Les villes étoiles de la haute Mésopotamie

"A journey to the sources of Syriac culture and the tale of eight cities, eight stars fallen from the sky on the wide land of Upper Mesopotamia. Nowadays in Turkey, here is Edessa and its flooding springs, Nisibis, the city of Light and Knowledge, Amida and its walls as a dark crown, Mardin, the city of the Sun.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, Arbil overwatched the plain, from its ancient citadel, Kirkuk is proud of its famous naphta, Sulaymaniya is dizzy by the scents of its pomegrantaes and figs, Dohuk is leaning on the folds of its mounts.

Eight famous cities, mostly inhabited by Kurds, but also by Turks, Arabs, where the Assyrian Chaldean Syriac people is still present. Light and Time had slowly slipped on them, and they are still shining with all their flames, enriching the inheritage of mankind."

Mesopotamia

You are an academic, an Iraqi writer, you have recently published “The Epic of the Tigris and the Euphrat”, that reports the history of Mesopotamia since millenia. Does Mesopotamia include current Irak and a part of Syria ?

- That is absolutely true. Ancient Mesopotamia was bordered at the East by the Zagros Mopuntains, it included the lands located at the west of the Euphrat, until the Habur, an affluent of the Tigris. When we consider the different civilizations which are to succeed in Mesopotamia, especially Sumerians' civiliaation at the beginning of the IVth millenium B.C, we observe that this people at the south of the country had an important influence in that region that called later the Fertile Crescent. It is shown moreover by the archeological discoveries which have done in the ancient city of Mari, in Syria.

Akkadian empire, the first empire, founded at the end of the Third Millenium B.C by King Sargon, (2334-2279) included a great part of the Middle-East, for Sargon had set his domination on Sumer and Akkad, invaded Northern-Syrias, controlled Elam, a region in the South-West of Iran. His successors had made a campaign to the north of current Irak.

After the fall of Akkadian empire in 2193, the Sumerian dynasty of Ur III dominated an important part of Mesopotamia. As the dynasty of Akkad, it was going to influence the people of Assur, the Assyrians, who began their territorial expansion under King Shamshî-Adad's reign (1807-1776 B.C) and constituted at the IXth century a very vast empire.

With the Babylonian dynasty of Hammurabi (1792-1750), the territoire increased, may be beyond Ninive, with campaigns to the North. This king remained in our memories as a great legislator with his famous Law “code”, about which we will talk further.



Nowadays, do we discover again some new informations about this civilization whith which had been excavated and by the research of the archeologists ?

-Everything are not obviously discovered. Archelogists say that hardly 10% of the inheritance of Mesopotamia had been excavated. Today, we talk about near to 10 000 historical sites, according to Iraqi sources. The four great Assyrian capitals, Assur, Nimrud, Ninive, Khorsabad, have been partially excavated, and the Babylon of the Chaldean period (612-539 avant notre ère). Much sites have been not yet excavated and then are not studied. Some thousands of tablets, which became 'terra cotta' during the last set fire of the overcome cities, and after remained hidden in sand, are not yet deciphered.




Unfortunately, the events which happened in Irak for twenty years have stopped the archeological research, that had begun to excavate the great cities of Antiquity : Eridu, Uruk, Nippur, Ur, Lagash, Ninive, Babylon...

Let's hope that peace will come soonly and that the situation will allow to start again researches and to find hundreds of thousands of hidden tablets in the ground ! Their transcription could reveal an ignored part of Human's history, for stakes are missing... May be we could go back to the IXth millenium, where man had perhaps tried to open his mind to the world, to ask himself the great questions and to probe the mysteries...


We have not yet a precise idea of the passage from the "Prehistoric" man to the human who belongs to the oldest civilizations. Do you go back to the furtherest time, about 8000 B.C ?

We know the Neolithic time that begins between 8100 and 7500 B.C. Archeologists made researches about this topic. They have observed that the first testimonies of this period are in the Middle-East. In Mesopotamia, the Neolithic village of Jarmo, in Kurdistan, the site of Ali Kosh, the strenghened village of Maghzaliyeh in Northern-Irak, delivered obsidian tools, earthen-flywheels of bobbins and many various ustensils. Goat and later sheep had been domesticated. Firstly hunter, human became farmer. He passed from the village to the town. The first cities, Eridu, Uruk, were founded.

In these cities devoted to the trade, it is necessary that people communicate each others; then they invent the writing, about 3200. It is the Sumerian cuneiform.

Later, during the third, second and first millenia, the Akkadian language is dominating a great part of the Middle-East. It is divided in the second millenium in “Assyrien” and “Babylonien”. The Sumerian is then only a religious language. Talentuous Akkadian writings emerge step by step, as the epic of Gilgamesh, king of Uruk.

The influence of Mesopotamian writing is reached until the city of Ugarit, in Syria. The first texts with alphabetical signs dated of the XIVth-XIIIth centuries. This alphabet includes near to thirty signs. It will be adopted by Greeks and will be diffused in the West.

The so-called Semitic languages as Arabic, Hebrew, could have for origins the Akkadian one ?

The Akkadian language is still the most ancient Semitic language that we know with the Eblait. Arabic, Hebrew and Syriac are too great Semitic languages but more recent.


