Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Tower of Babel, c. 1563, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Photo in public domain)

By Patrick Hunt - 

Most readers of history will recall how the mighty juggernaut Assyria finally fell at the hands of the rebel Babylonians and how Nineveh was sacked in 612 BCE at the able hands of Nabopolassar, Babylon’s new warlord king. Fewer readers know he rebuilt temples in his spare time after carefully studying plans and foundations, examining records in his archives and surveying ancient sites. Whether it was for religious motivation or intellectual curiosity, he was clearly careful in studying the Mesopotamian past.

The reversal of fortune for the Assyrians was long in coming after they had conquered a huge swath across much of the Near East from eastern Iraq to the Mediterranean and even Egypt for centuries, from the mountains of Anatolian Urartu to the Persian Gulf through desert waste and farmland alike. Having laid waste to fortress city after city and enslaving untold thousands in their path, the Assyrians were as much hated as feared, their self-styled kings of kings often celebrating their heavy-bearded macho with cruelty to their humiliated captives, like brutal Ashur-Nasirpal II (ruling 883-859 BCE) boasting of “cutting off lips, noses, ears of rebels” and elsewhere of putting out the eyes of royal children in front of their parents and dragging the kings and queens away with bronze hooks in their tongues.  The little book of Nahum in the Hebrew Minor Prophets sings a false lament with relief about Nineveh’s fall: “Woe to the city of blood, full of plunder, never without victims, the crack of whips, piles of dead… Nineveh in ruins, who will mourn for her?” (Nahum 3:1-7 excerpted).

While this Assyrian hegemony was now finishing its second surge as Neo-Assyria, just as Old Babylon of the Middle Bronze Age under such legendary rulers as the law-giver Hammurabi (ruling ca. 1792-50 BCE) had long passed and was now to become Chaldean Neo-Babylon in its rebirth, the upstart Babylonian leader Nabopolassar laid siege to Nineveh in 612 BCE when Assyrian power was waning, when the plundering had stopped and there was nothing left to fill their coffers. Perhaps an economy based on vassalage tribute, plunder and loot had been artificially engorged and was collapsing on itself. In any case, Nabopolassar did what no one else had done before – marched on the proud capital city and took it, burning its timber roofs to ash and charcoal and ironically firing its clay archives so that the event of its destruction also preserved its records, as the 30,000 clay tablet Royal Assyrian Library at the British Museum shows.

The above ca. 1563 painting of Bruegel, while not at all about Nabopolassar or even necessarily Neo-Babylon, imaginatively portrays the mythical Tower of Babel being built on the Plain of Shinar near where Babylon (derived from the Septuagint Greek version of Bab-El in Gen. 11). As an extrapolation of the Colosseum actually observed in Rome by the artist on his travel stay in Rome in 1552-53, Bruegel has its construction employing Renaissance tools and wheeled mechanisms around the cylindrical arcaded levels resembling the Roman landmark.

The U.C. Berkeley Nineveh excavations under Prof. David Stronach in 1987-90 found plenty of evidence for Nabopolassar’s siege at Nineveh’s southeastern Halzi Gate as well as at the northern Adad Gate, where carbonized material and some of the dozen skeleta of defenders were excavated exactly as they had fallen with scattered bronze and iron arrow points in places from the battle. [1]

After consolidating his liberated Babylon, Nabopolassar set about rebuilding sacred precincts and temples of his patron gods, especially Marduk and Nabu. The best record of his rebuilding is found in a small but highly legible clay cylinder in Emory University’s Carlos Museum now known as the Nabopolassar Cylinder, 9.8 cm in length and with three columns and 102 lines of writing, technically described as a foundation inscription because it was placed in a traditional context of a restored temple foundation. [2]

Nabopolassar Cylinder, ca 600 BCE, Emory University Museum (Photo in public domain)

Here are the pertinent lines that best describe his “archaeological” work:

“When I was young, although the son of a nobody, I constantly sought out the temples of Nabu and Marduk, my patrons…shrines, walls and temples… which had weakened and collapsed because of age; whose walls had been taken away because of rain and deluge; whose foundations had heaped up and accumulated into a mound of ruins—I mustered Enlil’s, Shamash, and Marduk’s troops. I had them use the hoe and imposed the basket of conscription on them. From the bank of the Arhtu canal, on the lower side near the Urash gate, I removed its accumulated debris, surveyed and examined its old foundations, and laid its brickwork in the original place. I established its base on the edge of the underworld. I surrounded the east bank with a mighty mountainous belt….I Nabopolassar, the one who discovers (inscribed) bricks from the past, the one who implements the work on the original, eternal foundations, the one who wields the hoe of the Igigi.”  [3]

In unusual humility for a king, several times on the cylinder Nabopolassar has his scribes mention he was a nobody and anonymous before the gods raised him to leadership. In return, his devotion also restored the civic pride of Babylon. The restored and rebuilt temples, sacred enclosures and shrines in his inscription include those of Ishtar, Ninurta, Enlil, Ea and others. The Igigi were Babylonian heavenly deities thought to be mostly involved in supervising the digging canals, moats and related hydrology irrigation functions. Sometimes rebellious, as in the Atra-Hasis flood myth, they may number from 10-300.

The universal archaeological tasks involved in Nabopolassar’s inventory are carefully ordered. First, he details the fallen condition: 1) “which had weakened and collapsed because of age”;  2) “whose walls had been taken away because of rain and deluge”;  3) “whose foundations had heaped up and accumulated into a mound of ruins”.   Therefore, Nabopolassar could recognize the aged weathering of ancient brickwork no longer capable of structural weight-bearing load and knew that unfired brick in particular would dissolve back to mud after long-term exposure to rain and excess water. What he found as ruins he knew had prior historic use.

Second, Nabopolassar’s plan was to utilize tools and forced labor to lay bear the buried remains after faithfully establishing their contexts: 4) I had them use the hoe and imposed the basket of conscription on them. From the bank of the Arhtu canal, on the lower side near the Urash gate, 5)  I removed its accumulated debris. Here, Nabopolassar demonstrates that the remains were partly subsurface and required excavation due to accumulation through time.

Third, Nabopolassar’s seemingly most exacting archaeological task involved quantitative topographical analyses and careful recording:  6) surveyed and 7)  examined its old foundations  8) and laid its brickwork in the original place. To an archaeologist, these phrases of Nabopolassar leap out because this is exactly how the discipline operates by stratigraphic and mathematical principles to make sure survey benchmarks and cardinal directions are recorded in order to contextualize remains.  His use of “examined” demonstrates careful observation.

