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Restoring Babylon? U.S., Iraqi experts developing plan to preserve Babylon    

.stripes.com/

The remains of what was once the greatest city in the world occupy a vast site on the bank of the Euphrates River.

Their roots go back 3,800 years to when the city of Babylon was the heart of a Mesopotamian empire, and the remnants include great slabs of stone that are said to be the remains of King Nebuchadnezzar’s castle. A giant stone lion guards one end of the fortifications, but the most stunning remnants were removed by European archaeologists in the early 20th century.

Now soldiers with the 172nd Infantry Brigade are exploring the ruins as part of a U.S.-Iraqi effort to preserve the ancient city and plan for the return of Western tourists.

Members of the brigade’s 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment escorted a group of U.S. heritage tourism experts to the ruins last week for the first of several visits to develop a preservation and tourism plan for the area.

U.S. and coalition troops have been criticized in the past for damaging and contaminating artifacts. In a 2006 report, the head of the British Museum’s Near East department said that, among other things, military vehicles crushed a 2,600-year-old brick pavement, and sand and archeological fragments were used to fill military sandbags.

Now the rapidly improving security situation in surrounding Babil province has persuaded the U.S. State Department and the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage to embark on the preservation project, dubbed the Future of Babylon Project.

The State Department and the World Monuments Fund have committed $700,000 to the project, which will see U.S. and Iraqi experts develop a plan to preserve the site and develop a local tourism industry, said Diane Siebrandt, the U.S. embassy’s cultural heritage officer.

The Babylon project is one of several that the State Department is involved in to conserve ancient sites in partnership with the Iraqi government, she said.

Two people with expertise developing tourism plans for historic sites in third-world nations, Gina Haney and Jeff Allen, have been employed by the State Department to run the U.S. side of the project. They visited the ruins for the first time last weekend.

Haney said the pair will involve the local community in the plan’s development, as they did with a similar project encouraging Western tourists to visit Ghana’s Gold Coast.

“You could throw money at it and do all this work, but unless you can create a sustainable situation, your opportunities for tourism will run out,” Allen said. “The idea is to develop something that is going to be here 30 to 40 years from now and has benefits for the local people. We don’t want something that will only benefit outsiders.”

The Iraqi government will be involved in the planning as well.

“If you have 200,000 people a year coming to this site, you will have people staying at hotels, visiting restaurants, buying souvenirs,” Allen said. “The site is in some ways a revenue generator for the local community.”

Babylon could be comparable to the Egyptian pyramids, which draw millions of tourists each year. But the area lacks the tourist infrastructure that has been built at sites such as the pyramids, he said.

“There is nothing for tourists here, but if you interpret and present it in the right way, you can spark interest,” he said.

Allen, who has experience designing walkways and signs for other heritage sites, said detailed planning won’t happen until authorities have worked out how best to preserve the ruins. The crumbling rocks of the original city are surrounded by more elaborate and modern fortifications, including a maze-like collection of interior walls built on top of genuine ruins during Saddam Hussein’s time.

“Some of the past restoration work hasn’t been very good,” he said. “Saddam was trying to inherit the power of the ancients and continue that legacy. His restoration methods helped reinforce that vision of himself, and he created a pattern of restoration and repair work that benefited a certain agenda.”

One of the 172nd soldiers who visited the ruins, 1st Lt. Bryan Kelso, 24, of Jacksonville, Fla., walked in wonder near the ancient stones.

“It’s amazing to be surrounded by this history. To think that we are standing where Alexander the Great has been,” he said, referring to the great Macedonian conqueror who died in Babylon. “Babylon is one of the oldest and first civilizations known to man. They created the wheel and the first calendars. Everybody coming here gets a sense of what this place really is and how it all traces back.”

Ancient tablet giving new shape to the story of Noah's Ark
MAEV KENNEDY
January 3, 2010

THAT they led the enormous floating wildlife collection aboard two by two is well known. Less familiar, however, is the possibility that the animals Noah shepherded on to his ark then went round and round inside.

According to newly translated instructions inscribed in ancient Babylonian on a clay tablet telling the story of the ark, the vessel that saved one virtuous man, his family and the animals from God's watery wrath was not the pointy-prowed craft of popular imagination but rather a giant circular reed raft.