The history of Mesopotamie could call in question the Old Testament and the version of events given by the Bible ?

-In a certain way, it could. The Bible relates only a part of History. It starts about one the First millenium B.C. It shows us the writings of a people, the Hebrews, who had set a small state often dominated by the great close empires, Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Bible presents in a way that is often partiel Assyrians, Babylonians and Egyptians who play often the parts of ennemies ! The assyrian king Salmanazar III made a campaign in the IXth century B.C in Hebrews' country didn't he ?

Later, in the VIth century, the Chaldean king Nabuchodonosor took Jerusalem in 597. After a coalition, he came back for looting the town in 586 and deported a part of the Jewish population in Babylon. They lived there, adopting its manners, habits, ideas, and came back from their exile only in 538 B.C.

Some authors of the sacred book were moreover inspired by Mesopotamian tales, as the Deluge.

Was it only this region of the Middle-East that had been sown by humans or there are some other parts in our planet which lived the same process ?

On the historical level another civilization existed that followed atfer a few centuries the Mesopotamian civilization : It was the Egyptian one, which was powerful, mystical, and its Pharaons reached a real greatness. But it stays rather “Egyptian”, focused on itself. It didn't conquest another countries, did export neither its language nor its writing.

About the second part of the third millenium, and at the very beginning of the second, an else civilization developped, in India, on the river Indus. Rich and spiritual, it marked this civilization of Asia. It still nourished nowadays one milliard men's souls.

At the eighteenth century before our era, another civilization raised, the Chinese civilization of Shang, rich, various, with writing and metallurgy. Curiously, its vision of the world was not very far from Babylonians' one !

Then we could talk about four prominent civilizations. The Mesopotamian one aroused the widest interest, at first in Greece and Western. It generates great inventions : the City, the writing, the swing-plough, the wheel, the chariot, the potter's wheel, the sailing boat, the welding. In architecture, it invented vaults, cupolas, and in the scientific field, astronomy, astrology, mathematiques : Babylonians, at the beginning of the second millenium, conceived systems of classification, calculation, and discovered, before Pythagoras, the theorem of the Hypotenuse.

The Mesopotamian civilization domesticated time, elaborated a calendar. The lunar year, with 354 days, than started to the Spring equinoxe, was shared in 12 months with 29 or 30 days, and in weeks of 7 days. From time to time, they added a month as correction. Like for us who have inherited of it today, the hour had 60 minutes and the minute 60 seconds.

Concerning Law, the Babylonian civilization bequeathed us Hammurabi's "code", engraved on a basaltic stele, (now in the Louvre museum) to manage the social and political life. The inhabitants of these cities had the right to be protected, themselves and their goods. Some articles concerned the widows and the orphans, and the slaves who detained a kind of self-dignity. The “code” treated of civil, trade, familial, and penal laws. This “code” inspired Ancient Eastern, and, by Greece and Rome, Western.

Ancient Mesopotamians let us too “libraries”, as in the city of Nippur; or, in the VIIth century, the Assyrian king Assurbanipal's one in Ninive, that detained, according to the archeological discoveries, 30 000 clayed-tablets in cuneiform, copyed and classified with a remarkable system. These tablets contained archives, edicts, donations, reaports. The scholars, did want to register their history on clay, to preserve the inheritage of Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, de Ninive.


And what about gods : did human already need god ?

-Since the dawn of these civilizations, some writing texts showed that these populations, Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, or Assyrien, were believers.

But there was a great diversity of gods. No monotheism oppressed the else gods. Those lived in heaven. They have created humans for being served and only for this reason. Human wisdom aimed to eat, drink, love, enjoy life. It inspired the author of the Ecclesiastes, in the Bible. Man could not pretend to be immortal, it was reserved to gods. Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk, the hero of the famous epic, dashed off in an extraordinary travel for obtaining immortality, but he failed and was resigned to his fate.

The Mesopotamian civilization didn't resemble the Egyptian one. It didn't build pyramids in which Pharaon eternally lived in a bright hereafter. The tombs of Assyrian kings that we have found, are ordinary tombs, for, after death, man entered in the world of shadow and dust.


We feel ourselves as small when we're looking a so far past, which came out of sand and is the origin of our current modern world, although the latter thinks it has all discovered. Are your public and your students enthusiastic about the history of Mesopotamian civilization ?

Students are very interested by this civilization, that is not really well known by the general public. I have stress that until a recent time, Mesopotamia was included in the program of History of the first form class. But National Education had removed this course, a few years ago.

However it is the starting point of History...

I is a very serious question, for one of the great Human's virtues is gratitude, thankfulness for the pioneers of our civilization.

Removing Mesopotamia off the scool is hiding a part of our history and cutting our roots.

I insist : the New French generation won't know that the source of its history and its civilization is Mesopotamia.

I whish that the study of this great civilization be restored in French teaching. Everybody don't start with Greece at the seventh century before our era, as some would like to believe !


And what about Arabs : do they place the Mesopotamian civilization in the foreground and do they devoted to the resarch of the origin of their inheritance ?

Unfortunaly, not much or in a secundary way. For at the beginning of the twentieth century, before the independance of majority of Arabic countries, the Ottoman Empire was not much concerned by this inheritance. Great archeological discoveries happened recently, in the middle of the XIXth century. When Arabs became independant, they gave priority to their ethnical and national identity. And they stress Omeyyads and Abbasids' civilizations, which are very important and nearer to themselves in tthe time. In a certain way, ancient civilizations have been neglected.

