Page 16 - The Tigris Expedition

In Search of the Beginnings
Mohammed Ac Prophet this has been the Arab’s eastern frontier.
Today oil flows through pipelines across the sterile deserts which
were once productive pastures and irrigated fields. In the withered
landscape temple-pyramids, minarets and oil drills stand side by
side as symbols of the changing civilisations. Near the former banks
of the Euphrates, south of Baghdad and half way to the distant
Garden of Eden, the road passes a huge, shapeless pile of crumbled
bricks. A signpost in the rubble brings to mind the classic tale of
man ’s first attempt to build higher than what he himself could
control. The sign reads: the tower of babel.
The road continues in the direction of the midday sun. It runs
through endless desert plains, with Arab towns so colourful and
picturesque that Sindbad and Ali Baba seem to sit on the doorsteps
or move in the throngs in the market places; and one passes from the
former domain of Babylon into the coastal area where everything
began - Southern Iraq, formerly known as Sumer.
The naked deserts, flat as a farmer’s field, continue to the open
gulf. Only in the flooded area where the twin rivers slowly con­
verge are vast stretches of green marshes full of birds and fishes.
Here a truly unique culture has survived since Biblical times, hidden
in a world of canes and reeds that grow tall and dense as a jungle.
More Sumerian blood probably runs in the veins of these marsh
dwellers than in any other Arab tribe. The rivers from Noah’s
distant mountain seem to ignore the scorched landscape of former
Mesopotamia throughout its length to overflow in joy at encoun­
tering the timeless Marsh Arabs. They alone of Noah s descendants
seem to have been blessed with eternal life, while all the great
city-states and kingdoms around them have followed one another
in collapse.
The desert, encroaching upon the spring-green marshes from all
sides, has swallowed up the former Sumerian homeland and all t at
it contained. Bright dunes of arid sand have rolled over colossal
temple-pyramids erected to forgotten gods, and covered a an-
doned cities ruled by kings themselves reduced to dust. The land­
scape which once throbbed with life is today as silent an 1 e ess as
the North Pole. Like the snow-filled crevasses of the Polar ice,
endless irrigation systems and former shipping cana s run r0™
horizon to horizon, though not a drop of water enters t em an n
* SlThefmmry of.n entire eivilitation, the oldert ancestor to
our own. No one who wants to know our own egim g
ignore what archaeological detectives have extracte ron
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