Finally, Naboplassar summarizes his findings and records them for an unknown posterity on this clay cylinder and identifies himself as the project director responsible for the work:  9) I, Nabopolassar, the one who discovers (inscribed) bricks from the past,  10) the one who implements the work on the original.  By claiming the “discovery” as something from the “past”, Nabopolassar also makes sure he doesn’t just abandon the remains but also “implements” the restoration on the “original foundations”.

By precedent, was Nabopolassar first and foremost a logical military leader who could take down Nineveh by utilizing similar advance careful observation, planning and strategy? Regardless of whether or not his archaeological work was done for religious reasons to please the gods he claimed gave him his reign and apparently secured his Neo-Babylonian dynasty, Nabopolassar’s Cylinder gives us the best evidence for carefully contexted and recorded material history over 2,500 years ago, just about 2,350 years before archaeology became a scientific and historical discipline. Was Nabopolassar thus history’s first known archaeologist?

Notes:

[1] Diana Pickworth. “Excavations at Nineveh: The Halzi Gate.” Iraq [British Institute for the Study of Iraq] 67.1 (2005) 295-316, esp. fig. 1 on 296 and 298.

[2]   K. C. Hanson. Nabopolassar Cylinder, 2012.  See Dr. K. C. Hanson, Wipf and Stock Publishers,199 W. 8th Ave. Eugene, OR 97401. See http://www.kchanson.com/ancdocs/meso/nabo.html

[3]  These texts are translated and discussed by F. N. J. Al-Rawi. “Nabopolassar’s Restoration Work on the Wall Imgur-Enlil at Babylon.” Iraq 47 (1985) 1-13; and P.-A. Beaulieu. “Nabopolassar’s Restoration of Imgur-Enlil, the Inner Defensive Wall of Babylon.” The Context of Scripture, W. W. Hallo, ed. Leiden: E. J. Brill (2000) vol. 2, 307-8.

Note: the author was a post-doctoral Research Fellow under Prof. David Stronach at U.C. Berkeley’s Near Eastern Studies Dept. from 1992-95 and worked on post-processual Nineveh material under Stronach.

Isfahan chahar-bagh "Paradise Garden" carpet, 17th c.

By Patrick Hunt

“And the Lord God planted a garden in the east in Eden…The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin and onyx are also there.) The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Ashur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.” Gen. 2:8-14

Introduction

Gudea, ruler of Lagash in Neo-Sumeria (c. 2100 BCE) said, “He who controls the rivers controls life.” [1] The famous Louvre diorite statue of Gudea depicts him holding a vase from which two streams flow, symbolic representations of both the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Water has always been the antithesis of desert and the necessary life-giver and the source of many gardens. Indeed, gardens cannot be conceived of without water.

Some might think it a tautology in the above title to use the word “paradise” as an adjective for “garden”. But we gardeners would not agree, especially if we might just have some kind of internal genetic template in our instinct to recreate some faintly remembered paradise in our gardens that ancient literature echoes.

"Mantes" Carpet, Louvre, Paris, Safavid Period, c. 16th. c

Regarding instinct, I was conducting Jean Clottes, the eminent cave prehistorian on a brief wine tasting in Northern California in late April, 2010 before his Stanford lecture. No doubt re-inspired by the streams in the nearby redwoods, I tried out an idea on him that had long been burbling through my own mind. I asked, “What if we love to hear water in our garden fountains or other places as a relaxing sound, putting our deepest minds at ease because we instinctively know the sound of running water is good for our health since our earliest human existence – maybe even earlier as animals – and the opposite of this is that stagnant water meant death?”  Jean was receptive of my idea.

A few days ago I repeated this idea and many others below in my talk “Persian Gardens on The Move” in the Gifts of Persia: Garden Conservancy seminar on July 15, 2011. Most of these ideas are also delineated in my forthcoming book (2012) Gardens of the Ancient World.  This brief article – whose shortcomings are due mostly to brevity – also condenses my Gifts of Persia talk.

Persian Mural Tile, 17th c., Met. Mus, NY

Garden of Eden as chahar bagh

In the above Genesis passage, several significant ideas leap out. First, a garden is planted; it is not an accident but a deliberate, planned entity.  Second, it is not a wilderness, although it may be surrounded by wilderness of either desertified context or unkempt vegetation. Third, this first biblical garden fulfills two requisites all gardens are designed to fulfill: its trees are good for food and pleasing to the eye, that is, it has both practical and aesthetic functions. More important, this first almost mythical garden must be watered, in this case not just one but four streams are mentioned.

Last and perhaps most important, this paradise Garden of Eden as recalled in biblical literature has a vital element of Persian gardens known from the earliest examples. Biblical Eden may actually reference the Old Persian chahar bagh “four-part garden” (Persian chahar “four”; bagh “garden”), especially after Adam and Eve were driven out and it was guarded by cherubim (Gen. 3:23-4); “walled” or “protected” not just to preserve plants and keep watery humidity high but keep mankind and the desert wind out. The allusion to the four parts may be in its four rivers (Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, Euphrates) that flow therefrom, just like the Persian chahar bagh divided by four water channels. The geographical context is surely at the head of the Persian Gulf below modern Iraq, and if we know two of the rivers today in the Tigris (ancient Hiddeqel [2]) and Euphrates, it is also most likely that the Gihon (gihon is “intermittent in Hebrew) is still visible in the now dry Wadi Batin that once flowed in from the west in Saudi Arabia where the Pishon is another now dry wadi (Karun) flowing in from the east and the Zagros Mountains as Zarins has surmised.[3] Naturally, the biblical Eden paradise story has many ancient Near Eastern parallels, including the legends of Dilmun, near present Bahrein. [4] Which came first or influenced the other, the idea of chahar bagh or the Eden biblical account and its far earlier literary antecedents in the Ancient Near east is a matter of debate.