I 've written too my book “The epic of the Tigris and the Euphrat” (published in the collection « Comprendre le Moyen-Orient », l’Harmattan, 1999) for Arabic people. I would like to make them understand that they have got a magnificent palace which includes several civilizations.

Dear friends, don't stay in only one room of this beautiful palace, let's go to the others which represent the civilization of which you are issued, these imposing and nice civilizations that exalt humans' mind and spirit.

Revue France-Pays Arabes, n° 261, Mai-juin 2000
Interview realized by the director of the review : Lucien Bitterlin

Babylon

I was always thinking of Semiramis who, according to a legend, had taken the initiative to built Babylon...

In reality, at the sixth century B.C, a second Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar II 's one, had been build on the elements of Hammurapi's capital.

I planned on going there at the beginning of autumn for it was not far from Bagdad, with 90 kilometres in south. Unfortunately, on September 22th 1980, the war between Irak and Iran broke out. During forty days, Iranian planes flew over the capital and bombed it. They made much civilian victims. As the other inhabitants of my district, I ended to get used to their ceaseless raids and I lived again in a more normal way.

Winter induced me to study. I began clever earches about the prestigious past of Babylon. I understood it clearly, it was becomen a mythical city that was reflected as in the water of the Euphrat, as in the ancient Jewish, Greek and Western sources. Former people had differently looked at it and even with contradictory ways.





Ishtar Gater -Berliner Museum

Mesopotamians saw Babylon as the “good city”, the centre of the world. They called it Bâb-Ili, the “God's gate” for it opened on the spiritual vocation of humans and led them at Marduk' s feet, the almighty master of the pantheon, of which residence was built inside the walls. Some hundreds of temples et de chapelles, devoted to different divinities, stood at the corner of the streets.

Babylon begot by spirit. It surrounded soul, subjugated it.

For Hebrews who had ticklish relations with their rich and opulent neighbour, it was the haughty Bâb-El, very provocative. It fascinated senses with its nice appearance, its flourished fragrances, so cheerishing, its rites, its secrets. Setting down as a queen at the shore of the river, dressed with fine linen, purple and scarlet-coloured, ornamented with gold and jewels, it abandoned itself to luxury, play, debauchery, and got drunk on palm wine in the pleasantness of evenings.

At the fifth century B.C, Babylona showed to Greek travelers as Herodotus the historian or the physician Ctasias a so such surprising aspect that they lost their sense of moderation. They added kilometers to its walls; they went into great raptures about the colossal breast of its temples, its palaces, on the amazing beauty of its gardens. Filled with wonder, Herodotus wrote :

“This town is so splendid that no other city in the world could be compared.12”

Subjected by Persians and Greeks, the Fair lost a few of its splendor. Pale, magic, it still however scrutinized the firmament with sharp eyes...



At the first century, another Greek historian, Diodorus of Sicily and a georgrapher, Strabo, recognized its great abilities of astronomer and astrologer. smelt again the scent of its past scent.

Then, a sky of oblivion fall on Babylon. The few Westerners who went through Mesopotamia, from the twelth to the nineteenth century, passed not far from it but nothing anything draw their attention. Some travelers compared it to a dethroned kings' dauthger, lying in dust and watched by owls and snakes. It seemed to be the victim of a curse.

At the middle of the last century, archeologists unveiled again the brow that was hidden under the debris of Babylon. Since and after 1899, the works of the German Robert Koldewey allowed a reconstitution of the features of its face, that had kept their nobleness.

In their turn, Iraqi people and government searched with assiduity, with nostalgia, all that remained of the city, that symbol of their greatness. They built, on ancient bases, imposing walls; they restored many gates and temples. Babylon came across, at the end of the twentieth century, its dazzling decoration, its history and its dryed up power. It played again its role of cultural capital.

Spring came back. I was longing to realize my dream, to become aware of the new beauty of this city that was always silhouetted at the horizon of my thoughts.

At the entering of the site, an enormous basaltic lion, heavy, hardly rough-hewed, stood up front of me, with an enigmatic look. I saw that it gripped in its paws a confused mani. Behind the animal, opened a long avenue paved with smooth flagstones, calcareous and breccia, excavated by Koldewey.

On the occasion of the celebration of the Babylonian New Year, the “ Akitu”, Marduk and else gods's effigies, clad with splendid clothes, took down it. The sumptuousprocession passed then between the thick surrounded walls, ornamented with friezes of emailed bricks, that had each one on them a suite of sixty lions with blazing manes. With their low tails and their opened mouths, these majestuous creatures, symbolizing Ishtar, the goddess of War and Love, seemed to accompany the procession. On the blue overseased background of bricks, they made burst, with a symphonia of colours, their resounding tawny golden, virile red and full bloomed white notes.

I thought with emotion that this alley had seen not only the famous monarchs of Babylon, but foreigned kings too, as the Persian Cyrus and Xerxes, all of them swathed in the same ochred and blue enchantment..



