ANE Today – The Ishtar Gate of Babylon: One Monument, Multiple Narratives - American Society of Overseas Research (ASOR)

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ANE Today – The Ishtar Gate of Babylon: One Monument, Multiple Narratives

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ANE Today – The Ishtar Gate of Babylon: One Monument, Multiple Narratives

April 2023

Vol. 11, No. 4

The Ishtar Gate of Babylon: One Monument, Multiple Narratives

By Helen Gries

Location of Babylon in modern-day Iraq (©Julia Rummel).

The lavishly decorated Ishtar Gate was one of the city gates of ancient Babylon in present-day Iraq, built by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II in the 6th century BCE. But it is also a masterpiece of Babylonian architecture: the reconstructed version is the highlight of any visit to the Vorderasiatisches Museum (Museum of the Ancient Near East) housed in the Pergamon Museum on Museum Island in Berlin. Above all, the Ishtar Gate carries great symbolic significance for contemporary Iraq. The gate therefore may be interpreted quite differently depending on the individual observer’s perspective and background, and we can see multiple narratives come together in this single monument.

The Ishtar Gate of Nebuchadnezzar II

The first narrative is that of its creation in the 6th century BCE, under the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II (604–562 BCE). In the heyday of the Babylonian Empire, Nebuchadnezzar II carried out enormous building projects in Babylon, including the Ishtar Gate, its adjoining Processional Way, and the so-called Throne Room Façade in the royal palace, all with their brightly colored glazed brick decorations. These are masterpieces of craftsmanship and art. At the same time, the lion, the dragon, and the bull on the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way are not merely decoration; they represent three of the most important Babylonian gods. The lion symbolizes Ishtar; the bull—or more precisely, the wild bull—embodies the weather god, Adad; and the dragon embodies Marduk, the city god of Babylon.

Babylon during Nebuchadnezzar II’s time (after O. Pedersén, Babylon. The Great City (2020), Fig. 2.1).

A reconstructed lion of the Processional Way representing the goddess Ishtar (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum, Photo: Olaf M. Teßmer).

But the Ishtar Gate was also one of five city gates that provided access to Babylon’s inner city. It constituted the entrance to the city’s ritual and political center, where the temple of the city god Marduk, the sanctuaries of other important deities, and the palace were located. During the annual New Year festival — the most important religious event in Babylonia — the ceremonial procession flowed through the Processional Way and the Ishtar Gate to Marduk’s temple in the city center. The fact that the Ishtar Gate and the Processional Way were made of glazed bricks and decorated with symbols representing the gods demonstrates the religious significance attached to them. No other gate or street in Babylon was as elaborately embellished.

Model of the Ishtar Gate, the Processional Way, and the North Gate, which was discovered later (after O. Pedersén, Babylon. The Great City (2020), Fig. 2.34).

The Ishtar Gate After the Time of the Great Empires

The second narrative is that of the reuse of the robust baked bricks of the ruins as a building material. As early as the Roman era, a sea of ruins was all that was left to remind the visitor of the former metropolis — and yet knowledge of Babylon was never completely lost. The Babylonians originally built the city primarily with Mesopotamia’s characteristic air-dried mudbricks. Without regular renewal and maintenance, mud-brick buildings will decay almost completely within 50 to 70 years. As such, rather than use air-dried mudbricks, Nebuchadnezzar II instead had the entire gate complex (as well as his other monumental buildings) erected from durable baked bricks.

Already in antiquity had people begun to remove the ruins to reuse the baked bricks from the structure’s interior as building material. The population of the surrounding towns and villages sustained awareness of ancient Babylon primarily thanks to the fact that they reused the bricks from the former metropolis. In addition to the written tradition in the Classical sources, the Bible, and the Koran, the local population was primarily responsible for preserving Babylon’s memory and maintaining knowledge of the site’s exact location.

The remains of the Ishtar Gate’s two older construction phases at the time the excavation began, Babylon 1902 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum, Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, photographer unknown).

The Rediscovery of the Ishtar Gate

The third narrative is that of the archaeological rediscovery of Babylon resulting from the excavation undertaken by the Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft (German Oriental Society) from 1899 to 1917, under Robert Koldewey’s direction. At that time, Babylon lay in the Ottoman Empire’s territory. No part of the iteration of the Ishtar Gate that has been reconstructed in Berlin was still standing at that time as large parts of the gate had been removed to reuse the bricks. Only the earliest construction phase — a gate made of unglazed relief bricks — had been preserved and was still standing. Visitors can still see this phase in Babylon today. In addition, the archaeologists found thousands of small glazed-brick fragments in the rubble. These had once been part of the later gate structure. The team excavating the site systematically collected these fragments. They obtained permission to bring the glazed brick fragments to Berlin in a division-of-finds agreement in 1903 and 1926, the former with the Ottoman Empire and the latter with the Kingdom of Iraq under British Administration.

