Babylon of Egypt: The Archaeology of Old Cairo and the Origins of the City Peter Sheehan The American University in Cairo Press, 2010. Reviewed by Jill Kamil Every so often a book comes on the market which is extraordinary, not only in production, layout, original photographs, plans and line drawings, but also on ground-breaking content. Peter Sheehan's Babylon of Egypt is one such book. On a market overflowing with publications on every aspect of Egypt: ancient, mediaeval and modern, up comes a publication which provides answers to questions often asked and never clarified; a book that brings to life the origins of Egypt's great capital and its development over time. In 1999, the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE), funded with a grant from USAID, launched a project to lower the groundwater level in Old Cairo prior to the restoration and conservation of monuments. The Egyptian Antiquities Project (EAP), developed under the direction of Peter Sheehan and with the approval of the then Supreme Council of Antiquities (now the Ministry of State for Antiquities), selected a number of locations at which to carry out archaeological excavations in Old Cairo. Among them were the Greek Orthodox Church of St George (Mari Guirgis), the Roman/Byzantine tower in the grounds of the Coptic Museum, and the crypt of the Church of St Sergius (Abu Sarga), a building of great archaeological complexity and interest. The work carried out over progressive years is the subject of Babylon of Egypt, the first archaeological survey of Old Cairo and arguably one of the most remarkably successful ever carried out in Egypt. What is curious is that so massive an undertaking, such an in-depth study, should have been kept secret from the public until the publication of this book. At the time I was a member of Al-Ahram Weekly staff and with a personal interest in the area (vide my publications Coptic Egypt: History and Guide, 1990; and Christianity in the Land of the Pharaohs, 2002), and I tried on many occasions to gain access to the area to learn what was going on. However, to no avail. Yet what I discerned as a haphazard series of excavations has proved to be a most carefully planned, professionally organised, and accurately documented archaeological study. Simply, it has enabled the examination of the material and structural remains of Old Cairo, revealing a sequence of continuous occupation extending from the sixth century BC until the present day. Dominated by the ruins of the Roman-Byzantine fortress of Babylon, Old Cairo is the site of the Mosque of Amr, numerous churches and monasteries, the synagogue of Ben Ezra and the Coptic Museum. It is a site that has played a major part in the history of Egypt with its multi-cultural and diverse heritages, at once difficult to comprehend -- because its buildings were rebuilt and restored time and again over the centuries, often reusing wood and stonework -- and to place in historical sequence. Back in the 1980s when I was conducting specialised tours around Old Cairo I was frequently asked questions to which I had no answer. Where exactly was the ancient canal linking the Nile with the Red Sea? Why was the fortress attributed to the Roman emperor Trajan called Babylon? Why were so many churches named after Syrian saints and martyrs, not Egyptian ones? Why did the Arab general Amr ibn al'As choose to build his mosque in such close proximity to a largely Christian area? Where did the synagogue of Ben Ezra fit into the order of things? Sheehan's Babylon of Egypt provides some answers. This comprehensive study begins with the ancient landscape of Cairo; confirms the existence of the sweet-water canal linking the Nile with the Red Sea; and outlines the development of the fortress of Babylon (known as Qasr Al-Sham) and the cycles of decline and development in Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman times. Read this book and you will no longer think of Old Cairo as a largely "Christian area". Data was obtained by the time-consuming method of drilling boreholes at carefully chosen locations that allowed for the identification and plotting of the contours of the Muqattam limestone formation (the Muqattam Hills) as it descends in a series of shallow terraces from the east. One of these terraces passes more or less through the centre of the area now enclosed by the walls of the Fortress of Babylon. On this landscape later changes and developments were based, and detailed archaeological information from a number of previously unexplored locations and buildings within the fortress confirms what has long been suspected -- that Old Cairo is far more important to an understanding of patterns of growth and development of modern Cairo, and its cycles of decline and revival, than many other areas of the city. We now know for certain that an early settlement was founded in Old Cairo, on the eastern bank of the Nile south of the apex of the Delta, during the Saite or Persian periods in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, the period that saw the first cutting of the Khalig, the canal to the Red Sea, thus confirming the written evidence of ancient writers who were explicit that the foundation of Babylon took place in the Persian Period. As for its name, Sheehan has an explanation for this too. He mentions that Diodorus Siculus wrote that captives brought from Babylonia seized a strong position on the bank of the river Nile which they named after their native land. Regarding the location of the ancient canal dug in Persian times, this was later re-cut by Trajan who, recognising the strategic and commercial interests of the location, wished to