Later, standing on his chariot, his leonine hair fired by the Sun, Alexander the Macedonian, had made a triumphant entrance in the town. Its oppressed inhabitants, impoverished by the Persian Achemenids who ruled them since 539 B.C, had welcomen their liberator with acclamations, flowers and crowns.

I let the sacred road and approached Ishtar gate that crossed it and was the main entrance of Babylon. It sparkled with green and blue. An Iraqi flag floated proudly by its side. Some palm-trees faned it. It was a double-gate, fixed on the ground, aimed to the skies. The uppered-part, that had heavy pannels of emailed bricks, had been removed from its hinges by the members of the German expedition before the First World War, and transfered to the Museum of Eastern Antiquities of Berlin. The lower part only remained, rebuilt as a miniature version, and equiped with a arched opening and four crenellated towers. It was decorated with white palmets, running grey-blued dragoons, with eagled and felined paws, Marduk's symbols. They alternated with the wild bulls of the Storm god Adad. With their sky-coloured furs, their large dreamy eyes, theses bovines impressed me.

All the animals emanated from the glaucous ground of the gate. Should I see in them the spirit and the memory of the city ?

As I watched them, captivated, they seemed to move. Light, almost unreal, they walked, anymore on a wall but on a mirror of water and took some fantastic appearances. Dazzled by this light of aquarium, I plunged in the past of Babylon...





Mesopotamia Babylonian map

The famous Nebuchadnezzar II had made arrange the processionnal way and Ishtar's Gate. He had let his name as stamped on the field of the great flagstones that covered the roadway. Compared with a dragon in the Bible, (Jeremiah, 51,34 ) he was known too by economical texts, royal inscriptions, ancient authors. In 1842, an artist as Verdi, gave his name to an opera, Nabucco, animated by a fiery patriotic inspiration.

Nebuchadnezzar remained an energetic and complicated man.

He was Nabopolassar's son, wha had founded about 625 B.C the Neo-Babylonian empire contributed to the collpase of Assyria in 612. He kept the stamp of his Chaldean origin, an Aramaïc tribe, the Kaldû, mentionned on the ninth century in Assyrian documents and who went to settle in Lower Mesopotamia.

In 605 B.C, Nebuchadnezzar succeeded with defeating Egyptians in Karkemish on the right of Euphrat. He pushed the gate of Syria-Palestine and penetrated in the area.

Disobedient, the Kingdom of Juda refused before long to pay a tribute, and revolted. On March 16th 697, the king of Babylon took Jerusalem and deported three thousands inhabitants. In spite of the advices of sumission of the prophet Jeremiah, the Jewish resistance didn't reduce. King Sedecias revolted at the beginning of 588 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar came back to besiege Jerusalem, made a rush on July 29th 587 B.C, burnt the temple, the houses. Nobles and craftsmen, some thousands people, bound their reins with the belt of captivity and walked toward Babylon.

These transportations, in Mesopotamia, were only small events in the life of the empire. They haven't any racist aspects. The elite of the Jewish population was transferred in a foreign country after a conflict between nations, and had been quite well treated.

Nebuchadnezzar received in his court the most handsome and the cleverest young men. He made them taught in his language, nurrished them at his own table, as told in the Bible the prophet Daniel.

Some exiled moarned to stay far away from the kingdom of Juda :

“ On the riversides of Babylon, We were sitting and we cried,

Remembering Sion. On the willows around,

We have hunged our harps. ” (Psalm 137)

Some others, the most numerous, adapted to their new way of life and prospered among Babylonians.

In 538, an edict of Cyrus II, the great king of Persia, who had becomed the master of the land of Sumer and Akkad, authorized transported people to come back in Palestine. Only a few number, imbued with the Chaldean wisdom, took to the road gain toward their native land for smelling its scents. The other Jews, seduced by the heady charms of Babylon, the extaordinary megalopolis, stayed in Mesopotamia. For

“Babylon was in the Eternal's hand a golden cup,

That inebriated all the world.” (Jeremiah, 50,7 )





Lion de la voie processionnelle

Nebuchadnezzar stood up to besiege Tyr during thirteenth years, then seized the city. If we confined ourselves to the inscriptions that commemorated his works, he did not set his vast empire on war. Valorous but wise, sensible, he merely conforted it.

Inside the borders, the sovereign proved to be a remarkable administrator. He controlled agriculture, developped the trade with the Indo-Iranian Eastern, the Mediterranean, encourage arts and sciences like mathematics, astronomy, that are the ground of our knowledges. He was interested too by the past.

With all these huge qualities, then, who could raise so highly than him ? Here is that wondered the prophet Daniel :

" O King, you are the king of kings, for the God of heaven gave you the empire, power, strengh and glory; he handed you, anywhere they lived, human's children, the beasts of fields and the birds in the sky, and he made you dominated all of them : You are the golden head” ( Daniel, 2, 37-39 )

The golden head means the most achieved, the most perfect being of Creation.

Under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar, then, the country forgot itself in peace.

So the king could devote himself to works of architecture. He sword to restore, embellish his beloved capital, that had then nine hundred hectares within itself, and sheltered a population of one hundred thousand inhabitants.

“Among all the inhabited places, I made no town more famous than you, Babylon ! ”

And indeed, he enlarged the canals and the enclosure of the city made by two walls separated by a large distance. He erected monuments, of among which a splendid temple devoted to Marduk, and a vast palace, a residence of majesty.

