One
KOLDEWEY’S CONUNDRUM AND DELITZSCH’S
DILEMMA
“At first this fabulous creature was classed along with the winged, human-headed bulls and other fabulous monsters of Babylonian mythology, but profound researches gradually forced the professor to quite a different conclusion.”
— Ivan T. Sanderson6
ROBERT KOLDEWEY,
famous German architect and “amateur” archaeologist, faced a
problem. A big problem. In the
intellectual world of the nineteenth century, the myth that all
ancient myths were nothing but myths
was quickly collapsing. Von Schliemann would prove that ancient
Troy, far from being a figment of Homer’s overactive and quite epic
Hellenic imagination, actually existed, for he was the one who,
using clues from Homer’s “myth,” actually dug it up. Whoops. Sorry,
academia. Wrong again.
Koldewey also entered
this typically German quest to verify the reality of ancient myths
not only by unearthing Babylon from her sandy tomb, but the actual
fabled “hanging gardens,”7 one of the seven
wonders of the ancient world, and the equally impressive Ishtar
Gate of Babylon. He was one of the principal architects, in fact,
of what would become something of an archaeological obsession with
the region for the Germans, and they’ve been there ever since,
scratching in the sands of Mesopotamia for clues to the actual
history of mankind. And that was the problem, for the deeper they
dug, the stranger that picture became. And in Koldewey’s case, the
problem was even more acute, for the problem was a picture.
The problem was a
picture, or to be more precise, the ideas he was entertaining about
that picture, for it was one thing to maintain Troy and Babylon
really existed, but this? Could it be?
And if so, what would the academic world think? Had he been under
the desert sun too long? Had he a touch of Wahnsinn? Was he perhaps ein
bisschen Verrükt? He surely must have wondered those things
himself, given the thoughts he was conceiving, not to mention the
fact that he was actually thinking about publishing those thoughts. But the insanity of
World War I still raged... perhaps no one would notice (until it
was too late) if he just snuck a most unorthodox, nonacademic
“idea” into an otherwise serious scholarly and archaeological
study. After all, he needn’t comment on its implications, which
were many and profound. He could leave commentary to others. All
he had to do was “sneak it in,” point
the way, hint at those wide and
profound implications.
And that’s exactly
what he did in a book published in Leipzig in 1918.
The book was
innocently entitled Das Ischtar-Tor in
Babylon, The Ishtar Gate in Babylon. And like the Ishtar
Gate itself, Koldewey’s book will be our gate into a very epic, and
very Babylonian, problem.