Transporting the crates with finds by sailboat to Hilla, where they were loaded onto the train for further shipment to Baghdad and Berlin, 1926 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum, Deutsche Orient-Gesellschaft, Photo: Walter Andrae).

The Recreation of the Ishtar Gate

The fourth narrative is that of the gate’s reconstruction in Berlin in the 1920s. Before the painstaking assembly of the brick fragments could begin, the pieces required elaborate preparation. The bricks first had to be thoroughly desalinated before they were put together. To accomplish this, the laboratory staff placed the fragments in 230 large wine barrels filled with water and changed the water regularly over several weeks. Afterwards they reinforced the glazes with wax. The restorations then began with the reconstruction of individual animals. Some of them were later given to the museums in Istanbul and Baghdad, but also sold to museums all over the world.

First, the bricks had to be thoroughly desalinated. To accomplish this, the staff at the Chemical Laboratory of the Royal Museums placed the fragments in barrels of water, which they changed regularly, 1928 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum, photographer unknown).

Staff sorting and assembling the brick fragments. Walter Andrae’s hand-drawn reconstructions of the animals in their original size hang on the wall to the right, 1928/1929 (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum, photographer unknown).

Since the original brick fragments were insufficient to reconstruct the entire Ishtar Gate, the then-director of the Vorderasiatische Abteilung (Department of the Ancient Near East), Walter Andrae, decided to fill in the gaps with new bricks made especially for this purpose. To this end, he commissioned three well-known ceramic manufacturers from the area around Berlin to produce suitable modern glazed bricks. Both the blue background and the ornamental bands, the floral patterns, and the battlements on the reconstructions consist almost entirely of these same modern bricks. Less than 20 per cent of the Ishtar Gate, about 45 per cent of the Processional Way, and as little as 15 per cent of the Throne Room Façade are composed of original Babylonian bricks. It was solely in the cases of the animals—the lions, dragons, and bulls—that the conservators only had to add small sections.

The reconstruction of the Ishtar Gate’s most recent construction phase, displayed in the Pergamon Museum (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Vorderasiatisches Museum, Photo: Olaf M. Teßmer).

The Ishtar Gate Today

Ever since the Pergamon Museum opened its doors in 1930, the Ishtar Gate has fascinated visitors with its vivid colors; it has become a symbol of ancient Near Eastern architecture and art. In 1999, UNESCO designated Museum Island and its five museums as a World Heritage Site. Almost 20 years later, UNESCO added the ancient city of Babylon to its list of World Heritage Sites, thus recognizing Babylon’s global importance. Since then, UNESCO has been committed to preserving both the remains of the Ishtar Gate that still stand in Babylon and the reconstruction of the gate in Berlin. Currently the Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and the World Monuments Fund are carrying out an extensive restoration project, which aims to repair recent damage but also to permanently secure the architectural remains of the gate.

Final touch-ups at the still-standing remains of the Ishtar Gate’s earliest construction phase in Babylon during the ongoing restoration by Iraqi State Board of Antiquities and Heritage and the World Monuments Fund (Photo: World Monuments Fund).

The ruins of Babylon today. On the right is Nebuchadnezzar II’s reconstructed royal palace (Southern Palace), on the left Saddam Hussein’s palace on an artificial hill, and in the background the Euphrates (Photo: Iraq State Board for Antiquities and Heritage).

But the Ishtar Gate is more than simply a historical monument to a bygone culture. Since its excavation and reconstruction, it has become an identity marker for the modern Iraqi state founded in 1921. In this way, it is also part of our current societal discourse on how to address both Germany’s and Europe’s colonial past. Thus its story is not yet complete.

Helen Gries is a curator at the Vorderasiatisches Museum in Berlin. Her book, The Ishtar Gate of Babylon: From Fragment to Monument, was recently published by Schnell and Steiner.

Further Reading:

Amrhein, A., C. Fitzgerald, and E. Knott, eds. 2020. A Wonder to Behold: Craftsmanship and the Creation of Babylon’s Ishtar Gate. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Gries, H. 2022. The Ishtar Gate of Babylon: From Fragment to Monument. Regensburg: Schnell + Steiner.

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