Fars, with their wonderful ruins of stone pal- the acropolis) they also turned up an abun- aces and tombs built by the kings Cyrus and dance of important ancient artefacts, includ- Darius. A less prominent place on the itiner- ing many not of local origin but from Susa’s ary of archaeological sites is occupied by the western neighbours in Mesopotamia (Harper ancient city of Susa in the plain of Khuzistan. 1992). Foremost among these were stone mon- Susa is its Greek name; the Elamites called it uments of the Old Akkadian kings, Sargon, Shushun, the Babylonians knew it as Shushin, Manishtushu and Naram-Sîn, published by later Shushi(m) and Shushan, the Achaemenid Fr Vincent Scheil in early volumes of Mémoires Persians as Shusha. Its present name, Shush-i de la Délégation en Perse. The best known of Daniel, combines the ancient toponym with them is certainly the great limestone stele of that of the prophet Daniel, who (legend has it) Naram-Sîn that depicted this king’s defeat of saw in Shushan a vision of a ram and a goat that the mountain-dwelling Lullubi people and was foretold the eclipse of Persia by Alexander of originally set up in Sippar on the Euphrates Macedon. Susa is vastly older than Pasargadae (Scheil 1900: 53–55). An added caption in and Persepolis: it has a history going back well Elamite reveals that Naram-Sîn’s stele was into the fourth millennium and was the lowland taken to Susa by Shutruk-Nahhunte as spoils capital of a succession of independent states in of war after his invasion of Babylonia, a period the third and second millennia. Among these of hostilities that led to the fall of Babylon in states was the Elamite kingdom of Shutruk- 1157 bc. Another famous Babylonian mon- Nahhunte and his sons, Kutir-Nahhunte and ument found at Susa but originally from Shilhak-Inshushinak, twelfth-century mon- Sippar is the great stele of Hammurapi of archs well known as conquerors of Babylon. Babylon, inscribed with the laws that so CCurtis_Ch44.inddurtis_Ch44.indd 447171 22/25/2010/25/2010 112:35:572:35:57 PPMM 472 THE WORLD OF ACHAEMENID PERSIA impressed twentieth-century Europe (Scheil Susa are not the only Babylonian objects 1902: 11–162). The probability is that this and that de Morgan found there. Less conspicu- many of the other early Mesopotamian arte- ous as works of art, but noteworthy never- facts found at Susa were taken there as booty theless, are three objects from a much later at about the same time as Naram-Sîn’s stele, period: a damaged clay cylinder (Fig. 44.1) of during the period of Elam’s short-lived hege- Nebuchadnezzar II, who ruled the Babylonian mony over Babylonia. empire in the sixth century bc (604–562), Such booty-taking was part and parcel and a marble vase and stone slab bearing of conquest. It is well known that Babylonian labels of the same king’s household (Langdon kings themselves accumulated in and around 1905/1906). Unfortunately no exact prov- their palace statues and other objects looted enances are recorded but since the cylinder from conquered peoples (Koldewey 1990: fragment was already discovered in 1900, the 162–169; Unger 1931: 224–228; Klengel-Brandt citadel is the likely find spot. The citadel of 1990). The exhibition at the British Museum Susa was obviously not the original location that gave occasion for the conference whose of these objects. The vase and slab can be pre- proceedings appear in this volume included sumed without more ado to have been pillaged a stone bowl of Ashurbanipal, the last great from the palace at Babylon, but the pre sence king of Assyria (668–c.630). Its inscription in Susa of the cylinder fragment presents a shows that it once belonged to the Assyrian larger problem. king’s palace, but was excavated in the royal treasury at Persepolis (Schmidt 1957: pl. Nebuchadnezzar’s cylinder 49/1a–d; Curtis & Tallis 2005: no. 117). It was probably taken from Nineveh as loot when fragment the Assyrian capital fell to the Babylonians The principal use of Neo-Babylonian cylin- and Medes in 612 bc. How it ended up in ders was to bear pious texts reporting royal Persian ownership is a matter for speculation, building work, typically of temples, city walls but its presence in the treasury speaks for the Achaemenid kings’ interest in the products of Mesopotamian royal power. A still more pertinent example of booty-taking comes from the time when Babylonia fell under the control of the Persian Empire. Many precious objects were removed from their proper locations in Babylonia to Persepolis and there also became part of the royal treasury (Schmidt 1957: 57–63). Especially noteworthy are several fine beads, cylinder seals