We assembled in Hawking, outside Number Three. Peterson in his role as trainer and mentor; Messrs Hopwood and Dewar and Miss Prentiss on their final training jump. And me. Ostensibly along to help supervise, but, in reality, just running away.
Peterson and I made ourselves scarce in the corner as they laid in their carefully calculated co-ordinates and, under Dieter’s watchful eye, carried out their pre-flight checks. I smoothed the folds in my tunic and arranged my shawl over my headdress. Eventually they were finished.
Dieter withdrew.
Peterson said, ‘In your own time, lady and gentlemen,’ and the world went white.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Hopwood, unprofessionally, and I had to agree. Nineveh in 680BC was – mind blowing.
We stood quietly under a small tree, just inside the Mashki Gate on the north-west side of the city, and tried to take it all in. The last king, Sennacherib, had extensively remodelled Nineveh, laying out new, wide streets and squares, and building ‘The Palace Without Rival’. He’d brought water to the city by building canals and aqueducts. He’d planted gardens and erected hundreds of statues. I was looking at a giant man-bull a few yards away and it was looking right back at me.
Nineveh was a huge city – about seven hundred and fifty hectares – and built on a scale to match. The gates – all fifteen of them – were colossal. The stone and mud brick walls were sixty feet high and fifty feet thick. And as if that wasn’t enough to deter invaders, stone towers had been cut into the walls every sixty feet or so.
Inside the walls, the city was dominated by the royal palace. Built for Sennacherib’s beloved wife, Tashmetu-sharrat, it soared above the city.
We’d been standing for about ten minutes or so and, as far as I could see, no one was paying us the slightest attention. As usual, we didn’t quite blend in, but Nineveh straddled the important trade routes of the time, so the streets were already full of other strange-looking folk who spoke funny.
This part of the assignment was under Mr Hopwood’s control.
‘This way,’ he said, confidently. ‘Miss Prentiss and Dr Maxwell, if you would be kind enough to bring up the rear, please.’
This was a polite way of saying, ‘Women at the back where you belong?’ Still, at least they hadn’t brought anything heavy for us to carry. In ancient times – and modern, now I come to think of it – it’s always women who do the heavy lifting.
We set off for the palace. Even I could have found it. Sennacherib had been a fully paid up member of the ‘in your face’ school of architecture. Built of huge white limestone blocks, it dazzled in the hot sunshine. A pair of magnificent copper lions guarded the main entrance. I saw terraces, pillars, and walkways, all heavily planted and cascading with running water. You could have been forgiven for thinking that here, indeed, were the famous hanging gardens, but you would have been wrong. Because the gardens were next door, connected to the palace by a canal and a royal avenue.
I caught my breath. We all caught our breath. The Hanging Gardens of Nineveh were beautiful. A green jewel in a dusty desert. Built in concentric squares, the largest, the outer square, was laid out as a public park. I could see small groves of trees. Shady paths invited further exploration. Entrance, to this part at least, seemed to be open to all.
Inside this park was a wide, lily-covered, square moat and inside this, another, smaller square park, more thickly planted and obviously private. But the centrepiece was the huge, three-storey ziggurat towering above its surroundings. Each terrace was lush and beautiful, landscaped with statues and planted with ornamental bushes, trees and the hanging foliage that gave the gardens their name. The summit was crowned with a copse of full-grown trees. Water cascaded wastefully from one terrace down to another, making the statement – We are Nineveh and we are rich and powerful and we can afford to chuck it around.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Mr Hopwood again. Again, no one argued.
‘Right,’ said Mr Dewar, pulling us all together. Historians do tend to get lost in the moment. On some assignments we really could do with a couple of well-trained sheepdogs and a cattle prod.
His was the next part of the mission. We’d all been allocated tasks. He made us check our com links – he was going by the book – and we all scattered. Peterson and I, who knew as much about horticulture as the average politician knew about effective and efficient government, were allocated the north side of the park.
We walked slowly, not drawing attention to ourselves – we hoped. The park was full of families enjoying a respite from the late afternoon sun. Heatproof children ran around, shouting. Water sellers lined the paths. Stone benches invited rest under the shady trees and everywhere was the sound of running water.
‘I want to see how they get the water up there,’ said Tim, gazing up at the ziggurat. ‘Sennacherib – never unduly modest about his achievements – claimed to have used something that sounds suspiciously like the Archimedes screw – four centuries before Archimedes got round to inventing it.’