The Great Dragon Dilemma: Should I or Shouldn't I?

 

I'm in a bit of a pickle. I'd like to include a dragon of the sea serpent variety in my historical novel set in ancient Babylon. But will readers accept a dragon in historical fiction or will that push it over the edge into fantasy?

In the Bible, the book of Job has an entire chapter devoted to a sea monster, a leviathan. This enormous creature was a lethal fire-breathing snake-like apex predator without equal and without fear. But did such a beast ever exist?

Every country has dragons in their mythology and stories of dragons have been passed down through millennia. They must have some basis in reality.

The Aberdeen Bestiary, written in the early 16th century, describes the dragon as 'bigger than all other snakes or all other living things on earth'.
The third century historian, Flavious Philostratus, said about dragons in India and Ethiopia that 'the marshes are full of them' and that they were 'thirty cubits long'.  Pretty darned big. Depending on how you measure a cubit, (18" makes a royal cubit while usual measurement was the length of a forearm) the creature could be as much as 45 feet long!

Now before you say, not possible, keep in mind that the blue whale runs around 98 feet in length, an African bush elephant measures about 35 feet from trunk to tail and the largest confirmed crocodiles are 20 - 23 feet long. One of my favorite apex predators, the almost extinct Barbary lion, is pretty small in comparison at only 11 feet long but he has a guaranteed spot in my novel.

African Lion 

Dragons are incorporated into much of ancient Babylon's artwork. The Ishtar Gate is ornamented with some pretty cool dragons in glazed-brick relief but they're rather fanciful affairs not actually meant to depict living animals, well at least not as far as we know anyway. They seem to have scaly bodies and snake heads, scorpion tails, the feet of a lion and the talons of a bird of prey.

But one of the best 'proofs' I found for water dragons in ancient Babylon is this white limestone boundary-stone housed in the British Museum and recording certain privileges granted to a chariotry captain by Nebuchadrezzar I.  This is the front of the stone. You can't see the dragon very well from this view.

But here's a side view and you can clearly see a thick giant serpent dragon running the length of the stone.

Cool, right? So, I'm thinking - maybe a dragon isn't such a far-fetched idea after all.

Babylon and Babylonia : Has Babylon Always Existed?

A couple of days ago someone asked this question on my post, Writing and Scribes in Ancient Babylon.

Babylon & Babylonia. Has Babylon always existed or did it come out of nowhere when Hammurabi came to rule it? And was it here Babylonia happened? When was Babylon established and when was Babylonian established?

Hammurabi's Babylonia - from Wikimedia Commons

The city of Babylon, according to the Bible, was established after the flood by Noah's great grandson, Nimrod. Genesis 10:10 says about Nimrod, "And the beginning of his kingdom was Babel (Babylon), and Erech (Uruk) and Accad (Akkad) and Calneh, in the land of Shinar."

There is little evidence that Babylon was much more than a small town before the Old Babylonian period (approx. 2000BC - 1600BC) . Sargon of Akkad ruled the whole Euphrates Valley between 2334BC and 2279BC. Texts say he enlarged Babylon and built a palace there.

It was likely only after the collapse of the UrIII empire ( 2112BC - 2004BC) that Babylon became a city. An Amorite chief called Sumu-abum (1894BC - 1881 BC) built the city walls and fortifications and made it the center for his operations. He founded a dynasty which ruled Babylon for 300 years. His aim was to gain control over cities in the immediate neighborhood but the real building program that was to propel Babylon into a major city was begun by Sin-muballit (1812BC - 1793BC) and then, most notably, by his son Hamurabi (1792BC - 1750BC).

Residents visit ancient city of Babylon near Hilla - from http://rt.com 

Geographically, Babylonia refers to the southern portion of the modern country of Iraq, ancient Mesopotamia, encompassing the land roughly between Baghdad (close to the site of ancient Opis) at its northern limit and the head of the Arabian Gulf at its southern limit.

Historically, the term Babylonia reflects a relatively late unification of the country under Babylon's First Dynasty (1894BC - 1595BC), although the word itself is of later origin.  You might say Babylonia became an independent state around 1894BC with Babylon as its capital city during Sumu-abum's reign. From very early times, the northern part of Babylonia was referred to as Akkad and the southern as Sumer.

As to Babylonian, if you're referring to the Babylonian language, it was a dialect of Akkadian, an extinct Semitic language replaced by Aramaic some time during the 8th century BC.

Aeriel view of ancient city of Babylon - from http://arabiangazette.com

Hope that's been of some help to you, Rose.

Ancient Babylon: A Hedonistic Society

The idea of ancient Babylonians being a society of pleasure seekers, devoted primarily to sensual self-indulgence, appears well supported.

One of the principal deities of ancient Babylon was the goddess Ishtar who presided over all aspects of sexuality. According to a line in an ancient Mesopotamian poem, the Erra Epic, Ishtar's sacred prostitutes 'frequently do abominable acts to please the heart of Ishtar'. A hymn dedicated to Ishtar declares her to be the supreme Woman, beautiful, desirable, 'with a fondness for sensual pleasures and delights, full of seduction, charm and voluptuousness'. Licentious activities were common in and around her temple precincts and such 'worship' of Ishtar was encouraged. The goddess is usually pictured naked, supporting her breasts with her hands.

Goddess Ishtar 

 

 



That the ancient Babylonians saw nothing unusual about the shocking activity of Ishtar's prostitutes, transsexual performers and acts of more or less public copulation, puzzled me a fair bit. It seemed like an almost frenzied attempt to wring as much physical pleasure from life as they could. But why? A bit of research into the society provided possibilities.