Standing front of Ishtar Gate, I was emerging slowly from the blue and luminous night of the Babylonian past... I slipped under the archway and went inside the citadel. I was burning now to visit the magnificent Nebuchednazzar's residence. It was raised on my right, toward the Euphrat. Though it was in restoration, it was still opened to the public. I entered in one of the large courts, crossed the threshold of a vaulted gate and stayed unmoved front of the huge throne chamber, formerly ornamented with palms, stylized flowers, running lions in a forest of volutes. I invoked the monarch's ghost, sumptuously clad, sitting down in a niche, facing the central opening, seeming to be almost a god ....

I called no longer after another ghost, the prince Bel-Sharra-Usur's one, the Belschatsar of the Bible. He was Nabonidps' son, the last king of Babylon. Did not he give, in this room, a legendary banquet that, later, Rembrandt immortalized in a famous picture, inspired with the sacred text ?

The prophet Daniel told that during a meal, Bel-Sharra-Usur, struck with amazement, saw appearing a man 's hand. It traced on one of the walls some mysterious words, aramean graffiti with numbers. The messages announced that Babylon would be taken soon by Persians. (Daniel, 5, 26 )

Very dreamy, I left the palace. Just before going away, I turned back, trying to see, at the corner of the citadel, the beautiful hanging gardens that had been described by Diodorus of Sicily and Quintus-Curcius, the Latin historian, as the seventh wonder of the world. According to them, the breeze balanced, above the high walls, the dazzling and hudled peaks that were raising to the sky.

Gardens of freshness and pleasure, gardens of Eden, created by the nostalgia of a languid queen with subdued dark eyes, who regretted the mountains and the woods of her native Media : Amythys, the grand-daughter of King Astyages, Nebuchadnezzar's wife.

Here are steps that fly away towards vaulted terraces, supported by columns and adorned with vigorous trees of all species, well irrigated by an ingenious system : Cypress, peach, apricot, fig and granada trees, and rose-trees of Persia and Bactrian.

At evening, when mauve shades dance in the plain arround, Amythis goes up towards the platforms, her heavy golden bracelets tinkling on her wrists. She slips under the young foliages, searching for the green plenitude. She rests under the shadow of her childhood memories.

Years flee by through the hanging gardens, that are already legends. But the queen of Babylon comes back always for getting back in touch with her inner self.

Often, I cross in dream these elegiac gardens where grass doesn't become yellow, where plants are always emerald green, where jasmines perfumes the air for eternity. I have a feeling to have already lived there before, like in a blissfull island. Life spreads the scent of Youth. There, I reviewed my soul...

Near to these gardens, in a room of the palace, in June 323, Alexander gave his last banquet. There he drunk a wine older than thousand years. Some days later, being delirious by fever, unable to speak, he greeted by screwing up his eyes, the Macedonian veterans who marched in silence front of his ceremonial bed.

The sun layed down behind the towers of the city, tinging them with scarlet, when the king breathed his last.

The Babylonians scanned the sky and its evening lights; they guessed a missing, harmful for the great project that wanted to make their city the capital of a universal empire. In a certain way, they will miss Alexander.

Extract from « The epic of the Tigris and the Euphrat », Editions l’Harmattan, Paris, 1999 , ch.12

Assyria's faces

A few time later, I was in Dohuk, a town at seventy-five kilometers from the north of Mosul, next to the defile of a mountain which has the same name. It was famous for its fig trees, its vineyards that crowned it by vine branches and leaves, and for its granada trees that produced smooth-barked fruits, with a delicious bitter-sweet taste.

I hadn't forgotten the splendid rupestral reliefs which stood not far from the close village of Maltaï.


One afternoon, I climbed up slowly to the Bekher mountain. After twenty minutes of walk, I watched with my own eyes, shivered of emotion, the portrait of a king, engraved in the rock : Sennacherib. He had made represent himself twice on each pannel of the cliff. He was standing front of Assyrian gods, who were crowned with high tiaras, and appeared to him, sitting or riding their animal-symbols. He was waiting for me, as it seems to myself, to commemorate a splendid victory that resounded now in my spirit....



Evening was falling, reliefs bathed in a rose lightness then vanished. The so-vivid past returned in the shade.

The following days, I dashed off in pursuit of Assyrians' track, who had built citadels, carved other rocked walls, at Mala Mergué and, more in the east, at Hinis Bavian, no far from the city of Ain Sifni. They had marked with their own seal Upper-Mesopotamia. I fitted their quartered sandals and, untiring traveler, unworry of anything, I went over their stiff and fertiles lands. They spred mainly between the Tigris and its affluent the Zab.

I crossed mounts and valleys, hills and woods, I passed through pastures scored by rivers of fresh water, I touched lightly bushes, buzzing by moired flights of bees. I strode over the fields of a forgotten time.

Everywhere, I was seeking for the Other one, the Assyria of yesteryear, that which one does'nt see but that quivers in the shade. It was my blood sister, wasn't it ? While I was walking, I evoked its name with its voiceless and flourished syllables, full of mysteries. I watched for its footprints which filled up antiquities. It had founded a dazzling civilization, that lasted more than thousand years, and of which litghts were still shining.



