01x01 - Legacy: The Origins of Civilization: Iraq-The Cradle of Civilization

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We humans have been on the Earth
for more than a million years,

but civilization, life in cities,

has come about
only in the last 5,000.

Through history
civilizations rose and fell,

carved out of nature,
dependent on nature,

in the end nature took them back.

But in the past few hundred years,

one form of civilization,
that of the West,

has changed the balance
with nature forever.

And now it is civilization itself

which has become
the central problem of our planet.

To understand why, we must
look afresh at how we see history.

In our time, at the
end of the 20th century,

many people in the West speak
as if the future course of history

has been settled.

People talk of the triumph of the West,

of the victory of liberal democracy
and the free market,

and even of the end of history.

The questions which have
concerned humanity for so long.

What is society for?

How should it be organized?

What are human rights and freedoms?

And how do they relate to nature
and to the spiritual?

These questions about
the goals of life, it is said,

have now been settled in favour
of the values of the West.

But there have been, and there still are,

civilizations which have seen the world
very differently.

Civilization arose independently
in a handful of places

on the face of the Earth.

In Iraq, Egypt, India, China, and here
in the jungles of the Americas.

And the oldest and greatest
of those, India and China,

are still alive
in the land of their birth.

And each of those civilizations

created a unique and
distinctive vision of life

which forms a vital counterpoint
to that of the West.

This series of journeys is a search.

A search for those first civilizations
and their continuing legacy.

It's through such images
that the West has come to know Iraq.

To most of us, its history and culture
were a blank before 1991.

Yet by terrible irony, when
the Western powers came

to make w*r here in Iraq,

they were returning to the very
source of their own civilization.

This journey was made
on the eve of the Gulf w*r.

It's a journey through Iraq
and through Iraqi history,

back to the origins
of the first civilization.

Searching in the present
for clues to the past,

and in the past for clues to the present.

Civilization means life in cities.

It means large populations
with great ceremonial buildings.

It means writing.

And all these things are
found for the first time on Earth,

here in this ferocious
landscape of South Iraq.

Old Sumer.

Here was the first law,
the first science, the first w*r.

And now, what remains is a stark warning

to our pride in the human achievement.

For this is all that's left
of the world's first cities.

Civilization was born on the banks of two
rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates.

Mesopotamia, as the Greeks called it,
the land between the two rivers,

had few other natural resources.

No stone, no wood or precious metals,
only water, and a rich alluvial soil,

with which a hard-working
people could transform

a land of scarcity
into a land of plenty.

And the other great resource of Iraq
was its people.

Iraqis are a mixture of
Arabs, Kurds, Turks, Persians,

whose ancestry goes back
to the mysterious people

who created the first civilization,
the Sumerians.

Their character today is still
the same as in their ancient proverbs,

long-suffering, resilient,
hard-bitten, pessimistic.

Heirs to a brilliant but terrible history,

repeatedly conquered by their neighbors,

or brutalized by rapacious
military regimes,

whose conception of justice
was an iron fist

in the land where law was first devised.

Not surprisingly, they were a people
who pondered deeply the meaning of life.

Iraq is matched only by India
as a cradle of religions,

rich alternative traditions which
have all ended up living side by side.

The history of Iraq, then,
is rich in splendors and sorrows,

the most gifted of civilizations
and yet the most tragic,

the first attempt by humankind
to bring people together

in organized societies
with a measure of happiness.

Another key quality of civilization is
continuity or rootedness.

The old towns of Iraq are the oldest
continuously inhabited on earth,

and it was to places like this,
Tel Afar, in the 19th century,

that western explorers
came for the first time,

looking for origins in the land
which the Bible said

was the cradle of the human race.

Here at Tel Afar, at the dawn of
Mesopotamian archaeology, in 1846,

the English excavator Austin Layard,
famous for his discoveries

at the cities of Nineveh and Nimrud,

climbed up here to the top
of the citadel one evening.

And as the sun set, he says,
I looked out

and counted over a hundred
mounds out there

throwing their long and darkening
shadows across the plain.