Earlier Mesopotamian and later Persian gardens

Reconstructed pairi-daeza of Cyrus, 6th c. BCE

Reconstructed pairi-daeza of Cyrus at Pasargard, 6th c. BCE

The Epic of Gilgamesh records date palm “gardens” at Uruk as seen in Tablet 1.17-22, with a volume of at least one league.[5]  Certainly gardens or orchard parks reputedly existed in 8^th century BCE Nineveh – as planted by Sennacherib (more than likely the better identification for the Hanging Gardens of Babylon as Dalley notes [6]) and specified in his extant texts as well as shown on Nineveh palace reliefs. Sixth century BCE Akkadian also had the word pardesu, apparently meaning “enclosed garden”. [7] Yet it is Achaemenid Persia where the pairi-daeza garden was given greatest emphasis.[8]  The Palace of Cyrus the Great at Pasargadae was noted for its aqueduct-fed park with gardens and orchards in chahar-bagh parterre design as Stronach’s 1961-3 Pasargadae excavations have shown. [9] Quoting Stronach:

“He [Cyrus] would want to have an avenue down the length of his garden, what is often called by garden architects as ‘the vision of power’. Since we had…two large rectangles, if we divided it with the ‘vision of power’ we would get a four-fold garden or Chahar Bagh. In some ways, this is one of those very important Iranian discoveries in design which the world has taken as a model.” [10]

Cyrus the Great is also referred to as the “Good Gardener” of Persia, as were his successors.[11]  Persepolis, Susa and other Persian palace sites continued the garden development of Cyrus. According to Herodotus’ History I.108, King Astyages had a dream about his daughter Mandane, the Median mother of Cyrus the Great, in which he envisioned her pregnancy as a vine that covered Medo-Persia and Asia.

Classical derivatives of the Persian garden

After Alexander’s conquest, the Greeks borrowed both the word and idea in the Greek paradeisos, and Xenophon especially uses paradeisos as “pleasure park”.[12]  Fountains along the great Canopus Street dispensed water for many gardens in Hellenistic Alexandria in the Ptolemaic period (4^th-1^stcenturies BCE), just one of many features of perhaps the world’s first truly cosmopolitan city.

Safavid 16th c. miniature from "The Seven Thrones" of Jami, from Mehdi Khansari, PERSIAN GARDENS, 1997

The paradeisos was later brought to Rome as paradisus, a Classical tradition derived in part from Persian antecedents. Nero’s notorious Domus Aurea enclave had parklike gardens commonly understood as paradeisoi  [13] and the peristyle hortus gardens seen in upper class Pompeiian houses, e.g., House of the Vettii, are in some sense a form of urban private paradisus. Curtius Rufus also describes paradeisoi as “hunting parks” [14]  and Jashemski concurs that exotic animal parks are essentially the Roman version of this idea in wall paintings. [15]  Rome itself had many gardens (horti), including the famous Hortus Sallustius and the Garden of Maecenas, along with that of Agrippa, as well as the Horti Lamiani, Licinii, Luculliani, Pallantiani. [16] The Pincian Hill and semi-rural areas of both Vatican and Janiculum Hills also had extensive gardens and parks in rich houses and villas and many of these private Roman villa gardens were ultimately appropriated and incorporated into imperial estates. [17] Gardens in villas are even more so Roman versions of the paradisus as pleasure garden because of their size and range of plants and trees as well as watercourses, especially watered by the many aqueducts feeding Rome. [18]

"Wagner" chahar bagh Garden Carpet, Central Iran, Burrell Collection, Glasgow, Safavid Period, 17th c.

Biblical pardes

On the other hand, there are biblical references seemingly earlier than the Classical World. Song of Songs 4:13 attributed to Solomon [19]  has used the Old Persian word and idea in the late Hebrew word pardes [20] in part for the legendary royal pleasure gardens of Jerusalem, possibly also influenced by earlier Phoenician mercantile contact with Mesopotamia, although ancient Egypt – especially the better-documented New Kingdom – also had both sacred and secular gardens,[21]  as the painted garden from the Tomb of Nebamun (c. 1350 BCE) in the British Museum shows, among others.[22] The putatively Solomonic Qohelet (Ecclesiastes) 2:5 states, “I made myself gardens and orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits.”

Persian Pomegranate Orchard Carpet (P. Hunt photo 2011)

Following the legendary Solomon, Esther 1:5 is another biblical reference to a pardes – the Shushan (Susa) “garden of the king’s palace” where the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes) himself may have planted trees [23] - as is Nehemiah 2:8 (“king’s forest”) although these post-Solomon references are clearly in the period of Persian domination and cultural influence over Judah between the Babylonian Captivity and the early Seleucids, roughly 604-300 BCE.

In a separate development from Classical or biblical borrowings, the tradition of Persian influence in the Mediterranean world was repeated much later in the 7^th to 9^th centuries CE when the advance of Islam and spread of Arab culture again brought the Persian garden as a new wave to the Mediterranean world through North Africa, Sicily and Spain. Moorish landscape planning incorporated the Persian garden into what would eventually become a European garden design in the medieval epoch as assimilated from contexts in Sicily and elsewhere; from the 10-11th c. in Sicily and the 14th c. in Spain.

Persian Rugs as Paradise Gardens

Safavid Tile from Royal Shah Mosque (Masjid-i Jami Abbasi), Isfahan

Arthur Upham Pope said, “The garden in all its splendid aspects is the basic theme of Persian carpets.” [24]  The first famed paradise carpet of note to be recorded was that of the Sassanid ruler Khosrow I (531-571 CE). This lost paradise carpet was described by the iconic Arab historian Muhammad ibn Jarir al-Tabari (c. 839-923 CE), an important source for the history of early Islam. In al-Tabari’s words: at the Ctesiphon palace of Kisra I (Khosrow I):

“[There] was a huge carpet, depicting a garden with streams and paths, trees and beautiful spring flowers. The wide border all round showed flower beds of various coloring, the ‘flowers’ being blue, red, yellow, or white stones. The ground was yellowish, to look like earth, and it was worked in gold. The edges of the streams were worked in stripes, and between them stones bright as crystal gave the illusion of water, the size of the pebbles being what pearls might be. The stalks and branches were gold or silver, the leaves of trees and flowers made of silk, like the rest of the plants, and the fruits were colored stones.” [25]

In beautifully illustrated traditions of Persian design lasting for millennia, these rugs often echo paradise gardens with a primary source of textile inspiration in the chahar bagh, as notable “paradise garden” rugs like the first image in this article demonstrates from before and during the Safavid Dynasty in Persia. Shah Tahmasp (1514-76) gave great stimulus to the Persian textile industries as proud national crafts. As Franses has noted:

“Gardens and the quest for paradise have been fundamental to Iranian thought ever since [Cyrus], and are continuously expressed in poetry, literature and painting. The carpet is a mirror of heaven and a transportable ground plan – what better medium of artistic expression could have been created for the garden, as the essence of Iranian life has always been the move between summer and winter quarters. To be able simply to roll up and carry one’s personal garden must have had tremendous appeal to poor and rich alike.”  [26]

Persian Carpet - Garden with Pool (P.Hunt photo 2011)