The battered tablet, which is about 3700 years old, was found somewhere in the Middle East by Leonard Simmons, a largely self-educated Londoner who indulged his passion for history while serving in the Royal Air Force from 1945 to 1948.

The relic was passed to his son Douglas, who took it to one of the few people in the world who could read it as easily as the back of a cereal box - Irving Finkel, a British Museum expert, who translated its 60 lines of neat cuneiform script.

There are dozens of ancient tablets that describe the flood story, but Dr Finkel says this is the first to describe the vessel's shape.

''In all the images ever made, people assumed the ark was, in effect, an ocean-going boat, with a pointed stem and stern for riding the waves - so that is how they portrayed it,'' said Dr Finkel.

''But the ark didn't have to go anywhere, it just had to float, and the instructions are for a type of craft which they knew very well. It's still sometimes used in Iran and Iraq today, a type of round coracle which they would have known exactly how to use to transport animals across a river or floods.''

Dr Finkel's research throws light on the familiar Mesopotamian story, which became the account in the Old Testament, of Noah and the ark that saved his menagerie from the waters that drowned every other living thing on earth.

In his translation, the God who has decided to spare one just man speaks to Atram-Hasis, a Sumerian king who lived before the flood and who is the Noah figure in earlier versions of the ark story. ''Wall, wall! Reed wall, reed wall! Atram-Hasis, pay heed to my advice, that you may live forever! Destroy your house, build a boat; despise possessions And save life! Draw out the boat that you will built with a circular design; Let its length and breadth be the same.''

The tablet goes on to command the use of plaited palm fibre, waterproofed with bitumen, before the construction of cabins for the people and wild animals.

It ends with the dramatic command of Atram-Hasis to the unfortunate boat builder whom he leaves behind to meet his fate, about sealing up the door once everyone else is safely inside: ''When I shall have gone into the boat, Caulk the frame of the door!''

Fortunes were spent in the 19th century by biblical archaeology enthusiasts hunting for evidence of Noah's flood. The Mesopotamian flood myth was incorporated into the great poetic epic Gilgamesh, and Dr Finkel believes it was during the Babylonian captivity that the exiled Jews learned the story, brought it home with them, and incorporated it into the Old Testament.

Despite its unique status, Simmons' tablet - which has been dated to about 1700BC, only a few centuries later than the oldest known account - was nearly overlooked.

''When my dad eventually came home, he shipped a whole tea chest of this kind of stuff home - seals, tablets, bits of pottery,'' said Douglas Simmons. ''He would have picked them up in bazaars, or when people knew he was interested in this sort of thing, they would have brought them to him and earned a few bob.''

His son took the tablet to a British Museum open day, where Dr Finkel ''took one look at it and nearly fell off his chair'' with excitement.

''It is the most extraordinary thing,'' Mr Simmons said of the tablet. ''You hold it in your hand, and you instantly get a feeling that you are directly connected to a very ancient past - and it gives you a shiver down your spine.''
A centuries-old search

HUMAN fascination with the Flood and the whereabouts of the ark shows few signs of subsiding.

The story has travelled down the centuries from the ancient Babylonians and continues to fascinate in the 21st century. Countless expeditions have travelled to Mount Ararat in Turkey, where Noah's Ark is said to have come to rest, but scientific proof of its existence has yet to be found.

Recent efforts to find it have been led by creationists, who are keen to exhibit it as evidence of the literal truth of the Bible.

In the Victorian era some became obsessed with the ark story. George Smith - the lowly British Museum assistant who, in 1872, deciphered the Flood Tablet that is inscribed with the Assyrian version of the Noah's Ark tale - could apparently not contain his excitement at his discovery. According to the museum's archives: ''He jumped up and rushed about the room in a great state of excitement and to the astonishment of those present began to undress himself.''

Ancient tablet giving new shape to the story of Noah's Ark (http://www.theage.com.au/world/ancient-tablet-giving-new-shape-to-the-story-of-noahs-ark-20100102-lmii.html)
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Since this tablet came from Babylon, I decided to post it here.

It is a good place to post it.

It should also be said for the benefit of those that do not know that this is just more information to show how the world can be deceived. It makes claims that the Babylonian script is older than that of the Bible so therefore it must be more correct than the Bible when in fact we know that is not true. Scripture is the true story and does give us the exact size and shape of Noah's ark. The traditional Noah's ark is a rectangle not round.