Each of those mounds
had built up over millennia

with the accumulated debris
of human settlements.

The one on which this citadel is built

has more than 50 feet of debris

extending back 6,000 years.

Perhaps nowhere, as here in Iraq,
is there such a continuity.

And some of those cities,
out there in the plain to the south,

were among the most famous
in the history of the world.

Ur of the Chaldees,
Nineveh, Babylon,

source of some of the greatest
tales in our culture.

The creation, the flood,

the Garden of Eden,
the Tower of Babel.

Those stories all come from the magical
landscape of Iraq's deep south.

Here, on the edge of the
great alluvial plain of Sumer,

is a wild and beautiful marshland

where the Tigris and Euphrates meet.

This was the biblical Garden of Eden.

Up to the very eve of the Gulf w*r,
it was still possible to enter this world

and see a way of life
preserved for thousands of years

since long before civilization,
the Marsh Arabs.

The Marsh Arab villages look much as
the first settlements must have done.

Man-made islands in freshwater lagoons,

where they still live by fishing,
raising water buffalo,

cutting the reed beds and
cultivating the rich soil

along the shores and levees.

Their reed houses,
some nearly 100 feet long,

are still built in the same fashion

as was depicted


In this world of almost
limitless potential,

the Book of Genesis says
the first cities arose

in the beginning when God
let dry land rise from the water.

And in the beginning,
said the Sumerian myths, was Eridu.

Legend said
this was the mound of creation,

the first land which arose
from the primal sea

at the beginning of time.

Here was a sacred shrine
which preceded the first cities.

At the root of civilization
is the temple.

Eridu is lonely, windswept
and abandoned today.

But it was one of the most famous
places in the history of Mesopotamia.

Not only did the Sumerians believe that

this was the site of the mound of creation,

they thought that here kingship,
that is political society,

first came down to earth.

And that here the arts of civilization
were initially developed.

It originally stood on a great sea of
fresh water stretching out to the south,

the Apsu.

And the great temple here,
the most famous shrine in Sumer,

was named after it,
Apsu.

Named after that primeval
ocean of sweet water

out of which all human life
and all natural life came,

so they believed.

And in fact, when the archaeologists
dug deep into the temple hill,

they discovered
around the time of 5000 BC,

a little sand mound surrounded by
a reed fence with a tiny chapel on it,

marking the site of that mound of creation.

Hard as it may seem
in this blasted landscape,

but we're in the area of
the original garden of Eden.

For what the Bible calls Paradise,
Eden was simply the Sumerian word Edin,

the wild grassland of the south,

the natural landscape
before the arrival of the city.

And picking over the debris of Paradise,

it's hard not to see the
psychological truth of the Bible's story,

but the very beginning
of our ascent to civilization

was also the fall, when we tasted the
fateful fruit of the tree of knowledge,

the means by which we would become
masters of the earth,

and yet eventually gain the power
to destroy it and ourselves,

truly a devil's bargain.

Sumerian myths also tell

how the arts of civilization
which originated here in Eridu

would bring both joy and sorrow.

This, they believed, was what the gods
passed on from here to future ages,

through the first true city on earth, Uruk.

To get to Uruk today, you cross southern
Iraq, skirting Ur and Nazaria,

names familiar now after the w*r of 1991.

Then you enter a lunar landscape,
a wasteland swept by gales of sand.

Immense mounds loom out of the haze
in a furnace heat.

It's 135 degrees out here in the summer.

Finally, you come to a city gate,
still visible after nearly 5,000 years.

Its approach silted with a deep tide
of pottery and bones.

And what feelings of anticipation

any city dweller of our planet
in the late 20th century would experience,

arriving at the place
which more than any other

has shaped our modern world,
both in its triumphs and in its disasters.

The first westerner
to stand here in modern times,

the Englishman
William Loftus in 1849,

was simply astounded.

Of all the desolate sites I ever beheld,

he said, that of Uruk
incomparably surpasses all.

Still 50 feet high, the line of eroded
walls curves round to the horizon.

In the center of the city are
the ruins of a great stepped tower,

a ziggurat, on which had stood
the temple of the city's goddess, Inanna,

whom we know as Ishtar.