It carried me, I was all the greater for it, like Mesopotamians from yesterday and nowadays. It prolonged in me its rich customs, its irresistible dashes, its generous dreams.

The Bible had kept the memory of the fascinating Assyria. It mentionned with eloquence “... The Assyrians its neighbours, Dressed with blue-tinted fabrics, chiefs and governors et chefs, All of them young and charming, Riders on their horses”. (Ezechiel, 23,6)

But alas, more often basing themselves on partial and hazardous informations, the Bible depicted this great power as a formidable ennemy, with a stern and pitiless face, a sovereign of Fear, inclined with conquests and plunderings, these sources of richness.

Terrible Assyria ? It wasn't only. At this remote time, all the nations let themselves do barbarian acts. Prophet Elias slit 450 priests of Baal's throats didn't he ? (I Kings, 18, 40 ) The king of Israël, Jehu, raised deliberately two pyramids of heads at the gate of his palace. ( II Kings 10, 9 )

And what about the countries that make today so such atrocities, massacres, and acts of genocides ?

We had to wait for the middle of the nineteenth century for doing justice to the land of Assur and at last for telling the truth. Western diplomats Paul-Emile Botta, Henry Austen Layard, Victor Place, and others, took off with their passionate hands the bloody mask of Assyria and unveiled its moving face, powdered of gold. Their eyes met the fire of its look and they burnt for it. They breathed its elating scent,a mixture of myrrh and blackcurrant. They tried to preserve the dress by which the Civilization had ornamented it.

They followed it in the ruines of its palaces, decorated with a great care, which stood up yesteryear in a pleasant landscape and smelt cypress, mulberry, juniper and pistachio trees.

These diggers of the past listened to the vibrant voices that were still raising from tablets and bas-reliefs and related princes' exploits, the valiance of soldiers with pointed-helms, the piety of linen-dressed priests, the pure-bred beauty of horses and lions. They marvelled at finely carved ivories, unearthed in Kalhu, the second Assyrian capital.

At the twentieth century, archeologists found again precious objets d'art, ciselled jewels as a token of craftsmen' exquisite taste and dexterity.

Contrasting by beings and ladscapes, both faces of Assyria, the Biblic one 's, appealing but violent, dominating, and archeologist's one, captivating and refined, ended up to merge, in my eyes, in the symbolic personification of Semiramis, the queen with her golden headband. Subtle, bright and a fierce Amazon, her beauty outshone all the ladies of the palace.

It seems that Sammuramat, King Shamshi-Adad V's wife, who ruled in Kalhu from 823 to 811 B.C, was at the origin of this legend.

Semiramis might have married Omnes, the governor of Ninive and later was the second wife of King Ninos. When she became widow again, she would have attempt some conquests, lead a military expedition until India, found Babylon and created these wonderful gardens.



She could not really die and she lived on in a white dove, the bird which is assimilated to gods.

Semiramis preserved the memory of her country, reaching the dimensions of a myth. She fired the imaginations of Greeks, Herodotus, Ctesias, Diodorus of Sicilia, but Romans, Armenians and Europeans too. Crébillon, Voltaire, Valéry, Gluck, Rossini, made her the heroin of literary works and operas. Degas dedicated her an academic picture.

In my turn I was bewitched by the Queen. She came back to me in the nightdreamings. My imagination wasn't wearied to invent her, to embellish her. I sought her, I found her, I lost her. I concentrated on her image until I found her again....

Sing, Semiramis, sound the strings of your harp ! Sing the greatness of Assyria, when all the nations bowed down before it. Your hairs ornamented with stocks, speak to me about glory, speak to me about love...



With the passing of the years, archeologists were let subjugate by the faces of the last kings of which they withdrew from the ground steles and statues. Didn't they personify Assyria, too ? Wearing some kind of fez, the princes seemed appeased behind their brilliantined beards. Their large cold eyes, formerly like dark velvet, looked at fixedly in front of, to the past, as if the story could start again...

These monarchs were not libertines with flabby bellies, weak and lascivious, nor bloodthirsty tyrants as they had been sometimes pictured. Made-up, perfumed, covered of jewels, certainly, but viril, energetic, always in movement.

Being passionate about an impossible peace, they felt they were pressed to the most brilliant conquests and the highest vertigos by neighbouring populations, who tightened, like rushes, the borders of their empire and put them in danger. Robust warriors, more raging than floods, they annihilated their ennemies, crushed their shields, they set their triumph on territories and hadn't any rivals. They compared war, that ensured them economical perspectives, to a fight against Evil. Convinced of the valiability and the real supériority of Assyrian civilization, they wanted that it was recognized and adopted by surrounding countries. Those paid a tribute to Assyria but benefitted from its economical stability and enjoyed the moral and material advantages of the royal protection.



Inside this immense empire, which, at the seventh century, spred from Cyprus to Iran and made communicate populations, languages and cultures, sovereigns didn't exert absolute power, as Louis XIV, in France. Their speeches were not a sharp blade. They were to count on the Ancients' assembly and on nobility and military caste.

These magnificent, charming, artist, humanist had duties to their country. They had to develop agriculture, to maintain temples and canals, to built dams, to make respect laws. Thanks to a policy of prestige, a centralized administration, they tried to warrent to their subjects self-dignity, well-being, prosperity. They associated them to their own triumphs and joys.

