Ancient Babylonian city left unattended in Iraq
The site, in the outskirts of Baghdad, was fenced and seen as one of the country’s most important ancient landmarks prior to the invasion.
Only recently the Antiquities Department has remember Harmal, where Iraq’s most renowned archaeologist Taha Baqer had unearthed an ancient library of about 300 cuneiform documents in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
Baqer did not only excavate the city but reconstructed some of its most important buildings where visitors could feel, touch and even smell the grandeur of a Babylonian site.
This highly significant site was left unattended “because of lack of financial resources”, according to Abdulzahra al-Talaqani, the department’s spokesman.
Ordinary people could enter the site and illegal digs have been reported to have taken place there.
Encroachments in the form of illegal buildings and cultivation have been freely conducted at the site in the past few years.
However, Talaqani said the department was determined to “remove all violations” and has appointed guard to protect the site.
But what could one single guard do amid the mounting violence that has engulfed Baghdad.
Talaqani said the site will be fenced once again and urged residents in neighborhoods close to it not to dump their garbage there.
Talaqani did not say whether the magnificent ancient temples which Baqer had reconstructed have escaped damage.
Earlier, local newspaper said insurgents used the massive site as a launching pad for their mortar and rocket attacks on U.S. occupation troops and Iraqi government offices.
Last time a foreign excavation team was at Tall Harmal was in 1997 when a team from the German Archaeological Institute dug new soundings to shed more light on older civilizations that inhabited the site before the Babylonians had it turned into a major settlement.