Mural Principles

“Something there is that doesn't love a wall,” wrote Robert Frost (Mending Wall), but that doesn’t keep us from (re)building them any more than it did Bob. My own property has no walls or fences (other than the ones integral to the buildings themselves, of course) designed as barriers to people. There is a retaining wall to keep earth from sliding and a three-rail fence to keep the deer away from the pool (both barriers are in need of maintenance this spring), but neither would pose much of an obstruction to a person. This is simply because, to date, no such deterrence to trespassers has been needed in my out-of-the-way location; my property doesn’t lie between any two places that anyone on foot is apt to go. Some nearby neighbors, though equally out-of-the-way, opt for border walls and fences anyway. Perhaps my immediate neighbors will someday be inspired to do the same. Then I’d have an enclosure on three sides without having to lay a brick or dig a post hole of my own. I can live with that.

Boundary walls have a history as old as civilization. Walls: a History of Civilization in Blood and Brick by David Frye makes just this point. It arrived from Amazon last week. History can be written profitably with a focus any one component of civilization, no matter how large or small. I have read and been impressed by histories of rust, salt, germs, and even cod. Frye’s book on walls is a fine addition to them.

Walls are designed to keep something/someone out or something/someone in. (Frost again: “Before I built a wall I'd ask to know/What I was walling in or walling out.”) Occasionally they are intended to do both. More commonly, though, they are just for one or the other, and most commonly of all they are to keep outsiders out. The need for them appeared as soon as ancient peoples settled down and built up static stores of food and goods; these were tempting targets for nomad raiders – and also for settled but covetous neighbors. Plundering someone else’s wealth was a pleasant activity – far more pleasant than laboring for it oneself – and so it was a difficult practice to stop. Defensive walls accordingly sprang up around the first cities. Walls have been with us ever since. They come in all types and sizes: frontier walls, city walls, neighborhood walls (aka “gated communities”), and walls around private estates. In general, the less effective the distant walls are, the more numerous the nearer ones will be.

Ancient frontier walls were built remarkably early. They turn up in what was still technically prehistory. When we think of frontier walls the Great Wall of China naturally springs to mind. Over millennia it was built and rebuilt: most impressively by the Ming, the last dynasty under which it served a real defensive purpose. Yet, while the Great Wall is exceptional by scale and by the persistence with which it was reconstructed, it was in other respects not alone and it was far from the first. In Syria, for example, there is a mysterious 100-mile wall more than 4000 years old running roughly north-south. Since writing was still a new idea that hadn’t yet spread to Syria, there are no descriptions of it from contemporary sources and no inscriptions on it. So, who built it and why are unknown. One can make surmises. Like most ancient frontier walls it separated the settled area of farms and cities (in this case to the west) from the unsettled realm of nomads (pastoralists and hunter-gatherers mostly) on the other side. Scarcely more than a meter tall, it wasn’t a very formidable barrier, though it would have presented an obstacle to war chariots, the Abrams tanks of the day. Chariots were among the weapons of the nomads at the time; pure cavalry, sans chariots, was half a century in the future. If defended, it at least would have slowed attackers on foot, too. A few centuries later, Shulgi of Ur built a long frontier wall across the desert “like a net.” The Sumerians did have writing so we have a record of Shulgi bragging about the accomplishment. The purpose was to block the raids of nomadic Amorites to the north. Later, for similar reasons, the Persians built walls against the horsemen of the northern steppes. (Fate being the prankster that she is, Persia eventually fell to horsemen from the south.) The Romans were inveterate wall builders as well. Hadrian’s Wall is most famous, but hundreds of miles of other walls defended the Empire against barbarians from unoccupied Germany (we often forget just how much of Germany Rome held), the Balkans, Syria, and even North Africa. In modern times the Maginot line, a frontier wall of sorts, is often derided because Germans bypassed it. Yet, the line forced the Germans to bypass it, so to that extent it worked. Had the Maginot line extended to the sea, 1940 might have been very different. Expanding empires, one might note, don’t bother much with walls. Border walls are commonly a signal that imperial expansion is over, and that emphasis has switched to holding ground against loss.

City walls were a second (sometimes only) line of defense in ancient times. They could be defeated by a determined and capable besieger, but more often than not they were effective. City walls left the surrounding countryside exposed to raiders, true enough, but at least the towns had protection. From Sumerian times to the end of the Middle Ages, well-defended walls were tough to beat. The Long Walls connecting Athens to the port of Piraeus made the Athenian rise to power possible by thwarting (for a time) Sparta’s more powerful army. For months the walls of Tyre held up Alexander the Great: not a fellow to be easily held up. Repeatedly over centuries the walls of Constantinople saved the Byzantine Empire from invaders. At long last, however, those walls were reduced to ruins by the cannonades of Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453. Orban, the Hungarian metals expert who cast the massive cannons, had offered his expertise to both sides, but Mehmed made the better offer. Sometimes it doesn’t pay to be stingy.

Some walls are built to keep people in rather than out: prison walls are the most obvious example. During the Cold War we saw the curious case of border walls – the Berlin wall most prominently – designed primarily to keep the population inside from leaving: a reversal of border walls’ usual function. Most walls and border fences today serve the old-fashioned exclusionary purpose. They often are controversial nonetheless, whether on the West Bank, the southern flank of Hungary, or the US southern border. Those inside at least are still free to leave, however.

Here at home, I’ll soon dig out my masonry tools from the garage for my wall repairs this spring. Once again, my own masonry walls at present merely keep back dirt from where I don’t want it. Hopefully, the need for anything more won’t ever arise. One never can be altogether certain about such things though. Fate is still a prankster.

Johnny Cash – The Wall