There must have been a reason for this choice, and economy can be ruled out of court without hesitation. Perhaps it is most probable that religious conservatism was the real motive. Men had built their temples, like their houses, of unburnt brick for centuries before they learned the art of burning it; and when that art had been acquired, the old material was still regarded as the proper one for the sacred purpose, and preserved accordingly. In like fashion the Jewish altar was for centuries composed of unhewn blocks of stone in a brazen frame, because the original altars of their patriarchs were unhewn of necessity. As a matter of fact, the very rudeness of the material of these temples has saved them from destruction when other buildings have perished. It was worth nobody’s while to transport unbaked brick anywhere, and in consequence, now that the dêbris has been removed, the temple walls stand up to a far greater height than do those of the palace. One fears, however, that this cannot continue, for of course mud needs to be sheltered from rain-drip if it is to last; though if that condition be secured it is one of the most durable forms of building.
These temples can hardly have been beautiful monuments. Impressive they doubtless were, for size and proportion together can hardly fail in securing that; but impressive in the fashion of an older world. Built just when Greece was feeling her way to the matchless grace of the Parthenon, they stood like the elephant among beasts—the memorial of an earlier age of evolution, but a sight of awe and wonder to the younger races of men.
It is interesting, too, to find that even that younger civilization has its monument here among the tombs of the old. Babylon fell before the Persian, and her glory passed away. But when the Persian fell before the Greek Alexander, that last of the great kings of the East showed himself the first of modern rulers also, in that he had dreams of uniting ancient East and modern West in one great empire. It was a dream that passed with the dreamer; though it has been revived time and again since, and noble men will spend and be spent for it even now. Alexander had ideas of[{357}] transplanting the finest flower of Greek culture to his new capital in the East—for such he intended Babylon to be. The dramas of Æschylus and Sophocles should be performed in ancient and restored Babylon; and with that object he ordered the construction of a Greek theatre of the best pattern of his day, in the mud brick of Babil. Strange parable of his great dreams, and strange exotic too, it stands to this day in the suburbs of Babylon; a memorial to all time of that first effort of the West to educate and assimilate the East—that East which it found so easy to overrun and so impossible to understand.
So “Babylon, the glory of nations, the beauty of the Chaldees’ excellency,” stands now uncovered for an hour, though a short time will see her hidden once more, and perhaps finally removed to form the material for modern houses.
Meantime, what of the land itself, which was the garden of the earth once, and is little but a mixture of swamp and desert now? The waters that men taught to make the land fruitful have been only its destruction when they were left uncontrolled. Will the great scheme that an English engineer has put forward make the land a garden once more? It can, of course—on the condition that it is properly managed. For nothing can take away the marvellous fertility of the soil; and there will be water for irrigation as long as the snow falls on Hakkiari and Ararat to feed the Tigris and the Euphrates.
If the work is managed, when finished, by the men who designed and executed it, it will do as much for the delta of Mesopotamia as the “Barrage” of the Nile has done for its delta, or the dam of Assouan for upper Egypt. But the Barrage, when built, stood absolutely useless for decades, because those who ruled the country would not trust the builders to administer their own work, fearing the power that such a position would give them in the land that they were saving. Will those men of the same stock who rule in Mesopotamia submit to govern by foreign advice, and so save the country? Or will they say (as they have always thought hitherto), “We cannot save our rule by compliance.[{358}] Let the land go to ruin, and the people too. At least it is ours, and we will rule it to the end.”
One who knew the Ottoman better than most has said, “If you want to know what a Turk will do under any circumstances, think first what you would do yourself; then what he ought to do; then what it is his obvious interest to do. After that, you can rule out all those alternatives with complete confidence; and that will at least narrow down the field of possible choice.”
Still, we must hope for the best. May it be an omen that the date-palm (Babylon’s ancient and beautiful emblem of fertility and life) is now springing up anew in every trench of the excavations at Babil—sown there by the stones of the dates served out as rations to the native staff of labourers.[{359}]
CHAPTER XVII
OUR SMALLEST ALLY
NINE years have elapsed since the last chapter was written, and the hope with which it ends has been most tragically deferred. Nearer Asia has been swept by another of those great cataclysms with which its past history has rendered it but too familiar—in this case a back-wash only of a yet more worldwide catastrophe, but scarcely less devastating than the ravages of Genghis or Timour. Of those mentioned by name in our earlier chapters a large proportion have perished. Nay, whole communities and nations have been almost completely erased. And some brief epilogue is needed to tell of the fate that has befallen them, and to arouse some new interest among Englishmen in the future of those battered remnants whom their Treaties still pledge them to protect.