and other votive objects originally presented to Babylonian temples by royal benefactors in the seventh and sixth centuries. The eye-catching monuments of third- Fig. 44.1 Nebuchadnezzar II’s cylinder fragment and second-millennium Mesopotamia from from Susa, Sb 1700. (Courtesy Musée du Louvre) Curtis_Ch44.indd 472 2/25/2010 12:35:58 PM Xerxes and the Tower of Babel 473 and other monumental construction proj- from the villages near Babylon were digging ects. These building inscriptions often indi- out the remaining courses of baked bricks of cate that the cylinders on which they were the ziggurat’s mantle for use as building mate- written were intended for embedding at reg- rial, and it seems likely that the Philadelphia ular intervals deep in the foundations and cylinders came to light as a result of their superstructure of the buildings in question. excavations. Four further exemplars were Archaeology confirms this, for a good few cyl- excavated at Babylon between 1899 and 1913: inders have been found intact in hollow spaces (a) one at the north-west corner of the ziggu- in walls, untouched since their deposit and rat’s mud-brick core, in a pit left by the vil- revealed only by archaeologists dismantling lagers; (b) another in Homera, the mound the building. of rubble from the ziggurat’s superstructure The text written on the cylinder found at dumped in north-east Babylon by Alexander Susa records Nebuchadnezzar’s completion of of Macedon and his successors; (c) a third Etemenanki, the ziggurat of the god Marduk (represented by two fragments) in disturbed at Babylon. This building was the enormous contexts in the ruins of the palace complex temple-tower that most accept inspired the (Qasr, Hauptburg); and (d) a fourth recovered biblical legend of the Tower of Babel. No from modern fill in the courtyard of the tem- spectacular ruin remains of the ziggurat of ple of Ninurta in the southern part of the city Babylon, for it was levelled in antiquity, but its (Berger 1973: 295–296; the find spot of the foundations reveal it to have risen from a base last mentioned is more accurately reported 90 metres square. Ancient sources allow for by Koldewey 1911: 31, “im modernen Schutt”). approximate reconstructions of how it once An eighth exemplar is a fragment that came to looked (Schmid 1990). Just recently a stele of light during Iraqi work at Babylon in the late Nebuchadnezzar II came to light that includes 1970s (Al-Rawi n.d.: 23–24, Babylon 105–A). a depiction of the tower in profile, which, even What was an exemplar of Nebuchadnez- allowing for idealization, leaves no doubt as to zar’s ziggurat cylinder doing in Susa? The the building’s general appearance. It was a discrepancy between the intended location stepped pyramid consisting of six storeys with of the cylinder and its actual provenance is the sanctuary of Marduk making a seventh at a key issue in this paper, and for that reason the summit (see provisionally Schøyen 2007, I have conducted a statistical analysis of the and my drawing in Levy 2008: 31). find spots of 386 cylinders left by Neo- and At least 12 exemplars of this king’s Late Babylonian kings and other builders. Etemenanki cylinder have survived, includ- Certainly there are more that have escaped ing that found at Susa (tabulated in Da Riva attention and, of course, very many more that 2008: 19–20, C41.1–12). None of them is com- remain in situ, but the figure is an appreciable plete. The fact that they are all broken can be sample that will give a trustworthy picture. explained as a result of the building’s even- The data of this investigation are too exten- tual demolition. Three exemplars (now in sive to include in this paper, but a brief sum- Philadelphia) were bought from dealers in mary of the pertinent results is instructive. London and Baghdad in the years 1888–1889 Only 28 (7 per cent) of the 386 cylinders were and are without secure provenance (CBS 33, certainly found at any distance from the build- 1125 and 1785). This was a time when people ings for which they were intended, including CCurtis_Ch44.inddurtis_Ch44.indd 447373 22/25/2010/25/2010 112:35:582:35:58 PPMM 474 THE WORLD OF ACHAEMENID PERSIA the four exemplars of Nebuchadnezzar’s zig- The data collected in my study of the prov- gurat cylinder noted above as found elsewhere enances of Neo-Babylonian cylinders indicate in Babylon; only 7 of the 28 seem certainly to that the number of cylinders that appear never have been excavated in cities where they did to have been put to the use for which they were not belong, including the piece from Susa.

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