At the time of the inauguration of their splendid palaces, kings invited sometime the inhabitants of cities to copious feasts and satisfied them for several days with delicious foods, choice wines, and songs.

Assyrians were indeed Sumerians and Akkadians' heirs. Like Gilgamesh, their wisdom consisted in enjoying cleverly an existence rhythmed by music. Didn't Ishtar, the goddess of Arbil advise to Assurbanipal “ to eat, to drink and to be happy, and to make his people's happiness because from his lips flood good words and because he satisfy stomach and ears ? ”

Simple representantives and gods' servants on earth - especially in Ashur - the kings were not immortal. After their death, they went down to the Land without return as any of their employees. They didn't built pyramids as the Pharaohs of Egypt, but simple tombs. They didn't care to bring their own goods with them.

The greatness of these sovereings did not come only from their prowesses or their opulent luxury. They wanted to make shine in all the word the name of Assyria, that they venerated. Their true conquest was the conquest of peace, beauty, life.

Extract from the book : « L’Epopée du Tigre et de l’Euphrate », Ch. 11, Editions l’Harmattan, Paris, 1999

Assur, the Craddle of Mankind

In 1962, at spring, I went to Shergat, a locality at a hundred and twenty kilometers in the south of Mosul. In the same occasion, I decided to visit Assur, the first capital of Assyria, very near, which haunted my dreams since months, blazing memory of heroic times.

I arrived on the imposing site, perched on a rock buttress of Djebel Hamrîn, which dominated right bank of the Tiger. Some walls and doors, like the door of Tabira at West, remained erected. Like a huge clayed-igloo, high of thirty meters and sifted by holes, a ziggurat – tower of a stored-temple - overhung the landscape. Herds of sheep sought a rare food among the grassy monticules. I moved firstly in its direction. Symbol of the City, it was dedicated to Enlil, the god of the air. Formerly, it connected earth and heaven, present and eternity. In one jump, I sprang to its conquest, but the ground weathered under my feet.

I nearly smashed and went down. But I was a nosy curious, and I crossed a door dug by the workmen in this heavy mass. “Provided that it does not run out on me, I thought, by while inserting myself in the black cave. A shiver of anguish shook my shoulders. Little by little, my eyes were accustomed to the darkness and I distinguished, here and there, scattered heaps of brick heaps. Hastily I went out.


I walked towards the north-eastern end of the rock horn. An Othoman citadel, built in XIXeme century, on the site of the temple of the god Ashur, had been arranged in museum. Ali, the warder, a young man with orant’s round eyes welcomed me with exubérance. He was bored and hastened around me. He showed me charts, diagrams, plans, shelves, statuettes of clay, and other lucky finds of the archaeologists. He gave me the cord and I was inserted in the past of Assur, as an adventurer throws top of a bridge at the bottom of the mysterious and dark water which runs with his feet.

A long history

The town dated from the most ancient period. Inscriptions and potteries revealed that i twas inhabited since the beginning of the IIIrd millenium by a Semitic people. The city was occupied by the Akkadian King Narâm-Sin (2259-2223 B.C.), then integrated by the IIIrd Sumerian dynasty of Ur (2111-2003 B.C.). Beautiful and busy, it then devoted to the trade of fabrics, copper, tin with Anatolia, Syria, and Mediterranean places.


A dark night wrapped it during centuries. Did it sleep on it ? Assur started again to be an important metropolis in Shamshi-Adad 1er’s Paleo-Assyrian (1813-1781 BC.). At the XIVth and XIIIth century, it became the capitale of a Medio-Assyrian kingdom, which spred from the Euphrat to the mountains of Persia.

Under the reigns of the energetic princes, Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 before J.-C.) and Salmanazar III (858-825 B.C.), it continued its rise. The first gave up it to transfer the seat from the capacity to Kalhu. But Assur remained the great religious center of Assyria .
Our ancestors placed the spirit of their country under the protection of Ashur, the local god, which was at the origin the master of the vegetation and revival. They showed it in a winged disc, armed with an arc. With the development of the Assyrian empire, they had given him the attributes of Enlil, the chief of the Sumerian Pantheon, the organizer of the universe .
Thus the king was chosen by the god Ashur. He looked it with favour, pronounced his name (which sometimes followed his own) and reserved him a great destiny. As the first servant of the divinity, the sovereign had to obey him blindfully. In exchange, he gained the victory when his military campaign. He obliged even the defeated countries to come towards Ashur and to offer their spoils to him. At the festivals of the New Year, the divine Master was led in procession to the temple and its splendid gardens. The monarch participated to the ceremonies. Ashur had given its name to the city which had been spread like a fan, offering to the eyes of dazzled visitors its sumptuous monuments, decorated with planks and paintings: The old palace, the new one, the double temple of Anû the god of Heaven and Adad, the lord of rain and storm, with his towers scratching the sky, the temples of Sin and Shamash, gods of the moon and the sun.
Followinf the warder’s advice, I choose to go to Ishtar(s temple, the goddess of love and war, the queen of doves. It was a very old sanctuary, built about 2030 B.C, and located at the south of the processional way. Alas, only ground and heaps of stones remained ! I thought with emotion of ancient days, of the enthusiastic creatures who had crossed the court. They had gathered in the large rectangular room, furnished with benches along the walls, for the ex-votos. They had sung, psalmodiated anthems and lamentations, with the sound of harps and lyres, inebriated with incense, cedar and cypress scents.