The first city began
as a religious center.

Standing on top of the goddess' ziggurat
here in Uruk,

you can get a real idea of
the vast extent of this site,

with a circuit of walls
of more than six miles.

Archaeology can show that
these walls were built

at the end of a period of
extraordinary expansion

when Uruk increased four times
in size in just a few generations.

Presumably then, thousands or
even tens of thousands of people

were moving in from the
countryside to this new city life.

And there are parallels for this kind of
change, from rural to urban life.

In Europe, for example, in England,
during the Industrial Revolution.

Scholars now believe that

the population of the Euphrates
plain may have increased tenfold

in these crucial 200 years.

And to parallel that, you'd have to
look at Mexico City today,

doubling its size in 20 or 30 years.

The effect of such growth was shattering.

As far as the eye can see,

this salt encrusted plain
was once a big wheat country,

with grain yields as high
as the mid-western Canada.

But the need for more land,
more intensive cultivation

to feed an ever-growing population,
eventually devastated the landscape.

We know now that civilization
inevitably destroys the environment,

but they discovered it here
for the first time.

The question was the same for them
as it is for us today.

How to balance the fertility of the earth

against the voracious demands of the city.

The watchman at Uruk, Muhar Abu Ghumar,
lives out here with his family.

He belongs to one of the Montefic tribes
who inhabit this part of the desert.

His forefathers fought the Turks,
the British, indeed anyone

who tried to impose their rule
on the south from the outside.

He knows the site
like the back of his hand,

down to the deep levels,
these massive foundations of old Sumer.

A stone-built storeroom from 3000 BC
for temple food and beer.

Alcohol is a Mesopotamian word.

Oh, it's a very... God, this is amazing.

So, after Part B...

With the ups and downs
of any living organism,

the city lasted through to about 300 AD.

But by the Arab conquest it was dead,
after a life of over 5,000 years.

It's a salutary experience,
walking these weathered gullies,

littered with testimony
to the long ascent of man, if such it is.

Here were enormous temples and palaces
as big as cathedrals,

their facades decorated
with blue-glazed tiles,

just as you'll see today
on the mosques of Iraq.

This is from the Irigal Palace.

So this is from the front
of the wall of the palace.

And from the salut.

So this is when the palace was rebuilt
after the time of Alexander the Great.

More than 2,000 years old, isn't it?

That's astonishing.

Thank you very much.

So this is obeyed?

Obeyed.

Obeyed.

So it's 6,000 years?



And this... But what is this here?

What is this, Mr Muha?

Money is a coin of the Parthians.

So this is from a rook
in the time of the Roman Empire.

And this, I think I recognize.

And from the deep past, hints of the
enigmatic beginnings we saw at Eridu,

Sumerian pottery, wheel-turned pottery.

For the wheel is found here
for the first time in history,

along with so many other great inventions
we still live our lives by today.

Here was the first astronomy,
the first literature,

the first school,
the first map of the world.

Here they first thought of dividing
time and space in multiples of 60,

so that even now,
whenever we look at a watch,

we're still in their debt.

Inside Muha's guest hut,
within the old walls,

were the only inhabitants
of Ishtar City tonight.

Even so, Muha still observes

the gracious formalities
of desert hospitality.

Thank you so much for showing me

just wonderful site

Iraqis have always been
great storytellers,

going back through
the thousand and one nights

to the world's first literature,
the epic of Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh.

Gilgamesh built the wall.

Gilgamesh built the walls.

King of Uruk, first and best of heroes.

His was the original tale of the flood
and the great ark,

known today to almost
every child across the world.

His last adventure was
the futile quest for everlasting life,

model for all searches from
the Odyssey to the Holy Grail,

Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

And we know his story
because of writing.

Writing is first found in the world
here in Uruk,

maybe invented in this city
by some unknown genius,

not long before 3000 BC.

Without writing,
there could be no civilization.

And it was through writing that
we humans found a kind of immortality,

passing on our memory to posterity.

So that even now we can go back with them,
as they would say, to a far off day,

on a far off night, in a far off time,
in Uruk, as the scribe writes.