Gen 6:15  And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits.
Gen 6:16  A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.

Amen, Pastor Roger!
It's so interesting...all of the different cultures on the earth have extremely similar stories of thier past. From the beginning, each generation passes on what they know from the past to the next generation. As time passes these stories get murky - there are things ADDED to the stories, AND TAKEN AWAY from them, until they're so far removed from their source that there are natural distortions.
     The further we get from the actual event, the greater the distortion of the actual story. And so there are many embellishments, and it becomes some of the tradition of different cultures.
     So Adam and Eve, at the beginning, began passing down the truth through the generations. By the time of the flood there are so many versions of the story. Noah tells his 3 children, and on and on again, we get more variaions on that theme. Now the languages get changed at Babel, where everything gets confused, the story takes on different words, or languages, until it is totally distorted. That is why we find common elements in these other cultural stories. So which is right?
     Our story comes from the CREATOR HIMSELF, who passes over all the previous disaster, meets with man on Mt. Sinai, and we receive the truth from the ONLY EYE WITNESS that was there at the BEGINNING. He dictates the story to Moses, and gives us a more relaible account than any other cultures version of what happened.
    Ours is coming from the author HIMSELF, skipping over all the other variations and themes.
     

Also, excellent article, grammyluv!

We recently saw a Chuck Missler teaching. He has many contacts with the servicement overseas, and was talking about communication cables begin set up just north or Babylon that will connect Asia and Europe - it is a gigantic undertaking!
When I find the particular DVD on that I'll quote what he says about some of the things going on over there.
Extremely interesting and prophetic!!!

Fascinating Thread! Thanks!

OK - I found the DVD with Chuch Missler. This is from a conference down here in St. Petersburg, Fl., sponsered by Joe VanKoevering from 'God's News Behind the News'. Some very interesting and recent (2008) facts about what's happening in Babylon:

"Now, let's talk a little bit about what's going on there (Babylon) now. There's a project, and I've gotta be careful here, because we're privy to some pretty sensitive information about this. And so, I'm gonna tiptoe a little bit carefully. But we have corraborated from more than 1 of our research associates, a project that's highly classified, that's taking all the fibre-optic cables of Europe - and the intent is to connect it with all the fibre-optic cables coming from Asia, into a master communications hub. Get the picture? It's very sensitive, that's why I've gotta tiptoe here a little bit.
     Well, let's talk about what's going on here in Iraq and Baghdad - as some of you may know - we're in the process of building the largest embassy on the planet earth.
     
Cont'd...

Cont'd...

New US Embassy

o Largest of its kind in the world:
   - 21 buildings on 104 acres
      o on riverside parkland in the fortified "Green Zone, "just east of al-Samoud, a former palace of Saddam Hussein
   - The size of the project approximates the size of Vatican City
   - There is presently a staff of approximately 5,500 in this Embassy
   - The whole thing is entirely self contained: water, power, etc. It can be totally isolated for a substantial period of time that, itself, is highly classified.
   You got the picture? Now, obviously an embassy has very, very advanced communication facilities required to service it. It doesn't take any imagination to realize what that involved.
  (He shows photos of it, then says, 'I think the national bird of Iraq is the crane', because there is so much building going on there and so many cranes to lift the building material.)
So they're pretty busily building, and it may be finished by now. I wasn't able to get these pictures updated in time for this conference.
                   Cont'd...

Cont'd...

So, you would think, that if you had a major project to connect all the communications of Europe with all the communications of Asia, and it's being paid for by the US, obviously. You'd think we'd go and put that through Baghdad, right? Wrong!    
It's not! The communication hub is being installed 57 miles south of Baghdad in a place called what? Babylon. I have not been able to find anyone in the E-ring of the Pentagon or anywhere else, that is equipped or able to tell me WHY. Wouldn't you somehow tie this through the Embassy? No. For some reason it's following, I presume, some other Master Plan.
   You don't invest that kind of money, and also technology for something casual. This is part of 'somebody's' plan.
   Now, a while ago, we picked up info that the UN was going to move to Babylon. And, one of the things, you know, prophecy suffers from its enthusiasts as well as its detractors. And one of the things we've tried to do in our 30 years of doing this sort of thing, is to steer clear of 'urban legends'. Because in the Christian community we can pick up alot of weird stories, you've gotta be cautious.


