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City & Village Tours: 0845 812 5000
The City of Screams
Unfortunately the 6
th
century Buddhas of Bamiyan
in the foothills of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan
weren’t popular with the terrorists either and were
destroyed by them in 2001.
150 feet tall, the buddhas
were carved into the side of a sandstone cliff on the
Silk Road where monk-hermits had lived in caves for
700 years until the Islamic invasion of the 9
th
century.
People continued to live here after the monks left but
Bamiyan was left a ghost town known as the City of
Screams after all of the inhabitants were massacred
by Genghis Khan’s warriors in the 12
th
century.
The Taliban’s explosives revealed caves covered in
elaborate mural paintings that Japanese researchers
have established demonstrate the earliest use of oil
paint in the world. However Unesco has decided
against rebuilding the Buddhas - no roads lead to the
City of Screams marooned in one of the world’s
most deprived and dangerous countries.
King of Kings Am I
The destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan as an
awful act of barbaric vandalism is really nothing new.
In many ancient civilisations public statues of the
old ruler were always melted down in order for new
ones to be built to symbolize the power of the new
ruler. Destroying the old and creating the new also
served to facilitate the
damnatio memorae
– the
legitimacy of the new leadership. We saw this
when the television cameras stayed for hours
watching a crowd of men hack away at the huge
statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and we are
seeing it now in the Ukraine where pro-Western
protestors have destroyed more than 100 statues of
The fabled design, size and posture of the Colossus of
Rhodes, if not its gender, would centuries later inspire
the design for the Statue of Liberty.
Our last wonder, the Lighthouse or Pharos of
Alexandria in Egypt was one of the greatest
architectural feats of antiquity. Built in the 3
rd
century
BC it was at least as tall as a 40 story modern
building and it stood for over 16 centuries before
being destroyed by an earthquake. Like ArcelorMittal
Orbit it was also a tourist attraction with two
observation platforms for visitors.
The Seven Wonders only co-existed for a period of
less than sixty years during which they were drawn
up into the best-known list although an earlier version
included the famous Ishtar Gates of Babylon, built by
our man Nebuchadnezzar II before the Colossus of
Rhodes was built. The Ishtar Gate of Babylon didn’t
make it to the final Greek list of wonders nor to the
British Museum. Excavated by German
archaeologists in the 1930s they were sent to the
Pergamon Museum in Berlin. An imitation Ishtar
Gate did however make it to the World Travel Market
in November at the Excel Exhibition Centre.
Dr Kettle and I pausing to admire the ambition of the
stand design (which rather knocked the UK’s little
offerings into a cocked hat) were approached by a
young Iraqi-Cockney who asked if we were interested
in visiting Baghdad.
I’d love to
, I said,
to see the
ruins of ancient Babylon and Ur but is it safe?
I asked.
Oh yes
said the young poppet in what really
is my favourite answer of the decade,
we only go to
places that aren’t popular with the terrorists!