Gilgamesh, what you seek
you will never find.

For when the gods created man,

they let death be his lot,
eternal life they withheld.

Let your every day be full of joy,
love the child that holds your hand,

let your wife delight in your embrace, for
these alone are the concerns of humanity.

This is Erbil, the oldest continuously
inhabited city in the world.

It's one of several mudbrick towns
in the north of Iraq,

which have survived
from the age of the first cities

right up to our own time.

Its great gate has been
entered by conquerors

from Alexander the Great and Tamerlane

to guerrilla armies
in the recent wars in Kurdistan.

Its mudbrick walls and houses fallen
and rebuilt so many times over the years

that the city now rests on a mound
a hundred feet deep in debris.

Here, at the end of the
second millennium AD,

is the very image of the
first urban life on earth,

massive burned brick walls
towering over the plain.

If you could have flown over the densely
packed workers quarters of Uruk,

Nippur or Ur of the Chaldees,
this is what you would have seen.

And within the walls of Erbil,

we can still get an idea
of how people lived

and how society was organized
in those first cities of old Sumer.

For here the past literally
is still alive.

Inside the old citadel at Erbil,
you find yourself

in a maze of narrow lanes and alleyways

fanning out from the main gate.

And although the mudbrick houses
on either side

have been rebuilt and destroyed
countless times over the generations,

the pattern of the streets
is still essentially the same.

There are 800 families here today,
that's 4,000 people,

organized into neighborhood wards
just as they were in Ur and Nippur.

So these were small scale,
face to face communities

which knew each other
or were related by kinship

or marriage or from the old village.

Perhaps with a local shrine
and a tiny little market,

rather like later Islamic cities

where each ward had its mosque,
its souk and its bath.

In ancient times, the soul of the
Mesopotamian town was the temple,

towering over the mudbrick streets,

a visible assurance to the townspeople
that God was among them.

It's still like that today.

The Al-Mulla family has run the mosque
here in Erbil for 600 years.

In just the same fashion
in ancient cities like Uruk or Nippur,

single families can be traced
over many generations

running the main temples.

In this little corner of Iraq,
the gods have come and gone.

Ishtar, Zoroaster, Yahweh, Jesus
and now Allah.

But the ritual of worship itself
has remained.

And on this spot where the oracle
of the goddess Ishtar once stood,

there's been continuous worship for
longer than anywhere else in the world.

In such continuity, perhaps, lies one of
the defining qualities of civilization.

Civilization was a great achievement
and the Sumerians were justly proud of it.

They loved city life
and the luxuries it afforded.

But at heart, they were
a pessimistic people

who knew how fragile
human achievement could be.

On the famous standard from
the golden age of the city of Ur,

images of w*r and peace
are mysteriously juxtaposed.

One of the great Sumerian myths
tells how the goddess Inanna

brought the arts of civilization
from the god of wisdom,

Enki of Eridu, like Pandora's box.

Here were the delights of society,
exquisite craftsmanship,

beautiful clothes,
the arts of sex and music.

But civilization has a darker side,
said Enki,

which has to be accepted
along with the good.

There was the art of being mighty,
the art of being kind,

the art of straightforwardness,
the art of deceit,

the art of kingship, justice
and the enduring crown.

The resounding note of a musical
instrument, rejoicing of the heart,

the kindling of strife,
the plundering of cities,

the setting up of lamentation,
fear, pity, terror.

All this is civilization,
said the god of wisdom.

All this I give you,

and you must take it all
with no argument,

and once taken,
you cannot give it back.

In around 2000 BC,
signs of foreboding swept Sumer.

Too much agricultural land
had been ruined,

inflation set in, famine,
economic collapse.

Evil, wrote the king Ibi-sin,
is descending on our land.

Then, all the cities of Sumer were smashed

by a coalition of ancient enemies
from Iran and the desert.

Ur is destroyed, bitter is its lament,

the country's blood now fills its holes
like hot bronze in a mould,

bodies dissolve like fat in the sun.

Our temple is destroyed,

but gods have abandoned us
like migrating birds.