 

First of all, they worshipped a vast number of gods who created man to take over their work so the gods could rest. The gods are almost morbidly ill-tempered, are incapable of gathering together without drinking ...to excess..are violent, gluttonous, uncontrolled, faithless and vindictive.(1)

A person's well-being was tied to the correct worship of these fickle deities and they were lousy role models.

 

                                  Tiamet, dragon goddess

 

Secondly, the Babylonians believed their world to be populated by vast numbers of ghosts and demons. Demons were invisible enemies, deformed monsters that compassed them on every side, lying wait for them by day and night, for if a person angered his god through disobedience he would be without any protection from them. There were incubi and succubi whose embraces no man could escape, she-demons who prevented children from being born or killed new-borns, or the 'evil eye' under the influence of which nothing could prosper. There were also spirits of those whose lives had been unhappy, who had been cheated of an expectation, died a violent death or had not enjoyed the happiness they craved. They were much feared as dangerous, vengeful ghosts who haunted the living.

 

                                        Humbaba, Babylonian demon

Thirdly, the gods reserved eternal life for themselves and decreed death to be man's fate. The Babylonians had no hope of anything being better in the afterlife, no matter how well they'd behaved in this life. Man had to enjoy life on earth while it lasted since life in the underworld was, for the most part, miserable for all. The realm of the dead was described as a dreary place:

"To the gloomy house, seat of the netherworld,
To the house which none leaves who enters,
To the road whose journey has no return,
To the house whose entrants are bereft of light,
Where dust is their sustenance and clay their food,
They see no light but dwell in darkness." (2)

The most they could expect in death was a bit to eat and drink in this dark place, provided by family members at their gravesite. Food was set near the burying place and liquids were poured through a pipe in the ground. The Babylonians were in constant dread of angering a host of unstable gods and being harassed by multitudes of demons and ghosts relentlessly dogging their footsteps. I think it's fairly easy to understand why they might prefer to live by a motto similar to Eat, Drink and Be Merry, For Tomorrow We Die!

 

Ereshkigal, goddess of underworld and sister of Ishtar

www.newworldencyclopedia.org

 

(1) excerpted from Everyday Life in Babylon and Assyria by Georges Contenau 
(2) excerpted from Daily Life in Ancient Mesopotamia by Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat

Hanging Gardens of Babylon: Did They Exist?

digital art by Sergy Lekhachev

Elevated gardens probably did, but likely not in Babylon. Too bad because I wanted to include the gardens in the novel I'm currently writing set in ancient Babylon. Sadly research not only confirms the things we've always 'known', it also destroys some of our romantic notions.

Early in my research I came across the diary of Gertrude Bell, a British writer and adventurer who accompanied Robert Johann Koldewey, the German architect and archaeologist who became famous for excavating much of Babylon.

On March 31, 1914 Gertrude wrote, "So we went to Esagila (temple of Marduk, patron god of Babylon). The outer lines of the temple have been found by subterranean diggings. They have left the inner cella which K (Koldewey) wants to dig out completely. So down to the Parthian houses which he would very much like to dig. The very long colonnade is possibly an agora. The Hanging Gardens were built by Nebuch. for a Susan. wife to remind her of her mountains! But the gardens were not planted high up. They were low down beneath the vaulted substructures. It is still possible that they may be found in the Babil mound."

supposed site of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon - photo by Raymond Kleboe

Although a vaulted structure was found at the northeast corner of Babylon's massive southern palace, its fourteen large rooms and thick walls probably housed a royal storehouse. A Babylonian ration list was found within the structure, confirming its logical use. Instead of being the underpinnings for the magnificent Hanging Gardens it was likely merely a giant storage facility.

The Greek historian, Herodotus, supposedly visited Babylon around 450BC but in describing all the amazing buildings and sites of the city he did not mention the Hanging Gardens, which according to legend would have been magnificent and higher than the city's soaring walls.

So, how did the story start? Where did it come from? Stephanie Dalley in The Mystery of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon: An Elusive World Wonder Traced, posited an interesting theory. That Josephus, the first century historian, may have been misled by a novelist! How cool. A writer living in south-west Turkey in the first century wrote a novel containing the theme of a woman abroad, crossing the Euphrates from the west and homesick for her native land.

The theme of homesickness is unknown and unlikely in Babylonian and Assyrian literature and Babylonian gardens were described as being set in flat areas. However, the description does match a type of elevated garden made in Nineveh at the palace of Khorsabad by Sargon II, father of Sennacherib. He said,  "a high garden imitating the Amanus mountains in which are planted all the aromatic trees of northern Syria, all the mountain's fruits, I created alongside (Khorsabad)"

A stone panel carved in bas-relief and found in the palace of Sargon at Khorsabad, shows such a garden, possibly even the very garden he described. Here it is below. The carving is difficult to make out so I've also included a drawing I found that makes it easier to see and enjoy.

But what did Nebuchadnezzar have to say about it? Nothing. Nothing at all. Found by Sir Harford Jones Bridges in Babylon, an engraved column of black basalt bears Nebuchadnezzar's own description of his building efforts. And while he mentions the walls he rebuilt and fortified, the gates, temples, shrines and palaces he built, there is no mention of any garden. Discovered to the north of the palace was an enormous elevated reservoir. For the garden? Evidently not. After detailing his rebuilding of the palace of My Royalty for the land of Babylon he simply says, and a depth of waters I collected.

Below is a photo of a vaulted water conduit next to the palace taken by Gertrude Bell while she was in Babylon. This conduit likely carried the water from the reservoir into the palace buildings.

 



The legend of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is no doubt untrue, as it is unsupported by archaeology or the kings of Sumer and Akkad. Disappointing but I guess it's better to get your facts straight before attempting to write historical fiction. Fictitious characters are fine, fictitious history not so much.