Black Widow: Cold Blood, Burning Heart

By Triptych


The beginning of all war may be discerned not only by the first act of hostility,

but by the counsels and preparations foregoing.

-John Milton, Eikonoklastes


…they have seduced my people saying,

Peace; and there was no peace:…

-Ezekiel 13:10-11


We have made a desert,

and called it peace.

-Tacitus, On the Roman occupation of Carthage


By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,

yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion.

We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof.

For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song;

and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying,

Sing us one of the songs of Zion.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,

let my right hand forget her cunning.

If I do not remember thee,

let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth;

if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

-Psalms 137:1-6

PROLOGUE:

The Fall of Babylon

In the flat, arid valley between the banks of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers there once existed a mighty city called Babylon. Of all the cities of antiquity, it is the one place that conjures up images of wealth, majesty and splendor. Historians, archeologists and anthropologists have often wondered about the marvel of this, the first great city of mankind. For it was here, in a desolate, wind-swept land, a place where plants could barely grow, that man's first civilization began. There were no fertile glades, no abundant rainfall that could produce crops to feed tens of thousands of people. The site of the first city of mankind had nothing, yet it had ultimately prospered, as its achievements became the stuff of myths and legend. For the riches of Babylon were all man-made.

It had no natural resources, yet of all the places in which mankind was to have their beginnings, it was in Babylon that it all started from. With what was once known as the greatest engineering project of the ancient world, engineers diverted the life-giving waters from the Euphrates by means of dams and immense irrigation canals so that farmers could plant crops upon the once arid soil. With the surplus of abundant food, specialists among the people began to develop. From farmers and animal herders came weavers, potters, merchants, soldiers, priests and kings. The city of Babylon was organized like that of any modern metropolis. Streets and shops lined the massive defensive walls while its citizens thronged along dusty streets to buy and sell their wares. Great inner palaces that housed the nobility and kings along with massive temples were the center of daily life.

The first city gave mankind the concept of money, credit and writing. Although paper had yet to be invented, records of all sorts of daily activities were written on clay tablets, many of which survive to this day. Positive dates have been proved reaching back over 8000 years that the Sumerian civilization not only existed, but also thrived while the rest of the world still lived in caves. The inhabitants of Babylon had seemingly performed a miracle from nothing. All the gold, silver and jewels that belonged to the people of Babylon came neither from mining its lands nor from plunder, but from the hard work of its citizens.

And there was slavery as well. But it was of a different meaning than it was today. Many citizens volunteered to become slaves, either because of excessive debts or crime, so that they could ultimately buy their freedom through work. Slaves could earn money from work and were allowed to own property. Only the prisoners of war were treated harshly, for it was they who toiled to build Babylon's great walls, temples and palaces after their failed attempts to conquer it. Of special mention were the slaves from Zion called Jews; they ultimately absorbed much of the folklore of Babylon such as the Great Flood, the trials of Job and the Garden of Eden that they ultimately incorporated these myths as part of their own religious tradition, which in turn gave birth to the present day faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

Wars were a common occurrence, for many rival kings coveted the wealth of Babylon. Armies of the ancient world were not to be taken lightly. Records show that units such as 10,000 horsemen, 25,000 war chariots and 1200 regiments of foot soldiers with 1000 men in each were not unheard of. Sometimes it would take two to three years to gather and supply an army of that immense size before any hostilities even began. A host of kings tried to conquer Babylon, but their campaigns always ended in vain. For the first great city of man was protected by one of the ancient wonders of the world, the great walls of Babylon. The exact height of the great walls has been lost through time though ancient accounts estimated that they were between fifty to sixty feet high when first erected thousands of years ago, faced on the outer side with burnt brick and surrounded by a moat. Later modifications of the walls six hundred years before the time of Christ staggers the imagination; they were reputed to be one hundred and sixty feet high, with a total length of between nine and eleven miles. So wide was the top that a six-horse chariot could be driven on top of them.

Hostile armies never entered Babylon until 540 B.C. Even then the walls were not captured. The circumstance around the fall of Babylon is one of the strangest tales of antiquity. Advisors of Nabonidus, the last King of Babylon, persuaded him to marshal his armies and meet the Persian King Cyrus and his invading army away from the city and its seemingly impregnable walls. When Cyrus then defeated the Babylonian army, it fled away from the city. The great Persian conqueror then entered the city without ever testing its walls. Babylon was never the same again; its prestige and power broken, the city waxed and waned over the next few hundred years until its inhabitants ultimately abandoned it. The canals dried up as the waters flowed back into the Euphrates, the once mighty walls crumbled from lack of maintenance and its streets became covered with dust. The once great city of Babylon fell and now exists only in the pages of history.

If there is to be one lesson learnt from the fall of Babylon, it is that the true power of empires, kingdoms and nations lie not with their land's natural resources, nor would it lie with the strength of their armies and neither would it be through their technological achievements. The true power of civilizations lies within the spirit and perseverance of its people. When the citizens lose hope, everything ultimately goes to ruin.