Some of the more famous “paradise garden” carpets of substantial size – these include about 15 rug treasures from Shah Tahmasp to Shah Abbas I (the Great) and their successors – include the Schwarzenberg “Paradise Park” Rug, circa 1550, formerly in Vienna, now in Qatar; the “Ardabil” Rug (although non-figural and possibly from Mashad) [27] , circa 1539-40, in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and its apparent twin at Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the ‘Wagner’ Carpet, circa 1650 onward, in the Burrell Collection of Glasgow, [28] as well as the Safavid period “Mantes” Carpet at the Louvre.[29]  Some of these carpets, like the ‘Wagner’ have clear chahar bagh designs, emphatically showing the Persian garden as inspiration. Brend comments that “Garden carpets probably developed from the town-planning activities of Shah ‘Abbas, since they are in effect picture maps.” [30]

Ardebil Carpet, "Paradise Garden", c. 1539, Victoria and Albert Museum, Safavid Dynasty London (P. Hunt photo, 2011)

Persian and Persian-influenced “Garden” Tiles

The former Bey’s Palace roof terraces in the Medina of Tunis still has beautiful tile portions with tile mural garden scenes, as I recently saw in 2008. The Musée du Louvre has another lovely garden scene in mural tiles, [31] as does the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, [32]  which I revisited in the spring of both 2010 and 2011, among many other occasions.

Most of these rugs mentioned have people in the gardens as well as trees and plants, whereas Islamic decorated tiles primarily have intertwined plant and flower lacework without people, especially at Isfahan’s Great Royal Shah Mosque (Masjid-i-Jami Abbasi) constructed from 1612-30, where thousands of tiles form intricate garden foliage both inside the ivans and outside on its dome, as in other mosque tile contexts. [33]  Ottoman Iznik ware and tiles as seen at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, at the Royal Academy 2005 Exhibition in London and at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul and elsewhere repeat the wonders of the original Persian garden tiles. [34]

Maidan Square (maidaan-e naqsh-e jehaan) Isfahan chahar bagh > 85,000 m. sq.

Solomonic to Medieval gardens and Mediterranean Islamic gardens

The recreated mythical biblical garden of the hortus conclusus is often thought to be from Solomon in the passage from Song of Songs 4:12, “a garden enclosed [gan na‘ul] is my sister, my spouse”). This idea also drew upon the prior Classical borrowing of this Persian theme in later medieval cloister gardens – as at Romanesque Monreale above Palermo in Sicily or St. Trophime at Arles – where clerics, especially women, became the virtual Bride of Christ and were essentially sequestered outside of the public eye. In one of the clearest examples of Sassanid Persian textile influence, the golden field mosaics from the Salle de Roger II in the Palazzo Normanni in Palermo demonstrates the balanced designs of Sassanid artistic dual symmetry just as seen on Sassanid silks and their Byzantine copies, including the treasure of the silk Shroud of St. Sernin at Toulouse with its obvious Kufic scripts.

Byzantine Mosaic (Sassanid Style) Salle Roger II, Norman Palace, Palermo

In Granada of the Moorish Al-Andaluz, the Alhambra of the Nasrid Dynasty and the Generalife Garden (Jannat al-‘Arif, the “Architect’s Garden”) also continued the Persian model with four-part harmony of gardens, fountains and reflecting pools. [35]  In Sicily, an enlightened period of cooperative tolerance not seen since, the Rogerian dynasty of Palermo peacefully employed Christian, Islamic and Jewish court officials, engineers and artists. The Palazzo Normanni was a medieval wonder, and Palermo was praised by the great Arab geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi (c. 1099-1166) who had travelled from Ceuta in Spain to York (Britain), from Turkey to France as well as across North Africa, stating: “Balarm [Palermo] the Beautiful is an immense city, the greatest and most splendid of its day, the most influential and excellent metropolis in the world.” Al-Idrisi also completed the most complete map of the time with his famous world atlas Tabula Rogeriana for the court of Roger II in 1154. Al-Idrisi certainly understood what he was comparing.

The extant Norman period art and architecture of the Palazzo Normanni is splendid, especially the Salle de Roger (actually dating to William I-II, c. 1160-70) with its hybrid Sassanid and Islamic influences – the architectural layout is Arabic – in mosaics with likely Byzantine-trained artisans of gardens and a pairi-daeza of fruit and date palm trees with leopards peacocks, griffins, stags (all typical Persian beasts) as well as other animals all on a gold background. Equally, the Hall of the Four Columns (or Four Winds) also has clear Sassanid silk textile motifs of symmetrically-facing animals surrounded by roundels. [36]

Antique Persian Carpet "Garden with Pool" (P.Hunt photo 2011)

Just a few hundred meters from the Palazzo Normanni crowning Palermo above the old Islamic Kalsa district, the red-domed church of San Giovanni degli Eremiti and its adjacent Islamic garden and wells reincorporated as a cloister garden emphatically show this cooperative hybrid architecture. Small wonder then that Boccaccio praised Sicilian Palermo as the pearl of the 13-14^th century, the wealthiest city in Europe at the time. Other contemporaries of the time remember the royal groves of lemon trees around the Palazzo Normanni whose thousands of blossoms perfumed the air of the upper city and valley above toward Monreale. This was the medieval Rogerian version of the pairi daeza of Cyrus. Palermo’s culminating 13^th century glory maintained by Frederic II, stupor mundi (“wonder of the world”), however, was too philosophically eclectic and tolerant for the Church. Frederick was twice excommunicated [37] but able to win back Jerusalem without a drop of Saracen blood in his diplomatic but unblessed “Sixth Crusade”, [38]  which apparently broke the Church rules for crusades. The civilized Frederick was also a lover of gardens.[39]

Safavid and Mughal “Paradise Gardens” and their European heirs

In the 16^th to 17^th centuries, Safavid Persia and the Mughal Empire continued the indigenous chahar-bagh four-part tradition of the Near Eastern gardens of antiquity with pools, trees and perfumed flowering plants. [40] Ordering the chahar bagh along formulaic standards, the Persian author Qasim b. Yusuf Abu Nasiri wrote a 16^th c. garden treatise Irshad al-zira‘a of the ideal garden, chahar bagh in design, and even recommended specific trees and vegetation as well as dimensions. [41]