Smoke lies on our city like a shroud.

Their lament has echoed down the ages,

to be heard again at Troy,
at Dresden, at Hiroshima,

and how loaded with meaning it is

for we of the late 20th century.

For now, we too have seen
the columns of smoke

hanging over Mesopotamia like a shroud.

The people of Sumer would sing laments
for their sacked cities for 2000 years.

Meanwhile, refugees fled Iraq on the
caravan routes across the western desert,

images evoking those of our own time.

City dwellers become as one with nomads
who'd never known a city.

Among them, the Bible says,
was a citizen of Ur

now revered by half the world,

Abraham.

Witnesses to the ruin of civilization,

faced by the unyielding
harshness of nature,

cast out of Eden, for such people
perhaps the old gods had failed.

For Abraham, son of an idol maker
in the old city of Ur,

the disaster sowed the seeds of an idea

which would change the world.

An idea of stark simplicity,
a single god, God the Father.

Abraham took his idea with him
as he migrated to Palestine.

And now, ironically,
he's viewed as the founding father

by Jews, Christians and Muslims alike.

For Abraham was the first man
to make a covenant with God.

It was perhaps Iraq's
greatest legacy to the world.

In the 7th century AD, Arab armies
bearing the new faith of Islam

swept into Mesopotamia, here at the cliff

which gave the land its name, Al-Iraq.

The coming of Islam to the land
of Abraham was, in a sense,

a homecoming,
culmination of a long trend

in the spiritual life of the Near East.

Babylonians, Assyrians,
Greeks and Persians

had all ruled
this intractable brown land

in long cycles of growth and decay.

And gradually, through
the triumphs and disasters,

the people had come to view God with
an attitude of unquestioning submission.

And so the way was paved
for the coming of Islam

to the cliff which gave the land
its name, Al-Iraq.

After the Arab conquest
in the south of Iraq, Old Sumer,

Islam took on a distinctive local form

which remained true
to its ancient past, Shi'ism.

In the sacred city of Karbala,

the Shiites carried the ancient
Sumerian tradition of lamentation

close to their hearts,
as no other faith has done.

And so it had been
for thousands of years before Islam.

Even the physical appearance of the
great mosque of Imam Hussein at Karbala

recalls the buildings of
Old Sumer, with its mosaics

and the same blue tiles
which had adorned the shrines of Uruk.

A true temple, as the Sumerians
would have said,

shining like a rainbow in the bright sun.

Shi'ism remains today

the religion of the farmers and
peasants of southern Iraq, Old Sumer,

ruled since the Arab conquest by
Sunni Muslim masters in Baghdad.

In 1991, at the end of the Gulf w*r,

Karbala was devastated
as the Shiites rose again

against their overlords.

Once more, the sacred shrine of Sumer
was sacked and desecrated.

And as so often before, the people
of the south were left to lament.

With such a tragic and turbulent history,

it's amazing that so many different sects
have managed to survive and flourish here.

This is a Mandaean wedding.

The Mandaeans are
an astonishing survival of

ancient Mesopotamian
religious traditions.

You could say they're
the last of the Babylonians,

but they also put us in touch
with the baptismal customs

out of which Christianity arose.

For like Jesus, they call themselves
followers of John the Baptist.

Their wedding ceremonies are accompanied
by full immersion in the Tigris,

which in commemoration
they still call the children.

This is perhaps
as near as we can get today

to the culture in which Jesus lived.

The Mandaeans are a reminder
of how pluralism and tolerance

are essential qualities of civilization.

A reminder too of how
ordinary Iraqi people,

despite the catastrophes
of their history,

have preserved tenaciously
the things they hold dear.

Life is victorious,
says their marriage service.

And indeed, what if a man gain
the whole world and lose his soul?

Baghdad had been founded by the Arab
conquerors of Iraq in the eighth century.

It became the greatest
cultural center in the world,

the richest city on earth, it was said.

Little survives of that time today.

Successive destructions of Baghdad
have seen to that.

But in the center of the old city

is the mosque of its patron saint,
Abd al-Gelani.