During the same time, priests, soothsayers and exorcists exalted by prayers and gifts their protective. On a podium, Ishtar stood, richly adorned, and its breath floated on the heads of its believers..


Slowly, I went up to the "old palace". Shaken by whole sides, its walls had been rebuilt at one meter height. The diggers had discovered there five tombs, among which Ashur Bêl Kala (1074-1057 B.C.), Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 B.C) and Shamshi-Adad V (823-811 B.C.)'s graves. When the king left toward his destiny, the wives of his harem anointed with fine oile and aromatics his corpse, kissed him, and mourned him tenderly. Then they were going to purify themselves in the Tigris, according to the habit. Adorned with his royal dresses, the dead one was put in a simple stone vault, enriched of some treasures, whose lid was sealed by bronze cramps.

The sovereigns of Assyria did not invest considerable sums to set up monuments or pyramids, like Pharaons. They were not made momifier, they did not regain an "area of light". Like all the men, they went down to the "country without return" to carry out a dull existence to it, sinks, dusty.

I leaned above Ashur-Beautiful-Kala's sarcophagus which was widely opened under the sky. It had been plundered, damaged by the wind and the rain. It had not kept any vestige of a prestigious past.



A storm of sand


I continued my walk on the site. The sky was darkened, filled of rumours and of predict. Then the wind started to blow, raising reddish grey sandy clouds, which pricked my eyes. The storm attacked me, seizd my neck. I fought to release myself. While running towards the shelter of the museum, I thought of another storm: It had devastated the city in year 614 before our era...

Where are you flying, cruel Medes with your impetuous chariots and your spirited steeds ? What are you going to do with Asur ? Its hour of fire and ashes has sounded... His humiliated face is dislocated like a figure of Picasso. The ground resounds of the hard noise of the shoes, of the deafening din of the palates which break down, of the howls of incandescent cliff!


Then a deep silence fall down again on the useless arm of the river...

I was quite relieved to reach the museum.

— Ashurs is angry like in the past, joked the warder. Let's come in quickly, or he will transpierce you of a cruel arrow!

I dropped myself on a bench, idle. I wiped my cheeks and my hands, then I sneezed several times. I saw that a fine layer of sand covered everything around us.

Ali gave me seat and sat down near to me. I continued to talk :

— But why this god is angry ? For which hidden fault did he abandon to Medes his own city ? Impossible that it was totally burnt... Its flammes still burn my soul.

— That's right, answered the young scholar, Assur did not disappear. After these terrible events, survivors came back to inhabit it. They could not forget the suzerainty of a name scenting myrrh, incense and cassia ! The city flourished again during the Hellenistic period (323 B.C. -end of the 1st century A.D.). Led by Sîn, the caravans which moved towards Arbeles, Hatra or Palmyre, shook the dust of the road, in the shade of the caravanserais placed out of the walls . They honoured with offerings the ancient divinities - among them the god Ashur - installed again in their restored temples.

Later, Parthes, an Indo-Iranian people, conquered Mesopotamia. They still supported the resurrection of Asur, with splendid buildings and districts of dwelling.

The Roman troops of Trajan ransacked Assur in 116, those of Septime Sévère in 198.

Layard discovered the site in 1847. During the excavations of 1903, the German Walter Andrae's staff found numrous remains and Aramaic graffiti, dated of this period. At the center of the city, sttod up a beautiful palate. Four iwans - deep rooms for cult and reception opened on a side - surrounded the court. They were head up with semicircular vaults and adorned with Greek borders and garlands in stucco and plaster.

But soonly Sassanids devastated the area. About 256 AD, they plundered the Holy City, that Assyrians's craddle, and the tomb of the kings. How Ashur's heart could support this second destruction?

- That is the question, observed in English the warder. He rose, seizes a rag and started to wipe antiquities. Then he offered a coffee cup, and we awaited the end of the storm.

Around six o'clock, Ali closed the museum, took his Volkswagen, and proposed to bring me back at Shergat, where I spent a night.

In my dream, I saw the ancient city of Asur. It lightened of its most beautiful plasticity. Firmly standing on its cliff, proud of its high walls, its notched towers, its temples and its majestuous palates, leaning toward the Tigris its jealous and quarellish face... I walked along its bituminized brick quays.

Musicians played for the dignitaries of the city. They sailed on the river, in boats with heads of dragons, drawn by bearded oarsmen, with white clothing. During my feverish sleep, I intended to make resound their toothings-stone, their cymbals and their quadrants, and my hand bathed in the water lapping to my bed. Dawn bleaches the panes, the city died out and is absorbed again at the bottom of the pit of eternity.

From Mésopotamie, paradis des jours anciens, édition l’Harmattan, 1996, Paris, chapitre 4, page 37.



The site of Asur is a treasure, it is today threatened by the building of a dam. After the serious events in Iraq, the project has been stopped, but concern remains. This site should be protected, against floods, stoppings, degradations, plunderings. Doesn't it belong to the inheritance of humanity?