Babur's garden, Baburnama, 16th c. British Library

Just a few examples of Persian chahar bagh gardens between 1500-1730 include the Safavid period Meidan Square of the Great Mosque in Isfahan with its immense size, well more than 85,000 square meters of garden enclosure in the Great Square as a legacy of Shah Abbas (1571-1629). [42] Elsewhere, the gardens of the Mughal Taj Mahal had similar plans,  [43] At Shiraz the Musalla Gardens of the Tomb of Hafez (1315-90) as well as the Bagh-e Jahan Nama and the Bagh-e Eram “Paradise” Garden, both at Shiraz, and the Bagh-e Fin at Kashan, [44] to name just a few, continue the Persian chahar bagh design. Even the Mughal c. 1590 Baburnama in the British Library shows miniature paintings with the Emperor Babur in a charbagh (Mughal spelling) garden accompanied by his courtiers, as do other miniatures showing his Garden of Fidelity or directing his gardeners from images a century later. [45]

Taj Mahal charbagh Gardens, 18th c., Sackler, Smithsonian

Subsequent Renaissance gardens, for example, may not consciously echo Persian chahar bagh paradise gardens but are nonetheless partly derivative. Four-part plans are seen in the many contemporary paintings of fifteenth century Medici gardens in and around Florence (e.g., Trebbio, Cafaggiolo, Careggi, Fiesole) and the later Castello and Boboli villa gardens. [46] In addition, the remnant garden of the Villa Farnesina in Rome adjacent to the Tiber – which location may be over the Garden of Agrippa in imperial Rome – along with the later Borghese Gardens above the Pincian Hill in Rome, all orderly four part parterre gardens of Renaissance and Baroque splendors, are nonetheless indirect descendants of the Persian garden envisioned by Cyrus the Great, where the royal pairi-daeza enclosed bits of paradise on earth, an ordering of nature within chahar bagh design just as in the Garden of Eden watered by pools and fountains with planted pleasures of trees and flowers for refreshing both body and soul.

Mughal char-bagh garden

Conclusion

Persian gardens and their Islamic successors continud to inspire subsequent gardens with their design and purpose even if many later gardens may not have any religious or civic function. But as Brend simply and magisterially puts it:

“It is not surprising that the design of Islamic gardens and garden courts is governed by the square grid of water channels which derives from the practical needs of irrigation. Nor is it strange that every vision of Paradise which Islam offers to the believer is that of a garden with running waters, and that every garden in the Islamic world tends to be seen as a metaphor for Paradise.”  [47]

While a first paradise was lost and remembered or dreamed only in literature or gardens, carpets, tiles and other ways in the Near East, a second paradise may be partially previewed in a biblical prophetic book. In Ezekiel 47:12 the exilic prophet envisions a better future in his challenged present of Babylonian captivity. He rhapsodizes the new trees planted by God and watered by a river flowing directly from the new temple in the New Jerusalem: “all the trees have fruit for food and leaves for the healing of the nations.” Like the first pleasure garden in Eden, “pleasing to the eyes” as well as good for food, this ultimate garden also fills multiple roles as a garden should. This desire of all desires, the ultimate pairi-daeza will be for feeding and healing both body and soul, just as the Persians have always known their gardens to do.

Villa Farnesina (as chahar bagh), Post Renaissance Garden, Rome (P. Hunt photo 2011)

Relative Chronology of Near Eastern and Persian Garden “Multiple Waves” of Influences

3rd millennium BCE  Epic of Gilgamesh describes civic date palm gardens at Uruk

8th c. BCE  Sennacherib, Assyrian king, creates irrigated Nineveh gardens (“Hanging Gardens?)  adjacent to Kyunjik palace

7th c BCE   Descriptions of Eden in Genesis imply fourfold rivers watering Paradise garden

6th c. BCE  Late Akkadian word pardesu and Avestan and Persian word pairi-daeza for garden or orchard, possibly walled

6th c. BCE  Cyrus the Great plants his chahar-bagh (four-part) garden and orchard at Pasargadae, his successors continue

6th c. BCE  Song of Solomon edited (Song of Songs 4:13) Hebrew poetry describes the lover as an “enclosed garden”

4th c. BCE  Alexander the Great’s legacy introduces the Greek version of paradeisos from Persia to Alexandria and Greece

1st c. BCE- 1st c. CE Romans create hortus conclusus gardens at Pompeii (e.g. House of the Vettii)

1st  c BCE – 1st c. CE Roman horti replicate elements of Greek paradeisos in Rome, especially Nero’s Golden House landscapes

6th c CE Sassanid (Persian) King Choesroe commissions first major paradise garden rug at Ctesiphon

7th -8th c. CE Islamic expansion brings the Persian Garden to North Africa, Spain and Sicily

11-12th c. CE Rogerian Dynasty in Sicily replicates gardens and orchards in mosaic in Palazzo Normanni

11-12th c CE Romanesque Cloisters landscape four-part hortus conclusus

13-15th c CE Al-Andaluz Moors in Spain create Persian-inspired gardens at Granada (Alhambra and Generalife), Nasrid Dynasty

14-17th c CE Persian rulers especially Safavids create chahar-bagh urban gardens and tiles in Isfahan, Shiraz, etc.

14-7th c. CE Persian rulers encourage Paradise Garden rug industry

15-16th c. CE Italian Renaissance creates four-part garden landscapes in Rome, Florence, etc. (e.g. Villa Farnesina)

16th c. CE  Iznik ware in Turkey replicates Persian garden motifs in tiles and tableware, etc.

17th c CE  Baroque and later gardens replicate four-fold garden design (e.g. Versailles)

References:

Barbara Brend. Islamic Art. Harvard University Press, 1996, 2^nd pr.

M. Carroll. Earthly Paradises: Ancient Gardens in History and Archaeology. Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2003

Amanda Claridge. Rome: Oxford Archaeological Guide. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998

Filippo Coarelli. Rome and Environs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007

Eric Cline. From Eden to Exile: Unraveling Mysteries of the Bible. Washington, DC: National Geographic, 2007

Penelope Hobhouse. Gardens of Persia. London: Cassell/Kales, 2004

Patrick Hunt. Gardens of the Ancient World, 2012 (in press)

Mehdi Khansari, M. Reza Moghtader and Minouch Yavari. The Persian Garden: Echoes of Paradise, 2003

Farzin Rezaeian. Incredible Isfahan: Discovering Persia’s Past. Sunrise, 2010

David Stronach. Pasargadae. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978

James Wescoat and Joaichim Wolschke-Bulmahn, ds. Mughal Gardens: Sources, Places, Representations and Prospects. Dumbarton Oaks, Arthur Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian, 1996

Acknowledgment is humbly given to David Stronach, peerless scholar, mentor and friend, beginning from when I was his Post-Doctoral Research Fellow 1992-94 in Near Eastern Studies at University of California, Berkeley; also to Betsy Flack of the Garden Conservancy, sponsor of the “Gifts of Persia” Seminar Lectures, July, 2011.