This was built at a time when colleges
and philanthropic institutions

were created throughout Islam

before the universities of the West.

Before Oxford, the Sorbonne and Bologna.

The civilized atmosphere of
its courtyards brings to mind

the great scholars of the past
who learned and taught here.

Scholars who translated the sacred
books of the Jews and Christians,

as they said, that we might better
understand the decisions of God.

Humane learning, wrote
one of them, Abd al-Latif,

leaves an aura like a ray of bright light

shining on those who come after.

And inside the shrine,
you are reminded again

of the old customs of
Mesopotamian worship

in the glittering Holy of Holies,

whose magnificence distantly reflects

something of that old pre-Islamic world.

Saint, poet and mystic, al-Gelani was
founder of one of the great Sufi orders.

And to pause for thought here in his
shrine is to feel what a dynamic force

Iraqi Islam, Shia and Sunni,
has been through history.

But now, at the end of the 20th century,

however much the rich and complacent
West may wish it otherwise,

Islam is once again a
great power in the world.

A beacon for the dispossessed
peoples of Asia and Africa,

an idea for which
people still live and die.

From the time of Harun al-Rashid,

Baghdad was one of the three
greatest cities in the world,

along with Constantinople
and Xi'an in China.

And like them, it was one of
the great transmitters

by which the cultural
legacy of the ancients

was passed on to the
medieval and modern world.

It's often forgotten in the West,

but much of the Greek scientific
and philosophical legacy

was passed on to us by Arab scholars.

And here in Baghdad in particular,

the Mesopotamian legacy
in astronomy and mathematics

is found in medieval Arab texts,
like this one.

The library here at the Galani Mosque
was founded in the 12th century,

and some of its books
date from that time,

like this beautiful Quran.

But it was one of the great
tragedies in the history of Iraq,

that this period of high culture
in Baghdad was cut short

by the devastating Mongol attack of 1258,

when the city was totally destroyed.

And in the aftermath,
one of the survivors

left this poignant note.

I recovered this book
from the River Tigris,

where it was thrown by the Mongols,

year of the Hijra, 656.

That's 1258 in the western calendar.

I am poor for the mercy of God,
Mahabad Abdul-Qad from Mecca.

A testimony to enduring faith,
not only in God,

but in the power of the written word
to create civilization.

You asked me, wrote a contemporary,
about the sack of Baghdad.

It was so horrible
there are no words to describe it.

I wish I'd died earlier and not seen

how the fools destroyed these
treasures of knowledge and learning.

I thought I understood the world,

but this holocaust is
so strange and pointless

that I'm struck dumb.

The revolution of time and its decisions
have defeated reason and knowledge.

The destruction of Baghdad in 1258

and the wrecking of the irrigation canals

was a turning point
in the history of the Middle East.

There's no doubt, said a Persian writer,

that even if for a thousand years
to come no evil befell Iraq,

it will not be possible completely
to bring back the land

to the state it was before.

By the end of the 16th century,

Iraq, the cradle of civilization,
had sunk to the lowest level.

The old cities of the south were dead,
the land had returned to desert.


plundered by a greedy military.

The great events of the Renaissance,
the Enlightenment,

the discovery of the new world,
passed it by.

Up here in the north, though,
the old traditions of urban life hung on.

This is Mosul.

The 12th century Arab traveller,
Ibn al-Jubayr,

describes its lovely river frontage,
with latticed windows and balconies.

There could be no finer or more
beautiful place than this,

he said wistfully.

To sit in the evening
overlooking the river Tigris,

talk to the people here
who are cheerful, soft-spoken,

kind and generous to strangers,
fair in their dealings, civilized people.

Out to the north of Mosul,
in one of the loveliest spots in Iraq,

the amazing religious life of the country
has one more surprise.

Our journey which started
in the Garden of Eden

has brought us finally to the domain
of the Prince of Darkness,

Satan himself.

This is the shrine of the Yazidis.

On the wall of the Yazidi temple,

the place of honor goes to none other than

the serpent from the Garden of Eden.

