Art Bites 4 : Ishtar Gate and Ancient Near East Collection at Pergamon Museum

The Pergamon Museum is in Berlin and houses monumental buildings like the Ishtar Gate we are about to see today.

The Ishtar Gate was the eighth gate to the inner city of Babylon. It was constructed in about 575 BC by order of King Nebuchadnezzar II on the north side of the city and dedicated it to the Babylonian goddess of love and war Ishtar.

It was made with glazed brick with alternating rows of bas-relief mušḫuššu (dragons), aurochs (bulls), and lions, symbolizing the gods Marduk, Adad, and Ishtar respectively.

Marduk, the national deity and chief god, is depicted as a dragon with a snake-like head and tail, a scaled body of a lion, and powerful talons for back feet.

It was excavated in the early 20th century and a reconstruction using original bricks and it is considered one of most complex and impressive architectural reconstructions in the history of archaeology.

Hundreds of crates of glaze brick fragments were carefully desalinated and then pieced together. Fragments were combined with new bricks baked in a specially designed kiln to re-create the correct color and finish.

Here we see a model of the whole gate.

It is an impressive 15 meters high building and yet it is the smaller of the two gates. The bigger back part was too big to be displayed and it is in storage !!!

Along with the Ishtar Gate there was a collection of Assyrian sculptures.

They are characterized by the sheer size and the distinguishing Near East easthetics.

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