Notes:

Sennenjem Lintel, 19th Dynasty, composite interactive image using RTI specular and color information, Phoebe Hearst Museum, Berkeley, courtesy of Cultural Heritage Imaging

While photography of archaeological artifacts for recording stretches back over a century plus, the needs to visually preserve a record of materials has only multiplied exponentially since the mid-19^th century. In fact, archaeology was one of the first disciplines to employ the nascent medium of photography for recording. Now digital technology in photography has unlocked whole new imaging possibilities for archaeological recording, virtual archaeology and subtle metadata.

Before archaeological visionaries Mark Mudge and Carla Schroer founded Cultural Heritage Imaging (CHI) in 2002, their dreams of applying digital technology to archaeological research stretch back a long way. Mark and Carla were among the first pioneers to see and unlock the future in new possibilities of light in digital photography. Before founding CHI, Mark started out as a sculptor and digital photographer and then was a 3D capture and computer modeling instructor at the Academy of Art and Expressions College. He was among the first to introduce laser scanning and 3D computer modeling to sculpture. Carla spent twenty years in commercial software development and testing and was part of the original team at Sun Microsystems that brought Java to market in 1995. She continued to work on Java software for thirteen years.

One of their first team projects was in the Alps of Switzerland and Italy, participating with the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project in 2000-2005 at the Grand-St-Bernard Pass, photographing project excavation seasons and artifacts. In 2004, Mark produced the first archaeological Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) data ever acquired on site during an active excavation at the Stanford Alpine Archaeology Project field site. Stanford University was thus the first academic institution to work with CHI, followed by others in Europe, and this growing group now includes Princeton University, Yale University, and the University of California.

In Switzerland CHI soon began sharing state-of-the-art imaging expertise with Canon Jean-Pierre Voutaz, the Archivist of the Grand-St-Bernard Monastery-Hospice, whose Medieval and Renaissance library and monastic natural history and archaeological collections provided a ready application as well related collections in the Museum of Grand-St-Bernard Monastery-Hospice. Soon Lausanne’s Cantonal Monetary Museum was knocking at their door. Since that initial phase, CHI has also subsequently worked in the Crimean Peninsula at the site of Chersonesos and rock art sites in UNESCO-targeted heritage contexts in Portugal’s Archaeological Park Vale do Côa, among others. In 2007, Mark and Carla also captured the first RTI documentation of gilded Byzantine mosaics from the 6th century apse of ‘The Church of Our Lady Angeloktisti” at Kiti, Larnaka, Cyprus.

Development of their open source imaging techniques burgeoned as each recipient of their expertise shared with others, and within a few years they were working with international and national museums such as the Smithsonian in Washington DC and most recently the The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

From 2005-2010, CHI has presented and lectured at symposia and congresses at the Louvre in Paris, at both Seville and Granada, Spain, several in Athens, Greece, Malta, Cyprus, as well as congresses in Budapest, Berlin, Pisa and at the 6^th World Archaeological Congress in Dublin, Ireland, among others. Many of these events have been sponsored by international working groups in Quantitative Methods in Archaeology and Computer Applications in Archaeology (CAA).

RTI Image acquisition for Sennenjem Lintel, Hearst Museum, Berkeley (courtesy of Cultural Heritage Imaging)

CHI’s founders are recipients of multiple awards including from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and two recent grants, the first from the National Science Foundation shared with Princeton University and the second from the Institute for Museum and Library Services, Spain’s Tartessos Prize, and joint projects funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation, among others. In 2010 in San Francisco, the Archaeological Institute of America recognized their contributions to imaging preservation playing a vital role in archaeology, visiting their San Francisco facilities. CHI’s pioneering work  was also praised in a keynote lecture at the Fairmont Hotel at the AIA San Francisco Soirée in October, 2010.

CHI takes multiple important digital imaging technology training programs to museums and universities in order to train museum imaging professionals. These technologies include Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) and Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI). Another of their featured technology projects is the Collaborative Algorithmic Rendering Engine (CARE), their current project with Princeton University, being developed by computer scientists and mathematicians to render objects quantitatively through algorithms in multiple viewing frames of reference from RTI data.

According to the available literature, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a useful conservation tool for powerful documentation, and conservation is a growing vital part of archaeology as responsible archaeology invests more and more energy and resources in preservation rather than excavation as was mostly the case for decades. Too many museums around the world are still filled with over  a century’s worth of excavated objects that have yet to be optimally conserved. Not only the objects themselves but preserving images of objects is also critical, especially when excavated objects continue to weather in oxidizing environments, even incrementally over time. Additionally, RTI makes better examination of surfaces possible, enhancing the interpretation of cultural heritage materials, especially contoured relief artifacts. Normal photography does not always necessarily enhance three-dimensionality in the way that specular light moving over a surface does. This RTI specularity is a new feature of digital photography in changing light circumstances that computers have revolutionized, especially since RTI is an image-based representation of a surface appearance using different directions of light, bringing out surface details because computer algorithms can render an object’s surface down to the individual pixel level. Multiple source light can be manipulated in so many more ways than single source light. The data acquired digitally contains information about exact three-dimensional shape and minute surface properties of the object photographed, as very detailed relief is another enhanced feature of specular and multiple source light. This actual relief is greatly improved by RTI, as can be seen from both the Sennenjem Lintel (above) and the Hirosada woodcut (below). This abstract photographic information collected by RTI is used to construct dynamic, interactive digital representations that allow mathematical enhancement and rendering in a variety of ways to reveal features that are otherwise difficult or impossible to see through direct examination in single source light. I’ve seen many CHI object photograph sessions in the Alps inside the monastery of the Grand-St-Bernard, where they have set up light arrays using a geodesic dome made from pvc tubes with equidistant lights at each junction.

One of the best applications I’ve seen from CHI is photographing numismatic material. Coins, although small, can contain many artistic and minting details that mobile specular light captures. In antiquity Greek coins were even an art form on the micro scale where sculptors made miniature masterpieces not always easily seen except in close examination, so RTI is a great tool for tracing changes in individual coin mintings and even highlighting artistic idiosyncrasies. RTI also produces significant advantages to conservation, including information that is scientifically reliable, acquisition of data not requiring physical contact, clear representation of 3D characteristics of shape via RTI enhancement functions, reduced or zero data loss due to shadows and specular highlights – since these can be manipulated or changed – as well as high resolution sample densities up to 20,500 per square millimeter. Since so many of us involved in archaeology and art frequently transmit high density, high resolution images electronically and near instantaneously over the internet, the ability to send RTI photographs is becoming increasingly easier as well, with RTI creating easily achievable image processing pathways, and facile communication online. RTI also provides museum curators and conservators with new means to share data with other professionals, scholars and the public in a highly interactive way that greatly expands the viewing experience. This is not just inside a museum. CHI has also shown in global contexts using mobile technology in the field: rock art is one more archaeological medium aided by RTI because its variable light can easily distinguish between tool marks and methods from incising, pecking, etc. These advantages RTI brings in photographic recording will be further elaborated in continuing technology advances.