Cont'd...

Cont'd...

So, I thought that 'rumble' was just one of these strange echos. UNTIL, I started to encounter some think tank study papers...and they're just people analyzing the situation. New York is anxious to get the UN out of there for lots of reasons. It's an administrative nightmare, with all the immunities, and that kind of stuff.
    From the UN's point of view, they have no room to expand. They have room they feel is essential that they need, and there's not enough there to expand. So there's an aggitation, apparently, for them to find another site.
    Now, for people who are anti-UN, don't all raise your hands at once, getting them out of the country would be cheered by many people because of the continuing malfeasance of the leadership. There's no organization I know of that is more rife with scandels, and embezzelment, and fraud of all kinds, etc, etc. And not only that, they have an unblemished track record of failure in everything they've handled.  :D
   Well suppose you'd say, OK - we've gotta move it somewhere...Where are you gonna move it?
   If you understand the dynamics here, you'll know they can't move into the EU, because in a very real sense, the UN and the EU are rivals for world influence. So where would you move it?

                             Cont'd...

Cont'd...

Well, you'd stand back and say, 'what is the biggest crisis facing the planet earth' (speaking as a secular planet now) 'over the next 30-40 years'? Oil. Energy, in the genetic - oil. So, why not plant the UN right in the middle of the oil patch? It'd make all the sense in the world.
   By doing so, you could establish a permanent 'peace keeping force' that would stabilize that region after the withdrawal of American troops. That would be acceptable even to our detractors. Locating the UN in the Middle East might reduce the global anti-american sentiments, to some extent, and would be a boon to Muslim interests. Iraq would benefit from an international commitment, an inducement to stop factional violence and encourage a stable source of income.
   Don't misunderstand me, I am not suggesting that I have evidence of a serious plan to do this. But I find it provocative, at least, that I find in the Beltway environment, the Think Tank world, people are discussing the pros and cons of something like this. Taking for granted that the UN is gonna have to move sooner or later.
   There's another dimension to this whole thing. Who was the first world dictator? Nimrod - the Babylonian.

So, something is happening there - but we'll have to wait and see exactly what that is...

Actually this is old news. It just hasn't been publicized very broadly and when it has been publicized in the MSM it wasn't tying things together. There is another mention of this in another thread here.

Also tie in another thing not mentioned here and should be ... The UN is being taken over by islamists as they are doing in most other things. It is also noteworthy to again mention the fact our government is now turning many governing powers over to the UN.

Do you know if the communications link is finished yet? Any further information on the US Embassy?

I'd really be interested. I'd heard about the UN but not about that link. I'm extremely curious about this and would like to learn more.

Who knows what vehicles of advancement the Anti-Christ will use, but I pretty quickly think of the U.N. and the Church of Rome. Babylon also rings a bell, and BIG BELL.

Fascinating Thread! Thanks!

US Embassy Dedicated
Jan 5 2010
Los Angeles Times

The United States formally dedicated its new $592 million embassy in Iraq on Monday, the largest and most expensive embassy in the world.
Its scale, according to the dedication ceremony program, "reflects the importance of the US-Iraqi bilateral relationship."

If superlatives were the order of the day, the ceremony reflected it. Invited guests filtered through extra tight security, walked down yards and yards of red carpet, and watched as white gloved Marines raised a giant American flag up a massive flagpole that stretched higher than the buildings in the Embassy compound.
Public officials, too, offered up superlatives on what they described as a historic day.
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani called the new embassy a "landmark edifice", made possible only by the courageous decision by President Bush to liberated Iraq.

...Americans handed military control back to Iraq on January 1, 2010, raised the flag on the new embassy, vacating Sadaam Husseins Republican Palace.
   
The embassy took 3 years to build and will house more than 1,200 American staffers from 14 different agencies.
- Kimi Yoshino in Baghdad

Thanks Sister Barbara,

The article you just posted answered many of my thoughts. I had thought about doing a search for more information, but I didn't get around to it and won't have to now. Connecting the dots becomes more fascinating now by the day.

Love In Christ,
Tom