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| Sunday, 30 March 2003 |
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Warlords rock cradle of civilisation by Karel Roberts Ratnaweera It is preposterous that in these times when the world is seeking peace at all levels, a country should invade someone else's, seek to oust or even kill its leaders, kill its civilians and changes its regime, whatever the invaders think that regime represents. What this writer sees as even more preposterous is that the victim country is no less than what was once the very cradle of civilisation that spread its learning, political systems and culture across parts of Europe and South West Asia thousands of years ago, long before the advent of the great religious teachers whose arrivals are said to have been heralded by comets, planets, stars and other cosmic phenomena. George Azizacu, Technical Adviser to the Iraqi Ministry of Oil some years ago, writes that he looked at some of the pinnacles of astonishing achievement or 'firsts' that can be traced back to the area known to historians as 'the cradle of civilisation.' Iraq, and its ancient peoples have found a place in the Guiness Book of Records in several astonishing areas which go back through Abbasid Arabicslamic civilisations, through the late Babylonian (Chaldean) and Assyrian kingdoms, to the early Babylonian and to the pre-Sumerian era which is the world's oldest recorded civilisation. The oldest bell in the world in the tintinnabulum found in the Babylonian palace in Nimrod. It dates from about 1100 BC, and was built by the Assyrian King Assur - Nasin-Pal as a new military capital, 20 miles south of the river Tigris which, even as this is being written is one of the flashpoint areas in the country. Whoever thought that two of the world's most famous rivers, the other being the great river Euphrates, would be crossed this very hour by the latter day hordes of Attila - a killer juggernaut-most of whom would not have even known what the Tigris and the Euphrates are at the time of take-off from their own country to invade somebody else's country without the sanction of the United Nations and in the teeth of some of the most vehement anti-war demonstrations the world has ever seen? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon - one of the Seven Wonders of the World-built by Semiramis lay on the banks of the Euphrates. It's most splendid era came in the late Babylonian period (5-538 BC), most famous for the reign of King Nebuchadnezzar. Babylon was in those days surrounded by a wall 50 kilometres in diametre, with 100 gates of solid bronze. Some other features about this cradle of civilisation now being barbarously rocked by 21st century vandals are: The world's earliest recorded place names are pre-Sumerian of which examples are Kish, Ur and Attara; The oldest known map of any kind was found on a clay tablet dated about 3800 BC, and showing the River Euphrates flowing through Mesopotamia, the old name for present day Iraq, the earliest known legislative assembly - 'Ukkim' - was the bicameral legislature in Erech in existence about 2800 BC, the earliest surviving judicial code was that of King Ur-Nammu, formulated during the Third Dynasty of Urthe world's earliest surviving musical notation dates from about 1800 BC and was deciphered in 1966-'67 from a clay tablet found in Nippur, Summer, the oldest human burial with religious connotations took place about 60,000 BC among 'Homo Sapien Neanderthalensis' in the Shanider Caves, Northern Iraq. What matter if this 'foreign' civilisation is bombarded, its children killed and maimed, its leaders threatened, its glory gone forever, to be replaced by an oafish 21st century, 'civilisation'? -Source: OPEC 1991 |
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