Konishi Hirosada, artist. Osaka Actor Mimasu Daigoro IV, color woodcut with embossing and metallic pigment, c. 1851-59 (Courtesy of Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and CHI)

Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) was the original form of Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), developed by Tom Malzbender, Dan Gelb and others at Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs. It was applied to archaeological materials by Mark Mudge, Carla Schroer and other CHI staff. From HP Labs is this description of PTM technology:

“Polynomial Texture Maps (PTMs) are a simple representation for images of functions instead of just images of color values. In an conventional image, each pixel contains static red, green, blue values. In a PTM, each pixel contains a simple function that specifies the red, green, blue, values of that pixel as a function of two independent mathematical parameters, l_u and l_v.

Typically, PTMs are used for displaying the appearance of an object under varying lighting direction, and l_u ,l_v specify the direction of a point light source. However, other applications are possible, such as controlling focus of a scene. PTMs can be used as light-dependent texture maps for 3D rendering, but typically are just viewed as ‘adjustable images’.

PTMs are typically produced with a digital camera by photographing an object multiple times with lighting direction varying between images. Even a low-end digital camera provides enough resolution to produce good PTMs, and almost any light source can be used such as a light bulb, LED or flash.”

Naturally, as nanotech drives the computer industry with better and better megapixel volume leading to higher resolution, combined with more memory capabilities, the world of imaging technology is becoming increasingly sophisticated and quantifiable ever since cameras have been loaded with computer chips enabling digital recording. Who even remembers photo film developing?

Mark Mudge and Carla Schroer and their team  at CHI are to be commended for seeing the archaeological imaging future so clearly, and what they share now to an eager world of archaeology professionals will pave the way for new recording and quantitative preservation in technologies not yet even imagined.

Baltic amber with preserved insect (work of Baltic-amber-beetle, image courtesy of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License)

by Patrick Hunt

Historical linguistics often surprises us about how old are some of the words we use today, especially when we might expect they were coined only within the last century or so. While some of these old words, either commonplace like “star” and “myth”, or not so common like “emery”, have their derivations in the Bronze Age or Classical world millennia past, other words like “electron” – and the Latin version in electrum – also have old and venerable stories that have preserved many ancient details, like primeval insects caught in amber.

In Ancient Greek electron,  sounding as ēlektron (ἤλεκτρον) was a word used for amber, the precious fossil resin from ancient trees. Amber was valued in antiquity although its sources were either unknown according to Theophrastus (On Stones 29) or possibly found at the Celtic, Western margin of the world according to Herodotus (History 3.115). Amber was a rare and beautiful commodity, traded from the Baltic north to the Mediterranean south. It was as valuable as other ‘gems’ and highly prized in antiquity for its translucent, gold-like color and found in early Etruscan tombs of the late 8^th century BC in quantity. Its metaphysical or poetic associations are fascinating. Similar to Greek ideas, amber was often thought in some folklore to be the distillation of sunlight and possibly a protective amulet against certain ailments or evils. Ancient Greeks also connected this word for amber to elector, sounding as ēlectōr (ἠλέκτωρ), for the “beaming sun” and this derived word was also related to fire. Amber was poeticized in myth as the congealed tears of the mourning sisters of Phaethon, the sun’s ephemeral charioteer whose name conveyed “shining”. [1]

The Ancient Greek word electron was also used to describe first a natural then a man-made alloy of gold and silver, a precious amalgam and medium of exchange in rare metal bullion used to pioneer coinage in the Mediterranean world.  Homer mentions the metal alloy “electrum” (electron) in Odyssey 4.73 when Telemachus refers to the splendor in the Palace of Menelaus, speaking about its echoing halls with the “flashing of electrum” in brilliant light effects. In antiquity the old system of barter and trade in goods like foodstuff or other bulk resources was replaced by being abstracted into these new symbols of value represented in metal tokens. While this gold and silver alloy occurred naturally along the Pactolus River in ancient Lydia, some of the earliest coins in the West were made of ‘electron’ (electrum) in small ingots from Lydia, minted by Kings Alyattes and Croesus circa 600-545 BC. [2]  In Ancient Latin as in Greek, electrum was both an alloy of gold and silver . Virgil (Aeneid 8.402) has Vulcan speak of molten electrum and in Latin this word could mean amber as well as in Pliny (Natural History 37.2.11).

electrum metal: Lydian trite or one-third stater (1/3 of Milesian standard weight), attributed to King Alyattes (c. 610-561 BC) :incuse two rough punches (reverse side), Image by courtesy of the Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

electrum metal: Lydian trite or one-third stater (1/3 of Milesian standard weight), attributed to King Alyattes (c. 610-561 BC): head of lion (obverse side), image by courtesy of the Department of Coins and Medals, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Finally, possibly because of amber’s highly conductive property, the Greek word electron was the modern (late 19^th century) source word for “electron”, the charged particle in physics; also becoming the source word for “electric” and “electricity”.  According to Europhysics News (1998), George Johnstone Stoney, an Irish physicist and Fellow of the Royal Society, deserves the credit in 1891 for first applying the ancient word  electron “to a hypothetical small unit of electrical charge”. [3]

In retrospect, amber was even recognized in antiquity as a highly conductive material, quickly warming to the touch, and for this property was thought to be connected to dormant or even  metaphysical life.  New research on Baltic amber evidences that Neolithic cultures around the Baltic Sea gathered amber for jewelry as far back as 13,000 years ago. David Grimaldi has reported on this in an article,“Pushing Back Amber Production”, Science Magazine (October, 2009). In fact, when considering how fossil amber itself may be so old, sometimes from trees that lived hundreds of millions of years ago, this means that human association with amber is in reality a short time.

In the Iron Age Hallstatt period, 8^th-6^th c. BC, Baltic amber became especially abundant in trade with Italy in the Villanovan period (before established Etruscan dates) and the following Etruscan culture prized amber. By the sixth century BC rich Italian amber-carving workshops sprung up for this luxury good valued by elites. This trade covered many middlemen across Europe and the Alps, and Celtic chieftains valued amber as a commodity appreciated about as much as Greek wine, although it brought a greater price when traded to Italy.

