Rape of Babylon

April 20th, 2006 at 06:57 Björn Hallberg

A Sploid headline too good to miss out on. As noted many times before, the respect among American troops for archeological sites is so low one must wonder if they’re somehow subconsciously taking revenge for their own nickelodeon excuse of a history.

For three long years, U.S. troops have wrecked what little remained of the ancient city of Babylon.

They’ve built roads over the 5,000-year-old walls, poured a concrete helicopter landing pad over an archaeological site, filled sandbags with “soil rich with precious artifacts” and dug trenches through temples.

At least those sins were done for military reasons. There’s no such excuse for the graffiti left by American Marines (”Cruz chillen’ in Saddam’s spot”) or the thousands of precious objects the troops sifted from the sand to take home as souvenirs. Looted cuneiform tablets from Babylonian museums have already shown up on eBay.

This week, the former chief of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq offered the lamest of apologies to Dr. Donny George, Iraq’s chief of antiquities. “If it makes him feel good, we can certainly give him one,” Coleman told the BBC.

Damages include, but are surely not limited to:

• US Marines from the First Expeditionary Force first set up camp in Babylon in April 2003
• Soldiers filled protective sandbags with sand containing ancient artefacts
• 2,600-year-old pavements were crushed by heavy military vehicles
• Landing helicopters caused structural damage to some of the city’s ancient buildings and sandblasted fragile bricks in the palace of Nebuchadnezzar
• Archaeologists say gravel brought in to build car parks and helipads has contaminated key sites
• US troops have also been accused of causing damage to the 5,000-year-old city of Kish by the Iraqi Ministry for Tourism and Antiquities

Entry 512 filed under: Middle East. This entry was posted 2 years, 8 months ago. RSS feed for comments on this post.