Once unfairly branded
as devil worshippers,

the Yazidis believe that the real
power in the world is Satan.

It's Satan who dispenses good and evil,

sickness and health,

and so he needs careful
and regular propitiation.

Keeping a weather eye on the active
presence of evil in the world,

in their own way
the Yazidis have come to terms

with the devil's bargain of Iraqi history.

After all its great achievements,

Iraq reached the modern age
like a society stopped in time.

Right up until the 1920s

its ancient towns looked no different

from those of the 3rd millennium BC,

save that the ancients built
bigger and better

and had a higher standard of living.

Oil would change all that.

The second largest reserves in the world.

And with independence, Iraq once again
became a name on the world stage.

Huge monuments were erected
to its victorious wars.

Here was a militarized society
using cruelty as an arm of state,

a state centered on a ruler cult

which would have done credit
to the ancient kings of Assyria.

Heaping up thousands of battered
helmets taken from Iranian dead

in emulation of Senachirib
and Ashurnasipal,

who set up pillars of skulls
outside their gates,

blinding our enemies

with the terror-inspiring
glamour of our rule.

And in an eerie
reenactment of past horrors,

S*ddam would represent himself
as an all-conquering Assyrian king

riding rough shard over his foes.

It was the old equation of Iraqi history,

the idea that only a brutal ruler
could hold the land together,

stop it being plundered by its neighbours,

a ruler who dealt in terror and
savage and merciless punishment.

There had been many such rulers
in Iraq's past.

Like the king who had himself
represented on his public monuments,

serenaded in a pleasure garden,

while his enemies' severed head
hung in a tree.

The final step of this new order

was to restore the most potent
symbol of that ancient past,

Babylon itself.

Babylon the Great,
as the book of Revelation calls it,

the mother of harlots and
the abominations of the earth.

Even during the height
of the w*r with Iran,

this colossal project went ahead,

rearing up palace walls with armies of
guest workers from Egypt and Sudan,

where Jewish captives
had laboured on the original.

And in the rebuilt palace,

every 50th brick was stamped in Arabic,

restored in the era of S*ddam.

Just as in 600 BC,

Nebuchadnezzar had advertised

his own Babylonian revival for posterity.

The message to the world from the late


Mesopotamia, they said,

had emerged once again from the darkness,

to become a bright light of civilisation.

But civilisation consists
not in walls of brick and stone,

but in the ideals created within them,

in the humane goals of life
pursued by the predecessors,

who attempted to moderate naked power,

as the Sumerians said,

to cause justice to prevail in the land,

that the strong may not oppress the weak.

On the eve of the Gulf w*r of 1991,

I returned to the marshes of southern Iraq.

They had been ravaged and then drained
in the aftermath of the w*r with Iran.

The water level had sunk,

the waving green reed beds
were now shriveled and brown.

Once upon a time, said an ancient poet,

Sumer, the great land of divine laws,

had all that was needed for life.

You, Sumer, set the ideals
of civilisation upon humankind,

lofty ideals, robed in enduring light.

Once upon a time,

when there was no fear, no terror.

In 1991,

a new w*r was fought in this desert,

where the first civilisation arose,

close to the ruins of the first city, Uruk.

Another w*r fought over
the natural resources of the earth

on which we all depend,

another w*r supposedly for civilisation

against barbarism.

It is as if history has come,

not to its end,
but back to its starting point.

Viewed from across the plain today,

Uruk, the first city of the world,

the city of Genesis,

seems like a great source of energy

whose power is exhausted.

The wheel of history
has turned full circle here,

back to the conditions
which held in the beginning,

before the Sumerians patiently laboured

to turn this monochrome landscape

into emerald green fields
stretching as far as the eye can see.

Before they sailed their
gaily festooned boats

up the old track of the
Euphrates from Nippur

to rejoice in the spring festivals
of the great goddess.

As they saw it themselves,

this was a heroic age,

the age of Gilgamesh
and the first city builders.

And we city dwellers of the late


Paris and Tokyo, can take
a vicarious pride in their achievement.

But it is this desert landscape of Uruk,

which is the spectre facing
the children of the 21st century.