A primary ancient Baltic amber source was the Bay of Gdansk (Danzig) and European map of Samland, East Prussia, in 1539 depicts amber collection from the ‘Ripa Succini’ (“Amber Coast”) with barrels. Succinum for “gumstone” was another ancient Latin name for amber. The Gdansk coast still prolific with 4,000 kg amber yields around 1998. Archaeologist and historian Kristiansen relates:

“In the 19^th century yearly production was  500-600 tons, used in lacquerwork and for cigarholders.  The traditional method, still employed today, is to collect the amber in nets as it washes in after storms with other light material. Especially large amounts of amber appear on exposed coastlines with heavy erosion during storms, such as the west coast of Jutland and the Pommeranian coast, where the amber-rich layers are washed out. After a single storm in 1862, 2000 kg of amber was collected from a 7-km stretch of coast at Palmnicken in the eastern Baltic.” [4]

Of course this brings to mind the infamous Amber Room of the Russian Catherine Palace of Tsarskoye Selo finished in 1709, lost or destroyed in World War II after Nazi theft but lavishly restored with new amber in 2003 with its polished, gleaming golden walls of amber, the proud hallmark of fabulous wealth on display from bygone years.

Thus, the continuity of expanding meanings for electron and electrum from the ancient world through the present is an exciting exploration in philology, ancient material culture and economic history. The finely-detailed insects embedded in fossil amber for millions of years, preserved for near eternity, remind us that electrum can last far longer than the ancient cultures who valued it as a precious substance. This long timeline ought to be humbling to mortal humans.

Notes

[1]  H. G. Liddell & R. Scott. Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. Oxford University Press, 1996, 768.

[2] Richard Seaford. Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy. Cambridge University Press, 2004, 114, 117.

[3]  Patrick Wayman. “Stoney’s Electron” in History of Physics. Europhysics News 28 [5-6] (1998) 159-60.

[4]   Kristian Kristiansen. Europe Before History. Cambridge University Press, 2000 ed. , esp. 233 & ff.

Mike Newell, acclaimed director of hits including Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire and Four Weddings and A Funeral, spoke to James Geary about the making of Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and about his lifelong fascination with archeology.

Mike Newell: Director of 'Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time'

Electrum: What kind of research was involved in preparing to film Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time?

Mike Newell: The screenwriter, Jordan Mechner, who also wrote the original Prince of Persia video game on which the film is based, is a research freak. By the time I got involved with the project, he had already minutely researched the Persian empire. So a lot of what I did was to respond to his writing. My chief notion at the start was: We all know about Noah’s ark, the end of the world story, and how the God of the Old Testament is a merciful but jealous God. That’s a story for wetland folk, though, for people who live near rivers. What would that myth look like to a desert people? If God wanted to destroy the world and make a new start, how would He do it? Sandstorms. Sand became a key part of the story.

Was it difficult to find the right location for the film, given the importance of sand?

In the film, the heroes must stop the villain, who is bent on obtaining a magic dagger containing sand that can reverse time. So the sand has mystical properties. We had to find a place that would feel right. I went to the best map shop in London and started poring over maps of the region, looking for a physical landscape that fit the story. A couple books by photographers Robin and Sabrina Michaud were particularly helpful, Caravans to Tartary and Afghanistan. The land there is hot, high, and arid. I kept thinking of a Persian king’s reply when he was asked why he lived in such an inhospitable place: “Soft countries make soft men.” Morocco turned out to have just the right kind of countryside, the kind of place where you could really imagine an army blinded by a sandstorm, with sand so thick you can’t breath.

Did you try to make the battle scenes historically accurate?

The Persians were the only people who gave the Romans a really hard time. They were not disciplined fighters like the Romans, though. The Persians did it by guile. They were extraordinary horsemen and archers. We worked with local Moroccan extras for the battle scenes. They were fantastic horsemen, very fierce, absolutely magnificent. We trained them to fight with the weaponry we gave them, but not in a finger-wagging kind of way. That would have been just dull. But historical accuracy absolutely lay underneath everything. As a director, you want to get things right because then you can see the light in the eyes of actors. If you show you are concerned about getting it right, they turn the knob up for you.

What other aspects of historical accuracy were important?

Once you have the landscape, you have to have the architecture, the colors, the faces. The set and costume designers studied the architecture, the weaponry, the costumes, and the religious rituals. We looked a lot at the Silk Road cities to get a sense of the enormous scale of the Persian empire. The designers went out to places in Pakistan to photograph rooftop textures, which we electronically cut and pasted onto the rooftops in the film.

There are all sorts of references to Sufism in the film. The king spent a lot of time in the saddle, so wherever he went the court and the palace went with him and there was always some kind of fire altar with an eternal flame burning. We did a lot of research into religious symbolism. Since we were dealing with Islam, there were no naturalistic representations but the designers made one cave into a kind of cult sanctuary full of little items brought by pilgrims and inlaid into the rock, a glorious collage.

Were you influenced by any previous cinematic depictions?

I love Ben-Hur! I love all the great big Hollywood epics, and they are revisited all the time. The scenes in Ben-Hur are wonderful. The scene on the Roman navy ship, for example, is exactly observed. It may be entirely invented, but you believe the slaves are chained to the oar; you believe their exhaustion; you believe they keep the oars in time by listening to the beat of a mallet. I have no idea if that is historically accurate, but it is utterly believable. The scenes are more exciting for being accurately portrayed. I take delight in that.

Which comes first then, accuracy or entertainment?

Archeological accuracy is not the first thing on your mind. There’s no question that it’s ‘story story story’ when you’re making a film. But accuracy sets all sorts of standards below which you should not fall. You need to get it right enough. You cannot allow people to see off the edges of the world you are presenting.

I come from a family of great readers. When I was around 13 or 14, I found the books of my father and my aunt endlessly fascinating. One book in particular I remember: Gods, Graves and Scholars: The Story of Archeology by C.W. Ceram. This book told the stories of Schliemann and Troy, Carter and Tutankhamen, Botta and Ninevah, and many others. I read that ‘til kingdom come. I always loved the archeological stuff, the effort to find the truths behind the myths.

When we had almost finished filming Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, someone gave me a newspaper cutting about an Italian expedition that found the remains of a Persian army said to have been lost in Egypt 2,500 years ago. This army had been sent out to sort out trouble on the outer edge of the empire. But the army disappeared. No trace of it had ever been found, and everybody said it was just a myth. But this expedition looked at an alternative route the army could have taken. Under a low ridge in the desert, they found coins, weapons, scraps of clothing. They had found the army, which had been overwhelmed by a great sandstorm. That was our story!