reopen the canal which had silted over. Amnis Traianus, Trajan's Canal, followed the route of the ancient Persian and Ptolemaic canals through the Wadi Tumilat, and in order to cope with the increase of seaborne traffic Trajan built a harbour in AD 110. Its entrance has been identified, as have the massive limestone embankment walls which are at least 6.5m wide. Parts were found beneath the Greek Orthodox Church of Mar Guirgis, and other parts run parallel to it 40 metres to the east, beneath the floor of the crypt in the church of Sergius (where the Holy Family reputedly hid during their sojourn in Egypt). The crypt and sanctuary of the church lie almost wholly over this wall, and its western part over the filled-in canal. The Roman fortress underwent major development under Diocletian, the emperor who unleashed the most ferocious campaign of persecutions against Christians at the turn of the fourth century. Irregular in shape and enclosing an area of five acres, the expanded fortification was designed to protect an enlarged harbour and the entrance to the canal. Its massively built, four-metre-thick and 15-metre-high walls were punctuated to the east by U-shaped towers (above which the Hanging Church, Al-Moallaqa was constructed), together with two massive round towers on the west which today form the entrance to the Coptic Museum. This resembles in construction an even bigger fortress built by Diocletian in Luxor that encompassed the whole of the Temple of Luxor, which no longer functioned as such, and is a clear indication that Egypt was firmly in Roman hands and explains why so many of the early churches in Old Cairo, built on a Byzantine blueprint, where built by foreign saints such as Sergius, Bacchus, Mercurious and Barbara. The church of Abu Sarga was burnt at one point, probably under Caliph Al-Hakim in the 10th century, and was restored under the later Fatimids. Archaeological evidence indicates that most of the surviving mediaeval buildings of Old Cairo underwent a major programme of rebuilding between the 10th century and the middle of the 11th, when Al-Hakim's successor Caliph Al-Muizz issued frequent decrees declaring his beneficence to the religious minorities: Sunni Muslims, Qibt (Copts), Yaqubi (Jacobite Syrians), Malaki (Melkite Greeks), Rumi (Greek-Romans) and Yahudi (Jews), all of whom were allowed full freedom and equality. Among the most important buildings restored in that era were the mosque of Amr, and the Hanging Church (Al-Moallaqa, which acquired distinction when the patriarchate was moved from Alexandria to Masr), and the synagogue of Ben Ezra where the Geniza archive was found, providing considerable information of the nature and organisation of these building projects. The area within the walls of the former Roman fortress saw a surge of building activity in the Ayyubid and early Bahri Mameluk periods from the mid-12th to the 14th centuries, when pilgrims and travellers took a special interest in sites associated with the Holy Family in the wake of the Crusades. Crosses engraved on marble blocks in the niches of the central subterranean sanctuary of the Church of St Sergius reveal the increasing presence and influence of Franciscans in the 13th century, and a Roman Catholic presence in Old Cairo reveals itself in a small cemetery (now built over) to the north of the church.There was a notable fall in building activity in Old Cairo in the later Mameluk period. Indeed there appears to have been an extended period of stagnation until a new phase of patronage and building activity was launched in the 17th century. One of the most positive signs resulting from the archaeological project as revealed in Babylon of Egypt is a growing awareness of and appreciation for the cultural remains of Christian Egypt, both internationally and within the Coptic community. An increase in the body of knowledge has already resulted in expanded interest not only in today's largely Christian area, but also its place among early mediaeval religious buildings as a whole, and as a focus of the capital's multi-ethnic community. Like many archaeological sites and monuments in Egypt, Old Cairo has faced the conflicting agendas of government-sponsored tourist development, and concern for heritage protection and conservation. Developing and implementing long-term planning of major sites has been sadly lacking, and over the past decades important restoration projects have been carried out with little or no comprehensive strategy to maintain their historical integrity - to protect the sites as a whole. "Ultimately, the best chance for the conservation of Old Cairo rests with the information the archaeological monitoring project gathered since 2000," writes Sheehan in his concluding paragraph. "We have seen throughout our work that in spite of truncation, removal, and restoration, ancient and modern, enough always seems to survive in the archaeological record below ground or in a forgotten corner to allow us to at least get near to the real story of the site and its buildings. It is a sincere hope that publication and presentation of this story will succeed in raising the profile of archaeology and making it a major consideration in future programs of presentation and conservation which would, and perhaps will, complete the making of Old Cairo." In concluding this review of Babylon of Egypt I must mention the important Timeline of Significant Events outlined in the book, as well as the quality of the illustrations. Without them an archaeological review such as this would be perplexing-- and Nicolas Warner and his team's axonometric drawings of the various project locations are quite brilliant.
